Rebuilding family relationship bridges

This paper describes two techniques that the family therapist can use to help families in emotional crisis change and heal. They require the family therapist to persuade family members to view the therapy sessions as a project in building or rebuilding their family relationship bridges. An essential component of these approaches is the value placed by the family therapist on building rather than destroying family relationship bridges. Four themes are suggested as building blocks for healing dysfunctional family relationships: Love, Anger, Loss and Forgiveness. Vignettes of several family problems are presented accompanied by an intervention demonstrating an aspect of family bridge building.     

Congruence between personality type and environment type as a predictor of stay in an environment

Following Holland's (Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973) congruence hypothesis, the independent variable in this study is the level of congruence between the personality type of the subjects and the modal personality type in their environment. This variable is hypothesized to predict the two criteria of the study—the inclination to stay and the social acceptance of 71 couples from three settlements. Results show that (a) in each settlement the modal personality type of males is not similar to the modal personality type of females; (b) the correlation between congruence level and inclination to stay in the settlement is .44 (n = 142, p < .01); and (c) the correlations between congruence level and social acceptance are low and not significant. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Dream content of schizophrenic, nonschizophrenic mentally ill, and community control adolescents

This study compared the manifest dream content of 20 schizophrenic adolescent inpatients whose medications were stable for at least four weeks, 21 adolescent inpatients with other mental disorders (nonschizophrenic group) matched for age and gender, and 31 matched community controls. All participants were administered the standardized Formal Dream Content Rating Scale (FDCRS), which evaluates dream-related anxiety, cognitive disturbance, implausibility, involvement, primitivity, and recall, as well as two additional scales measuring emotional expression and duration of dream report. The Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS) was administered to the two inpatient groups. The community controls demonstrated more involvement and emotional expression than the schizophrenic patients; furthermore, they demonstrated more implausibility and had a greater duration of dream report compared with the nonschizophrenic group. In the schizophrenic patients only, elevated scores on the negative subscale of the PANSS were significantly correlated with lower scores on involvement, emotional expression, and dream recall. No relationship was found between the positive subscale of the PANSS and any of the FDCRS subscales. These results suggest that psychopathology per se, rather than the specific psychiatric disturbance, may be associated with impoverishment of dream content, and that negative, rather than positive, schizophrenic symptomatology may be influential in the dream content of schizophrenic youngsters.     

The Evolution of Mutuality in the Resolution of Transference

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

A note on ECG changes observed during Pavlovian conditioning in a rhesus monkey following coronary arterial occlusion

Changes in the ECG of a rhesus monkey during a classical aversive conditioning trial conducted 10 minutes after occlusion of the marginal branch of the left circumflex coronary artery have been observed. This appears to reflect an instance where myocardial ischemia following coronary occlusion was exacerbated by presentation of a conditional stimulus.     

To be at the tail of the lions or the head of the foxes?

Agents seeking an opportunity for profit often have to compete with others who pursue the same opportunity. When having to choose between a number of opportunities differing in their value and if individuals differ in their chances of outperforming others, the choice can be cognitively and emotionally demanding. We explore choice between opportunities using stylized Lions–Foxes games. In such a game, each of three players, with different odds of beating others, has to choose one of two contests that offer different rewards. After game theoretically analyzing the games, which we have experimentally employed, we report four experiments that vary in choice elicitation (repeated play or strategy method), in players' matching (random strangers or partners) and in rewards. Regarding contest choices, we found the choice of the higher value (and seemingly more prestigious) contest to be positively related to winning odds, contrary to what four out of the five (mixed, partially mixed, or pure) equilibria predict. Participants started out rather optimistic, with a large majority choosing the higher value option, but with experience, they approached the only viable of two pure strategy equilibria. Still, mixing continued via reacting to past play and outcome, apparently balancing dissatisfaction from choosing either contest.     

Consciousness and control in task switching

Participants were required to switch among randomly ordered tasks, and instructional cues were used to indicate which task to execute. In Experiments 1 and 2, the participants indicated their readiness for the task switch before they received the target stimulus; thus, each trial was associated with two primary dependent measures: (1) readiness time and (2) target reaction time. Slow readiness responses and instructions emphasizing high readiness were paradoxically accompanied by slow target reaction time. Moreover, the effect of task switching on readiness time was an order of magnitude smaller then the (objectively estimated) duration required for task preparation (Experiment 3). The results strongly suggest that participants have little conscious awareness of their preparedness and challenge commonly accepted assumptions concerning the role of consciousness in cognitive control.     

Training‐induced recovery of low‐level vision followed by mid‐level perceptual improvements in developmental object and face agnosia

Long‐term deprivation of normal visual inputs can cause perceptual impairments at various levels of visual function, from basic visual acuity deficits, through mid‐level deficits such as contour integration and motion coherence, to high‐level face and object agnosia. Yet it is unclear whether training during adulthood, at a post‐developmental stage of the adult visual system, can overcome such developmental impairments. Here, we visually trained LG, a developmental object and face agnosic individual. Prior to training, at the age of 20, LG's basic and mid‐level visual functions such as visual acuity, crowding effects, and contour integration were underdeveloped relative to normal adult vision, corresponding to or poorer than those of 5–6 year olds (Gilaie‐Dotan, Perry, Bonneh, Malach & Bentin, 2009). Intensive visual training, based on lateral interactions, was applied for a period of 9 months. LG's directly trained but also untrained visual functions such as visual acuity, crowding, binocular stereopsis and also mid‐level contour integration improved significantly and reached near‐age‐level performance, with long‐term (over 4 years) persistence. Moreover, mid‐level functions that were tested post‐training were found to be normal in LG. Some possible subtle improvement was observed in LG's higher‐order visual functions such as object recognition and part integration, while LG's face perception skills have not improved thus far. These results suggest that corrective training at a post‐developmental stage, even in the adult visual system, can prove effective, and its enduring effects are the basis for a revival of a developmental cascade that can lead to reduced perceptual impairments.     

Emotions,Risk Perceptions,and Precautionary Behavior Under the Threat of Terror Attacks: A Field Study Among Israeli College Students

The current study uses the unique data from a natural experiment conducted in a college located in southern Israel that was exposed to rocket attacks in 2008. The study examines the relationships between the negative emotions, the perceptions of risk to oneself, the precautionary actions, and the intentions of 290 students who were exposed to terror attacks while on campus. In addition, we compared the emotions, the risk perceptions, and the precautionary behavior between the two groups: those who lived within the range of the rockets and were also exposed to rocket attacks at home and those who lived outside the range of the rockets. The results show that the risk perceptions were affected mainly by the emotion of fear while the students were on campus. In particular, fearful people became more pessimistic about their general and personal risks from terror but not about routine risks. The results also reveal that those who lived outside the rocket area (and had less or no experience with terror attacks) were more likely to take precautionary actions during their stay in the campus and were more pessimistic about continuing their studies in college in the coming year than those living in the area, who had more experience with terror attacks. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.