Familial dyadic patterns in defenses and object relations

The Defense Mechanisms Inventory was administered to 308 sets of marital couples, and adult sons or daughters. The inventory yields five defensive clusters as well as a composite object relations measure. Correlational analyses were aimed at determining the extent to which defensive and object relations styles generalize within the family. Results showed consistent similarities across the family in object relations styles and in acting out defenses. Dyadic analyses showed striking similarities between Husband-Wife, Father-Son, and Mother-Daughter, but not for Father-Daughter and Mother-Son dyads. Results are discussed in context of modeling, sex role, and systems theory.Data from this study were presented at the American Psychological Association annual convention, August, 1991, in San Francisco, CA.     

Health Care Reform and Psychologists in Medical Schools: Stress, Challenge, and Change

Psychologists from 45 academic health science centers throughout the United States and Canada gathered at Georgetown University for a national conference November 2–5, 1995 organized by the Association of Medical School Psychologists. This paper introduces the proceedings of that conference described in the next four articles in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings[Volume 4, number 1]. Papers prepared by the working groups focus upon clinical services, education and training, research, and governance and administration within the academic medical setting.     

Sex differences in spatial ability reflected in performance on IQ subtests by black or white examinees

Sex differences in spatial ability were investigated using scores on the performance subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. The sample consisted of 832 adolescents, evenly divided by race (black or white) and sex. Within both racial groups, males outscored females on all of the spatially-oriented subtests, but females outscored males on a subtest emphasizing rote memory. The similarity of patterning of sex differences within each racial group might be interpreted as indicating that something more than social experience alone is involved in this phenomenon.     

A scale of educational-vocational undecidedness: A typological approach

A scale designed to measure and identify antecedents of educational-vocational indecision was administered to a variety of college student groups expected to differ in career-decidedness. Results indicate that the scale is reliable, appears to discriminate career-decided from career-undecided students, and is responsive to interventions designed to alleviate educational-vocational indecision. A factor analysis of the scale yielded four factors: need for structure, perceived external barriers, positive choice conflict, and personal conflict. The instrument has potential for diagnostic, criterion, and conceptual purposes related to career indecision.     

Interpersonal counsellor qualities: Their effect on client improvement

Recent analyses of client improvement suggest that it is related to three inter-personal counsellor qualities: (a) empathy — the ability of the counsellor to grasp the meanings, needs and hierarchies of the client's world as if it were his own; (b) genuineness — honesty and openness; and (c) non-possessive warmth — a care for and valuing of the client, functioning to preserve the client's dignity. These three core conditions are examined, and their implications for counselling research and practice are discussed.     

Evidence that short-term memory is not the limiting factor in the tachistoscopic full-report procedure

An experiment was conducted to determine whether acoustic short-term memory is the factor which limits performance in the tachistoscopic full-report paradigm. Many Es have demonstrated the existence of phonemic encoding in short-term memory. The confusion errors from a tachistoscopic full-report task were, therefore, analyzed for the presence of acoustic confusions. Absolutely no evidence for acoustic confusions was found; visual confusions, however, were abundant. It was concluded that acoustic short-term memory is not the limiting factor in the full-report paradigm.     

Lateral masking in visual information processing

When unrelated letter strings are presented tachistoscopically, the end letters are reported more often than their neighbors; and when spaces are inserted into strings, performance on certain adjacent letters is superior to performance on those letters when no spaces were present. An experiment was conducted to determine the nature of those spacing effects. Letter strings were presented at a variety of retinal locations, and spaces were inserted into different positions in the instructed left-right processing order. The space effect was unrelated to processing order, but it was dependent on retinal location. To account for the various asymmetries, it was necessary to postulate that letters tend to interact with adjacent lettersand that the interaction was not spatially symmetric. Furthermore, it was found that spaces had greater effects on “right-hand” letters than on symmetric letters. It was therefore concluded that letters interact at the feature level.     

