The goal as process: music and the search for the Self

This paper explores and compares the processes of music and analysis from the author's experience as a musician, piano teacher and analyst. It explains how the use of music improvisation in analysis (with simple percussion instruments) can powerfully enhance the dialogue between the unconscious and conscious psyche, as well as deepen the relationship between analyst and analysand. This is connected theoretically to Jung's active imagination and Winnicott's concept of play within the analytic encounter. Finally, the question is raised whether analytic trainings could do more to expose trainees to the possibility of using music within the analytic encounter. This touches on the more basic and controversial issue (which often separates analytical psychology and psychoanalysis) of whether expressive therapy should be used in analysis at all.     

Might Relationship “Techniques” Extend the Reach, Efficacy, and Efficiency of the Psychotherapies? The Challenge of Treatment-Resistant Outpatients

Study-based clinical observations and two premises are presented as indications for a need to identify therapeutic relationship techniques or the like that can extend the reach and efficiency of the psychotherapies. The premises are: (1) advances in psychotherapy practice and research now highlight one of the field's most longstanding challenges, signified by terms like treatment resistance; and (2) some proportion of outpatients whose problems are resistant to the psychotherapies (and medications) have marked limitations in the capacity to relate positively and productively to others, including therapists. Thus, ironically, they cannot optimally utilize a treatment modality that largely has developed to ameliorate problems relating to others.     

Battered women's coping strategies and psychological distress: differences by immigration status

People are rarely passive, and battered women are no exception. This study investigated the types of coping strategies women of Japanese descent (both Japan-born and U.S.-born) chose and their perceived effectiveness in dealing with their partners' violence. Japan-born respondents were significantly less likely to use active strategies and perceived them to be less effective than did U.S.-born respondents. For the Japan-born, the more effective they perceived active strategies, the higher their psychological distress, whereas the more effective they perceived passive strategies, the lower their psychological distress. In contrast, for the U.S.-born, the higher the perceived effectiveness of active strategies, the lower their psychological distress, and the perceived effectiveness of passive strategies had little effect on their psychological distress. The complex relationship between individuals' country of birth, the choice and perceived effectiveness of coping strategies, and psychological distress calls for increased attention to the role of culture in studies of coping and domestic violence.     

Probing the Time Course of Nonlinear Discriminations during Human Electrodermal Conditioning

Animal-based theories of Pavlovian conditioning propose that patterning discriminations are solved using unique cues or immediate configuring. Recent studies with humans, however, provided evidence that in positive and negative patterning two different rules are utilized. The present experiment was designed to provide further support for this proposal by tracking the time course of the allocation of cognitive resources. One group was trained in a positive patterning schedule (A−, B−, AB+) and a second in a negative patterning schedule (A+, B+, AB−). Electrodermal responses and secondary task probe reaction time were measured. In negative patterning, reaction times were slower during reinforced stimuli than during nonreinforced stimuli at both probe positions while there were no differences in positive patterning. These results support the assumption that negative patterning is solved using a rule that is more complex and requires more resources than does the rule employed to solve positive patterning.     

Timing and Foraging: Gibbon's Scalar Expectancy Theory and Optimal Patch Exploitation

We present a study that links optimal foraging theory (OFT) to behavioral timing. OFT's distinguishing feature is the use of models that compute the most advantageous behavior for a particular foraging problem and compare the optimal solution to empirical data with little reference to psychological processes. The study of behavioral timing, in contrast, emphasizes performance in relation to time, most often without strategic or functional considerations. In three experiments, reinforcer-maximizing behavior and timing performance are identified and related to each other. In all three experiments starlings work in a setting that simulates food patches separated by a flying distance between the two perches. The patches contain a variable and unpredictable number of reinforcers and deplete suddenly without signal. Before depletion, patches deliver food at fixed intervals (FI). Our main dependent variables are the times of occurrence of three behaviors: the “peak” in pecking rate (Peak), the time of the last peck before “giving in” (GIT), and the time for “moving on” to a new patch (MOT). We manipulate travel requirement (Experiment 1), level of deprivation and FI (Experiment 2), and size of reinforcers (Experiment 3). For OFT, Peak should equal the FI in all conditions while GIT and MOT should just exceed it. Behavioral timing and Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET) in particular predict a Peak at around the FI and a longer (unspecified) GIT, and make no prediction for MOT. We found that Peak was close to the FI and GIT was approximately 1.5 times longer, neither being affected by travel, hunger, or reinforcer size manipulations. MOT varied between 1.5 and just over 3 times the FI, was responsive to both travel time and the FI, and did not change when the reinforcer rate was manipulated. These results support the practice of producing models that explicitly separate information available to the subject from strategic use of this information.     

Crossmodal temporal order and processing acuity in developmentally dyslexic young adults

We investigated crossmodal temporal performance in processing rapid sequential nonlinguistic events in developmentally dyslexic young adults (ages 20-36 years) and an age- and IQ-matched control group in audiotactile, visuotactile, and audiovisual combinations. Two methods were used for estimating 84% correct temporal acuity thresholds: temporal order judgment (TOJ) and temporal processing acuity (TPA). TPA requires phase difference detection: the judgment of simultaneity/nonsimultaneity of brief stimuli in two parallel, spatially separate triplets. The dyslexic readers' average temporal performance was somewhat poorer in all six comparisons; in audiovisual comparisons the group differences were not statistically significant, however. A principal component analysis indicated that temporal acuity and phonological awareness are related in dyslexic readers. The impairment of temporal input processing seems to be a general correlative feature of dyslexia in children and adults, but the overlap in performance between dyslexic and normal readers suggests that it is not a sufficient reason for developmental reading difficulties.     

Lateral asymmetry in phonological processing: relating behavioral measures to neuroimaged structures

Recent neuroimaging studies have revealed neuroanatomical centers of activation that appear to be linked specifically to phonological processes. Furthermore, there is evidence that these centers of activation are more likely to be bilaterally represented in women than in men. However, behavioral evidence of such hemispheric asymmetries or of related sex differences is somewhat inconsistent. Two experiments were carried out to determine whether behavioral correlates of the neuroimaging findings could be demonstrated. The first experiment employed a rhyme-matching task used in a recent neuroimaging study, in which two nonsense words were projected successively to the left or right sides of the visual field. The results indicated that the left hemisphere was superior for this task. An analysis of gender effects, however, revealed that the asymmetry was restricted to men. The second experiment employed a lateralized pseudohomophone detection task that was designed to determine whether the results of the first experiment could be confirmed in the context of a phonological task with a simpler structure. This experiment broadly supported the findings of the first experiment. The results support the specialization of the left hemisphere for phonological processing, and the existence of gender differences with respect to these processes.     

Effect of speech task on intelligibility in dysarthria: a case study of Parkinson's disease

This study assessed intelligibility in a dysarthric patient with Parkinson's disease (PD) across five speech production tasks: spontaneous speech, repetition, reading, repeated singing, and spontaneous singing, using the same phrases for all but spontaneous singing. The results show that this speaker was significantly less intelligible when speaking spontaneously than in the other tasks. Acoustic analysis suggested that relative intensity and word duration were not independently linked to intelligibility, but dysfluencies (from perceptual analysis) and articulatory/resonance patterns (from acoustic records) were related to intelligibility in predictable ways. These data indicate that speech production task may be an important variable to consider during the evaluation of dysarthria. As speech production efficiency was found to vary with task in a patient with Parkinson's disease, these results can be related to recent models of basal ganglia function in motor performance.