Gender in family therapy supervision

While gender has taken its place as a fundamental construct in family therapy theory, little has been written about gender in family therapy supervision. This paper attempts to redefine gender as it pertains to families, family therapy, and family therapy supervision; call attention to aspects of gender as they apply to training in family therapy and family therapy supervision; and suggest ways that family therapy supervisors can sensitize themselves to issues of gender so that they can be more effective in supervision.The author gratefully acknowledges her husband, Victor Nelson, STM, and Eric McCollum, PhD, for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper and for helping with the idea that men are raised to fix things, women to make them better.     

Self-image formation in adopted children: The environment within

Adoption of a child is an event in which a number of crises have converged. Both the biologic and adoptive families have contributed their failures and crises, and the subsequent interpretations of these by the adopted child can lead to polarized themes of goodness and badness. The absence of the biologic parents and of a coherent history reinforces the tendency to splitting. This paper explores these operations and raises questions about prevailing adoption practices.Paper presented at Spence-Chapin Symposium on Identity Problems of Children in Non-Nuclear Families, April 11, 1981.     

The Primary Mental Health Project (PMHP): Evaluation of current program effectiveness

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Primary Mental Project (PMHP), a program for early detection and prevention of school adjustment problems. Pre- and postprogram assessments were done with 215 primary-grade children seen in PMHP, usig teacher ratings of problem behaviors and competencies, and child-aide ratings of problems. School mental health professionals judged educational and behavioral changes in project children during the year. Significant across-the board improvements were found on all criterion measures. Modest intercorrelations among criterion change estimates suggested that the observed changes were due to program, rather than halo, effects. PMHP children also improved significantly more than matched, retrospective controls.     

A machine-level software program for the generation of aversive conditioning schedules using the KIM-1 microprocessor

A microprocessor system can be used both to control aversive conditioning (classical, signaled and Sidman avoidance, and conflict) experiments and to acquire behavioral data in multiple subjects at a fraction of the cost of solid state systems. The software described in this paper can be used to program tones and shocks and count responses, independently, in up to 12 animals simultaneously.     

Subproblem learning: A misnomer

Among other things, K. J. Rust and T. S. Kendler (1987, Developmental Review, 7, 326–362) tested and disconfirmed the Tighes' independent subproblem learning hypothesis experimentally. The Tighes defended themselves by claiming that independent subproblem learning (ISPL) is a label, not a hypothesis and that our tests were invalid. In this reply we showed that ISPL is either an erroneous hypothesis or a misnomer because our tests were valid demonstrations that for young children the so-called “subproblems” are dependent rather than independent.     

Suicidal Behaviors in Surviving Monozygotic and Dizygotic Co‐Twins: Is the Nature of the Co‐Twin's Cause of Death a Factor?

Genetically informative samples can address hereditary and experiential influences on suicide‐related behaviors. The frequency of suicide‐related behaviors was compared in twins from two survivor groups: (1) those whose co‐twins' deaths were suicides (monozygotic [MZ]: n = 47; dizygotic [DZ]: n = 31), and (2) those whose co‐twins' deaths were nonsuicides (MZ: n = 347; DZ: n = 170). The frequency of suicide attempts among suicide survivors was significantly higher in MZ than DZ twins, while the frequency of suicide attempts among nonsuicide twin survivors did not differ between MZ and DZ twins. Twin concordance for suicide attempts more likely reflects a genetic predisposition than a behavioral reaction to the loss.     

Single-Stage Prediction Models Do Not Explain the Magnitude of Syntactic Disambiguation Difficulty

The disambiguation of a syntactically ambiguous sentence in favor of a less preferred parse can lead to slower reading at the disambiguation point. This phenomenon, referred to as a garden-path effect, has motivated models in which readers initially maintain only a subset of the possible parses of the sentence, and subsequently require time-consuming reanalysis to reconstruct a discarded parse. A more recent proposal argues that the garden-path effect can be reduced to surprisal arising in a fully parallel parser: words consistent with the initially dispreferred but ultimately correct parse are simply less predictable than those consistent with the incorrect parse. Since predictability has pervasive effects in reading far beyond garden-path sentences, this account, which dispenses with reanalysis mechanisms, is more parsimonious. Crucially, it predicts a linear effect of surprisal: the garden-path effect is expected to be proportional to the difference in word surprisal between the ultimately correct and ultimately incorrect interpretations. To test this prediction, we used recurrent neural network language models to estimate word-by-word surprisal for three temporarily ambiguous constructions. We then estimated the slowdown attributed to each bit of surprisal from human self-paced reading times, and used that quantity to predict syntactic disambiguation difficulty. Surprisal successfully predicted the existence of garden-path effects, but drastically underpredicted their magnitude, and failed to predict their relative severity across constructions. We conclude that a full explanation of syntactic disambiguation difficulty may require recovery mechanisms beyond predictability.     

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Clusters and Acquired Capability for Suicide: A Reexamination Using DSM-5 Criteria

This study used the interpersonal–psychological theory of suicide to explore the relationships among DSM-5 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom clusters derived from the six-factor anhedonia model and facets of acquired capability for suicide (ACS). In a sample of 373 trauma-exposed undergraduates, most PTSD symptom clusters were negatively associated with facets of ACS in bivariate correlations, but the anhedonia cluster was positively associated with ACS in regression models. Structure coefficients and commonality analysis indicated that anhedonia served as a suppressor variable for the other symptom clusters. Our findings further elucidate the complex relationship between specific PTSD symptom clusters and ACS.