Cortisol Response Following Exposure Treatment for PTSD in Rape Victims

This study examined changes in salivary cortisol levels pre- to posttreatment in adult female rape victims diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) randomly assigned to be treated with either prolonged exposure therapy or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Salivary cortisol was collected at baseline, Session 3, and Session 9. A significant decrease in salivary cortisol levels was observed in individuals classified as treatment responders in both treatment conditions. Findings suggest that successful exposure-based treatments for PTSD that result in trauma-related and depressive symptom reduction may impact the action of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis as measured by changes in level of salivary cortisol from pre- to posttreatment.     

Methods for Connectedness

SUMMARY

There are prerequisites that must be achieved developmen-tally before individuals are capable of co-creating healthy intimacy in adult relationships. Thus, therapists often have to work to help client systems overcome failures of maturation. In these kinds of therapeutic encounters the therapist acts as a developmental partner. By designing compensatory experiences, the therapist can help partners fill gaps in early development and education that operate to sabotage loving relationships. This paper offers examples of how levels of moral development and social-perspective taking can be utilized within a transpersonal approach to help couples achieve more satisfying intimate connections.     

Inclusion of Disabled Children and School Reform

Summary

Over the past three decades, special and general education have undergone dramatic philosophical and structural changes. The mission of special and general education and the roles and responsibilities of school personnel have become increasingly blurred. The inclusion movement has captivated the interest of scholars, educators, politicians and the public alike. This paper reviews the major historical and current socio-political, legal, and professional forces that have led to the inclusion movement and national educational reform initiatives (e.g., Goals 2000, IASA, IDEA) in America. Psychologists assume significant leadership roles in the refinement and implementation of inclusion models and national reform initiatives. The expertise and contributions of psychologists to this movement are outlined. Critical issues and unanswered questions are presented to stimulate future research and debate.     

The Analytical Theatre: Freud and Ibsen

The author describes how an illusion of timelessness was manifested in the psychoanalytic process with a four and a half year old boy. This illusion turned out to serve as a protection against overwhelming death-anxiety and an intolerable experience of separateness. Development in the direction of a perception of time as linear appeared to be connected to the relinquishment of a two-dimensional, adhesive mode of identification, simultaneously with the development of a conception of three-dimensionality. This change seemed to be brought about by the introjection of the holding and boundary-shaping skin-function of the analyst, which implied the conception of a closed space, a container, and the realization of an essential third instance. The psychoanalytical process made explicit the paramount importance which the symbolic presence of the paternal function in the mother has for her capacity for holding and containment and as the premise for the infant's perception of reality, including the development of the dimensions of time and space.     

Variable coordination of eye and head movements during the early development of attention: A longitudinal study of infants aged 12–36 months

This longitudinal study investigated the effects of attentional development on peripheral stimulus localization by analyzing the eye and head movements of toddlers as they matured from 12 to 36 months. On each trial of an experiment, a central fixation point and a 30° peripheral stimulus were presented, such that in the gap condition the fixation disappeared 300 ms before the peripheral stimulus, whereas in the no-overlap condition it disappeared simultaneously as the peripheral stimulus, and in the overlap condition the fixation remained present when the peripheral target occurred. Results showed that eye and head movement latencies were highly correlated in all conditions and ages. However, at 12 months, head movements were as fast as eye movements, whereas during the subsequent development, eye movements became increasingly faster than head movements. These findings are indicative of a transition between 12 and 36 months due either to a change in attentional control, or to changes in the size of the visual field in which only eye movements occur.     

On the Role of Visual Afferent Information for the Control of Aiming Movements Toward Targets of Different Sizes

The authors investigated (a) whether the specificity of practice hypothesis is mediated by the importance of visual afferent information for the control of manual aiming movements and (b) how movement planning and online correction processes to the movement initial impulse are affected by the withdrawal of visual information in transfer. In acquisition, participants (N = 40) aimed at targets of different sizes in a full-vision or in a target-only condition before being transferred to a target-only condition without knowledge of results. The results supported the hypothesis that learning is specific to the source or sources of afferent information that are more likely to ensure optimal performance. The results also suggested that individuals will not always use visual afferent information more extensively when aiming at a small rather than at a large target. Instead, in a temporally constrained task, the relative efficiency of visually based corrections appears to mediate how exclusively an individual will rely on online visual afferent information for movement control. Finally, the detailed kinematic analysis performed in the present study clearly indicated that online modifications to the movement primary impulse are possible, arguing for a continuous or pseudo-continuous control of relatively slow aiming movements on the basis of visual afferent input.     

Effects of Training on Endurance in Hanging by The Hands

The effect of training on endurance in hanging by the hands from a horizontal bar was examined by timing the duration of such hanging in six male and five female subjects each weekday for 2 weeks. A significant increase in endurance was observed. The results, both subjective and objective, indicated the most important factors in the training to be increased psychological endurance of discomfort and increased muscular strength and efficiency.     

The Effect of Interpolated Motor Activities in Short-Term Motor Memory

This experiment examined the effect of an interpolated motor response on short-term retention of a blind positioning movement. The interpolated response was varied in degree of similarity to the response length (± 25, ± 50, and ± 100 mm.), in number of repetitions (0, 1, or 5), and in temporal position (immediate or delayed), with a retention interval of 25 sec. Absolute error was not affected but a systematic change in response bias due to interpolated motor activity was found. When an interpolated response was longer than the response length, the tendency to undershoot decreased. The defay of the interpolated response was relatively more important than the number of repetitions in producing a positive shift in response bias. These results are interpreted as evidence for a form of interference in short-term motor memory.     

The effects of relational structure on analogical learning

Relational structure is important for various cognitive tasks, such as analogical transfer, but its role in learning of new relational concepts is poorly understood. This article reports two experiments testing people’s ability to learn new relational categories as a function of their relational structure. In Experiment 1, each stimulus consisted of 4 objects varying on 2 dimensions. Each category was defined by two binary relations between pairs of objects. The manner in which the relations were linked (i.e., by operating on shared objects) varied between subjects, producing 3 logically different conditions. In Experiment 2, each stimulus consisted of 4 objects varying on 3 dimensions. Categories were defined by three binary relations, leading to six logically different conditions. Various learning models were compared to the behavioral data, based on the theory of schema refinement. The results highlight several shortcomings of schema refinement as a model of relational learning: (1) it can make unreasonable demands on working memory, (2) it does not allow schemas to grow in complexity, and (3) it incorrectly predicts learning is insensitive to relational structure. We propose schema elaboration as an additional mechanism that provides a more complete account, and we relate this mechanism to previous proposals regarding interactions between analogy and representation construction. The current findings may advance understanding of the cognitive mechanisms involved in learning and representing relational concepts.     

Phase transformation of Cu precipitate in Fe–Cu alloy studied using self-guided molecular dynamics

The self-guided molecular dynamics (SGMD) method, which can enhance the conformational sampling efficiency in MD simulations, was applied in investigating the phase transformation of Cu precipitate in α-iron that took place during thermal aging. It was shown that the SGMD method can accelerate calculating the bcc to 9R structure transformation of a small precipitate (even 4.0 nm in size), enabling the transformation without introducing any excess vacancies. The size dependence of the transformation also agreed with that seen in previous experimental studies.