Therapeutic activities and the assimilation model: A preliminary exploratory study on the Insight stage

The assimilation model describes the process of change assuming that the self is enriched when there is a dialogue between nondominant voices or problematic experiences and the dominant voices. This dialogue is best seen in the Insight stage. The aim of this paper is to study the Insight stage during the assimilation process in relation to the main therapeutic activities performed by the therapist. All the Insights from the assimilation process of a patient, María, were analysed. In assimilation terms, María could be described through the nondominant voices of “dizziness,” “tiredness,” and “inability to cope with daily demands,” and through the dominant voices of “control,” “overcome and solve,” and “why something is happening.” María showed a successful assimilation of her problematic experiences. The therapeutic context was the Linguistic Therapy of Evaluation (LTE), a kind of cognitive therapy based on the theory of General Semantics. María was considered a good outcome case in the LTE sample. Results showed that there were some general therapeutic activities related to these Insights. A high percentage of activities pointed to one of the main issues of LTE: the development of an extensional orientation. At the same time, some of these activities were related to María’s voices. Results are discussed in relation to the relevance of the development of an extensional orientation for the assimilation process; how voices are recognized or challenged in therapy, and to the importance of considering relationship issues during the assimilation process.     

Practice‐based evidence in school‐based counselling

Aims: Counsellors are becoming commonplace within the support structures of secondary schools. To date, research findings from practice‐based outcome studies suggest this is a positive move. There are, however, numerous limitations to this work, and this project aims to develop this existing body of literature. Method: Nine 13–15 year olds attending counselling in six school‐based services participated in the project – one individual withdrew. A standardised self‐report questionnaire (YP‐CORE) was collected at four intervals: (1) the point of referral; (2) the onset of counselling; (3) the completion of counselling; and, (4) a two‐month follow‐up. The change indicated in each of these phases is examined and reported here. Additionally, YP‐CORE was completed during each session. Findings: The YP‐CORE indicates an improvement in the well‐being of this small sample, while waiting for and attending therapy. Further examination of session‐by‐session data also highlights how pre‐ and post‐outcome data should not necessarily be viewed as linear in nature. Discussion: This is a small‐scale investigation and further work is needed in this area. It does, however, raise a number of issues regarding the complexity inherent in conducting outcome research that warrant further investigation.     

宋代学者论“轻重”

和前代相比,宋代学者对《管子》＂轻重＂内容的分析,更为深入细致;对＂轻重＂的总体评价与年代作者的认识,也发生了变化。宋代学者对＂轻重＂近乎一致的否定评价,受到当时理学思想的直接影响;他们对＂轻重＂著作年代与作者的辨伪,与当时的疑古思潮密切相关。     

利他惩罚中的结果评价—— ERP研究

利他惩罚是指个体为惩罚违反社会规范的人, 自愿支付成本。前人研究发现利他惩罚行为激活了背侧纹状体等与奖赏有关的脑区, 因此可以认为利他惩罚的结果是一种相当于金钱奖赏的正性结果, 不惩罚结果则是一种负性结果。本研究利用事件相关电位技术考察了被试在多次信任博弈游戏中观察“利他惩罚结果”和“不惩罚结果”的脑电成分, 结果发现被试产生了明显的反馈相关负波(feedback related negativity, FRN), 且负性程度更大的“不惩罚”结果其FRN波幅大于负性程度更小的“惩罚”结果。因为FRN是对负性反馈结果敏感的一个脑电成分。可见个体并非把利他惩罚结果知觉为一种正性结果, 因此FRN反映了对社会结果的情绪动机意义的评价。     

Possession attachment: Individual differences in the endowment effect

The endowment effect suggests that people become attached to objects that are in their possession, and they demand a higher price to sell an object they own than they would be willing to pay to buy the same object. The results of four experiments support the suggestion that “possession attachment” is related to adult attachment styles in close relationships. Measures of attachment style in close relationships significantly predicted both actual and hypothetical selling prices moderating the endowment effect (Study 1), and significantly correlate with ratings of possession attachment (Study 2). Specifically, attachment anxiety is positively correlated with the selling prices of objects, while attachment avoidance shows no significant relation with object evaluation. The third and fourth experimental studies further demonstrated that attachment anxiety enhances possession evaluation and inhibits trades. The studies used real commodities and real money, and therefore, they have implications for everyday decisions as well as for the development of theories to better understand decisions about trades, negotiations, and choice of goods. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Anticipating explanations in relative clause processing

