Psychoacoustic cues to emotion in speech prosody and music

There is strong evidence of shared acoustic profiles common to the expression of emotions in music and speech, yet relatively limited understanding of the specific psychoacoustic features involved. This study combined a controlled experiment and computational modelling to investigate the perceptual codes associated with the expression of emotion in the acoustic domain. The empirical stage of the study provided continuous human ratings of emotions perceived in excerpts of film music and natural speech samples. The computational stage created a computer model that retrieves the relevant information from the acoustic stimuli and makes predictions about the emotional expressiveness of speech and music close to the responses of human subjects. We show that a significant part of the listeners’ second-by-second reported emotions to music and speech prosody can be predicted from a set of seven psychoacoustic features: loudness, tempo/speech rate, melody/prosody contour, spectral centroid, spectral flux, sharpness, and roughness. The implications of these results are discussed in the context of cross-modal similarities in the communication of emotion in the acoustic domain.     

The development of a brief group intervention (Dynamic Interpersonal Therapy) for patients with medically unexplained somatic symptoms: a pilot study

The primary aim of this equivalence study was to compare the outcome of a brief group therapeutic intervention, based on the principles of dynamic interpersonal therapy (DIT) with an intervention based on cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) in patients suffering from medically unexplained somatic symptoms (MUSS). Participants were 89 patients (aged 18 to 62) who were offered 20 sessions of either DIT or CBT, as central part of a treatment package, consisting of art therapy, psychomotor therapy, social therapy and physical therapy. Measurements were conducted at baseline, 10 weeks and 20 weeks, using self-rating scales measuring the level of anxiety and depression, the severity of medically unexplained symptoms and quality of life. Results showed that CBT and DIT were comparable. The conclusion was that it is recommended to design a larger scale randomised controlled trial to further elaborate the short-term and long-term effects of this novel psychodynamic group therapy for MUSS patients.     

Editorial

No abstract available for this article.     

Cognitive Behavioral Principles Within Group Mentoring: A Randomized Pilot Study

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a group mentoring program that included components of empirically supported mentoring and cognitive behavioral techniques for children served at a community mental health center. Eighty-six 8- to 12-year-old children were randomly assigned to either group mentoring or a wait-list control group. Group mentoring significantly increased children's reported social problem-solving skills and decreased parent-reported child externalizing and internalizing behavior problems after controlling for other concurrent mental health services. Attrition from the group mentoring program was notably low (7%) for children. The integration of a cognitive behavioral group mentoring program into children's existing community mental health services may result in additional reductions in externalizing and internalizing behavior problems.     

Neural predictive mechanisms and their role in cognitive incrementalism

Many neuroscientists view prediction as one of the core brain functions, especially on account of its support of fast movements in complex environments. This leads to the natural question whether predictive knowledge forms the cornerstone of our common-sense understanding of the world. However, there is little consensus as to the exact nature of predictive information and processes, or of the neural mechanisms that realize them. This paper compares procedural versus declarative notions of prediction, examines how the brain appears to carry out predictive functions, and discusses to what degree, and at what level, these neural mechanisms support cognitive incrementalism: the notion that high-level cognition stems from sensorimotor behavior.     

Does Motivational Interviewing (MI) Work With Nonaddicted Clients? A Controlled Study Measuring the Effects of a Brief Training in MI on Client Outcomes

This study investigated the relationships between motivational interviewing (MI) and client symptoms, attendance, and satisfaction. Seventy‐nine clients attending a university‐based counseling center were purposefully assigned to treatment or control conditions. Statistical analyses revealed client symptoms in both groups improved. However, clients assigned to treatment conditions attended more sessions and missed fewer sessions than clients in the control group. Implications for using MI and suggestions for additional research are explored within the study.     

Mass psychology of the led and the leaders

Abstract

Some salient features of a Sullivanian perspective are given as a background for a discussion of the case of Anna. Lived experience is mentioned as of equal importance as fantasy. Technically, analytic inquiry in the form of questions is stressed. In his review of the case presentation, the author observes that too much emphasis is given to content, compared to form. He notes that the therapist does not report key transference and non-transference interactions with the patient and further suggests that the patient still has significant narcissistic problems. He suggests that it is time to confront the patient with her characterological ways of relating to the analyst.     

Child Personality as Moderator of Outcome in a School‐based Intervention for Preventing Externalising Behaviour

Studying moderators of intervention effects is essential to elucidate what works for whom. The present study investigated whether child personality moderates short‐term and follow‐up effects of an individualised preventive school‐based intervention for children with externalising behaviour. The sample consisted of 48 schools, with 264 fourth‐grade children displaying externalising behaviour (M_age = 10.2 years), randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 191) or no intervention control (n = 73) condition. Teachers and children reported at pretest, posttest and follow‐up test about reactive and proactive aggression. Child personality was assessed by teachers at pretest. Child conscientiousness moderated short‐term intervention effects, indicating that more organised and planful children benefited more from the intervention. Child extraversion moderated both short‐term and follow‐up intervention effects, with low extraverted children showing larger effects. These results affirm the importance of including personality as moderator of intervention effects in future studies, as interventions adapted to specific child traits might yield larger effects. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Normative and Descriptive Models of Military Decisions to Deploy Precision Strike Capabilities

Precision strike capabilities represent a significant and highly controversial part of present day military operations. And yet, there is a surprising dearth of empirical research on military decision making in this domain. In this article, we therefore review different psychological perspectives on how these decisions can be made. Specifically, we compare the application of normative models of judgment and choice against the empirical research on human decision making, which suggests that people are more likely to employ heuristic strategies. We suggest that several features of decision tasks in the precision strike domain evoke the use of intuitive (heuristic) decision making whereas other features such as the sometimes unfamiliar (or novel) nature of the decision task requires analytic strategies to generate good solutions. Therefore, decisions about precision strike capabilities are best made with a mixture of intuitive and analytic thought, a mode of thinking known as quasirationality.