Effects of Verbal Processing on Psychiatric Patients’ Proactive Coping Skills Using Recreational Music Therapy

Psychiatric patients who are able to cope with life stressors and appropriately use leisure time are less likely to be rehospitalized. The purpose of this study was to examine how verbal processing of recreational music therapy affected psychiatric patients’ knowledge and use of coping and leisure skills. The researchers utilized a quasirandomized controlled design and collected data at pretest, immediately before discharge, and at one month postdischarge. The researchers isolated verbal processing within recreational music therapy sessions to determine if the verbal-processing component affected proactive coping and patients’ use of coping and leisure skills. Using the Proactive Coping Scale, the researchers measured patients’ proactive coping before and after attending recreational music therapy sessions. Results indicated no significant between-group differences in patients’ proactive coping scores. Difficulties conducting research in psychiatric settings, clinical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Deregulated semantic cognition contributes to object‐use deficits in Alzheimer's disease: A comparison with semantic aphasia and semantic dementia

Executive control is impaired from the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and this produces deregulated semantic cognition (Corbett, Jefferies, Burns, & Lambon Ralph, 2012 ; Perry, Watson, & Hodges, 2000 ). While control deficits should affect semantic retrieval across all modalities, previous studies have typically focused on verbal semantic tasks. Even when non‐verbal semantic tasks have been used, these have typically employed simple picture‐matching tasks, which may be influenced by abnormalities in covert naming. Therefore, in the present study, we examined 10 patients with AD on a battery of object‐use tasks, in order to advance our understanding of the origins of non‐verbal semantic deficits in this population. The AD patients’ deficits were contrasted with previously published performance on the same tasks within two additional groups of patients, displaying either semantic degradation (semantic dementia) or deregulation of semantic retrieval (semantic aphasia; Corbett, Jefferies, Ehsan, & Lambon Ralph, 2009 ). While overall accuracy was comparable to the scores in both other groups, the AD patients’ object‐use impairment most closely resembled that observed in SA; they exhibited poorer performance on comprehension tasks that placed strong demands on executive control. A similar pattern was observed in the expressive domain: the AD and SA groups were relatively good at straightforward object use compared to executively demanding, mechanical puzzles. Error types also differed: while all patients omitted essential actions, the SA and AD groups’ demonstrations also featured unrelated intrusions. An association between AD patients’ object use and their scores on standard executive measures suggested that control deficits contributed to their non‐verbal semantic deficits. Moreover, in a task specifically designed to manipulate executive demand, patients with AD (and SA) exhibited difficulty in thinking flexibly about the non‐canonical uses of everyday objects, especially when distracted by semantically related objects. This study provides converging evidence for the notion that a failure of regulatory control contributes to multimodal semantic impairment in AD and uniquely demonstrates this pattern for the highly non‐verbal domain of object use.     

Foetal trauma,body memory and early infant communication: a case illustration

This paper presents the complex case of a male patient who started life as an unwanted pregnancy and adoptee in an era of socio‐cultural shame and blame. When able to contact his birth mother later in life, he experienced a number of confronting synchronicities as well as visions which he felt were related to failed abortion attempts and to other pre‐ and post‐natal events. The case material lends weight not only to Freud's, Ehrenwald's and FitzHerbert's assertions that the earliest form of mother‐infant communications is telepathic in nature but that this mode of communication can be retained if emotional trauma inhibits normal developmental processes. Contemporary neuroscience research is presented supporting the hypothesis that emotional memory can become imbedded in the psyche/soma of the foetus. Such memory traces can later emerge into imagery and/or words if the traumatic impingement has been substantial enough and if other defensive strategies are in place. Clinical implications are then suggested regarding analysts’ attention to the emotional conditions underpinning their patients’ conceptions and foetal development; the connection to projective identification components of the countertransference as being aspects of the earliest telepathic mother/infant communication channel and the need for reductive analyses in analyst training programmes.     

