A repertory grid study of therapist/couple interaction

A case of marital therapy is described in which the presenting problem, one of non-consummation, is treated by the standard Masters and Johnson's technique. Using repertory grids at the start and finish of treatment the changing perceptions of both partners and the therapist were determined. In spite of an ostensibly behavioural treatment, substantial changes occurred in the couple's understanding of the nature of their problem. The changes undergone in the couple's perceptions, and their differences from the therapist's assessments of change give rise to speculations about the nature of the therapeutic interaction and suggest further lines of exploration.     

Task dynamics and resource dynamics in the assembly of a coordinated rhythmic activity.

Task dynamics corresponding to rhythmic movements emerge from interactions among dynamical resources composed of the musculature, the link segments, and the nervous and circulatory systems. This article investigated whether perturbations of interlimb coordination might be effect over circulatory and nervous elements. Stiffness of wrist-pendulums oscillated at a common tempo and at 180 degrees relative phase was perturbed through the use of tonic activity about an ankle. Left and right stiffnesses, the common period, and the phase relation all changed. Stiffnesses increased with ankle torque in proportion to the wrist's inertial load. Despite different changes in stiffness at the two wrists, isochrony was preserved. The stability was shown to be consistent with the proportionality of changes in stiffness to the inertial loads. The phase departed from antiphase in proportion to the asymmetry of inertial loads. The size of departures decreased with increasing ankle torque. An account was developed in terms of muscular, circulatory, and nervous functions.     

Sensorimotor synchronization: Motor responses to regular auditory patterns

Subjects (N = 32) were asked to synchronize a motor response with tones in auditory patterns. These patterns were created from six tones and six intertone intervals of equal duration. The pitch of the first tone differed from the others. It was found that subjects used three types of timing in their motor response: (1) the first intertone interval was prolonged and the second interval was shortened, (2) the second intertone interval was prolonged and the first interval was shortened, and/or (3) the first interval and the second interval were of approximately the same length. The prolongation of the fifth interval was observed during all three types of timing. The results are explained using the concept of suprasegmental control of timing, which explains a prolongation of intervals at critical control point of the patterns. The occurrence of three different strategies of timing is discussed in connection with similar principles in musical performance.     

On the spread of semantic excitation

Summary Access to word-representations in memory was studied in two experiments. A lexical decision paradigm was used in both: Ss had to decide whether a string of letters shown to them was a word or a nonword. Decision time was the main dependent variable. Independent variables were context-similarity and context-intensity. The former is defined in terms of the categorical relationship that holds between a set of context-words and a subsequently presented test-word. The latter is defined by the number of highly related context-words, all sampled from a small semantic subcategory, that preceded the test-stimulus. In theory, the presentation of the context-words generates semantic excitation that spreads over memory and activates other memory representations. Differences in mean decision time, as a function of experimental conditions, are attributed to differences in the activation of test-words. Two hypotheses about the course or gradient of excitation-spread in lexical memory were studied. The results indicate that a simple spread-of-excitation hypothesis as proposed by Meyer, Schvaneveldt and Ruddy (1972, 1974) is sufficient to account for the data. For the conditions studied in the experiments, there was no reliable evidence of inhibitory processes that confine spread of excitation to a small region of lexical memory.This paper reports work that was conceived and begun at Stanford University, Calif., USA, where the author spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow. The fellowship was made possible by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bad Godesberg, West Germany, Grant Schm 350/1. I thank Prof. Richard G. Atkinson and Dr. Stephan Monsell for discussing aspects of this work with me. I further thank Paul Matthews for introducing me to the art of running computerized experiments.     

The siren's call: terror management and the threat of men's sexual attraction to women

Why do sexually appealing women often attract derogation and aggression? According to terror management theory, women's sexual allure threatens to increase men's awareness of their corporeality and thus mortality. Accordingly, in Study 1 a subliminal mortality prime decreased men's but not women's attractiveness ratings of alluring women. In Study 2, mortality salience (MS) led men to downplay their sexual intent toward a sexy woman. In Study 3, MS decreased men's interest in a seductive but not a wholesome woman. In Study 4, MS decreased men's but not women's attraction to a sexy opposite-sex target. In Study 5, MS and a corporeal lust prime increased men's tolerance of aggression toward women. Discussion focuses on mortality concerns and male sexual ambivalence.     

Sleep,activity, temperature,and performance: Techniques for long-term monitoring in the mouse

This paper describes a test chamber, a food acquisition task, and a training procedure for the long-term testing of an implanted mouse in a circadian rhythm experiment. For the training phase, a special-purpose controller is provided to a single cage. For the experimental phase, behavioral, electrophysiological, and environmental measures are collected by means of a mini-computer.