We show that comprehenders’ expectations about upcoming discourse coherence relations influence the resolution of local structural ambiguity. We employ cases in which two clauses share both a syntactic relationship and a discourse relationship, and hence in which syntactic and discourse processing might be expected to interact. An off-line sentence-completion study and an on-line self-paced reading study examined readers’ expectations for high/low relative-clause attachments following implicit-causality and non-implicit causality verbs (John detests/babysits the children of the musician who…). In the off-line study, the widely reported low-attachment preference for English is observed in the non-implicit causality condition, but this preference gives way to more high attachments in the implicit-causality condition in cases in which (i) the verb’s causally implicated referent occupies the high-attachment position and (ii) the relative clause provides an explanation for the event described by the matrix clause (e.g., …who are arrogant and rude). In the on-line study, a similar preference for high attachment emerges in the implicit-causality context—crucially, before the occurrence of any linguistic evidence that the RC does in fact provide an explanation—whereas the low-attachment preference is consistent elsewhere. These findings constitute the first demonstration that expectations about ensuing discourse coherence relationships can elicit full reversals in syntactic attachment preferences, and that these discourse-level expectations can affect on-line disambiguation as rapidly as lexical and morphosyntactic cues.     

The effect of goal activation on the evaluation of hybrid products1

A hybrid product (i.e. a multifinal means) is connected with goals relevant to the key functionalities best served by the product categories constituting the product. Given that single‐ or multiple‐category inference for a hybrid product can be elicited in individuals, we propose that single‐ (vs. multiple‐) category inference can lead to a relatively higher preference for the hybrid product if only one of the key focal goals that the hybrid product can satisfy is activated. We also explore whether the evaluation of a hybrid product in single‐category inference will reflect valuation and/or devaluation effects if only one of multiple key focal goals attached to the hybrid product is active.     

Overpredicting and Underprofiting in Pricing Decisions

This research examines sellers' price‐setting behavior and discovers a naturally occurring mismatch between sellers and buyers: Sellers who make a price decision often consider alternative prices and engage in the joint evaluation mode, whereas buyers who make a purchase decision see only the finally set price and are in the single evaluation mode. This mismatch in evaluation modes leads sellers to overpredict buyers' price sensitivity and underprice their products. However, these effects apply only to products unfamiliar to buyers and without salient reference prices and can be alleviated if sellers are encouraged to mimic single evaluation when making pricing decisions. These propositions are empirically tested and verified. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Testing an interactionist perspective on the relationship between personality traits and performance under public pressure

Objectives

The interactionist principle of trait activation [Tett & Gutermann (2000). Situation trait relevance, trait expression, and cross-situational consistency: testing a principle of trait activation. Journal of Research in Personality, 34, 397-423.] explains human behavior through the stimulation of traits by trait-relevant situational cues (i.e., situation-trait relevance). In applied (real-world) high-pressure situations, audiences provide the situational demand of public evaluation. Therefore, traits that are related to public evaluation are appraised as situation-relevant. The purpose of the current study was to test if situation-relevant traits (i.e., narcissism, public self-consciousness) predict performance in applied high-pressure situations, while situation-irrelevant traits (i.e., private self-consciousness) do not contribute to the performance explanation.

Design/Method

Experienced handball players (N = 55) completed personality questionnaires and performed a throwing task in low and high-pressure conditions, whereby the high-pressure condition involved 1500-2000 spectators during halftime breaks of professional handball games.

Results

Findings supported the assumptions about situation-trait relevancies and indicated that narcissism and public self-consciousness were relevant to high-pressure performance (i.e., positively associated), whereas private self-consciousness was found to be irrelevant. No predictors were correlated to low-pressure performance.

Conclusions

Results emphasize that trait activation is a promising explanation for the relevance of personality characteristics to performance under pressure. A systematic consideration of situational demands of high-pressure situations will result in adequate appraisals of situation-trait relevance and help predict performance with trait scores.     

质性研究中的资料饱和及其判定

在质性研究中,资料饱和通常被用以评估研究资料的充足性。但在研究实践中,资料饱和却存在概念模糊及操作性问题。作为某项质性研究所抽取的样本量已满足研究需要的标志,按照在研究过程中判定时点的先后顺序,资料饱和可划分为数据饱和、编码或主题饱和、意义饱和及理论饱和4种主要形式。4种形式的资料饱和各有其特定的内涵、评估方式和判定标准。研究认为,达到资料饱和的样本量标准不应统一设定,其检验需嵌入具体的研究过程;资料饱和存在逻辑上的不确定性,适度追加抽样有助于进一步确认;资料饱和作为考察研究质量的一项重要指标,并不适用于所有质性研究。