Regressive Imagery in Creative Problem‐Solving: Comparing Verbal Protocols of Expert and Novice Visual Artists and Computer Programmers

We applied computer‐based text analyses of regressive imagery to verbal protocols of individuals engaged in creative problem‐solving in two domains: visual art (23 experts, 23 novices) and computer programming (14 experts, 14 novices). Percentages of words involving primary process and secondary process thought, plus emotion‐related words, were tabulated. Visual art protocols were higher in primary process thought and emotion‐related words; those from programming were higher in secondary process thought. Almost no main effects of expertise or interactions were found. Correlations between the measures (particularly those involving emotion‐related words) also varied as a function of task. This pattern suggests cognitive processes vary considerably across different creative problem‐solving tasks or domains, and that a more domain‐specific approach to creative cognition may be advisable. Further implications for integrating and consolidating some extant lines of creativity research are discussed.     

Client crying in the context of family therapy: an exploratory study

This study explores the crying episodes of twenty‐eight clients treated at a family therapy service in a community centre. The crying episodes were associated with some significant elements: the time of appearance, the content and triggering factor, the interpersonal context of sessions and the emotions clients had for the therapist, as well as the therapy's outcome (end of treatment and the satisfaction of clients). Crying was much more frequent during the first session. It occurred more frequently when there was another family member present. The proportion of clients who cried during the treatment was significantly higher for clients who completed it successfully. Clients who cried perceived the therapist, in all cases, as a kind person who never got annoyed with them. Crying could be considered a type of behaviour that helps the therapist to create a safe context and foster the therapeutic alliance.     

Exploring cooperation and competition in the Centipede game through verbal protocol analysis

The Centipede game is an abstract model of reciprocal relationships in which two individuals alternate in helping each other at relatively small personal cost. Whereas mutual cooperation can benefit both individuals in the long run, a paradoxical but logically compelling backward induction argument suggests that cooperation is irrational. Empirical studies have reported reliable deviations from the non‐cooperative backward induction solution, but their exclusively quantitative methods allow only a limited range of predefined motives to be explored. Our study uses verbal (‘think aloud’) protocols and qualitative data analysis to identify motives for cooperation in the Centipede game. The results provide little evidence for sophisticated backward induction reasoning. Instead, a wide range of motives emerged, their relative saliences varying according to the stage of the game. Activity bias affected decisions mainly at the beginning of the game, whereas cooperative and altruistic social value orientations most frequently accounted for cooperation towards its natural end.     

谁该成为体验型产品网络评论的主角,图片还是文字?

图片、文字是体验型产品网络评论的两种主要形式,但关于两者对消费者影响的研究结论尚存在分歧。本研究基于解释水平理论,通过系列实验揭示了图片、文字评论在不同购买可行性情境下对消费者产品评价的影响,及产品类型(怀旧/非怀旧)的调节作用。结果表明:(1)购买可行性低情境下的消费者受文字评论的影响更大,而购买可行性高情境下的消费者受图片评论的影响更大(实验1a、实验1b和实验2);(2)购买怀旧产品时,购买可行性低情境下的消费者仍受文字评论的影响更大,而购买可行性高情境下的消费者受两类评论的影响无差异;购买非怀旧产品时,购买可行性高情境下的消费者仍受图片评论的影响更大,而购买可行性低情境下的消费者受两类评论的影响无差异(实验3)。本研究表明,当图片、文字评论与购买可行性在解释水平上一致时,影响力最大,且怀旧/非怀旧产品类型会调节这种效应。本研究还讨论了如何在实际中运用此结论。     

An unusual presentation of probable dementia: Rhyming,associations, and verbal disinhibition

We report a case of probable Alzheimer's disease who presented with the unusual feature of disinhibited rhyming. Core language skills were largely intact but generative language was characterized by semantic‐based associations, evident in tangential and associative content, and phonology‐based associations, evident in rhyming, in the context of prominent executive dysfunction. We suggest this pattern is underpinned by a failure to terminate or inhibit verbal associations resulting in a ‘loosening’ of associations at the level of conceptual preparation for spoken language.