Domestic Violence

Summary

In this paper, the authors outline their experience in incorporating a curriculum on domestic violence into an urban family practice residency program. Based on the concept that in order to successfully develop such a curriculum, it is necessary to address the “culture of the organization,” joint educational strategies that in-elude resident education as well as faculty development were considered. A research question was designed to inquire as to the difference in the level of knowledge about domestic violence in family practice faculty as compared to residents prior to the introduction of educational strategies. The authors describe curriculum goals and objectives and outline specific teaching methods as well as the evaluation instrument utilized in the study to measure actual difference in knowledge between faculty and residents about domestic violence with a focus specifically on spousal abuse. Their conclusions point to the need for an educational strategy that includes emphasis on the faculty-resident interface which utilizes both traditional and non-traditional integrated formats in order to successfully train residents in the identification and treatment of domestic violence.     

Phenomenology of delusions and hallucinations in schizophrenia by religious convictions

This study was conducted to assess the impact of religious affiliations on the phenomenology of delusions and hallucinations. Fifty-three Pakistani Muslim patients with schizophrenia were interviewed using the Present State Examination and Religiosity Index. The results indicated that the more religious patients had greater themes of grandiose ability and identity. These differences were more obvious in groups divided on the basis of practice of Islam. Similar results were obtained in the content of hallucinations. More religious patients were more likely to hear voices of paranormal agents and had visions of the same. The results of this study have strong implications for mental health professionals who, without reinforcing threatening and pathological beliefs of patients, can utilise this knowledge to create and maintain a therapeutic alliance with the patients as well as to more effectively manage the disorder.     

Aging and Semantic Cueing during Learning and Retention of Verbal Episodic Information

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of semantic cues provided at encoding and during retention for older adults' memory. For the California Verbal Learning Test-II, participants received semantic or nonsemantic cues that were varied across groups at encoding and during the retention interval. Provision of a semantic cue at encoding led to greater semantic clustering at learning, but not increased recall performance. Providing a semantic cue during the retention interval led to better delayed free recall and greater semantic clustering. No group differences in recall or semantic clustering were found at delayed cued recall. The current findings suggest that semantic cues can be beneficial for recalling unstructured information when administered during the retention interval.     

Priming of Pop-out in Visual Search: A Comparison of Young and Old Adults

An experiment examined potential age-related differences in priming of pop-out (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994, 1996, 2000; McPeek, Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1999), an implicit, memory-based phenomenon that facilitates repeated gaze or attention shifts between visually similar stimuli. Older and younger adults performed a visual search task requiring them to judge the orientation of a color singleton target. Trial-to-trial repetition of target color and/or target position primed attentional selection for both age groups, producing faster and more accurate responses. Age-related increases in the strength of priming by target color appeared to arise from generalized slowing in older observers’, but marginal age-related increases in the strength of priming by target position remained even after transformation to account for generalized slowing.     

Mothering Children with Schizophrenia in a Village Setting: A Multiple Case Study

This study reports on the experiences of mothers (n=8) raising children with schizophrenia in a rural South African village. The mothers were individually interviewed at their homes, using in-depth, phenomenological methods. Data were thematically analysed. Mothers of children with schizophrenia indicated that they are facing the following challenges on their process of caregiving: mothers' emotional reactions, blaming witchcraft, dealing with the children's violence and destructiveness, poverty and unemployment, financial support, isolation and social support, effects of schizophrenia on the mother-child relationship, and the loss that mothers go through.     

Perceptual processing affects the reactivation of a sensory dimension during a categorization task

According to grounded theories of cognition, knowledge is grounded in its sensory-motor features. Therefore, perceptual and conceptual processing should be based on the same distributed system so that conceptual and perceptual processes should interact. The present study assesses whether gustatory stimulation (participants tasted a sweet or a nonsweet yoghurt) could influence performance on a categorization task that involves the reactivation of the same sensory dimension. The results indicate that participants were slower (Experiment 1) or faster (Experiment 2), respectively, at categorizing pictures as representing edible sweet stimuli when they either simultaneously or had previously tasted a sweet yoghurt as compared to a nonsweet yoghurt. These results confirm the significant overlap between perceptual and memory mechanisms and suggest the functional equivalence between perceptually present and perceptually absent (memory reactivated) dimensions.     

Individual differences in forced-choice recognition memory: Partitioning contributions of recollection and familiarity

In forced-choice recognition memory, two different testing formats are possible under conditions of high target–foil similarity: Each target can be presented alongside foils similar to itself (forced-choice corresponding; FCC), or alongside foils similar to other targets (forced-choice noncorresponding; FCNC). Recent behavioural and neuropsychological studies suggest that FCC performance can be supported by familiarity whereas FCNC performance is supported primarily by recollection. In this paper, we corroborate this finding from an individual differences perspective. A group of older adults were given a test of FCC and FCNC recognition for object pictures, as well as standardized tests of recall, recognition, and IQ. Recall measures were found to predict FCNC, but not FCC performance, consistent with a critical role for recollection in FCNC only. After the common influence of recall was removed, standardized tests of recognition predicted FCC, but not FCNC performance. This is consistent with a contribution of only familiarity in FCC. Simulations show that a two-process model, where familiarity and recollection make separate contributions to recognition, is 10 times more likely to give these results than a single-process model. This evidence highlights the importance of recognition memory test design when examining the involvement of recollection and familiarity.     

Trade-offs in visual attention and the enhancement of memory specificity for positive and negative emotional stimuli

Emotional influences on memory can lead to trade-offs in memory for gist or detail and trade-offs in memory for central or peripheral aspects of an event. Attentional narrowing has often been proposed as a theoretical explanation for this pattern of findings with negative emotion. These trade-offs have been less extensively investigated with positive emotion. In three experiments, we investigate memory for specific visual details of positive and negative stimuli, examine central–peripheral trade-offs in memory, and assess the hypothesis that attentional narrowing contributes to emotional enhancement of memory specificity. We found that memory for details was enhanced by negative and positive emotion. Central–peripheral trade-offs were found in memory for negative emotional stimuli but not in memory for positive emotional stimuli. These trade-offs with negative emotion were associated with attentional narrowing at the time of encoding, as measured by eye movements. There were no attentional effects at the time of encoding found with positive emotional stimuli. Evidence was found for the attentional narrowing hypothesis of memory specificity and central–peripheral trade-offs in memory for negative emotional events. Alternative explanations for the positive emotional enhancement of memory specificity are required.     

Ageing and secondary-distinctiveness-based effects: The orthographic distinctiveness effect is more robust than the bizarreness effect

Differences related to ageing were investigated in two cases of secondary-distinctiveness-based effects: the bizarreness effect and the orthographic distinctiveness effect. A secondary distinctiveness effect means that items that are unusual compared to one's general knowledge stored in permanent memory are better remembered than common items. Experiment 1 confirmed that ageing diminishes the facilitative effects of bizarreness in a mixed list design with equal numbers of bizarre and common images. We suggest that the impaired bizarreness effect in older adults (above age 70) may be due to reduced attentional resources, since no bizarreness effect was observed for younger adults in the divided attention condition. Experiment 2 studied the orthographic distinctiveness effect in ageing for the first time. Contrary to our expectations, an orthographic distinctiveness effect was observed for all participants including older adults and younger adults in a divided attention condition. Because reduced attentional resources due to normal ageing or to experimental manipulation did not impact the facilitative effects of orthographic distinctiveness, our findings suggest that the orthographic distinctiveness effect may be mediated by more automatic processing.