The state,the institution,and the patient: A three-way collison at the crossroads as a hospital fights closure

This paper recounts the story of a National Health Service hospital which was almost closed for financial reasons in 1990. After a political campaign carried out in the full glare of publicity, the Hospital was reprieved. The account is based on the author's conversations with members of staff. The story of the staff, the patients, the Hospital, and the political struggle are woven together by common themes which are highlighted by reference to the Oedipus myth.     

“The Test of a Civilization Is the Way that It Cares for Its Helpless Members”: Violence Against Older Women

Violence against women is a major health risk nationally and internationally. However, despite its impact, violence against older women remains an understudied area. Abuse of older women is frequently unrecognized unless encompassed under “elder abuse.” The purpose of this article is to (1) provide a summary of current research on violence against older women, (2) describe methodological biases in research on violence against older women, (3) discuss methodological biases that have kept the problem of violence against older women hidden from view, and (4) propose new directions for feminist research, advocacy, and therapy.     

Action, verbal response and spatial reasoning

Studies have shown that perception of distance, orientation and size can be dissociated from action tasks. The action system seems to possess more veridical, unbiased information than the perceptual/verbal system. The current study examines the nature of the distinction between action and verbal responses in a spatial reasoning task. Participants imagined themselves facing different orientations and either pointed to where other objects would be, or verbally reported their egocentric directions (e.g., "50 degrees to my left"). When using pointing responses, RT and error increased as a function of the angular disparity between the imagined heading and their actual heading. However, when using verbal responses, performance was not affected by angular disparity, suggesting that participants knew the direction of the targets from the imagined perspective but could not point to them directly. The verbal and action systems have fundamentally different information or processes rather than quantitatively different ones.     

Systematic Changes in Families Following Prevention Trials

A selective prevention design was applied to 238 recently separated families. Of these, 153 mothers randomly assigned to the experimental (E) group participated in 14 group sessions focused on Parent Management Treatment (PMT). Prior analyses showed that, over time, the group of families in the untreated group deteriorated in both parenting practices and in child outcomes. In keeping with the classic prevention pattern, families in the E group showed modest improvements in parenting and in child outcomes. Improvements in parenting were associated with significant reductions in problem behavior. The data showed that those mothers who improved their parenting skills during the first 12 months also showed significant reductions in maternal depression during that same interval. A cross-lagged panel analysis showed that a reduction in maternal depression during the first year of the study was a significant predictor of maintenance or improvements over the next 18 months. The findings are consistent with the concept of the family as a system.     

The efficacy of videotape feedback for enhancing the effects of exposure-based treatment for social anxiety disorder: a controlled investigation

Correcting patients' faulty beliefs concerning social evaluative threats is the hallmark of cognitive-behavioral treatment of social anxiety disorder. The current study examined the efficacy of two videotape feedback procedures as adjuncts to exposure-based treatment. Participants suffering from social phobia (N=77) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (a) credible placebo treatment (PLA); (b) exposure + no feedback (EXP); (c) exposure + videotape feedback of performance (PER); or (d) exposure + videotape feedback of audience responses (AUD). Contrary to prediction, the videotape feedback procedures did not enhance the effects of exposure-based treatment. Clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Preference and resistance to change with constant- and variable-duration terminal links: independence of reinforcement rate and magnitude

Pigeons responded in a three-component multiple concurrent-chains procedure in which the variable-interval reinforcement schedules were the same across components but magnitudes differed across components. The terminal links were arranged either as a variable delay followed by presentation of a reinforcer ("variable duration") or as a fixed period of access to the schedule during which a variable number of reinforcers could be earned ("constant duration"). Relative reinforcement rate was varied parametrically across both types of conditions. After baseline training in each condition, resistance to change of terminal-link responding was assessed by delivering food during the initial links according to a variable-time schedule. Both preference and resistance to change were more sensitive to reinforcement-rate differences in the constant-duration conditions. Sensitivities of preference and resistance to change to relative reinforcement rate did not change depending on relative reinforcement magnitude. Taken together, these results confirm and extend those of prior studies, and suggest that reinforcement rate and magnitude combine additively to determine preference and resistance to change. A single structural relation linking preference and resistance to change describes all the data from this and several related studies.     

Promotion of social change: a conceptual framework

This paper argues for the need to advance promotion efforts and proposes a conceptual framework for promotion of social change. A brief review is presented of traditional frameworks for the prevention of mental and social disorders and the promotion of wellness and social competencies, with attention to the ways in which promotion of social change extends and departs from these frameworks. In a framework for promoting social change, we advocate for promoting dynamic processes within systems, rather than outcomes within individuals. Systems are viewed as flexible and capable of facilitating multiple adaptive pathways for individuals and groups. Promoting social change also involves careful attention to critical analysis, values, language, and contextual processes. Examples are discussed throughout to illustrate how these principles have been used in the past and can be implemented in future efforts to promote social change.     

Gricean Belief Change

One of the standard principles of rationality guiding traditional accounts of belief change is the principle of minimal change: a reasoner's belief corpus should be modified in a minimal fashion when assimilating new information. This rationality principle has stood belief change in good stead. However, it does not deal properly with all belief change scenarios. We introduce a novel account of belief change motivated by one of Grice's maxims of conversational implicature: the reasoner's belief corpus is modified in a minimal fashion to assimilate exactly the new information. In this form of belief change, when the reasoner revises by new information p ∨ q their belief corpus is modified so that p∨q is believed but stronger propositions like p∧q are not, no matter what beliefs are in the reasoner's initial corpus. We term this conservative belief change since the revised belief corpus is a conservative extension of the original belief corpus given the new information.