The Nature of Generalized Anxiety in Older Primary Care Patients: Preliminary Findings

Clinical features of older primary care patients with GAD (PC-GAD; n = 22) were examined relative to older patients with GAD recruited for two academic clinical trials (M. A. Stanley, J. G. Beck, et al., 2003; J. L. Wetherell, M. Gatz, & M. G, Craske, 2003) and to a sample of older primary care patients without psychiatric diagnoses (No Dx; n = 10). Comparisons revealed similar levels of worry, anxiety, depressive symptoms, quality of life, and functional status between the PC-GAD subsample and patients recruited for academic trials, although primary care patients were older, less well educated, and more ethnically diverse. The PC-GAD subgroup, however, reported greater symptom severity, reduced quality of life, and poorer perceived general health, mental health, and vitality than the No Dx subgroup (² = .23–.43). Service utilization was not different between PC-GAD and No Dx subgroups, with the exception of psychotropic medication use. The Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) and an abbreviated version of this measure may be useful for identifying late-life GAD in primary care. Cutoff scores of 50 and 22 on the full and abbreviated versions of the PSWQ, respectively, demonstrated excellent specificity, sensitivity, and positive predictive value. Negative predictive value was less impressive, probably as a result of high base rates for GAD in this sample.     

Techniques for Teaching HIV Counseling: An Intensive Experiential Model

This article provides a thorough guide to experiential as well as didactic methods that have been used in teaching an HIV course at two separate graduate counselor education programs. This model is based on sound pedagogy, experimental techniques, and effective debriefing methods to enhance the skills of counselors in working more effectively with clients affected by HIV/AIDS. Pertinent themes that have emerged in the classes are discussed.     

Emotional Contagion and Social Judgment

This study examined the influence of another's emotional expressions and individual differences in responsiveness to afferent feedback on attention, evaluations, and memory. In a mixed design, participants (N = 71) rated pictures following exposure to a sender in a neutral mood and then in either a happy or sad mood. Attention, ratings, and recall evidenced a bias characteristic of the sender's mood: Participants spent more time viewing happy and sad pictures following exposure to the happy and sad sender, respectively; ratings by participants exposed to the happy and sad sender were more positive and negative, respectively, and this effect was greater for those more cue-responsive; participants recalled more pictures congruent with the sender's mood and those more cue-responsive exposed to the sad sender exhibited impaired memory characteristic of the effect of sadness on memory. Findings suggest that exposure to even mild emotional expressions can influence cognition and behavior and this effect is greater for those more responsive to cues generated by afferent feedback.     

Inertial eigenvalues, rod density, and rod diameter in length perception by dynamic touch

Four experiments addressed the relevance of the eigenvaluesI _k of the inertia tensor for perceiving length by dynamic touch. Experiments 1–2 focused on the consequences of limiting variation in the minimum eigenvalueI ₃. Both revealed that perceived length is a function ofI _k . Whether the contribution ofI ₃ is detected, however, depends on the range of values that characterize a particular object set. Experiments 3–4 considered the relationship between an independent index of a rod’s diameter, which does not affectI _k , and actual manipulation of a rod’s diameter, which does affectI _k . Whereas the former appeared as satisfaction of implicit instructions to alter reports of perceived length, the latter entailed actual differences in perceived length in accordance withI _k . Results are discussed with respect to the links among actual length, perceived length, andI _k , as well as, in particular, how these links guarantee that perceived length is in the range of actual lengths.     

Communication Deviances and Clarity Among the Mothers of Normally Achieving and Learning-Disabled Boys.

The main purpose of the study was to reexamine the association between maternal communication deviances and learning disabilities in children. In this study, we adapted and extended the procedure used b Ditton, Green, and Singer (1987). A two-part experimental task was used: one in which the child could not request any clarification of mother's insruction, and another in which the mother and child could communicate. Both communication deviances and the clarity of mother's communication were analyzed. The subjects were 60 mother-child paires in which half of the children had learning disabilities and the other haalf were normally achieving children matched for age and parents' SES. The dyads were vedetaped in a laboratory setting. The mothers o f learning-disabled (LD) children were found to give less exact instructions and to present more ambiguous messages to the child than the mothers of non-LD children.     

A GROUP-ORIENTED CONTINGENCY TO INCREASE LEISURE ACTIVITIES OF ADULTS WITH TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY

An interdependent group-oriented contingency and graphic feedback were used to increase the activity levels of residents of a group home for persons with traumatic brain injury. Results showed that the intervention was effective for 4 of the 6 subjects. Individual performances must be examined when implementing group contingencies because all subjects may not respond.     

A Review of the TFA Counseling System: From Theory Construction to Application

The purpose of this article is to provide counseling practitioners and researchers with an integrative review of the TFA (thinking-feeling-acting) counseling system, Tracing the 12-year evolution of the model from theory construction and instrument development to practical application provides in one place a comprehensive synthesis of published work on the TFA system. The theoretical principle guiding the model was the systematic combination of the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains of human functioning. The Hutchins Behavior Inventory (HBI) was developed to assess the interaction of thoughts, feelings, and actions that led to applications of the TFA system in counseling and related areas.     

‘So you did what you wanted then’: Discourse analysis,personal agency,and psychotherapy

This paper explores issues concerning personal agency in discursive psychology and discourse analysis, with a particular emphasis on agency in terms of motivational accounts of the person. Issues are discussed in relation to the efficacy, acceptability, and accessibility of discourse analytic research for the practising psychotherapist. We suggest that such an approach may raise problems in four areas. First, we argue that without explicit theorization of the subject as language user, discourse analysis may be vulnerable to the charge of determinism. Second, theorization of the subject as language user may be required to account successfully for individual consistency and continuity of identity. Third, although claiming to critique commonsense notions of subjectivity, implicit dualist assumptions facilitate a reading of discursive psychology that is compatible with a motivational model of the person. Finally, we argue that discursive psychology itself implies a particular model of the strategically motivated language user. We conclude that, although these issues require clarification, discursive psychology and discourse analysis have much to offer psychotherapy research.     

Pseudodiagnosticity

Subjects selected data in order to decide from which of two ‘islands’ an ‘archeological find’ had come. The results replicated two established phenomena in cognitive psychology: (1) the tendency to ignore base rate data given individuating information, and (2) the tendency to seek confirmatory evidence.The major outcome of the study was, however, to reveal a new phenomenon in information search. Subjects displayed a surprising and strong tendency to seek diagnostically worthless information. They then altered their conclusion based on that information. For example, subjects who had already obtained P(D₁/H₁) selected P(D₂/H₁) when P(D₁/H₂) was equally easily available, and when they had no relevant experience to bring to bear on the estimation of P(D₁/H₂). This phenomenon, which appears to be a wholly dysfunctional cognitive tendency, was labeled pseudodiagnosticity.