Therapists' emotional reactions to patients as a mediator in cognitive behavioural treatment of panic disorder with agoraphobia

The aims of this study were to examine whether therapists' emotional reactions to their patients mediate the effect of personality disorders and interpersonal problem behaviours on the outcome of treatment, focusing on an Axis I disorder; and whether therapists' reactions mediate the effect of personality disorders on the course of interpersonal problems. Therapists completed a checklist of emotional reactions to individual patients after the end of residential cognitive or guided mastery therapy for 46 inpatients with panic disorder with agoraphobia. The severity of DSM-III-R personality disorder was related to therapists' insecurity feelings, but not to interest and anger. A higher level of therapists' insecurity feelings was related to less reduction in self-reported agoraphobic avoidance during treatment, whereas therapists' emotions were unrelated to symptomatic course after treatment. Therapists' insecurity feelings appeared partly to mediate the relationship between patients' severity of personality disorder and persistence of patients' interpersonal dominance and nurturance problems.     

Can drug patents be morally justified?

This paper offers a few elements of an answer to the question to what extent drug patents can be morally justified. Justifications based on natural rights, distributive justice and utilitarian arguments are discussed and criticized. The author recognizes the potential of the patents to benefit society but argues that the system is currently evolving in the wrong direction, particularly in the field of drugs. More than a third of the world’s population has no access to essential drugs. The working of the patent system is an important determinant of access to drugs. This paper argues that drug patents are not easily justified and that the ‘architecture’ of the patent system should be rethought in view of its mission of benefiting society. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “The Ethics of Intellectual Property Rights and Patents,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 23–24 April, 2004. The author is a part-time Senior Research Fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research, Department of Philosophy and Moral Science, Ghent University (Belgium) and a part-time Professor, Department of General Economics, University of Antwerp (Belgium).     

Discrete-trial alternation in the rat

The acquisition and maintenance by rats of single alternation, double alternation, and four other repeating patterns of reinforced and non-reinforced trials was studied in a discrete-trial lever-pressing situation. The rats learned all these patterns in a small number of experimental sessions. Single alternation was learned more rapidly than the more complex patterns. Rate of learning single and double alternation decreased moderately as inter-trial interval increased. Abrupt changes in the scheduling of trials, either by doubling the inter-trial interval or by shifting from fixed to variable trial spacing, temporarily disrupted the patterned performance. Two hypotheses concerned with the means by which the rats could have learned to conform to the pattern were examined: (1) “timing” of the interval between successive reinforcements; and (2) control of responding on a trial by the outcome of preceding trials, depending on the consistency with which these outcomes were associated with reinforced or non-reinforced trials in the pattern and on how many trials back these outcomes occurred. The second hypothesis accounted for the relative frequency of errors on trials at various locations in the sequences, and predicted most of the changes in error frequency observed in experiments in which “inter-trial stimuli” were added to the sequences.     

Upon Further Reflection: View from the Other Side of “Windows on the 21st Century”

Three points discussed in Glenn (1993) are reviewed in the context of current events: the discipline of behavior analysis as a cultural system, the importance of that discipline in the training and regulation of behavior analytic practitioners, and Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI) as a cultural subsystem that links to all the other parts and therefore links the other parts to one another. Noting similarities between behavior analysis and biology, I consider the growth of biological sciences as a model for behavior analysis. Of particular importance for biology has been the role of basic biological sciences in the practice of medicine and the resulting feedback loops that have developed among its basic sciences, applied sciences, and medical practice. I suggest that behavior analysis explicitly follow this model and that ABAI has a critical role to play in leading the field to developing the feedback loops that have integrated the biological sciences and medicine.     

A Comparison of Rorschach Records of Three Multiple Personalities

Inter- and intra-protocol comparisons among the Rorschachs of three authenticated cases of multiple personality were presented. The original or primary personalities seemed reasonably complex but, as successive personalities emerged, a definite tendency toward simplification was noted. A theoretical explanation for this phenomenon was advanced.     

Changes in intersegmental dynamics over time due to increased leg inertia

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of asymmetrical loading on the intersegmental dynamics of the swing phase. Participants were asked to walk on a treadmill for 20 min under three loading conditions: (a) unloaded baseline, (b) 2 kg attached to the dominant limb’s ankle, and (c) post-load, following load removal. Sagittal plane motion data of both legs were collected and an intersegmental dynamics analysis of each swing phase was performed. Comparisons of steady-state responses across load conditions showed that absolute angular impulses of the loaded limb’s hip and knee increased significantly after load addition, and returned to baseline following load removal. Unloaded leg steady-state responses were not different across load conditions. However, after a change in leg inertia both legs experienced a period of adaptation that lasted approximately 40 strides before a steady state walking pattern was achieved. These findings suggest that the central nervous system refined the joint moments over time to account for the altered limb inertia and to maintain the underlying kinematic walking pattern. Maintaining a similar kinematic walking pattern resulted in altered moment profiles of the loaded leg, but similar moment profiles of the unloaded leg compared with the unloaded baseline condition.     

Affective meanings of 1,469 Bengali concepts

This article provides semantic differential ratings of 1,469 concepts in Bengali, a language spoken by about 250 million individuals in eastern India and Bangladesh. These data were collected from 20 male and 20 female Calcutta respondents who rated stimuli on three culturally universal affective dimensions: evaluation–potency–activity (EPA). This study employs pan-respondent component analyses as a means of examining the respondents’ usage of the standard EPA scales. The pan-respondent component analyses indicate that some respondents used the rating scales in unexpected ways, recording their feelings about one component of concepts’ EPA with ratings on a scale intended to measure a different dimension. When scores were based only on respondents who used the scales appropriately, several interesting patterns were found. For respondents of both genders, potency scores have a curvilinear relation with evaluation, such that very good and very bad concepts are mostly seen as very potent, whereas evaluatively neutral concepts are seen as somewhat impotent or just slightly potent. A moderate linear correlation exists between activity and evaluation, and a modest positive relation exists between potency and activity. Gender correlations are high on evaluation, .93, but much lower for potency scores, with a correlation of .55, and even lower for activity, .30. In this article we examine several explanations for why scales denoting potency and activity were reinterpreted as indicating goodness by certain respondents, and consider the matter of including data collected from respondents who used scales in this way.