Using strategic psychotherapy: A case study of chronic PTSD after a terrorist attack

This article describes a case of chronic post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The patient came to psychotherapy three years after he was injured in a terrorist attack. He was in a state of dysfunction. The article elaborates on theoretical issues, the choice of strategic model of psychotherapy, the various phases of the therapeutic process and the specific difficulties that such a case presents.     

A developmental study of the role of word order in comprehending Hebrew

Monolingual Hebrew-speaking subjects, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 11 years old, as well as adults, were asked to interpret utterances consisting of two nouns and a verb. Some utterances included only word order cues while others included direct object marker and subject-verb gender agreement cues. Even though Hebrew word order is relatively free, when subjects used word order as an interpretive cue they generally assigned sentence relations according to the dominant SVO order of modern Hebrew. This trend was less strong for the interpretations of NNV utterances than of NVN and VNN utterances. There was no evidence of a developmental sequence for word order strategies. In addition, there was no evidence that word order, for any age group, was necessarily a dominant cue for assigning sentence relations when other linguistic information was available.     

Perceived benefits of using an Internet-based interactive career planning system

Making Better Career Decisions (MBCD) is an Internet-based interactive career planning system designed to help deliberating individuals. The present research examined the benefits of a dialogue with MBCD, by analyzing 712 users’ perceptions of its contribution to their career decision-making process, and locating variables associated with these perceptions. A pre-dialogue and a post-dialogue questionnaire were used to collect the users’ perceptions of its benefits and measure the change in the degree of decidedness. Perceived benefit was derived from participants’ ratings of the degree of progress they had made in their career decision-making process, whether they had learned about additional factors to be considered and their career-related preferences, as well as their ratings of the quality of the list of “promising” career alternatives presented to them during their dialogue with MBCD. This composite perceived benefit was found to be positively associated with the users’ decidedness at the completion of the dialogue with MBCD. Users’ satisfaction with the length and variety of their personal “promising alternatives” list was associated with a higher perceived benefit.     

Separation anxiety disorder in a sample of children of divorce

Anxiety in children through separation from parents is one of the most frequent psychological problems in the infantile population. Children of divorce are more vulnerable to suffer this disorder due to the abrupt separation from one of the parents after the break-up, which they may experience as a traumatic event that predisposes them to react anxiously in daily separations. The purpose of this study is to examine the presence of symptoms of separation anxiety and general anxiety in a Spanish sample of 95 students of ages between 8 and 12 years. They were compared to a group of children of similar ages and sex whose parents are not divorced. The results show that children of divorce present higher levels of separation anxiety than the children whose parents remain together. Moreover, they show significant levels of generalized anxiety, but similar to that of the other group of children (undivorced parents). The clinical implications of these findings are discussed, emphasizing the importance of cooperation and frequent contact of the children with both parents to promote their security and autonomy.     

Forgiving the September 11th terrorists: associations with coping, psychological distress, and religiosity

Two studies examined how non-interpersonal forgiveness (when there is no social relationship between the transgressor and forgiver) related to coping and involuntary responses to stress, psychological distress, and religiosity. Three to six weeks after September 11th, 2001, forgiveness had non-linear associations with other responses to the terrorist attacks. Among college students (N=488), those who were trying or had forgiven (pro-forgiveness) the terrorists reported less involuntary engagement, more primary and secondary control coping, and more meaning finding than those who were unsure about forgiveness (ambivalent) and those who did not believe the perpetrators should be forgiven (anti-forgiveness). Ambivalent students reported the most distress, even after controlling for religion. Anti-forgiveness students reported less religiosity than ambivalent and pro-forgiveness students. Most findings were consistent among middle schoolers (N=154), particularly regarding psychological distress and responses to stress. Also, forgiveness of strangers for acts against one's community functioned separately from religion.     

How arousal modulates memory: Disentangling the effects of attention and retention

Emotion may influence memory both by altering attention and perception during encoding and by affecting memory retention. To date, studies have focused on the enhancement of memory consolidation by arousal. However, they have failed to rule out a role for attention. To specifically link memory enhancement of arousing material to modulation of memory retention, we examined recognition of neutral and arousing words at two time points and under conditions that manipulate attention during encoding. Participants were briefly presented with an arousing or neutral word at the periphery, while fixating on a central word. Recognition of peripheral words was assessed either immediately or after 24 h. Whereas recognition of neutral words became worse over time, recognition of arousing words remained the same and was better than neutral word recognition at delay. The results indicate that arousal supports slower forgetting even when the difference in attentional resources allocated to stimuli is minimized.     

