Coping with the exposure to torture

This paper describes approaches taken at the International Rehabilitation and Research Centre in Copenhagen to helping torture victims and their families cope with the exposure to and aftermath of torture.     

Temporary suppression of visual processing in an RSVP task: an attentional blink? .

Through rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), we asked Ss to identify a partially specified letter (target) and then to detect the presence or absence of a fully specified letter (probe). Whereas targets are accurately identified, probes are poorly detected when they are presented during a 270-ms interval beginning 180 ms after the target. Probes presented immediately after the target or later in the RSVP stream are accurately detected. This temporary reduction in probe detection was not found in conditions in which a brief blank interval followed the target or Ss were not required to identify the target. The data suggest that the presentation of stimuli after the target but before target-identification processes are complete produces interference at a letter-recognition stage. This interference may cause the temporary suppression of visual attention mechanisms observed in the present study.     

Family reunions: Visionary encounters with the departed in a modern-day psychomanteum

A poignant feature of many near-death experiences is a visionary encounter with deceased loved ones. Over the centuries, researchers have sought safe ways to replicate near-death and related experiences, hoping to induce the powerful aftereffects of these events. The ancient Greeks contructed psychomanteums, or oracles of the dead, where seekers could consult spirits of the deceased. I describe a modern attempt to recreate the psychomanteum. Like near-death experiences, visionary encounters in this modern psychomanteum are experienced as real and not as hallucinatory, and have profound personal aftereffects. This novel experimental technique may permit the scientific study of phenomena that previously occurred only spontaneously and under uncontrolled circumstances.     

Assessing the acceptability of staff management procedures to direct care and supervisory staff

Direct care and supervisory staff in five residential training programs for persons with mental retardation in North Dakota rated the acceptability of six staff management procedures. Overall, staff rated “Instructions”, “Instructions and Modeling”, “Feedback and Praise”, and “Instructions, Feedback, and Praise”, as significantly more acceptable than “Self-Management” and “Self-Management, Feedback and Praise”. There was a significant group by treatment interaction in which supervisors and direct care staff had significantly different acceptability rating for four of the six procedures. The results were further analyzed by group and implications and future research are discuessed.     

Setting and response generalization in rational-emotive therapy: A case study

A single case study (n=1) conducted during therapy investigated the relationship between disputing irrational beliefs in vivo and setting and response generalization. Irrational beliefs associated with the subject's anger and depression were disputed at different intervals over a ten week period utilizing a multiple baseline design across four classes in a school setting (setting 1). Depression and anger were rated several times each week. The subject's level of anxiety was also rated in setting 1 but the irrational beliefs associated with it were not disputed. Anger, depression, and anxiety were rated without disputation in a separate work setting (setting 2). Affect ratings significantly decreased across both settings throughout the ten week period. Results indicated that 1) disputing irrational beliefs associated with anger and depression in setting 1 led to reductions in anxiety in this setting (response generalization), 2) anger and depression reductions in setting 2 paralleled setting 1 reductions (setting generalization), and 3) anxiety reductionsWilliam J. Ruth, PhD, Staff Psychologist and practicum supervisor, Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy, NY City; School Psychologist, Board of Cooperative Educational Services, Southern Westchester.Raymond DiGiuseppe, PhD, ABPP, Director of Training and Research, Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy, NY City; Graduate Professor, St. John's University, NY City; co-author,Practitioner's Guide to Rational-Emotive Therapy and RET with Alcoholics and Substance Abusers.     

The effects of staff self-management on positive social interactions in a group home setting

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a participative management (self-management) procedure directed toward increasing the frequency of positive interactions between direct-care staff and group home residents. A component of the self-management procedure, goal setting, was also evaluated. This study took place in two group homes housing a total of 16 male and female adults with moderate to mild mental retardation. Ten direct-care staff served as subjects. It was found that self-management produced an increase in the frequency of positive interactions of staff and residents, but did not produce changes in other behaviors being measured (e.g., negative interactions, self-stimulation, etc.). Goal setting did not result in changes in positive interactions or other target behaviors. Reasons for the different results of self-management versus goal-setting are discussed and further research is suggested.     

Covert visual orienting: Hemifield-activation can be mimicked by zoom lens and midlocation placement strategies

How is attention distributed over visual space when an observer expects a target to occur at one of several possible locations? Two experiments sought to understand the source of the conflict between studies leading to the notions of hemifield activation (Hughes and Zimba 1985) and attentional gradients (Downing and Pinker 1985; Shulman et al. 1985, 1986). Subjects were cued to attend one of the 4 corners of an imaginary square centered at fixation, allowing comparison of uncued locations in the cued and uncued hemifields. In one experiment marking of the 4 locations was varied to determine if providing a ‘target’ for attention is necessary to obtain within-hemifield gradients. RT was faster at the cued location than at the three uncued locations which had equivalent latencies, a pattern that was unaffected by marking of the potential target locations. This result, which is consistent with the notion of a gradient around the attended location is a strong disconfirmation of the hemifield activation hypothesis. The second experiment demonstrated that an unusual procedure for presenting the probe stimuli in Hughes and Zimba (1985) is at least partially responsible for their evidence for uniform hemifield activation. It is proposed that visual attention is directed to visuo-spatial channels with fixed structural properties, and that when attention to two locations is desired, the subject may attend a spatial channel located between them.     

Implications of memory and language dysfunction in the naming deficit of senile dementia

Young normals, elderly normals, and patients with either mild-to-moderate or severe senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) were administered several tests of language function and remote memory. On all of the language tests examined, elderly normals exhibited a mild, nonsignificant performance decrement relative to the young normals. Advanced SDAT patients were markedly impaired on all of the tests. Early dementia patients were most impaired, relative to aged normals, on tests of object naming, category instance fluency, and remote memory. The deficit was smaller on the WAIS vocabulary subtest, on selecting the name of a visually presented object, and on recalling the function of an object. Early SDAT patients were least impaired in selecting the picture of an object after its name had been provided and in selecting objects that belong to a specified functional category. The results are consistent with the notion that the language dysfunction in early SDAT is due to a deficit in semantic memory function in which general, categorical information remains available whereas information about specific attributes becomes less accessible. The object naming test might be useful in the assessment of treatment effects upon SDAT because of its sensitivity and specificity to dementia, its high face validity, and its independence of recent memory.