The effects of interactive staff training on staff programing and patient aggression in a psychiatric inpatient ward

Interactive staff training (IST) uses principles of organizational psychology to help line-level staff members design and implement social learning programs for severely mentally ill inpatients. IST is a training package that includes assessment of staff perceptions regarding programatic needs, selection of appropriate social learning strategies to meet these needs, appointment of a program committee from within the ward to champion development of the social learning strategy, and participative decision making about aspects of the social learning strategy. Staff on an extended care ward at a state hospital participated in IST for 15 months as part of a pilot study of its effects. Ongoing examination of ward programing showed that IST significantly increased staff and patient participation in rehabilitation programing and decreased the rate of physical restraints and aggression-related. Changes in staff attitudes about rehabilitation programing were noted on a subsample of IST participants. Implications for more controlled research into IST are discussed.     

AVTA: a device for automatic vocal transaction analysis

The Automatic Vocal Transaction Analyzer was designed to recognize the pattern of certain variables in spontaneous vocal transactions. In addition, it records these variables directly in a machine-readable form and preserves their sequential relationships. This permits the immediate extraction of data by a digital computer. The AVTA system reliability has been shown to be equal to or better than that of a trained human operator in uncomplicated interaction. The superiority of the machine was demonstrated in complex interactions which tax the information processing abilities of the human observer.     

Assessment of competency for execution: professional guidelines and an evaluation checklist

The issue of whether mental health professionals should be involved in conducting evaluations of competency for execution is a topic that has elicited controversy and heated debate. This article picks up at a point beyond the controversy and addresses issues of professionalism and the objective assessment of competency for execution. Specifically, this article identifies professional standards for conducting competence for execution (CFE) evaluations, describes current practices in this area, and provides an interview checklist that can be used as an evaluation guide by involved professionals.     

Mythic perspectives for a world in distress∗

In a series of books and articles published over the past two decades, the authors have developed a five‐stage system for identifying and modifying the mythic structures that guide individual development. In this essay, they draw upon the integral relationship between personal and collective myths in applying this five‐stage model to contemporary social issues. They focus, in particular, on the mythic conflicts that underlie the tensions between progress and sustainability and between individualism and community. Based on the contradictory designs inherent in a prevailing myth and in an emerging myth, the authors present a dialectical model that is formulated to lead to a new myth that incorporates the most functional elements of old and emergent forces, while transcending their limitations. The essay closes with a discussion of social actions that may embed a new myth within a culture, along with the conditions that are required to effectively reinforce and maintain it.     

The perception of speech rate from the sound-silence patterns of monologues

Two experiments asked whether listeners can judge word rate from a speech signal that has been degraded in various ways. In the first, the rates of spontaneous speech were increased by 42% and further transformed to produce tone-silence sequences. The tonesilence sequences were presented to listeners who judged the rate of each sequence. Results clearly indicated that listeners could differentiate the rates of the tone-silence sequences, suggesting that minimal nonlinguistic information may be sufficient to make grossly accurate estimates of speech rates. In the second study, listeners were presented with speech sequences involving three naturally produced rates (slow, moderate, and fast) in three conditions (clear, frequency-inverted, and tone-silence) such that different listeners participated in the three conditions, but heard all rates in each condition. Listeners in the clear and frequency-inverted conditions distinguished all three rates, but those in the tone-silence condition differentiated only the slow and moderate rates. Contrary to expectation, the gender and extroversion scores of the listeners did not affect their judgments.     

Depressed and Anxious COPD Patients: Predictors of Psychotherapy Engagement from a Clinical Trial

This study examined patient-level factors associated with engagement in mental health treatment in a sample of medically ill patients with clinically significant symptoms of depression and/or anxiety. A total of 248 patients was enlisted from a randomized controlled trial of cognitive-behavioral therapy for depression and anxiety in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Logistic regression analysis was used to predict mental health engagement, defined as attending at least one intervention session. Results indicated that patient-perceived mastery over COPD was negatively related to mental health engagement. Further, mastery was the only significant predictor of mental health engagement after controlling for patient demographic characteristics, severity of COPD, depression, and anxiety. To improve engagement for medically ill patients with comorbid mental health difficulties, clinicians should explore patients’ attitudes about their mental health within the context of their perceived ability to cope with their medical disease.     

Analyzing coefficients of psychophysical power functions

Somemathematical properties of coefficients of power functions were analyzed. The size of correlations between intercepts (the logarithm of the coefficient) andexponent.s depends on the choice of unit of measurement of the physical stimuli. When the mean of logarithms of a set of responses is uncorrelated with the exponent, the absolute size of the correlation between the intercept and the exponent increases as the geometricmean of the stimulus measures deviatesfrom one. When the geometric mean is less than one, the correlation is positive, and when it is greater than one, the correlation is negative. Similar trends hold for a nonzero correlation between the exponent and the mean logarithm of a set of responses. The power of statistical tests of differences between mean intercepts also depends on the geometric mean of the stimuli. Power is reduced as the geometric mean deviates from one. Effects are illustrated with real data.