Arthur Kronfeld (1886-1941)--a psychiatrist in the service of psychotherapy

The psychotherapeutic life-work of psychiatrist Arthur Kronfeld has almost fallen into oblivion. Against the background of the 100th anniversary of his birth the author traces Kronfeld's psychotherapeutic career, pointing out his activity at the Berliner "Institute of Sexual Research" under Magnus Hirschfeld, and his psychotherapeutic concept--the psychagogic guidance of the patient--and its connection with the individual psychology of Alfred Adler. Kronfeld translated his theoretical positions into activities directed towards socialization and the teachability of psychotherapy which are still worthy of note by those engaged in the field.     

On the relation between indistinguishability of identical particles and (anti)symmetry of the wave function in quantum mechanics

Two different concepts of distinguishability are often mixed up in attempts to derive in quantum mechanics the (anti)symmetry of the wave function from indistinguishability of identical particles. Some of these attempts are analyzed and shown to be defective. It is argued that, although identical particles should be considered as observationally indistinguishable in (anti)symmetric states, they may be considered to be conceptually distinguishable. These two notions of (in)distinguishability have quite different physical origins, the former one being related to observations while the latter has to do with the preparation of the system.     

Substance P facilitation of memory: effects in an appetitively motivated learning task

Food deprived, heterogeneous strain (HS/IBG) mice were trained on two different discrimination tasks for food reinforcement. In one experiment animals were trained to make spatial discriminations in a T maze. Immediately after training they were given subcutaneous injections of either substance P (1 ng/g) or vehicle. Twenty-four hours later the animals were given reversal training in the same maze. The results showed that substance P-treated animals took significantly longer to acquire the reversal habit than did control mice. In a second experiment, animals were trained to make visual discriminations in a T maze. Immediately after reaching acquisition criterion animals were injected with either substance P (1 ng/g) or vehicle. Different groups of mice were retrained on the same task either 1, 2, 3, or 7 days after original learning. Savings scores were calculated and, at every interval, substance P-treated mice retained the task better than control animals. One interpretation of these data is that substance P-treated mice remembered the original task significantly better than vehicle-injected control animals.     

Evidence that fixation digits can contribute to visual field asymmetries in lateralized tachistoscopic tasks

Fixation point digits have been widely used in tachistoscopic laterality studies as a simple and convenient means of ensuring unihemispheric projection of stimulus materials to the hemispheres. Previous findings demonstrate that fixation digits do not influence asymmetries in recognition accuracy studies with adult Ss. Present results, comparing four conditions differing in their use of fixation digits, show that in the naming latency paradigm the requirement to remember and report fixation control digits significantly augments RVF superiority. Implications for other latency tasks are discussed.     

Some evidence for correlated separate activation in a simple letter-detection task

This study investigates the separate activation versus coactivation issue for redundant targets in a simple letter-detection paradigm with latency as the dependent variable. The results of a one-response visual-search task are reported. Since, on single-target trials, only the target was presented and no accompanying noise element, no “distraction decrement” caused by irrelevant noise elements (Grice et al., 1984) was to be expected. The data obtained showed a clear redundantsignal effect. Subsequent detailed analysis of the latency data using Miller’s (1982) procedure indicated that the results were consistent with a separate activation model and failed to provide convincing evidence in favor of coactivation models. A further analysis of the data indicated that, in the present study, the separate channels were negatively correlated for a range of fast RTs and positively correlated for intermediate and larger RTs. No evidence in favor of Grice et al.’s (1984) distraction-decrement hypothesis was found. The conclusions of this study are that (1) a separate activation model summarizes the essential features of information processing in this simple visual search task, and (2) no convincing evidence in favor of coactivation in visual search tasks has been reported in the literature up to now.     

Intensive specialised multi-family therapy for multi-stressed families: Therapeutic alliance as predictor for effectiveness

The effectiveness of intense specialised multi-family therapy (ISMFT) for 111 multi-stressed families, and the therapeutic alliance as a possible predictor of outcome, were examined. A repeated measures design was used, where changes in all ISMFT phases (preparation, multi-family therapy and follow-up) were assessed and compared for both mothers and fathers. Evidence was found for improved family functioning after the therapy period, which was maintained at 3 months follow-up, although the multi-stressed families still functioned in the problematic range. The therapy did however not decrease parenting stress, or did so only temporarily. Observations of the therapeutic alliance with the System for Observing Family Therapy Alliances (SOFTA) scales indicated that high therapist engagement was related to positive therapy outcomes, both at the start of therapy and later. High family engagement also predicted therapy effectiveness, but only at the start of therapy. The present study shows that solution-focused multi-family therapy at least seems to provide the first step in alleviating problems in multi-stressed families.     

The Intergenerational Transmission of Party Preferences in Multiparty Contexts: Examining Parental Socialization Processes in the Netherlands

Research shows that parents have a strong influence on the party preferences of their children. Yet little is known about how such preferences are transmitted in multiparty systems with weak party identification and high electoral volatility. We propose a model of intergenerational transmission that includes both direct effects of parents' party preferences on those of their children, as well as indirect effects through left–right and issue positions. We test this model with original survey data of Dutch adolescents (14–20 years old) and their parents (N = 751 adolescent-parent pairs). We find two paths through which parents exert influence on the party preferences of their adolescent children. On the first path, parental party preferences function as a direct predictor of adolescent party preferences. On the second path, adolescent left–right and issue positions function as a mediator between parental left–right and issue positions and adolescent party preferences, with the effect of left–right positions being stronger than that of issue positions. The frequency with which adolescents discuss political topics with their parents moderates these effects.