Einige Erfahrungen mit hoch- und niederfrequenten Settings

In this very private account about my psychoanalytic career I draw some consequences concerning the long and widely discussed questions of the setting. Especially, I refer to my many years of experience I was able to gain in the framework of focal conferences.     

Probabilistic argumentation

Argumentation in the sense of a process of logical reasoning is a very intuitive and general methodology of establishing conclusions from defeasible premises. The core of any argumentative process is the systematical elaboration, exhibition, and weighting of possible arguments and counter-arguments. This paper presents the formal theory of probabilistic argumentation, which is conceived to deal with uncertain premises for which respective probabilities are known. With respect to possible arguments and counter-arguments of a hypothesis, this leads to probabilistic weights in the first place, and finally to an overall probabilistic judgment of the uncertain proposition in question. The resulting probabilistic measure is called degree of support and possesses the desired properties of non-monotonicity and non-additivity. Reasoning according to the proposed formalism is an simple and natural generalization of the two classical forms of probabilistic and logical reasoning, in which the two traditional questions of the probability and the logical deducibility of a hypothesis are replaced by the more general question of the probability of a hypothesis being logically deducible from the available knowledge base. From this perspective, probabilistic argumentation also contributes to the emerging area of probabilistic logics.     

Individual‐ and group‐level effects of social identification on workplace bullying

A study of 494 employees nested in workgroups from 19 different organizations revealed group identification to be an important factor influencing work-related bullying at both the individual and the group level. Results show that the more employees identified with their group, the less likely they were victims of bullying, which is in line with previous social identity-based analyses of work stress. More importantly, the higher the average level of group identification in the organization, the lower the odds of being a victim versus not being a victim. The latter effect constituted a genuine context effect. These findings redress a neglect of the social bases of workplace bullying and suggest that bullying needs to be understood within a broader perspective of workgroup identities.     

Family interactions of assaultive adolescents,stealers, and nondelinquents

Eleven adolescent chronic offenders apprehended for assaultive crimes in the community were observed in their family homes. This group was matched with 11 adolescents apprehended for stealing and with 11 adolescents with no court contact. Assaultive adolescents, unlike their controls, ranked significantly higher among their own family members in terms of their total aversive behavior in the family home. The results support the notion that assaultive adolescents are more involved with fighting with their siblings in the family home and consequently have had more practice in fighting than their controls, thereby preparing them for assaultive behavior in the community. Assaultive adolescents had more female siblings than male siblings, whereas nondelinquent adolescents had more male than female siblings.     

Statistical evaluation of measures of fit in the Lingoes-Borg procrustean individual differences scaling

PINDIS, as recently presented by Lingoes and Borg [1978] not only marks the latest development within the scope of individual differences scaling, but, may be of benefit in some closely related topics, such as target analysis. Decisions on whether the various models available from PINDIS fit fallible data are relatively arbitrary, however, since a statistical theory of the fit measures is lacking. Using Monte Carlo simulation, expected fit measures as well as some related statistics were therefore obtained by scaling sets of 4(4)24 random configurations of 5(5)30 objects in 2, 3, and 4 dimensions (individual differences case) and by fitting one random configuration to a fixed random target for 5(5)30 objects in 2, 3, and 4 dimensions (target analysis case). Applications are presented.     

Comparisons of stimulus learning and response learning in a punishment situation

These experiments use a procedure in which a rat is trained to make two topographically distinct responses on a single manipulandum, and then one of the responses is punished. Differential suppression of the punished response is taken as evidence of response learning, whereas the common suppression of both responses is attributed to stimulus learning or to general and nonassociative factors. Thus, this procedure begins the experimental separation of animals learning about the consequences of their behavior and animals learning what happens in a particular environment. A further separation is effected by using two such manipulanda; this procedure begins to distinguish between stimulus learning about the manipulandum and the more gereral factors that cause suppression. Some parameters affecting the relative importance of stimulus learning and response learning are examined.     

Increasing achievement motivation and work productivity in a chronic psychiatric population

The major goal of this study was to determine if social reinforcement for behavior in a simulated work activity would increase achievement motivation, work interest, and simulated work activity production. Forty-five chronic psychiatric patients were randomly assigned to one of three groups: work sample with praise, work sample without praise, and a no-treatment control group. A 3 (between) × 2 (within) analysis of variance was run for each dependent measure, that is, achievement imagery, work interests, and simulated work production. The main effect for the interaction between trials and treatment was significant on each dependent measure. Follow-up Duncan Multiple Range Tests indicated that the praise group showed a significant improvement on each dependent measure, pre to post, as well as significantly greater improvement than the no-treatment control group and/or the work sample without praise group. These results are discussed in terms of the procedure used as a method for increasing motivation and in terms of possible generalization of results to other treatment situations.