Problems and prospects in group psychotherapy research

The scientific basis of psychotherapeutic findings involves a number of difficulties which are above all connected with the insufficient state of basic research in this field. In this situation, significant advances can only be expected on the basis of a systematic long-term investigation and research programme. This applies in particular to the problems of personality and efficiency diagnostics and to group process research. On the basis of some intermediate results, it is shown that by the combined and systematic use of procedures a number of possibilities for the differentiated recording of the complex processes in therapeutic groups can be obtained.     

Differential indication of trimipramine - results of a controlled multiclinical study]

The antidepressants trimipramine and imipramine were compared within the framework of a multiclinical study performed under the conditions of a controlled clinical experiment. There has been found a time-different remission of affective und psychomotoric symptoms. The panthymoleptic action of trimipramine and other antidepressants is discussed with reference to these results. Trimipramine influences psychotic states, especially if in depression anxiety is combined with agitation, also in hypochondriac forms of depression.     

Axiomatic and numerical conjoint measurement: An evaluation of diagnostic efficacy

Synthetic data are used to examine how well axiomatic and numerical conjoint measurement methods, individually and comparatively, recover simple polynomial generators in three dimensions. The study illustrates extensions of numerical conjoint measurement (NCM) to identify and model distributive and dual-distributive, in addition to the usual additive, data structures. It was found that while minimum STRESS was the criterion of fit, another statistic, predictive capability, provided a better diagnosis of the known generating model. That NCM methods were able to better identify generating models conflicts with Krantz and Tversky's assertion that, in general, the direct axiom tests provide a more powerful diagnostic test between alternative composition rules than does evaluation of numerical correspondence. For all methods, dual-distributive models are most difficult to recover, while consistent with past studies, the additive model is the most robust of the fitted models.Douglas Emery is now at the Krannert Graduate School of Management, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, on leave from the University of Calgary.     

Age-of-acquisition effects in lexical and episodic memory tasks

This paper reports four experiments on the effects of word age of acquisition in verbal tasks. In all cases, multiple-regression analysis was used to assess the relative effects of age as opposed to other potentially relevant word attributes. Experiments 1 and 2 concerned lexical memory tasks. In Experiment 1, picture naming speeds were found to be mainly determined by picture codability and name age of acquisition. In Experiment 2, it was found that when subjects produced words in response to bigram cues, early acquired target words were more likely to be produced than later acquired words, even when frequency and other word attributes were taken into account. The remaining two experiments dealt with the episodic memory tasks of free recall and recognition. No age effects were found in these tasks. It was concluded that early age of acquisition facilitates retrieval from lexical memory but has no significant effect in episodic memory tasks.     

Gender-deviant boys compared with normal and clinical control boys

The physical movement and social characteristics of effeminate behavior-problem, referred boys (N=13)were compared with those of normal boys (N=25)and boys (N=12)referred for nongender problems. Parent reports, observer ratings, and videotapes were collected in a series of structured tasks. As expected, mothers described gender-problem sons as much more feminine than the other two groups in interests, activities, and mannerisms. Gender-problem sons were also seen as relatively inactive and introverted. Further, they were non-significantly lower than the clinical control boys in perceived behavior problems, but both groups had marginally more problems than the normal boys. Gender-problem and clinical control boys both showed more body constriction than normal boys in ratings of a videotaped interview. They also both showed less ideal ball-throw form than normal boys on a set of variables scored with slow-motion video. However, in a set of behaviors directly rated in the various tasks, the gender-problem boys gave a uniquely general impression of uncoordination. The groups did not differ on seven additional variables.The research was supported in part by USPHS Grant MH17072. The authors are indebted to the more than two dozen research staff members who contributed many essential services at various stages of the project, to the families who generously participated, to the clinicians who referred their clients to our project, and to Marion Hee for computational assistance.     

Effects of retention interval and modality on sensory and semantic trace information

Subjects studied a long list of individual words that were presented either visually or auditorily. Recall was tested immediately or after a filled delay by using either word endings or taxonomic categories as extralist retrieval cues. Two interactions were of particular interest. First, word ending cues were just as effective as taxonomic cues on the immediate test. On the delayed test, however, ending cues were less effective. This result suggests that sensory information encoded about a word decays at a faster rate than semantic information. Second, although modality had no observable influence on the taxonomic cues, word ending cues were more effective when all items were shown visually than when they were presented auditorily. Taken together, these findings indicate that the visual features of words are encoded at study and that this information can be accessed during test if it is recapitulated by the retrieval cue shortly after acquisition.