Microcomputerized clinical and research laboratories in psychiatric inpatient,settings

Microcomputers have become increasingly useful in clinical settings, performing functions ranging from test administration to composition of narrative reports. They may in the near future be involved in therapeutic procedures. Clinicians and researchers have begun to wonder whether a microcomputer can take over a wide range of functions in clinical psychiatric settings, becoming a versatile and cost-effective tool. This paper describes the development of a comprehensive system for research and clinical data management on a psychiatric inpatient unit. The core of the system is an Apple II-Plus microcomputer equipped with PASCAL, standard peripherals, and an inexpensive custom interface. The system has met the current data management needs of the unit, and its expandability allows planning of assessment-and treatment-related research.     

Effects of post-operative environment on recovery from dorsal hippocampal lesions in young rats: Tests of spatial memory and motor transfer

Young rats (30 days old) were given dorsal hippocampal lesions and then housed in different conditions to assess the contribution of the environment to recovery from the effects of the lesion. They were subsequently tested on a spatial memory task and on a task requiring complex motor movements and transfer ability. Animals with lesions were inferior to sham-operates on both these tasks. Social housing and environmental enrichment improved performance on both tests, but there was no evidence for an interaction between lesion and environmental effects. The validity of using the term “recovery” in these circumstances is discussed, and called into question.     

Values and the psychotherapist

One cannot live without encountering the problem of values. Certainly, one cannot go through psychotherapy without becoming involved implicitly and explicitly in the problem. Nor can one engage in psychotherapy as a therapist without bringing certain convictions about values into one's work. These convictions may or may not be specifically communicated to the patient, but they underlie the therapist's activity; they help determine the goal he sets for himself and his patient; and they are consciously or unconsciously reflected in his questions, statements or other reactions.“^1,p.1     

Maternal Agreeableness Moderates Associations Between Young Children's Emotion Dysregulation and Socioemotional Functioning at School

The goal of this study was to explore associations among maternal agreeableness, child temperament (i.e., emotion dysregulation), and children's social adjustment at school. Participants were 146 children in kindergarten and Grade 1 (76 girls; M_age = 67.78 months, SD = 10.81 months). Mothers provided ratings of their own agreeableness and their child's temperament, and teachers assessed indices of children's socioemotional functioning at school. Among the results, maternal agreeableness moderated associations between child dysregulation and aspects of adjustment at school. Specifically, at higher levels of maternal agreeableness, the relations between child dysregulation and both anxiety with peers and their prosocial behavior were attenuated. Overall, the results suggest that maternal agreeableness may serve as a protective factor for dysregulated children. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Alone and without purpose: Life loses meaning following social exclusion

Four studies (N = 643) supported the hypothesis that social exclusion would reduce the global perception of life as meaningful. Social exclusion was manipulated experimentally by having a confederate refuse to meet participants after seeing their videotaped introduction (Study 1) and by ostracizing participants in a computerized ball-tossing game (Study 2). Compared to control condition and acceptance conditions, social exclusion led to perceiving life as less meaningful. Exclusion was also operationalized as self-reported loneliness, which was a better predictor of low meaning than other potent variables (Study 3). Study 4 found support for Baumeister’s model of meaning (1991), by demonstrating that the effect of exclusion on meaning was mediated by purpose, value, and positive self-worth.     

INEQUALITY,INJUSTICE AND LEVELLING DOWN

The levelling down objection is the most serious objection to the principle of equality, but we think it can be conclusively defeated. It is serious because it pits the principle of equality squarely against the welfares of the persons whose welfares or resources are equalized. It suggests that there is something perverse about the principle of equality. In this paper, we argue that levelling down is not an implication of the principle of equality. To show this we offer a defence of, and partial elaboration of, what we call a common good conception of the principle of equality, which principle favours states in which everyone is better off to those in which everyone is worse off. We contrast this with what we call a purely structural conception of the principle of equality. The common good conception of equality involves two basic components: (1) in each circumstance there exists an ideal egalitarian distribution, which distributes equally all the available good in the distribution with the highest average welfare and (2) in evaluating how just the world is, it will matter how far the actual distribution is from the ideal distribution. The ideal egalitarian distribution in the circumstance is Pareto optimal and the approximation rule implies that Pareto superior states are less unjust than Pareto inferior states. 1     