The importance of the keyword-generation method in keyword mnemonics

Keyword mnemonics is under certain conditions an effective approach for learning foreign-language vocabulary. It appears to be effective for words with high image vividness but not for words with low image vividness. In this study, two experiments were performed to assess the efficacy of a new keyword-generation procedure (peer generation). In Experiment 1, a sample of 363 high-school students was randomly into four groups. The subjects were required to learn L1 equivalents of a list of 16 Latin words (8 with high image vividness, 8 with low image vividness), using a) the rote method, or the keyword method with b) keywords and images generated and supplied by the experimenter, c) keywords and images generated by themselves, or d) keywords and images previously generated by peers (i.e., subjects with similar sociodemographic characteristics). Recall was tested immediately and one week later. For high-vivideness words, recall was significantly better in the keyword groups than the rote method group. For low-vividness words, learning method had no significant effect. Experiment 2 was basically identical, except that the word lists comprised 32 words (16 high-vividness, 16 low-vividness). In this experiment, the peer-generated-keyword group showed significantly better recall of high-vividness words than the rote method groups and the subject generated keyword group; again, however, learning method had no significant effect on recall of low-vividness words.     

Presentation of keywords by means of interactive drawings

One of the main outstanding problems in keyword mnemotechnics is whether this technique is more effective when the subjects generate their own keywords, or when the keywords are supplied by the experimenter. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages. An alternative method has recently been suggested, in which the keywords are generated by the subjects' peers. In the present study we aimed to investigate whether immediate or delayed recall are affected by keyword generation method (experimenter or peer generation). We also aimed to determine whether the method of keyword generation affects imaging capacity as evaluated by questionnaires or spatial tests. A total of 377 secondary-school students were selected and divided into four groups. All subjects were presented with 30 Latin words. Additionally, the subjects in Group 1 were presented with bizarre images, while the subjects of Group 2 were presented with normal images, in both cases representing the keywords selected by peers as interacting with the Latin words. The subjects in Groups 3 and 4 were likewise presented with normal or bizarre images, respectively, but representing the keywords selected by the experimenters. The subjects' imaging capacity was evaluated by means of the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) and the Spatial Test of Primary Mental Abilities (ST-PMA). The results were analysed by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) with three factors (ST-PMA imaging capacity, 2 levels; VVIQ imaging capacity, 2 levels; and mnemotechnic method, 4 levels) and dependent variables immediate recall and delayed recall. All three factors influenced recall. Subsequent univariate analyses of variance indicated that subjects with high ST-PMA score and subjects with high VVIQ score showed better immediate and delayed recall than subjects with low ST-PMA score and subjects with low VVIQ score. Mnemotechnic method (i.e. whether keywords are generated by the experimenter or by peers) significantly affected immediate recall but not delayed recall.     

Slow and steady: sustained effects of lexico-semantic associations can mediate referential impairments in schizophrenia

The present study investigated the contribution of lexico-semantic associations to impairments in establishing reference in schizophrenia. We examined event-related potentials as schizophrenia patients and healthy, demographically matched controls read five-sentence scenarios. Sentence 4 introduced a noun that referred back to three possible referents introduced in Sentences 1–3. These referents were contextually appropriate, contextually inappropriate but lexico-semantically associated, and contextually inappropriate and lexico-semantically nonassociated. In order to determine whether participants had correctly linked the anaphor to its referent, the final sentence reintroduced each referent, and participants indicated whether the last two sentences referred to the same entity. Results indicated that between 300 and 400 ms, patients, like healthy controls, used discourse context to link the noun with its preceding referent. However, between 400 and 500 ms, neural activity in patients was modulated only by lexico-semantic associations, rather than by discourse context. Moreover, patients were also more likely than controls to incorrectly link the noun with contextually inappropriate but lexico-semantically associated referents. These results suggest that at least some types of referential impairments may be driven by sustained activation of contextually inappropriate lexico-semantic associations.     

Non-conscious goal conflicts

The question raised in this paper is whether goal conflicts can occur outside of conscious awareness. Given the numerous and potentially conflicting goals people pursue, and the severe scarcity of mental resources, we offer a positive answer. Six experiments that employed a dissociation paradigm tested this hypothesis. Using three implicit behavioral markers of goal conflict (increased decision times, increased decision variance and heightened sensitivity to environmental information), and one physiological marker (increased arousal as measured by skin conductance level), these experiments document goal conflicts that do not reach conscious awareness.