Is horror a necessary component of flooding (implosion)?

Experimental results indicate that presentation of horrifying scenes is not necessary to obtain a favorable outcome in the treatment of phobias by flooding. Prolonged exposure to the feared object, even under relatively pleasant conditions is sufficient. Subjects were college students who rated highly fearful of rats. They were randomly assigned to one of three experimental groups and to a no treatment-control group. Treatment groups differed along the dimension of harshness of scene presentation. Control group subjects received no treatment but were assessed repeatedly as were experimental subjects. All experimental subjects showed improvement irrespective of treatment received-after treatment they were all willing to come closer to a live rat and experienced less anxiety at the closest point. However, subjects exposed to horrid scenes were judged by an independent evaluator as less likely to avoid fearful situations. The discussion centers on the discrepancy between rater's evaluation and other measures, implications of the results for treatment, and on the generalizability of findings to a patient population.     

Psychophysiological assessment of imagery in obsessive-compulsives: a pilot study

In a within-groups design, four obsessive-compulsive patients imagined four different types of scenes: (1) exposure to feared situations; (2) exposure to feared situations followed by engaging in ritualistic behavior: (3) engaging in ritualistic behavior without provocation; and (4) neutral situations. Each scene type was presented three times with order of presentation randomized. Beat-by-beat heart rate samples were taken during the visualization of each scene and converted to second-by-second heart rate. An examination of second-by-second heart rate for each scene type suggested that scenes involving exposure to feared situations elicited defensive responses (DR), whereas those that did not elicited orienting responses (OR). The implications of these results for compulsive behavior, the fear-reduction model and Sokolov's (1963) OR-DR model, are briefly discussed.     

Massed vs. spaced exposure sessions in the treatment of agoraphobia

The differential effects of massed and spaced sessions of exposure in vivo were investigated with 11 agoraphobics in a crossover design. Clients were randomly assigned to one of the following two groups: (a) 10 daily sessions followed by 10 weekly sessions, or (b) 10 once-weekly sessions followed by 10 daily sessions. The results indicated that both massed and spaced sessions of exposure in vivo effected changes in avoidance behavior and subjective anxiety of agoraphobics, massed practice being superior especially with respect to avoidance. It was suggested that the superiority of massed practice is due to the lack of opportunity to engage in avoidance or escape during short inter-session intervals. The relationship between subjective anxiety and avoidance were considered and the differences between clinical and statistical significance were discussed.     

An analysis of generative representation systems

Three ideas are basic to generative theory: (a) Subjects are assumed to attend to the relations among stimuli, extracting the transformations relating pairs of stimuli; (b) the set of abstracted transformations is decomposed or reduced to an elementary set of generators; (c) subjects use the elementary generators as the basis for judging similarity. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate these ideas with an experiment in which subjects were asked to rate the similarity between stimulus pairs. The stimulus materials consisted of the permutations of a 4-item pattern with the properties of a dihedral group which insured the existence of sets of elementary transformations. Three analytic techniques were used to determine the generator set of transformations abstracted by subjects. The first analysis consisted of a monotonic regression between dissimilarity ratings and the number of elementary generators of a given permutation. The residual variance of this monotone regression, suitably normalized, was used as a quantitative goodness-of-fit measure. For the stochastic analysis, cumulative distributions of dissimilarity ratings were obtained for permutations requiring one, two, or three generators. The idea was that permutations requiring fewer generators should be associated with distributions of lower dissimilarity values (higher similarity scores) as compared to permutations predicted to be transformationally more complex. The final analysis, a multidimensional scaling of dissimilarity ratings, converted subjects' ratings into spatial structures to determine whether individual subjects' ratings exhibited the predicted spatial arrangement. The monotone regression and stochastic analyses abstracted similar generator sets for individual subjects, some of which provided perfect fits to the data. Although the scaling analysis yielded similar estimates of generators, for some subjects, transformations with the same number of generators yielded unequal “cognitive” distances resulting in some-what deformed spatial structures for these subjects. It was concluded that the results generally supported a generative model as an approximation to subjects' representations of interstimulus relationships.     

Entrevista con Alan Baddeley

RESUMEN

Tras presentar a este profesor inglés -director de la Applied Psychology Unit- como uno de los investigadores más importantes en psicología cognitiva, la entrevista se centra en la denominada “memoria operativa” o “memoria de trabajo” (working memory) y alguna de sus implicaciones. En primer lugar el autor nos habla de sus estudios sobre el desarrollo de la lectura, afirmando que se puede caracterizar el retraso en el lenguaje como un déficit en la memoria operativa. Seguidamente trata el tema del aprendizaje humano desde la perspectiva de la psicología cognitiva, así como la relación entre su enfoque y el de los procesos automáticos y controlados de Shiffrin y Schneider o el de asignación de recursos de procesamiento de Navon y Gopher. Esta entrevista finaliza analizando las relaciones entre aprendizaje y memoria operativa.     

