The effects of phenothiazine on disordered thought in schizophrenia.

Using a counterbalanced design, 24 male chronic schizophrenics were tested both while receiving phenothiazine therapy and while off drugs. The test used was a conceptual one which permitted measures of 3 kinds of errors, errors resulting from excessively broad interpretation of common concepts, errors resulting from excessively narrow interpretation of common concepts, and random errors which reflect lack of alertness and a drop in intellectual efficiency. Phenothiazine therapy reduced errors of excessive breadth of concepts (p     

Effects of chlorpromazine on primary-process thought manifestations.

Attempted to determine the effect of chlorpromazine on primary-process thinking. 40 institutionalized schizophrenics were randomly assigned to either a drug or a placebo group. Research data were obtained from pre- and postdrug Rorschach protocols, which were scored using Holt's method. The most outstanding finding was the striking improvement in mean defense effectiveness. Drug patients proved to be more capable of handling primary-process elements; the more so, the more they were rated as clinically improved. The insignificant changes in the sum of Level 1 primary process and mean defense demand suggest that the degree of thought pathology itself is not directly affected by drug treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impulsive versus realistic thinking: An examination of the distinction between primary and secondary processes in thought.

The nature of the distinction between primary and secondary processes, as described by Freud, has relevancy for both a cognitive psycholoy and a psychology of motivation. Several issues arising from an examination of the 2 processes are examined. Possible empirical approaches to the basic problems are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The psychological effects of insufficient rewards.

The "absence of reward or the existence of inadequate reward produces certain specific consequences which can account for a variety of phenomena which are difficult to deal with if we use our usual conceptions of the role of reward." The "specific analysis of the psychological effects of insufficient rewards" is discussed in the context of a theory of dissonance and the reduction of dissonance. Several research studies are summarized. "It seems clear that the inclination to engage in behavior after extrinsic rewards are removed is not so much a function of past rewards themselves. Rather, and paradoxically, such persistence in behavior is increased by a history of nonrewards or inadequate rewards." From Psyc Abstracts 36:02:2CJ01F. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood and context-dependence: Positive mood increases and negative mood decreases the effects of context on perception.

Five studies show that mood affects context-dependence, such that negative mood promotes attention to a salient target, whereas positive mood enhances attention to both target and context. Judgments of temperature (Study 1), weight (Study 2), and size (Studies 3 and 4) were more strongly affected by the context in a positive than in a negative mood. Moreover, these effects extend to the social domain: When perceiving a target person's emotions, happy people were more influenced by the context than were sad people (Study 5). Thus, positive mood enhanced, and negative mood reduced, the magnitude of perceptual context effects. The results suggest that this pattern is not easily explained in terms of effort or depth of processing differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological effects on surviving family members of seeing the deceased person after forensic autopsy.

In medicolegal autopsy, it is essential to consider the emotions experienced by relatives of the deceased person. This study examined the psychological effects on surviving family members of seeing the deceased person’s body after forensic autopsy. Participants (n = 359) were surveyed by means of a questionnaire designed to measure posttraumatic symptoms; 62 participants had been involved in traumatic events related to the bereavement (trauma-involved group), and 297 participants had not (no-involvement group). Statistical analyses using structural equation modeling (SEM) showed that the model implying a significant difference between these groups was better fitted, than that implying no difference. The trauma-involved group showed a higher score for posttraumatic symptoms than the no-involvement group (Ms = .32 and .00, respectively). However, there was a negative correlation in the trauma-involved group between seeing the deceased person after forensic autopsy and posttraumatic symptoms (r = ?.43), but there was no correlation (r = ?.01) in the no-involvement group. Furthermore, factor structure for posttraumatic symptoms in bereaved people showed that treatment focused on avoidance behavior would be most effective Japan. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Happiness versus sadness as a determinant of thought confidence in persuasion: A self-validation analysis.

The present research introduces a new mechanism by which emotion can affect evaluation. On the basis of the self-validation hypothesis (R. E. Petty, P. Bri?ol, & Z. L. Tormala, see record 2002-12575-003), the authors predicted and found that emotion can influence evaluative judgments by affecting the confidence people have in their thoughts to a persuasive message. In each study, participants first read a strong or weak persuasive communication. After listing their thoughts about the message, participants were induced to feel happy or sad. Relative to sad participants, those put in a happy state reported more thought confidence. As a consequence, the effect of argument quality on attitudes was greater for happy than for sad participants. These self-validation effects generalized across different emotion inductions, different persuasion topics, and different measures of thought confidence. In one study, happy and sad conditions each differed from a neutral affect control. Most important, these metacognitive effects of emotion only occurred under high elaboration conditions. In contrast, individuals with relatively low motivation to think showed a main effect of emotion on attitudes, regardless of argument quality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Thought confidence as a determinant of persuasion: The self-validation hypothesis.

