Assessing adolescents who threaten homicide in schools

Psychoanalytic and psychiatric perspectives on children who threaten to kill others are reviewed in the context of the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problem. Converging technologies derived from a psychoanalytically informed social systems model are compared to law enforcement approaches, psychoanalytic understanding of the individual dynamics of the child, and empirical research on conduct disordered adolescents. The interdisciplinary orientation of a broadly trained community psychoanalyst allows a unique contribution when trying to distinguish adolescents who make a threat from those who pose a threat. Case vignettes are used to illustrate the hypotheses.     

The role of attack and defense semantics in skilled players’ memory for chess positions

There is much evidence that chess skill is based on chunks in memory that represent parts of positions from previously encountered games. However, the content of these chunks is a matter for debate. According to one view, (1) the closer two pieces are to each other on a board (proximity), the more likely they are to be in the same chunk, and (2) skilled players encode the precise locations of pieces. An alternative view is that what information is encoded in a chess chunk is determined more by processing of the attack/defense relations during evaluation. In three experiments, participants evaluated positions and completed recognition tests. Experiment 1 supported the view that expert players make more use of attack/defense relations than of locations of pieces in a recognition test. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that, for both long and short presentation times, expert players' recognition for a piece within a position was primed more by a piece related by attack or defense than by a piece merely proximal. These findings challenge theories of expertise for chess that assume a primary role for proximity and location in determining which pieces are grouped together in memory.     

The emergence of a new paradigm in ape language research

In recent years we have seen a dramatic shift, in several different areas of communication studies, from an information-theoretic to a dynamic systems paradigm. In an information processing system, communication, whether between cells, mammals, apes, or humans, is said to occur when one organism encodes information into a signal that is transmitted to another organism that decodes the signal. In a dynamic system, all of the elements are continuously interacting with and changing in respect to one another, and an aggregate pattern emerges from this mutual co-action. Whereas the information-processing paradigm looks at communication as a linear, binary sequence of events, the dynamic systems paradigm looks at the relation between behaviors and how the whole configuration changes over time. One of the most dramatic examples of the significance of shifting from an information processing to a dynamic systems paradigm can be found in the debate over the interpretation of recent advances in ape language research (ALR). To some extent, many of the early ALR studies reinforced the stereotype that animal communication is functional and stimulus bound, precisely because they were based on an information-processing paradigm that promoted a static model of communicative development. But Savage-Rumbaugh's recent results with bonobos has introduced an entirely new dimension into this debate. Shifting the terms of the discussion from an information-processing to a dynamic systems paradigm not only highlights the striking differences between Savage-Rumbaugh's research and earlier ALR studies, but further, it sheds illuminating light on the factors that underpin the development of communication skills in great apes and humans, and the relationship between communicative development and the development of language.     

Serious delinquent behavior,sensation seeking,and electrodermal arousal

Low tonic skin conductance level (SCL) has been related, inconsistently, to both delinquency and sensation-seeking. This study tests the hypothesis that there is an interaction such that high sensation seeking delinquents, in particular, have low SCLs. Participants consisted of 335 boys from the Pittsburgh Youth Study classified as serious delinquents or controls based upon 10 years of prospectively collected self-report delinquency data. Participants' skin conductance was evaluated at age 16 along with several personality and neuropsychological measures. Both delinquency and sensation seeking were characterized by low SCL. However, there was no evidence to suggest that the presence of both of these factors together lead to especially low skin conductance levels. This finding is not explained by differences between the groups on measures of negative emotionality, IQ, socioeconomic status, or impulsivity.     

The defense of extreme emotional disturbance in New York County: pleas and outcomes

A number of studies have investigated the use of the insanity defense; however, there are few reports on the use of other types of psychiatric defenses. This study explored the use of the affirmative psychiatric defense of extreme emotional disturbance (EED) in New York County (one of the five counties which comprise New York City). The results of the study indicate that, as in the case of the insanity defense, EED is rarely proffered by criminal defendants (plea rate 0.84%). The defense only prevailed on one occasion at a jury trial. While the EED defense was successful 39% of the time that it was entered, this was usually only when the prosecutor accepted the argument that was offered by the defense.     

Client perceptions of hindering experiences in counselling

The purpose of this study was to increase understanding of what clients perceive as hindering experiences in counselling. In‐depth interviews combined with concept mapping were used to gather, organize, and understand clients' perceptions of hindering aspects of therapy. In the initial data gathering stage, 8 adult client participants, aged 18 or older (average of 14.1 sessions) were asked to respond to the following open‐ended questions:

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The Penn Psychoanalytic Treatment Collection: a set of complete and recorded psychoanalyses as a research resource

From a set of seventeen complete and tape-recorded psychoanalyses, a sample of findings is presented: (a) the level of agreement of two clinical judges on the psychological health of these patients is adequate for the late sessions, but not for the early sessions; (b) the amount of change during psychoanalysis appears to be similar to that in the Menninger Foundation Psychotherapy Research Project; (c) psychiatric severity measures from the early sessions can yield a significant level of prediction of the later benefits from psychoanalysis. Finally, further research uses of this collection of psychoanalyses are suggested.     

Fragile self-esteem in children and its associations with perceived patterns of parent-child communication

We examined the extent to which 11- to 12-year-old children's (N = 174) self-esteem (SE) stability and level related to their perceptions of various aspects of parent-child communication. Compared to children with stable SE, children with unstable SE reported that their fathers were more critical and psychologically controlling, and less likely to acknowledge their positive behaviors or to show their approval in value-affirming ways. Likewise, children with low SE reported that their fathers exhibited these qualities to a greater extent than did children with high SE. In addition, fathers of children with stable high SE were viewed as especially good at problem solving. Children's SE level related to perceptions of mothers' communication styles very similarly to how it did with fathers'; with respect to SE stability, however, relationships were generally less consistent and frequently absent. Discussion centered on the role of parent-child communication in promoting unstable SE.     

SME Committee vs. Field Job Analysis Ratings: Convergence, Cautions, and a Call

This investigation examined the agreement between job analysis ratings completed by a small committee of subject matter experts (SMEs) and ratings made by a larger sample of field respondents. The results indicated there were very high levels of agreement across six commonly used job analysis rating indices. These findings converge with those in prior studies suggesting that for purposes of obtaining task and KSA ratings, a small committee of SMEs may provide empirical results that agree with those obtained from a larger sample of field respondents. However, cautions are presented for applying a committee only strategy in job analysis. Given convergence in conclusions across studies such as the current one thus far, a call for future research which addresses more specific issues is presented.