Cognitive Analytic Therapy: time and process

Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) is an increasingly popular brief therapeutic approach for use with a variety of types of clinical problem. This paper outlines the key components of CAT and demonstrates its use by case examples. The history of CAT is traced, particularly the concept of Reciprocal Roles which was developed from Object Relations Theory. It is suggested that CAT has considerable potential as a collaborative, active therapy, with particular application to difficult patients such as those with borderline personality disorder. Some of the differences from other psychodynamic therapies are described, and an assessment of its future role is provided.     

The relationship between sentence meaning and word order: Evidence from structural priming in German

Most theories of human language production assume that generating a sentence involves several stages, including an initial stage where the prelinguistic message is determined and a subsequent stage of grammatical encoding. However, it is contentious whether grammatical encoding involves separate stages of grammatical-function assignment and linearization. To address this question, we examined the mapping between the message level and grammatical encoding in two structural priming experiments in which German speakers choose between three different structures expressing ditransitive events. Although speakers showed a tendency to repeat the order of constituents (noun phrase–prepositional phrase, NP–PP, vs. NP–NP), they were additionally primed to repeat the order of thematic roles when constituent structure was constant (NP_RECIPIENT–NP_THEME vs. NP_THEME–NP_RECIPIENT). Experiment 2 found that the latter effect could not be due to persistence of the order of phrases referring to animate and inanimate entities. These results suggest a direct mapping of thematic roles to word order, consistent with a model in which the message is mapped onto syntactic structure in a single stage.     

Priming word order by thematic roles: No evidence for an additional involvement of phrase structure

Three experiments are reported that studied the priming of word order in German. Experiment 1 demonstrated priming of the order of case-marked verb arguments. However, order of noun phrases and order of thematic roles were confounded. In Experiment 2, we therefore aimed at disentangling the impact of these two possible factors. By using primes that differed from targets in phrase structure but were parallel with regard to the order of thematic roles, we nevertheless found priming demonstrating the critical impact of thematic roles. Experiment 3 replicated the priming effects from Experiments 1 and 2 within participants and revealed no evidence for a modulation of priming by phrase structure. Consequently, our findings suggest that word order priming crucially depends on the structural outline of thematic roles rather than on the linearization of phrases.     

Space positional and motion SRC effects: A comparison with the use of reaction time distribution analysis

The analysis of reaction time (RT) distributions has become a recognized standard in studies on the stimulus response correspondence (SRC) effect as it allows exploring how this effect changes as a function of response speed. In this study, we compared the spatial SRC effect (the classic Simon effect) with the motion SRC effect using RT distribution analysis. Four experiments were conducted, in which we manipulated factors of space position and motion for stimulus and response, in order to obtain a clear distinction between positional SRC and motion SRC. Results showed that these two types of SRC effects differ in their RT distribution functions as the space positional SRC effect showed a decreasing function, while the motion SRC showed an increasing function. This suggests that different types of codes underlie these two SRC effects. Potential mechanisms and processes are discussed.     

样例的子目标编码对新问题解决中原理通达的作用

通过 3个实验 ,分别研究了样例的不同编码对消除由于表面概貌和表面对应变化对原理通达带来的消极影响的作用以及样例学习中原例概化的形成阶段。实验结果表明 :样例解题步骤的子目标编码有助于消除由于表面内容变化对原理通达带来的消极影响 ;子目标学习使学习者在样例学习阶段就形成了关于原理的概化。     

Contextual and Cognitive Determinants of Procedural Justice Perceptions in Promotion Barriers for Women

The relationships between procedural justice in promotion decisions for women and contextual factors deemed as contributing to glass ceilings were examined. The contextual factors examined were a lack of female role models, limited networking opportunities for women, gender segregation, and formal career ladders. It was found that gender schema is a moderator between procedural justice and the perceived number of female role models and between procedural justice and the perception of formal career ladders. Although gender schema was not a moderator in the relationship between procedural justice and gender segregation, nor in the relationship between procedural justice and networking opportunities for women, a significant main effect was found. These results are consistent with the notion that organizational justice perceptions are products of individual cognitive processes, which develop in response to cultural expectations.     

Empowering and legitimizing the fundamental attribution error: Power and legitimization exacerbate the translation of role‐constrained behaviors into ability differences

Our daily interactions are influenced by the social roles we endorse. People however underestimate these role constraints in their everyday explanation relying on individual dispositions to make sense of behaviors. Two studies investigated whether this bias is exacerbated when role structure is legitimated and when power matches the advantages conferred by the social roles of a quiz game. Legitimacy as well as power increased the tendency for both advantaged (questioner) and disadvantaged (answerer) actors (Study 1) as well as naïve observers of the quiz game (Study 2) to attribute to ability the behaviors elicited by social roles. These results extend previous findings. People are more prone to explain constrained behaviors by differences in ability when role structure is legitimated and when power asymmetry matches role structure. Legitimacy and power may then play an important role in the translation of role constraints into inferences about ability.     

Stimulus–response correspondence effect as a function of temporal overlap between relevant and irrelevant information processing

The stimulus–response correspondence (SRC) effect refers to advantages in performance when stimulus and response correspond in dimensions or features, even if the common features are irrelevant to the task. Previous research indicated that the SRC effect depends on the temporal course of stimulus information processing. The current study investigated how the temporal overlap between relevant and irrelevant stimulus processing influences the SRC effect. In this experiment, the irrelevant stimulus (a previously associated tone) preceded the relevant stimulus (a coloured rectangle). The irrelevant and relevant stimuli onset asynchrony was varied to manipulate the temporal overlap between the irrelevant and relevant stimuli processing. Results indicated that the SRC effect size varied as a quadratic function of the temporal overlap between the relevant stimulus and irrelevant stimulus. This finding extends previous experimental observations that the SRC effect size varies in an increasing or decreasing function with reaction time. The current study demonstrated a quadratic function between effect size and the temporal overlap.     

Bullying as a group process: Participant roles and their relations to social status within the group

Bullying was investigated as a group process, a social phenomenon taking place in a school setting among 573 Finnish sixth-grade children (286 girls, 287 boys) aged 12–13 years. Different Participant Roles taken by individual children in the bullying process were examined and related to a) self-estimated behavior in bullying situations, b) social acceptance and social rejection, and c) belongingness to one of the five sociometric status groups (popular, rejected, neglected, controversial, and average). The Participant Roles assigned to the subject were Victim, Bully, Reinforcer of the bully, Assistant of the bully, Defender of the victim, and Outsider. There were significant sex differences in the distribution of Participant Roles. Boys were more frequently in the roles of Bully, Reinforcer and Assistant, while the most frequent roles of the girls were those of Defender and Outsider. The subjects were moderately well aware of their Participant Roles, although they underestimated their participation in active bullying behavior and emphasized that they acted as Defenders and Outsiders. The sociometric status of the children was found to be connected to their Participant Roles. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.