Induction in variants of White's effect: common or separate mechanisms?

In White's display the gray target surrounded more by black than white appears darker than the target of the same physical luminance surrounded more by white than black. Several subsequent studies have shown that this effect occurs only when the luminance of the test regions lies between the minimum and maximum luminance values of the inducing stripes. With targets either lighter or darker than both inducing stripes, the direction of the effect is reversed and the effect is known as the 'inverted' White's effect. Views differ on whether the classical and inverted White's effects are mediated by common or separate underlying mechanisms. We varied the aspect ratio of the test and inducing regions in the classical and inverted White's effects. Consistent with previously reported findings, we found that the direction of the classical effect did not depend on the amount of black or white border in immediate contact with the test patch. On the other hand, perceived lightness in the inverted White's effect was affected by such variations, suggesting that induction in classical and inverted White's configurations is governed by different mechanisms. These results confirm the critical importance of the interaction between luminance and geometric relationships in induced brightness.     

BuscaPalabras: A program for deriving orthographic and phonological neighborhood statistics and other psycholinguistic indices in Spanish

This article describes a Windows program that enables users to obtain a broad range of statistics concerning the properties of word and nonword stimuli in Spanish, including word frequency, syllable frequency, bigram and biphone frequency, orthographic similarity, orthographic and phonological structure, concreteness, familiarity, imageability, valence, arousal, and age-of-acquisition measures. It is designed for use by researchers in psycholinguistics, particularly those concerned with recognition of isolated words. The program computes measures of orthographic similarity online, with respect to either a default vocabulary of 31,491 Spanish words or a vocabulary specified by the user. In addition to providing standard orthographic and phonological neighborhood measures, the program can be used to obtain information about other forms of orthographic similarity, such as transposed-letter similarity and embedded-word similarity. It is available, free of charge, from the following Web site: www.maccs.mq.edu.au/~colin/B-Pal.     

Counselling studies

It is proposed that a discipline of 'counselling studies' be considered as an extension of counselling and a contribution to social guidance. Likely features of such a discipline are suggested, including a focus on the individual person, interdisciplinarity, humanistic values, applied and theoretical dialectic, critical attitude and dynamic nature. Questions of suitable name, location and goals are considered. Some indication of possible contents is given in the article.     

'Until He Comes': Towards an Eschatology of Church Membership

This article is a critical consideration of Robert Jenson's understanding of the church as the Body of Christ in the light of 1 Corinthians. Jenson is understood to be claiming that the church is the presence on earth of the eschatological kingdom. This is based on a variety of faulty presuppositions. But Jenson's view of the church as a social political reality is found not to allow for a distinctive ethic. 1 Corinthians is shown to assert the priority of the Word, creating the church, and to have an eschatological morality, relating worship and church polity.     

Counsellors' experiences of working with suicidal clients: An exploratory study

Counselling is increasingly available in a wide variety of contexts, including mental health and psychiatric services. As a consequence, counsellors increasingly work with clients who present with suicidal ideation, expressing either suicidal thought and/or intent in the counselling session. This paper describes an exploratory study that examined the experience of counsellors when working with suicidal clients. The paper considers counsellors' behavioural, cognitive and emotional responses to such suicidal expression, both on a personal and professional level. The research employed semi‐structured interviews. A constant comparative method was used in analysing the transcribed interview text. Results suggest that counsellors experience a range of responses when their clients express suicidal thought, including fear, anxiety, anger and professional impotence. The interviewees also expressed self‐doubts about their professional competence. In addition, they identified the threat of litigation for negligent practice and the lack of confidence in appropriate risk assessment approaches as significant causes for concern. The implications for further research, and practice, are discussed.     

Information Processing in the Context of Genetic Risk: Implications for Genetic-Risk Communication

Communicating genetic-risk information is fraught with difficulties, and there are no universally accepted guidelines for clinical practice. In this paper, we suggest that information-processing models may offer some guidance for the communication of genetic risk. The paper reviews selected literature from health and social psychology, including defensive reactions to threatening health information, the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) and Self Affirmation Theory. Ultimately, it presents the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM) of information processing as a useful perspective from which to view genetic-risk communication. Through our review of this literature, we identify some of the variables found to influence the systematic or heuristic processing of risk information and note their relevance to genetic counseling contexts. We suggest that systematic information processing is conducive to informed decision-making, as well as improved understanding of risk information. Clinical practice implications derived from our review of these literatures are noted.