Malpractice in clinical social work: A perspective on civil liability in the 1980's

Recently reported cases involving the malpractice of psychiatrists have also focused attention on the potential liability for similar acts by clinical social workers. While there is no appellate case authority holding social work clinicians liable for malpractice at this time, the potential for such litigation is enormous. This article explores some of the more common areas of concern and suggests several prophylactic measures that clinicians may employ to safeguard both their professional career and their continued financial independence.     

Learning to reproduce a list and memory for the learning.

The ability to reproduce from memory a short list of verbal items immediately following presentation is known to improve over successive trials on that list, even if these trials are embedded in a sequence of trials on other lists of the same sort (Hebb, 1961). Less clear is whether this "Hebb effect" arises without the list repetition being noticed. This question has long been pondered and has recently taken on particular theoretical significance, but the available evidence is scant and inconsistent. Two experiments are described in which, in essence, a sequence of immediate reproduction trials was followed by tests that called for list recognition (Experiments 1 and 2) and/or estimates of list presentation frequency (Experiment 1). These tests provided quantitative measures of repetition awareness. Typical Hebb effects were found, but there was no evidence that the effects occurred without the subjects' being aware of the repetition; effect-size analyses indicated that both the recognition and frequency responses were more sensitive to repetition than were the reproduction responses. Therefore, not only could the recognition and frequency responses not have been made solely on the basis of how readily the test lists were reproduced, but the Hebb effect could have required an awareness of repetition.     

Lateral inhibition and echoic memory: Some comments on Crowder’s (1978) theory

Crowder (1978) has proposed a theory of the suffix effect based on lateral inhibition among echoic representations of the list and suffix items. The theory was prompted by, and derives its principal support from, the counterintuitive finding that the effect is smaller with multiple suffixes than with a conventional single suffix. In this paper, we describe four experiments, each of which fails to replicate this finding. In addition, we note a prediction of the theory and show that it is contrary to available evidence. It is argued that the details of the suffix effect are too complex to be captured by a theory of peripheral mechanism, even one as ingenious as Crowder’s.     

Toward understanding sex differences in pay allocation: Agency,communion, and reward distribution behavior

This research examined the extent to which the personality characteristics of agency and communion are sex linked, and the extent to which differences in these orientations can account for sex differences in reward distribution behavior. In two studies, the agency and communion level of large samples of male and female undergraduates were assessed. As expected, males were more agentic and females were more communal. Moreover, when subjects who scored high or low on agency and high or low on communion were asked to allocate rewards between themselves and a co-worker, these personality differences were related to their allocation decisions. These results were used as the basis for discussing the role that sex-linked personality differences might play in distributive justice judgments.This article is an adaptation of a colloquium presentation at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, August 1981. The research reported here was supported by NIMH grant MH29987-1, Goals, Motives, and Norms of Reward Distribution, and by NIMH Biomedical Research Support Grant from the College of Social Science, Michigan State University. The authors wish to thank Andrea Doughty for her valuable advice, and to gratefully acknowledge the help of Mark Teicher, Julie B. Klein, Sue Schnelbach, Pat Loepp, Barb Allen, Gavin Goodrich, Bob O'Hara, Kelly Bowen, Rod Hollenstein, Steve Schultz, and Mary Hurst.     

Generalized and specific expectancies: Sequential mediators of interpersonal behavior1

Two experiments confirmed sequential mediation of social interaction by investigating the effects of generalized expectancies on specific expectancies and the effects of specific expectancies on performance. Both experiments used a simulated tutoring task in which the subject took the role of tutor while a confederate took the role of student. In Experiment 1 subjects combined generalized expectancies about the effectiveness of certain tutoring responses with specific situational information to produce specific expectancies about the results of the tutoring responses under the experimental circumstances. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that specific expectancies of the relative effectiveness of different responses influenced which response was performed more. Results were discussed in terms of cognitive motivation theory and social learning theory.     

Yes,they can! Efficient physical effort mobilization according to task difficulty in schizophrenia

The current literature has largely highlighted a deficit of effort-based decision-making for reward in schizophrenia. However, not all studies have dissociated effort from reward, while other studies emphasize that difficulty is the main determinant of effort rather than reward. In this study, 33 individuals with schizophrenia and 32 healthy controls were recruited to perform a decision-making isometric force task. According to motivational intensity theory, task difficulty (i.e., required force) but not reward was manipulated from easy to impossible. Accuracy between force exerted and force required, and choice to perform a task or not were our effort measures. Clinical variables including depression, defeatist beliefs, and apathy were assessed. Our results demonstrated that the schizophrenia group chose to perform easy, moderate, and difficult tasks and exerted the necessary effort to succeed similarly to the non-clinical group. No association between effort and clinical variables was found. Our findings provide new understandings related to effort mechanisms in schizophrenia.