Building therapeutic relationship in schizophrenic and alcohol-related disorder cases

Current literature on the dual diagnosis in cases of schizophrenia and alcohol dependence has reported how pharmacological treatment has positive effects on the reduction of both disorders. Nevertheless, patients have considerable difficulties in following the prescribed medication. This work aims to build an engagement stage and therapeutic relationship in seven patients with schizophrenic and alcohol-related disorder cases. This result was achieved through the use of the vignette technique and narrative psychodynamic approach during group counselling sessions. Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS) and Munich Alcoholism Test (MALT) were applied before and after treatment. A follow-up session was organized. The PANSS and MALT scores indicated there was no reduction of the psychiatric symptoms after treatment. The follow-up session showed positive outcomes in terms of increasing the level of socialisation as well as awareness of their own condition; at the same, an adherence to pharmacological treatment and psychotherapy for all the subjects.     

No Easy Answers: Avoiding Potential Pitfalls of De‐implementation

In 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began to de‐emphasize and de‐implement multiple evidence‐based HIV prevention practices that had been around for 20 years, thus changing the scope of implementation across the globe. The authors provide evidence how existing interventions (e.g., CDC HIV interventions) may influence implementation of interventions that came after the program was discontinued. De‐implementation is an ecological event that influences, and is influenced by, many parts of a system, for instance, implementation of one type of intervention may influence the implementation of other interventions (biomedical and/or behavioral) after a long‐running program is discontinued. Researchers and policy makers ought to consider how de‐implementation of behavioral interventions is influenced by biomedical interventions mass‐produced by companies with lobbying power. The scientific study of de‐implementation will be inadequate without consideration of the political climate that surrounds de‐implementation of certain types of interventions and the promotion of more‐profitable ones.     

Identifying pre-service teachers’ profiles of conceptions of learning: a cluster analysis

Social Psychology of Education - This study was conducted to track conceptions of learning among pre-service teachers and to verify whether they can be grouped in profiles. A sample of 232...     

The what–where trade-off in multiple-identity tracking

Observers are poor at reporting the identities of objects that they have successfully tracked (Pylyshyn, Visual Cognition, 11, 801-822, 2004; Scholl & Pylyshyn, Cognitive Psychology, 38, 259-290, 1999). Consequently, it has been claimed that objects are tracked in a manner that does not encode their identities (Pylyshyn, 2004). Here, we present evidence that disputes this claim. In a series of experiments, we show that attempting to track the identities of objects can decrease an observer's ability to track the objects' locations. This indicates that the mechanisms that track, respectively, the locations and identities of objects draw upon a common resource. Furthermore, we show that this common resource can be voluntarily distributed between the two mechanisms. This is clear evidence that the location- and identity-tracking mechanisms are not entirely dissociable.     

Efficacy of the program "Testas's (mis)adventures" to promote the deep approach to learning

This paper provides information about the efficacy of a tutorial training program intended to enhance elementary fifth graders' study processes and foster their deep approaches to learning. The program "Testas's (mis)adventures" consists of a set of books in which Testas, a typical student, reveals and reflects upon his life experiences during school years. These life stories are nothing but an opportunity to present and train a wide range of learning strategies and self-regulatory processes, designed to insure students' deeper preparation for present and future learning challenges. The program has been developed along a school year, in a one hour weekly tutorial sessions. The training program had a semi-experimental design, included an experimental group (n=50) and a control one (n=50), and used pre- and posttest measures (learning strategies' declarative knowledge, learning approaches and academic achievement). Data suggest that the students enrolled in the training program, comparing with students in the control group, showed a significant improvement in their declarative knowledge of learning strategies and in their deep approach to learning, consequently lowering their use of a surface approach. In spite of this, in what concerns to academic achievement, no statistically significant differences have been found.     

The Uses of Argument in Communicative Contexts

This paper challenges the view that arguments are (by definition, as it were) attempts to persuade or convince an audience to accept (or reject) a point of view by presenting reasons for (or against) that point of view. I maintain, first, that an arguer need not intend any effect beyond that of making it manifest to readers or hearers that there is a reason for doing some particular thing (e.g., for believing a certain proposition, or alternatively for rejecting it), and second that when an arguer is in fact trying to induce an effect above and beyond rendering a reason manifest, the effect intended—the use to which his or her argument is put—need not be that hearers “do” what the stated reasons are reasons for “doing.” Where the actual or intended effect of making a reason R for “doing X” manifest is something other than “doing X,” I call it an oblique—as opposed to a direct—effect of making that reason manifest. The core of the paper presents an overview or map of the main categories of effect which arguments can have, and the main sub-types within each category, calling attention to the points at which such effects can be indirect or oblique effects. The purpose of that typology is to make it clear (i) how oblique effects can come about and (ii) how important a role they can play in the conduct of argumentation.     

Maternal concepts and expectations regarding a preterm infant

The objective of the present study was: (a) to identify the concerns, verbally expressed, of 50 mothers regarding their preterm infants (PT) and then compare their verbal expression with those of 25 mothers of full-term infants (FT); and (b) to correlate the mothers' verbal expressions with maternal and infant variables. The following instruments were used to compose and characterize the sample: Structure Clinical Interview for DSM III-R Non-Patient (SCID/NP), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and medical charts. Results showed that there was no difference between groups in term of mothers' expectations and conceptualizations; both groups exhibited predominantly positive expectations and concepts. In comparison with FT mothers, PT mothers verbally expressed more feelings and reactions predominantly negative or conflicting in relation to infant birth. Higher levels of maternal anxiety and depression in the PT Group were correlated with more verbal expressions about negative or conflicting emotions. In addition, lower birth weight, higher neonatal risk and longer length of stay in intensive care nursery of the infants were related with more negative or conflicting concepts by the mothers.     

Selecting from dynamic environments: attention distinguishes between blinking and moving

Pinto, Olivers, and Theeuwes (2006) showed that a static target can be efficiently found among different types of dynamically changing distractors. They hypothesized that attention employs a broad division between static and dynamic information, a hypothesis that conforms with earlier research. In the present study, we investigated whether attention can only make use of this crude division or can exploit more subtle discriminations within the dynamic domain. In Experiment 1, participants were able to efficiently find a blinking target among moving distractors and moving targets among blinking distractors, although all items changed at the same rate and produced the same change in local luminance. In Experiment 2, search for a dynamic target among dynamic distractors was aided when we gave the distractors additional dynamic cues. Experiment 3 showed that making the displays equiluminant affected search efficiency for a static target among moving distractors, but not among blinking distractors. The findings refute the broad division hypothesis and suggest that object continuity plays an important role in selection.