Engaño,intenciones y creencias en el desarrollo y evolución de una psicología natural

Resumen

Los comportamientos de engaño suelen relacionarse con la intencionalidad y la conciencia, aunque desde una perspectiva evolutiva amplia puede apreciarse que el engaño es una estrategia evolutiva bastante antigua. En este artículo se discutirá en qué medida los engaños que producen los seres humanos y algunos otros primates, pueden entenderse como el producto de una competencia básica para atribuir mente a los demás y a uno mismo

El criterio más aceptado para determinar si un organismo posee tal capacidad mentalista, es que demuestre la comprensión de las creencias falsas. Las situaciones de engaño en las que se crean deliberadamente creencias falsas en otros para conseguir beneficios cumplen teóricamente bien los criterios de mentalismo que los humanos alcanzan hacia la edad de cuatro años y medio. En otros primates, no se ha demostrado experimentalmente con claridad la comprensión de creencias falsas. Sin embargo, si atendemos a los datos de observación naturalista vemos numerosos comportamientos de engaño tanto en algunos primates no humanos, como en niños menores de 4 años ¿Son estos engaños el producto de una teoría de la mente? ¿De una capacidad mentalista previa? ¿Qué otros estados mentales estarían implicados? Tras una revisión crítica de los trabajos que nos proporcionan estos datos, se discutirá el papel de la manipulación y detección de intenciones como un proceso anterior a la manipulación de creencias falsas y las implicaciones que esta postura tiene para la reconsideración evolutiva de la capacidad mentalista.     

Sistemas de Instrucción Asistida por Ordenador: el sistema ABRAXAS

Resumen

Este artículo presenta el desarrollo de un sistema de instrucción asistida por ordenador (IAO), el sistema Abraxas, dirigido a los estudiantes de Psicología. Su objetivo es enseñar la metodología del análisis factorial, tema de considerable dificultad para una gran mayoría de los estudiantes. Desde hace unos años, los sistemas IAO se han convertido en herramientas cotidianas de trabajo en distintos ámbitos de investigación y aplicación. Sin embargo, dichos sistemas no cumplen su objetivo en la gran mayoría de los casos, siendo una de las causas que durante el proceso de diseño y desarrollo, no se toman en cuanta una serie de pautas que se deben seguir al diseñar y desarrollar sistemas IAO, de modo que se optimice el aprendizaje real de los usuarios. Abraxas se divide en 5 módulos instruccionales: introducción temática, idea de correlación, idea de factor, desarrollo matemático y modelos factoriales. En cada módulo se usan distintos tipos de pantallas, de enseñanza, criterialesy de evaluación, y cada uno de estos módulos se ha valorado con potenciales usuarios desde el momento de su diseño; los resultados han indicado el éxito de esta estrategia.     

Interacción social y nivel de conflicto sociocognoscitivo en la construcción del esquema de probabilidad

Resumen

En este estudio se analiza la influencia que la interacción social y el conflicto sociocognitivo tienen en la construcción del esquema de probabilidad por medio de un diseño pretest-intervención-postest.

Se muestra cómo las situaciones experimentales de interacción social con conflicto sociocognitivo producen mayores logros durante la fase de intervención, así como mayores avances cognitivos en el postest en el esquema de probabilidad que las condiciones de trabajo individual y las de interacción sin conflicto. Los progresos alcanzados en el postest para el esquema de probabilidad se generalizaron al esquema de proporciones.     

Parentification,Stress, and Problem Behavior of Adolescents who have a Parent with Mental Health Problems

When adolescents live with a parent with mental illness, they often partly take over the parental role. Little is known about the consequences of this so‐called parentification on the adolescents' internalizing and externalizing problems. This survey study examined this effect cross‐sectionally and longitudinally in a sample of 118 adolescents living with a parent suffering from mental health problems. In addition, the study examined a possible indirect effect via perceived stress. Path analyses were used to examine the direct associations between parentification and problem behavior as well as the indirect relations via perceived stress. The results showed that parentification was associated with both internalizing and externalizing problems cross‐sectionally, but it predicted only internalizing problems 1 year later. An indirect effect of parentification on adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems via perceived stress was found, albeit only cross‐sectionally. These findings imply that parentification can be stressful for adolescents who live with a parent with mental health problems, and that a greater awareness of parentification is needed to prevent adolescents from developing internalizing problems.