Heart rate variability and respiratory concomitants of visual and nonvisual “imagery” and cognitive style

Attention to visual and nonvisual imagery, elicited by an imagery questionnaire, was studied using both within and between subjects analyses of cardiac and respiratory parameters. Visual imagery was accompanied by more regular interbeat heart rate (HR) and shorter, more stable respiratory cycles than nonvisual imagery. “Visually-oriented” thinkers (visualizers), identified by a word association test, manifested less overall variability in HR than “verbally-oriented” thinkers (verbalizers), as well as less variable HR and respiratory period during visual imagery. Visual and nonvisual imagery differed in HR variability for verbalizers and in respiration period for visualizers. The results are discussed in terms of the concepts of attention deployment, “mental load”, cerebral asymmetry, and stylistic personality differences in cognitive functioning.     

Learning from negative outcomes in stuttering therapy: II. An epiphany of failures

Proceeding on the premise that learning advances on the feet of failure, a litany of therapeutic failures with stutterers across 3 decades is recounted. The basis for these failures included the assumptions that stuttering is a neurotic symptom; that “lucky fluency” can be maintained permanently; that a fluent drone is preferable to stuttering; that controlled fluency, once established, can be maintained permanently; that a proper task for clinicians is to motivate clients to achieve and preserve fluency; that the clinician has the responsibility for marching clients through their therapeutic paces; and that stuttering is punishing to the stutterer, so it is not preserved by reinforcement. Unfortunately, more has probably been learned about what does not work than what does.     

Exposure and response prevention of morbid ruminations and compulsive avoidance

Two patients with morbid ruminations and compulsive avoidance behavior were independently treated by the authors with exposure and response prevention strategies. The patients were quite different with respect to age (23 vs 58), occupational status (student vs civil servant) and length of disorder (2 vs 40 years), although their disorders were quite similar. The present report describes the patients and treatment procedures and reports on dramatic behavioral changes that occurred within brief time periods.     

Sex differences in attribution for occupational success

A study was conducted to both test and extend Deaux's (Sex: A perspective on the attribution process. In J. H. Harvey, W. J. Ickes, & R. F. Kidd, (Eds.), New directions in attribution research, Volume 1. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1976) expectancy model of sex-linked differences in attribution for success. Specifically, it was hypothesized that female occupational subjects would attribute success more to the unstable causes of effort and luck, as well as the stable internal cause of interpersonal skill, while male occupational subjects would make higher attributions to the stable causes of ability and task ease. This hypothesis was supported for the causes of effort, luck, and task ease. Additionally, a comparison between sex differences in attribution occurring within a nonpersonal vs. personal frame of reference showed three of the expected sex differences in attribution to be stronger in the latter condition. Moreover, it was shown that this difference was largely accounted for by changes in females' rather than males' attributions. A final hypothesis, namely, that males would perceive themselves as more successful in their occupations than females, was not confirmed.     

The voice problems of stutterers: A practical approach from clinical experience

Voice disorders, which may be caused by the stuttering problem, have been noted in at least one-third of stutterers seen. Basically, stutterers have false speech images that normal speech is perfect and without natural dysfluencies (repetitions, pauses, etc.). Many stutterers also have erroneous vocal images of how they should or should not sound. Both images control speech and voice. Clinical experience indicates that vocal rehabilitation should be used in conjunction with speech therapy for many stutterers.     

The cognitive structure of social categories

Support for the prototype theory of categorization was found in a study of the structure of social categories. Though occupational terms such as DOCTOR are socially defined, they do not have the classical structure their clear definitional origins would predict. Conceptions of social categories are richer and more complex than those of physical object categories and subjects agree upon them. Comparison of various instructions for eliciting attributes of categories showed that whether subjects are asked to define a term, give characteristics, or describe ways they recognize members of categories, the attributes they list contribute to a prototype structure. These data provide evidence against the view that prototype structure is relevant only to an identification procedure and not to the core of concepts, as has been suggested.