Modelling relative motion to facilitate intra-limb coordination

The importance of relative motion information when modelling a novel motor skill was examined. Participants were assigned to one of four groups. Groups 1 and 2 viewed demonstrations of a skilled cricket bowler presented in either 'video' or 'point light' format. Group 3 observed a single point of light pertaining to the 'wrist' of the skilled bowler only. Participants in Group 4 did not receive a demonstration and acted as controls. During 60 acquisition trials, participants in the demonstration groups viewed a model five times before each 10-trial block. Retention was examined the following day. Intra-limb coordination was assessed for the right elbow relative to the wrist in comparison to the model. The demonstration groups showed greater concordance with the model than the control group. However, the 'wrist' group performed less like the model than the 'point light' and 'video' groups, who did not differ from each other. These effects were maintained in retention. Relative motion information aided the acquisition of intra-limb coordination, while making this information more salient (through point lights) provided no additional benefit. The motion of the model's bowling arm was replicated more closely than the non-bowling arm, suggesting that information from the end-effector is prioritized during observation for later reproduction.     

Solitude without Souls: Why Peter Unger hasn’t Established Substance Dualism

Unger has recently argued that if you are the only thinking and experiencing subject in your chair, then you are not a material object. This leads Unger to endorse a version of Substance Dualism according to which we are immaterial souls. This paper argues that this is an overreaction. We argue that the specifically Dualist elements of Unger’s view play no role in his response to the problem; only the view’s structure is required, and that is available to Unger’s opponents. We outline one such non-Dualist view, suggest how to resolve the dispute, respond to some objections, and argue that ours is but one of many views that survive Unger’s challenge. All these views are incompatible with microphysicalism. So Unger’s discussion does contain an insight: if you are the only conscious subject in your chair, then microphsyicalism is false. Unger’s mistake was to infer Substance Dualism from this; for microphysicalism is not the only alternative to Dualism.     

Linking Peer Victimization to the Development of Depressive Self-Schemas in Children and Adolescents

Previous theory and research suggest that childhood experiences are more likely to generate depressive self-schemas when they focus attention on negative information about oneself, generate strong negative affect, and are repetitive or chronic. Persistent peer victimization meets these criteria. In the current study, 214 youths (112 females) with empirically-validated histories of high or low peer victimization completed self-report measures of negative and positive self-cognitions as well as incidental recall and recognition tests following a self-referent encoding task. Results supported the hypothesis that depressive self-schemas are associated with peer victimization. Specifically, peer victimization was associated with stronger negative self-cognitions, weaker positive self-cognitions, and an elimination of the normative memorial bias for recall of positive self-referential words. Effects were stronger for relational and verbal victimization compared to physical victimization. Support accrues to a model about the social-developmental origins of cognitive diatheses for depression.     

Contextual interference and augmented feedback: is there an additive effect for motor learning?

Learning to perform a skilled behavior is affected by the context of the practice session and the frequency of augmented feedback. We studied the combined effect of these variables in the acquisition of a ballistic, bi-directional lever movement pattern involving four different target locations as measured by performance in practice, retention, and transfer tests. Augmented feedback was presented in either an every-trial or a faded schedule during random and blocked practice. Consistent with the contextual interference effect, the blocked practice group produced lower errors in acquisition, but the random practice group outperformed the blocked practice group in both retention and transfer. In contrast, faded feedback did not have a beneficial effect on learning and degraded learning when provided during blocked practice. While the results were consistent with previous findings of random and blocked practice, they were not consistent with previous findings of reduced feedback frequencies.