An indigenous community mental health service on the Tohono O'odham (Papago) Indian reservation: Seventeen years later

The status of a fully indigenous mental health program serviced and controlled by the Tohono O'odham (Papago) Indian tribe is reviewed from the perspective of its 17-year history. The program functions in large measure in a crisis intervention model, with suicidal or acutely disturbed cases being most frequent. However, a whole range of disorders and ages are seen. Traditional Medicine Men and Women are often used as consultants, as are some professionals. In recent years child sex abuse and abuse of drugs among youth are prominent problems. The program experienced problems of obtaining services off reservations for patients in need, and in establishing credibility of the Indian Mental Health workers with the outside service providers.     

Bias in the use of base rates: Racial prejudice in decision-making

Two studies investigated biases in the use of base rate information when assessing the probability of a witness' accurate identification of a white or West Indian as a burglar. An adapted version of the Kahneman-Tversky cab problem was used, to provide a social decision in which biases could be measured against some normative standard. Ethnicity of youth (white/West Indian) and nature of base rate (incidental/causal) were manipulated in a 2 × 2 between-subjects design. A significant interaction effect revealed that subjects took no account of the base rate for a West Indian subject, but used the base rate only when it was causal and the youth was white. This ‘prejudice effect’ against a West Indian youth and ‘exoneration effect’ for a white youth were replicated in a second study, using a microcomputer and chronometric analyses. Results are discussed in terms of heuristic decision-making, social schemata, and the cognitive versus motivational bases of bias in the use of base rates.     

Insight-oriented group psychotherapy of latency-age children in an acute care setting

Traditional approaches to group therapy with latency-age children have stressed activity and nonverbal therapeutic interventions. These approaches originated in the 1940s with Slavson's activity aroup therapy. A review of the literature of the past 25 years reveals that many clinicians have increasingly employed verbal techniques with latencyage groups. Most such reports describe groups for latency-age out-patients. In this paper, a verbal, interpretive technique for group therapy with latency-age inpatients is described. Clinical vignettes are included to illustrate this technique. Our experience suggests that such a technique can become an integral part of the inpatient treatment program for the latency-age child.     

Verbal conditioning of stimulus significance in the orienting response context

The manipulation of stimulus significance, by instructions from the experimenter, may be taken as an example of verbal conditioning. Consideration of such a mechanism suggested that personality effects previously found in conditioning studies should be apparent in instructional manipulations of significance in a study of the orienting response (OR) to words. Because of recent changes in dimensioning of the personality structure, some of the items originally used to define Eysenck’s extraversion (E) dimension are now used to assess the new dimension of psychoticism (P), suggesting that at least some of the established effects of E upon conditioning may be associated now with P. Hence the P scale was focused on in this study. Words differing on the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential were presented in three blocks, the first under indifferent instructions, the second under instructions to rate the words for their affective impact, and the third under indifferent instructions again. These blocks correspond to baseline, conditioning, and extinction conditions respectively. Electrodermal activity indicated enhanced conditioning, together with greater carry-over effects in the extinction phase, for low-P compared with high-P subjects. The results indicate the importance of personality effects in studies of stimulus significance and illustrate the value of the verbal conditioning mechanism in this area of the OR field. They also suggest the need to re-examine previously obtained E-effects in conditioning studies in light of changing personality tests.     

Stability/Instability of Cognitive Strategies Across Tasks Determine Whether Stress Will Affect Judgmental Processes'

Previous research indicates that individuals employ various cognitive heuristics and decision modes in making decisions and judgmental tasks that do not follow an expected value model. It further indicates that several cognitive faculties are affected by stress. The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to examine whether individual differences exist in the use of cognitive heuristics and risk-assessment decision modes; second, to examine whether stress would affect the use of these cognitive strategies. Three versions of a questionnaire measuring the representativeness and availability heuristics, and risk-seeking and risk-aversion decision modes were administered to three different groups of subjects. Consistent individual differences were only observed in the subscales measuring risk-seeking and risk-aversion modes, but not in the use of the heuristics. In a different group of subjects, exposure to noise and task overload stress increased the use of the representativeness heuristic, but did not alter the use of risk-seeking and risk-aversion decision modes. These results indicate that the existence of individual differences in cognitive strategies may determine, in part, whether stress will modify judgmental processes.     

On the Relation Between Time Perception and the Timing of Motor Action: Evidence for a Temporal Oscillator Controlling the Timing of Movement

Studies of time estimation have provided evidence that human time perception is determined by an internal clock containing a temporal oscillator and have also provided estimates of the frequency of this oscillator (Treisman, Faulkner, Naish, & Brogan, 1992; Treisman & Brogan, 1992). These estimates were based on the observation that when the intervals to be estimated are accompanied by auditory clicks that recur at certain critical rates, perturbations in time estimation occur. To test the hypothesis that the mechanisms that underlie the perception of time and those that control the timing of motor performance are similar, analogous experiments were performed on motor timing, with the object of seeing whether evidence for a clock would be obtained and if so whether its properties resemble those of the time perception clock. The prediction was made that perturbations in motor timing would be seen at the same or similar critical auditory click rates. The experiments examined choice reaction time and typing. The results support the hypothesis that a temporal oscillator paces motor performance and that this oscillator is similar to the oscillator underlying time perception. They also provide an estimate of the characteristic frequency of the oscillator.