Psychotherapists' religious beliefs and their perception of the psychotherapy process

In a comparison of religious and nonreligious psychotherapists' perceptions of a portion of a psychotherapeutic session no significant differences were found on the Vanderbilt Psychotherapy Process Scale for four groups of therapists designated according to their scores on three religious questionnaires. While the results suggest attitudes toward religion are not reflected in therapists' practice of psychotherapy, limitations of the study indicate the need for more rigorous testing of this possibility.     

Heterosexual Therapists Leading Lesbian and Gay Therapy Groups: Therapeutic and Political Realities

The authors describe the thought processes, plans, and reflections of two heterosexual therapists who decided to lead gay and lesbian therapy groups in a university counseling center. The debate regarding the viability of the heterosexual counselor and the gay and lesbian client pair is discussed, as are the practical issues informing and maintaining thegroups. Campus political issues regarding the groups and counselor homophobia are explored.     

Organizational and extraorganizational factors affecting stress,employee well-being,and absenteeism for males and females

The purpose of this research is to examine separately for males and females, the effects of different sources of job and life stress on the emotional and physical well-being of those individuals, and in turn on absenteeism. Results using a sample of 170 males and 204 females indicated that females experienced higher levels of job stress, absenteeism, and poorer emotional well-being. Patterns of relationships for males and females were similar, however, the data suggest that sex moderates the effects of different sources of stress on emotional and physical well-being and absenteeism. The model developed as a part of this research was more complicated for females than for males.     

Object recognition contributions to figure-ground organization: Operations on outlines and subjective contours

In previous research, replicated here, we found that some object recognition processes influence figure-ground organization. We have proposed that these object recognition processes operate on edges (or contours)detected early in visual processing, rather than on regions. Consistent with this proposal, influences from object recognition on figure-ground organization were previously observed in both pictures and stereograms depicting regions of different luminance, but not in randomdot stereograms, where edges arise late in processing (Peterson & Gibson, 1993). In the present experiments, we examined whether or not two other types of contours—outlines and subjective contours—enable object recognition influences on figure-ground organization. For both types of contours we observed a pattern of effects similar to that originally obtained with luminance edges. The results of these experiments are valuable for distinguishing between alternative views of the mechanisms mediating object recognition influences on figure-ground organization. In addition, in both Experiments 1 and 2, fixated regions were seen as figure longer than nonfixated regions, suggesting that fixation location must be included among the variables relevant to figure-ground organization.     

A form of behaviour therapy for some states diagnosed as “affective disorder”

Certain of the states commonly diagnosed by psychiatrists as “affective disorder” do not respond favourably to the usual treatments prescribed, and it is argued by Lum (1976) that such states are not appropriately labelled, as they are primarily due to the somatic condition of hypocapnoea—an abnormally low level of arterial carbon dioxide. This condition is well-recognized and can be diagnosed by appropriate physiological investigation. Hypocapnoea seriously affects various somatic systems, and if the patient later experiences affective distress it is a secondary symptom due to a vicious circle mediated by autonomic responses. The treatment of choice is a form of behaviour therapy aimed at altering the breathing response in the direction of building up toleration of a higher habitual level of arterial carbon dioxide. Existing work by behaviour therapists and others on the physiological and behavioural responses to varying levels of arterial carbon dioxide is cited, and the rationale of symptomatic treatment is discussed. Current treatment methods for hypocapnoea, although behaviourally oriented, are not closely in accord with the principles of modern behaviour therapy, and this paper suggests some directions of improvement.     

The body as theology in pastoral psychology

The physical body is explored as a metaphor of transformation and healing in pastoral psychotherapy. Three sections of the paper outline 1) the perception of the body as a point of critical clinical intervention, 2) the understanding of body as a living image of soul, and 3) the body as corporal participant in the mystical Body of Christ. Primary concern focuses on correcting possible misperceptions (among both secular and pastoral bodyists) of bodily dysfunction as retribution for sinful existence rather than, more biblically, as signaling an opportunity for the inrushing of healing, divine grace. A brief clinical example highlights some possible theoretical and methodological consequences of this clinical world view.Terrill L. Gibson, Ph.D., is a Director of the Christian Counseling Service in Tacoma, Washington, where he serves as Minister of Finance and Education.     

Word associations and the development of lexical memory

Endel Tulving's distinction between “episodic” and “semantic” memory defines changes with age in word association norms in a more informative and more comprehensive manner than the syntactic classifications normally used. The principal development as subjects mature is an episodic-semantic shift. Young children associate primarily to the stimulus's perceived contexts, older subjects to its abstract semantic content.     

Word Order Predicts Cross-Linguistic Differences in the Production of Redundant Color and Number Modifiers

When asked to identify objects having unique shapes and colors among other objects, English speakers often produce redundant color modifiers (“the red circle”) while Spanish speakers produce them less often (“el circulo (rojo)”). This cross-linguistic difference has been attributed to a difference in word order between the two languages, under the incremental efficiency hypothesis (Rubio-Fernández, Mollica, & Jara-Ettinger, 2020). However, previous studies leave open the possibility that broad language differences between English and Spanish may explain this cross-linguistic difference such that English speakers may generally produce more modifiers than Spanish speakers, including redundant ones, irrespective of word order. Here, we test the incremental efficiency hypothesis in a language production task crossing language (English, Spanish) with modifier type (color, number). Critically, number words occur on the same side of the noun in both English and Spanish. If broad language differences are responsible for the higher rate of color word production in English compared to Spanish, then the same effect should hold for number words. In contrast, the incremental efficiency hypothesis predicts an interaction between language and modifier type, due to different ordering for color words but identical ordering for number words. Our pre-registered analyses offer strong support for the incremental efficiency hypothesis, demonstrating how seemingly small differences in language can cause us to describe the world in surprisingly different ways.