The Hispanic Treatment Program: Principles of effective psychotherapy

The Hispanic Treatment Program was an inpatient psychotherapy Unit at the Colorado State Hospital that operated from October 1979 to February 1982. Staffed exclusively with personnel of Hispanic heritage, the Program emphasized the use of linguistic and cultural elements, as well as the customs and beliefs characteristic of Hispanic culture. A specialized inpatient treatment unit for Hispanic patients with psychotic (especially, schizophrenia) disturbances, the Program offered a unique opportunity to these patients by providing a variety of psychotherapies conducted in a culturally-sensitive manner. Spanish and English were used in a manner conducive to enhancing the treatment process, with flexibility in use of language.This project was supported by Grant No. ROlMH29016-01A2, awarded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Center for Minority Group Mental Health.The authors acknowledge Gregorio Kort, M.D. and Wayne Smyer, M.A. and other staff for their contributions to the development and success of the Hispanic Treatment Program.Original version of paper was selected for the First Senior Award given by the Psychological Services Center's (NYSCP) Minority Mental Health Award Competition.     

Facilitating autonomy in passive-dependent persons: An integrative model

Passive and dependent qualities are commonly found in psychiatric patients suffering from a variety of disorders. While such tendencies are often secondary to an Axis I clinical syndrome, they are occasionally more persistent and refractory. The present article attempts to provide therapeutic guidelines useful when working with clients displaying stable personality traits of passivity and dependency. An attempt is made to adapt and combine several therapeutic techniques to be applicable to passive-dependent clients. More specifically, problem-solving approaches and self-control strategies can be used to facilitate autonomy if precautions are taken to reduce the dogmatic and didactic styles commonly employed with these techniques. The Socratic method of interviewing is posited as a useful means of developing problem-solving skills without creating unnecessary dependence on the therapist. Self-control strategies can help reduce the reliance on others as the primary source of satisfaction for dependent clients. In this way, passive-dependent clients may become more self- reliant and autonomous in their daily functioning.The author would like to thank Patti Watson, Katie Brooks, and Estyn Williams for comments made on an earlier draft of this article.     

The development of selective attention: holistic perception versus resource allocation

In two experiments, a speeded sorting task was administered to children. In each sorting, the child was instructed to sort a deck of cards according to values on one dimension while the values of a second irrelevant dimension were held constant, were correlated, or were varied orthogonally. Experiment 1 evaluated developmental changes in perceived structure as compared with such changes in the control of attention. Different groups of kindergarten, 2d-, and 5th-grade children performed the task with spatially integrated vs spatially separated dimensions. The results indicate that with spatially integrated dimensions there is a trend from holistic to featural perception and an increase in attentional control with increasing age. Spatially separate dimensions are perceived dimensionally at all ages, but show a trend in attentional development. In Experiment 2, the spatially integrated dimensions of Experiment 1 were made separable by portraying different targets within a configuration in different colors. The theoretical implications of the results are discussed.     

Differences in academic performance at school depending on handedness: matter for neuropathology?

Two studies found that left-handed children had significantly poorer academic records than did right-handed children, though the effect was small. Study 1 provided evidence that, for some academic disciplines, the important difference appeared to be between those children whose family history of handedness was concordant with their own handedness and those children whose family history of handedness was discordant with their own handedness. The inclusion of gender in asymmetry research was bolstered by Study 2. When predicting idiosyncrasies in left-handers' cognitive performance, it should be borne in mind that left-handers form a minority group as well as a neurologically distinct one.     

Development of time concepts: differentiating clock and calendar from apparent durations

To investigate the role of perception and stress on time concepts, the real-time and apparent durations of common events varying in length from 30 s to 4 years were rated by kindergarten through 12th-grade pupils, college students, professors, and stress-impaired adults (N = 1,788). The events were pleasant, neutral or unpleasant; either directly perceptible and of specific duration or perceptually vague; and happened either to oneself or to someone else. Second graders differentiated apparent from real-time durations and, therefore, already had an abstract concept of time. As predicted from differentiation theory (Gibson, E. J., 1969; Gibson, J. J., 1966, 1983), longer durations were acquired later than shorter ones; perceptually-vague durations were acquired later than clearly perceptible ones of similar length; and, as Neisser (1976) also suggested, stress did not lead to regression, nor did the personal-impersonal dimension make a difference during childhood.     

Romantic love conceptualized as an attachment process

This article explores the possibility that romantic love is an attachment process--a biosocial process by which affectional bonds are formed between adult lovers, just as affectional bonds are formed earlier in life between human infants and their parents. Key components of attachment theory, developed by Bowlby, Ainsworth, and others to explain the development of affectional bonds in infancy, were translated into terms appropriate to adult romantic love. The translation centered on the three major styles of attachment in infancy--secure, avoidant, and anxious/ambivalent--and on the notion that continuity of relationship style is due in part to mental models (Bowlby's "inner working models") of self and social life. These models, and hence a person's attachment style, are seen as determined in part by childhood relationships with parents. Two questionnaire studies indicated that relative prevalence of the three attachment styles is roughly the same in adulthood as in infancy, the three kinds of adults differ predictably in the way they experience romantic love, and attachment style is related in theoretically meaningful ways to mental models of self and social relationships and to relationship experiences with parents. Implications for theories of romantic love are discussed, as are measurement problems and other issues related to future tests of the attachment perspective.     

Fantasy proneness and psychopathology

Fantasy prone persons ("fantasizers") selected from "normal" populations report experiences associated with psychopathology in clinical populations (e.g., fantasies that reach hallucinatory proportions, difficulty discriminating reality from fantasy). In Study 1, we administered objective (MMPI) and projective (Rorschach) measures to high fantasy prone individuals (upper 4% of college population), medium fantasy prone individuals (middle range), and nonfantasizers (lowest 4%). Subjects who were fantasizers appeared to use fantasy for defensive or adaptive purposes compared with others and produced 8/9 modal code types on the MMPI. On the basis of the MMPI findings, a subset of fantasizers could be described as exhibiting a significant degree of psychopathology. In Study 2, a second sample of fantasy prone individuals could not be distinguished from comparison groups in contacts with professionals for help with psychological problems, use of psychotropic medication, or number of close friendships. Although fantasizers perceived themselves as less well adjusted than comparison subjects and reported greater difficulty in distinguishing fantasy from reality, most fantasizers rated their psychological functioning as adequate and above and did not differ from less fantasy prone subjects in ratings of positivity of self-concept. As demonstrated in Study 1, a subset of fantasizers did appear to be more pathological than other subjects were, with three fantasizers reporting a history of psychiatric hospitalizations. It is estimated that between 10 and 20% of fantasizers exhibit significant signs of maladjustment/psychopathology; however, as a rule, fantasy proneness does not appear to be antecedent to severe manifestations of psychopathology.     

Cognitive operations associated with individual differences in affect intensity

There are wide individual differences in the characteristic intensity of affective response to the same emotion-evoking event. The processes whereby individuals come to experience strong or mild emotional responses when exposed to the same affect-provoking stimuli are still unclear. In these studies, we propose that individual differences in affect intensity are associated with certain cognitive operations used during exposure to emotion-relevant stimuli. Specifically, cognitive operations that involve personalizing, generalizing, and selective abstraction were hypothesized to discriminate subjects high and low in affect intensity. Two studies replicated support for the hypothesis that subjects high on the affect-intensity dimension engage in more personalizing/empathic and more generalizing/elaborative cognitive operations than do subjects low on the affect-intensity dimension. The same cognitive operations discriminated groups high and low in affect intensity in response to both positive and negative emotional stimuli. Also, the cognitions that discriminated subjects high and low in affect intensity occurred only in response to affective stimuli; neutral stimuli did not evoke divergent cognitive operations for these two groups. Finally, a high degree of consistency was found in the use of emotion-relevant cognitive operations across positive and negative affective stimuli.     

Study of neuromotor reaction times under the influence of thyrotropin-releasing hormone

Neuromotor reaction times (simple, choice, and decision) were measured when Thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) was administered intravenously to nine healthy men in a double-blind study. Measurements were made of simple reaction time, choice reaction time, and decision time for each subject at various intervals over a 54-hr. period. Given the observed inherent interaction of the drug with the long time used (54 hr.), most analyses were conducted across separate time epochs. Injected subjects showed inhibition in the normal improvement of simple reaction time (which occurs with practice), and they reduced the time required to make a decision. Choice reaction time, however, remained unchanged across the drug-nondrug experimental conditions.