DIFFERENTIALLY REINFORCING LOW RATES OF MISBEHAVIOR WITH NORMAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN1

Effective nonpunitive procedures for reducing counterproductive classroom behaviors are of potential benefit to both students and teachers. A recent strategy for dealing with this class of problem behaviors involves the reinforcement of acceptably low levels of such behavior. The laboratory version of this procedure, called differential reinforcement of low rates of responding (or DRL), provides for a reinforcer to be delivered contingent upon a response that is separated from the last preceding response by a minimum amount of time. To make this procedure more amenable to classroom use, the present authors have modified it so that a reinforcer is delivered if fewer than a specified number of responses occur within a preset time interval (Deitz and Repp, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1973, 6 , 457–463). Previous studies using this procedure have found it effective in reducing and maintaining low rates of targeted behaviors. However, these effects have been demonstrated with groups of subjects and/or individuals from dependent populations. The present study investigated use of this modified DRL procedure with individual students in normal elementary classrooms. In the first of three studies, “talk-outs” of an 11-yr-old fifth-grade male were reduced when nonexchangeable gold stars were made contingent on two or fewer responses per session. During baseline sessions, an average of 4.45 talkouts were observed per 45-min session. Average responding subsequently fell to 1.83 when the modified DRL contingency was applied, increased to 7.60 during a reversal phase, and dropped again to an average of 1.20 when the contingency was reapplied. In the second study, out-of-seat behavior of a 12-yr-old sixth-grade female was reduced when gold stars were made contingent on two or fewer responses per 45-min class period. Baseline responding averaged 6.10 responses per session. When the contingency was applied, average responding fell to 0.16. During the reversal period, responding increased to an average of 6.00 and fell again, after the contingency was re-introduced to an average of 0.40. In the third study, a reduction in both talking-out and out-of-seat behaviors of another 11-yr-old fifth-grade male was demonstrated with a multiple-baseline design. Using different lengths of baselines, gold stars were made contingent first on a low rate of out-of-seat behavior, and then on a low rate of talk-outs. Out-of-seat responding fell from a baseline average of 7.50 to a treatment average of 1.14. Talk-outs went from a baseline average of 4.66 to a treatment average of 1.14. In all three studies, the modified DRL procedure proved effective with the children and was manageable by the classroom teacher. For the students, nonexchangeable conditioned reinforcers (stars) were sufficient to maintain lowered rates of inappropriate behavior with the modified DRL schedule; there was no need for an elaborate token economy, a process that in many cases may be only a form of behavioral “overkill”. As in other studies investigating DRL schedules, students were not informed of their accumulation of responses; the differential effects of providing or withholding this feedback need to be investigated. Overall, these studies add single-subject replication with normal children to the literature on modified DRL procedures.     

Neuroendocrine and behavioral correlates of constitutional differences

Consistent and stable individual differences were observed in the renal responses of water-loaded dogs during the development of Pavlovian conditional motor defense reflexes by electrocutaneous reinforcement. Some dogs developed persistent and intense conditional antidiuretic responses (with a high urine osmolality) to the entire Pavlovian conditioning room complex, whereas other dogs failed to exhibit conditional antidiuresis. In contradistinction to the conditional motor defense reflexes, the conditional antidiuretic responses showed poor differentiation, thus demonstrating the phenomenon of schizokinesis discovered by Gantt. In addition to conditional water retention, the antidiuretic dogs also exhibited persistent hyperpnea, copious salivation and tachycardia. The physiologic responses of the antidiuretic dogs to the Pavlovian conditioning room resemble those described by Walter B. Cannon for a “fight or flight” response,i.e., physiologic reactions of animals engaged in intense muscular effort. The antidiuresis serves the function of conserving body water so that it may be available for evaporative cooling in order to maintain thermal homeostasis. Since our experimental dogs cannot engage in a consummatory “fight or flight” response, their physiologic reaction to a stressful psychologic environment can be considered maladaptive. Pharmacologic analysis suggested that the antidiuretic responses may involve cholinergic transmitters.