The Functional Analytic Psychotherapy Rating Scale: a Replication and Extension

Few theories of psychotherapy give direction to the therapist on a moment-to-moment level or make predictions about how specific therapist techniques change client behavior in session. Functional analytic psychotherapy (FAP, Kohlenberg and Tsai in Functional analytic psychotherapy: a guide for creating intense and curative therapeutic relationships. Plenum, New York 1991) provides this direction and prediction. Specifically, FAP claims that client problem behaviors will be displayed in the therapeutic relationship and that the therapist can improve client in-session behavior through differential, contingent responding. Further, it is assumed that these improvements in session can be generalized to out of session relationships. The FAP rating scale (FAPRS) was developed for the purpose of coding in-session client and therapist behaviors in an effort to test FAP’s purported mechanism of change. The current study seeks to replicate and extend initial FAPRS findings (Callaghan et al. in J Contemp Psychother 33:321–339, 2003) regarding mechanism of change and to address transportability. FAPRS coding data from a single successful case of an individual diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and treated with FAP is presented. Results indicate that the FAPRS system is transportable and are generally supportive of the claim that therapist contingent responding leads to client improvement.     

Folk conceptions of fairness and unfairness

This study sought to identify the standards people invoke when judging the fairness or unfairness of outcomes of everyday events, and to determine whether their standards of judgment vary according to the fairness of the outcome and to their perspective, i.e. whether the outcomes are ones they personally experienced or witnessed. The standards of fairness laypeople were found to invoke, even when unprompted, coincided with the standards social scientists have emphasized (e.g. distributive, procedural) in their theories of psychological justice. However, laypeople emphasized these standards differently when accounting for the fairness–unfairness of personal experiences versus those they had witnessed, and when accounting for fair versus unfair outcomes. As predicted, they were more likely to invoke procedural and interpersonal criteria when judging the fairness–unfairness of their own outcomes, but more likely to invoke distributive criteria when judging others' outcomes. Regardless of perspective, laypeople cited procedural criteria as the major determinants of their fairness judgements; but cited procedural, distributive and interpersonal criteria as comparably influential in determining their unfairness judgments. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A second look at the impact of nontraditional vocational role models and curriculum on the vocational role preferences of kindergarten children

During a 10-week period 24 kindergarten children in a treatment group were exposed to nontraditional vocational role models and curricular materials, and a control group, consisting of 24 kindergarten children, was exposed to a curriculum unrelated to vocational or sex roles. Using a t test for related measures, the pretest and post-test scores were compared. The results were that the children in the treatment group were only slightly less traditional in their vocational role preferences at the end of the 10-week treatment. None of the t values were significant. These findings are compared to an earlier study in which one of the authors was involved and which used a similar, shorter term treatment (2 weeks). The results of this study are discussed in the context of L. Kohlberg's (E. Maccoby (Ed.), The Development of Sex Differences. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1966.) Cognitive Developmental Theory of Sex Roles. Some possible implications for role-related education and further research are suggested.     

Uncritical inference making and intellectual functioning

The relationship between uncritical inference making and intelligence has been uncertain. In the present study a group of 30 advanced undergraduate students were administered the Uncritical Inference Test and the Otis-Lennon Test of Mental Ability. A significant Pearson correlation of .52 indicates that this measure of intellectual functioning is associated with uncritical inference making. Further research needs to be conducted using standard intelligence measures of specific kinds of intellectual processes.     

Sex differences in dual-task interference between speaking and a manual force-production task

12 male and 12 female right-handed adults performed a unimanual force-production task alone and while sound-shadowing high frequency words. The secondary speech task disrupted right-hand performance by men and left-hand performance by women. The implications of these findings for intrahemisphere-interference models of dual-task performance are discussed.     

Of scapegoats,strawmen, and scarecrows

The thesis of this paper is that much pathology derives from our inability to deal with our feelings of hurt. The inability to deal with hurt results in the externalization of responsibility which in turn creates victims and dysfunctional behavior. The drama of the externalization of responsibility involves the same individual, the victim, or identified patient, playing three successive dysfunctional roles: the scapegoat, the strawman, and the scarecrow. This view of pathology is basically transactional because the process occurs in a familial context where all the parts of the system are intrinsically related in producing a victim.