Book reviews

Hostility and Aggression by Dolf Zillmann Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1979, 422 pages, $24.95.

Sexually Abused Children by David Finkelhor New York: The Free Press, 1979, $13.95, cloth.

Damnation and Deviance: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Failure by Mordechai Rotenberg New York: The Free Press, 1978, 232 pages, $12.95.

Prison Sexual Violence by Daniel Lockwood New York, Elsevier, 1980,179 pages, $12.95, cloth.

Ethnic Drinking Subcultures by Andrew Greeley, William McGready, and Gary Theisen New York, Praeger, 1980,138 pages.     

Eye–voice span during rapid automatized naming of digits and dice in Chinese normal and dyslexic children

We measured Chinese dyslexic and control children's eye movements during rapid automatized naming (RAN) with alphanumeric (digits) and symbolic (dice surfaces) stimuli. Both types of stimuli required identical oral responses, controlling for effects associated with speech production. Results showed that naming dice was much slower than naming digits for both groups, but group differences in eye‐movement measures and in the eye–voice span (i.e. the distance between the currently fixated item and the voiced item) were generally larger in digit‐RAN than in dice‐RAN. In addition, dyslexics were less efficient in parafoveal processing in these RAN tasks. Since the two RAN tasks required the same phonological output and on the assumption that naming dice is less practiced than naming digits in general, the results suggest that the translation of alphanumeric visual symbols into phonological codes is less efficient in dyslexic children. The dissociation of the print‐to‐sound conversion and phonological representation suggests that the degree of automaticity in translation from visual symbols to phonological codes in addition to phonological processing per se is also critical to understanding dyslexia.     

Psychological correlates of reasons for nonbelief: tolerance of ambiguity,intellectual humility,and attachment

ABSTRACT

The process of acquiring beliefs – including the belief that there is no God–is largely implicit. We propose that psychological factors that function largely outside of conscious awareness make different conscious reasons for nonbelief more plausible to different people. The present study focuses on intellectual humility, tolerance of ambiguity and attachment and how they relate to stated reasons for nonbelief. The survey was distributed online to an international network of over 100 atheist, secular, and freethought organisations. As predicted, emotional reasons for nonbelief were positively related to anxious attachment, and intellectual reasons for nonbelief were inversely related to tolerance of ambiguity. We did not find evidence for our hypotheses that intellectual reasons for belief would be related to intellectual humility, or that uncertainty reasons would be related to tolerance of ambiguity, intellectual humility, and avoidant attachment. We unexpectedly found that early socialisation reasons for nonbelief were negatively related to intellectual humility.     

Human movement variability, nonlinear dynamics, and pathology: is there a connection?

Fields studying movement generation, including robotics, psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience utilize concepts and tools related to the pervasiveness of variability in biological systems. The concept of variability and the measures for nonlinear dynamics used to evaluate this concept open new vistas for research in movement dysfunction of many types. This review describes innovations in the exploration of variability and their potential importance in understanding human movement. Far from being a source of error, evidence supports the presence of an optimal state of variability for healthy and functional movement. This variability has a particular organization and is characterized by a chaotic structure. Deviations from this state can lead to biological systems that are either overly rigid and robotic or noisy and unstable. Both situations result in systems that are less adaptable to perturbations, such as those associated with unhealthy pathological states or absence of skillfulness.     

Font size modulates saccade-target selection in Chinese reading

In alphabetic writing systems, saccade amplitude (a close correlate of reading speed) is independent of font size, presumably because an increase in the angular size of letters is compensated for by a decrease of visual acuity with eccentricity. We propose that this invariance may (also) be due to the presence of spaces between words, guiding the eyes across a large range of font sizes. Here, we test whether saccade amplitude is also invariant against manipulations of font size during reading Chinese, a character-based writing system without spaces as explicit word boundaries for saccade-target selection. In contrast to word-spaced alphabetic writing systems, saccade amplitude decreased significantly with increased font size, leading to an increase in the number of fixations at the beginning of words and in the number of refixations. These results are consistent with a model which assumes that word beginning (rather than word center) is the default saccade target if the length of the parafoveal word is not available.     

Disagreement, evidence, and agnosticism

In this paper, I respond to recent attempts by philosophers to deny the existence of something that is both real and significant: reasonable disagreements between epistemic peers. In their arguments against the possibility of such disagreements, skeptical philosophers typically invoke one or more of the following: indifference reasoning, equal weight principles, and uniqueness theses. I take up each of these in turn, finding ample reason to resist them. The arguments for indifference reasoning and equal weight principles tend to overlook the possibility of a certain kind of agnostic credal state which I call deep agnosticism, the possibility of which derails the arguments. The arguments for uniqueness theses tend to invoke a flawed understanding of the evidential support relation. When these problems and misunderstandings are brought into the light and corrected, the threat to reasonable disagreement vanishes.     

Psychoedukation bei Personen mit erh?htem Psychoserisiko

Background

So far only few studies are available which have evaluated the effectiveness of psychoeducation for individuals at risk of psychosis in the early initial prodromal state (EIPS) whereas the benefit of psychoeducation in psychotic patients has been repeatedly confirmed. Thus the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of psychoeducation in individuals with increased risk of psychosis in the EIPS.

Method

A total of 128 help-seeking outpatients in the EIPS participated in a randomized controlled multicentre trial of 12 months of either psychoeducation as part of an integrated psychological intervention (IPI) or supportive counseling (SC). The time to transition to psychosis at 12-month and 24-month follow-up as well as the social adjustment at baseline, time of transition or post-treatment by means of the social adjustment scale (SAS?II) were assessed.

Results

The IPI was superior to SC in preventing progression to psychosis at 12-month (3.2% versus 16.9%, p?=0.008) and 24-month follow-up (6.3% versus 20.0%, p?=0.019). Both treatments resulted in significant pre-post improvements in SAS?II with no significant differences between the two groups.

Conclusions

Psychoeducation as part of an integrated intervention is effective for preventing the onset of psychosis over a 24-month time period in people in an EIPS. Moreover patients at risk of developing first episode psychosis seem to benefit from a specific psychoeducational intervention in the context of other treatments as well as from SC.     

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue part 3: issues of utility and alternative approaches in psychiatric diagnosis

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM ?C whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances.     

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue. Part 4: general conclusion

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined.