Brief group psychotherapy for the spousally bereaved: a controlled study.

A consecutive sample of mid- and late-life bereaved spouses were randomly assigned to treatment and no-treatment groups. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) that brief group psychotherapy during the early stages of loss would facilitate adjustment assessed by measures of mental health, positive psychological states, social role, and mourning; and (2) that positive effects would be maximized for subjects who were more distressed psychologically. Although group participants, compared with untreated controls, did over 1 year show modest improvement on role functioning and positive psychological states, overall the study failed to find substantial support for the two major hypotheses. Both experimental and control groups showed improvement over the year, particularly on measures of mental health and mourning. Differential benefit was not observed for the high-risk group.     

Could an autonomous syntax module have evolved?

Darwinian evolution necessitates a contribution to reproductive fitness. Recent studies of aphasia and Parkinson's disease show that functional syntactic ability involves neural structures that also are involved in speech motor control and nonlinguistic cognition. The evolution or presence of an autonomous syntax module is, therefore, implausible.     

Political families in therapy: The impact of media coverage and therapeutic issues

Many political families are ultra cautious about seeking therapy because of the stigma it carries in the political arena. Various cases on record show where an aspiring political candidate's chances to run for high elected office were destroyed because of publicity over her or his involvement in therapy. Nonetheless, members of families in politics do seek treatment and bring with them their idiosyncratic circumstances. This article attempts to provide an interior view of the politician's family life as seen in the therapist's sanctuary and a consideration of how media coverage may impact politician and family. Clinical data and information from interviews with six acquaintances whose main occupation is politics are presented. It is hoped that the data will enable therapists to understand and treat political families more effectively.Florence Kaslow, PhD, is director of Florida Couples and Family Institute in West Palm Beach. She is a visiting professor of medical psychology in psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, NC, and a visiting professor of psychology at Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL.     

Le role de la convention dans l'espace d'un observateur isolé

Sommaire L'édification spatio-temporelle dont se sert un observateur isolé pour représenter ses résultats de mesures comporte la construction d'un espace physique qui, quoique non catégorique, est applicable sur l'espace euclidien à trois dimensions. Aucun argument ne permet de décider si l'espace est euclidien ou non euclidien. Les expériences permettent seulement à l'observateur d'affirmer que l'espace est pratiquement euclidien en son voisinage.     

Understanding how groups work: a study of homogeneous peer group failures

The study examines thirty-six homogeneous peer support groups that failed to positively benefit most of the participants. Outcomes were assessed pre and one-year post using measures of mental health, marital relationships, and motherhood role indices. Four central group process characteristics previously found to be common in successful peer support groups were used as a framework for developing a series of post hoc hypotheses. The groups were found to be low on cohesiveness defined behaviorally, saliency, cognitive structures for reframing common dilemmas, and limited in the range of therapeutic experiences.     

In Vivo Hippocampal Acetylcholine Release During Exposure to Acute Stress

Hippocampal extracellular acetylcholine (ACh) and choline levels were evaluated using in vivo microdialysis in male Fischer 344 rats before, during, and following an 80-min exposure to two different stress conditions. Measurements were taken in rats restrained and immersed in a water bath containing either 37 degreesC (normothermic-restraint) or 20 degreesC (cold-restraint) water. Results were compared to normothermic-freely-moving rats. Cold-restrained rats displayed decreased ACh levels during cold exposure relative to both normothermic-restrained and normothermic-freely-moving rats. By the end of the cold exposure period and following removal from cold, ACh levels had returned to near-baseline values. Normothermic-restrained rats had levels similar to those of normothermic-freely-moving rats, except for a marked increase in ACh following removal from restraint. Cold-restrained rats displayed a gradual elevation in choline levels during cold stress, followed by a gradual decline after stress termination, whereas both normothermic-restrained and normothermic-freely-moving rats displayed gradual decreases during the microdialysis session. These findings demonstrate that central cholinergic neurotransmission can be altered by the application of, and removal from, acute stressors. In addition, the results suggest a possible relationship between the magnitudes of both the stressor and its cholinergic consequences.     

One-session cognitive treatment of dental phobia: preparing dental phobics for treatment by restructuring negative cognitions

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a single session of cognitive restructuring in a sample of phobic dental patients. Fifty-two patients were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: cognitive restructuring (modification of negative cognitions), provision of information (about oral health and dental treatment), and a waiting list control condition. Both interventions maximally lasted one hour. In comparison with the waiting list control condition and the information intervention condition, the cognitive intervention condition not only showed a large decrease in frequency and believability of negative cognitions, but also exhibited a clear decline in dental trait anxiety. Analysis at a follow-up of one year demonstrated a further, drastic reduction in dental anxiety in both intervention conditions, wherein the difference among these conditions was not maintained. It is concluded that it is possible to obtain substantial reductions of dental trait anxiety through a single session of cognitive restructuring. Nevertheless, repeated exposure to the dental situation seems necessary for a further reduction of anxiety.     

Dissociation of implicit and explicit memory tests: Effect of age and divided attention on category exemplar generation and cued recall

In this article, we report an experiment that provides further evidence concerning the differences between explicit and implicit measures of memory. The effects of age and divided attention on the implicit conceptual test of category exemplar generation (CEG) were compared with their effects on the explicit test of cued recall, where the category names served as cues in both tasks. Four age groups (20–35, 40–55, 60–75, and 76–90) were compared. Half of the subjects were also required to carry out a secondary letter-detection task during the learning phase. Cued recall performance was significantly impaired by increased age and imposition of the secondary task. In contrast, the CEG task was unaffected by these two factors. These results suggest that implicit conceptual tasks and explicit memory tasks are mediated by different processes. This conclusion opposes those of previous studies that showed that experimental manipulations (level of processing, generation, organization) influenced these two kinds of memory tests in a similar way.     

Long term marriages in Sweden: And some comparisons with similar couples in the United States

This international, five-country long term marriages study of couples who have been married, or unmarried and cohabiting, for 20 years or longer is designed to study, among other things, marital satisfaction. This first report of the Swedish part of the study reports on a Swedish version of the self-rating Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) used to investigate self-rated marital satisfaction. The couples describe high marital satisfaction and a high sense of coherence (SOC) compared to other groups. Contrary to other studies, no differences were found between men and women regarding SOC. The differences between them, that describe high relative to low marital satisfaction, pertain to matters of recreation, sex, life philosophy, time spent together, and frequency of quarrels. The men reported greater marital satisfaction than the women.