Previous research in the domain of attitude change has described 2 primary dimensions of thinking that impact persuasion processes and outcomes: the extent (amount) of thinking and the direction (valence) of issue-relevant thought. The authors examined the possibility that another, more meta-cognitive aspect of thinking is also important--the degree of confidence people have in their own thoughts. Four studies test the notion that thought confidence affects the extent of persuasion. When positive thoughts dominate in response to a message, increasing confidence in those thoughts increases persuasion, but when negative thoughts dominate, increasing confidence decreases persuasion. In addition, using self-reported and manipulated thought confidence in separate studies, the authors provide evidence that the magnitude of the attitude-thought relationship depends on the confidence people have in their thoughts. Finally, the authors also show that these self-validation effects are most likely in situations that foster high amounts of information processing activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Roles of Instruments in Psychological Research.

What roles have instruments played in psychology and related disciplines? How have instruments affected the dynamics of psychological research, with what possibilities and limits? What is a psychological instrument? This article provides a conceptual foundation for specific case studies concerning such questions. The discussion begins by challenging widely accepted assumptions about the subject and analyzing the general relations between scientific experimentation and the uses of instruments in psychology. Building on this analysis, a deliberately inclusive definition of what constitutes a psychological instrument is proposed. The discussion then takes up the relation between instrumentation and theories and differentiates in greater detail the roles instruments have had over the course of psychology's history. Finally, the authors offer an approach to evaluating the possibilities and limitations of instruments in psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An experimental approximation of thought reform.

Thought reform processes were simulated in the laboratory with 96 Ss. The Ss were required to evolve an extended series of alternative responses from their own behavior repertoire, in successive approximation to the criterion demanded by the E, which remained unknown to the Ss. This study sought to achieve the abandonment of a basic behavior pattern and the adoption of a new behavior pattern of more than momentary duration. The experimentally induced changes of the Ss, in the direction opposite to their starting positions, persisted over an 8-day follow-up period. Sex and the use of positive or negative signals had no effect on the magnitude of the changes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological Treatments.

Psychology has recently identified itself as a health care profession and codified this change in the bylaws of the American Psychological Association. Although psychologists make a number of contributions to the nation's health-and mental health-the most identifiable activity focuses on treating physical or psychological pathology with psychological interventions. Recently, health care policymakers have established that evidence supporting the efficacy of these interventions is more than sufficient for their inclusion in health care systems around the world. To promote faster and more widespread dissemination of these interventions specifically targeting problems severe enough to be included in health care systems and to solidify the identification of psychology as a health care profession, perhaps it is time for a change in terminology. It is proposed that psychologists label these procedures psychological treatments so as to differentiate them from more generic psychotherapy, which is often used outside of the scope of health care systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in the effects of conscious and unconscious thought in decision making.

The roles of unconscious and conscious thought in decision making were investigated to examine both (a) boundary conditions associated with the efficacy of each type of thought and (b) age differences in intuitive versus deliberative thought. Participants were presented with 2 decision tasks, one requiring active deliberation and the other intuitive processing. Young and older adults then engaged in conscious or unconscious thought processing before making a decision. A manipulation check revealed that young adults were more accurate in their representations of the decision material than older adults, which accounted for much of the age-related variation in performance when the full sample was considered. When only accurate participants were considered, decision making was best when there was congruence between the nature of the information and the thought condition. Thus, unconscious thought was more appropriate when participants relied on intuitive rather than deliberative processing to make their decision, whereas the converse was true with conscious thought. Although older adults displayed somewhat less efficient deliberative processing, their ability to process information at the intuitive level was relatively preserved. Additionally, both young and older adults displayed choice-supportive memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological adjustment among African American breast cancer patients: One-year follow-up results of a randomized psychoeducational group intervention.

The effectiveness of support group interventions for cancer patients has been established among White patients but has been virtually unstudied among minority patients. The current study represents the 1st randomized support group intervention targeted to African American women with breast cancer. Participants (N = 73) with nonmetastatic breast cancer were randomly assigned to an 8-week group intervention or an assessment-only control condition At 12 months, the intervention resulted in improved mood as well as improved general and cancer-specific psychological functioning among women with greater baseline distress or lower income. Subsequent research is needed to address effective methods of enrolling and following women with fewer psychosocial and financial resources, as they were the most likely to benefit from this particular intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

论心理效应对后进生的激励与调控效用

教师在教育教学与管理中,如能运用和发挥心理效应机制,定能帮助学生重拾信心,树立正确的目标,唤起学习的积极性与主动性,激发学生的潜能,培养创新意识,调控自我约束力,增强教育教学与管理的效果,从而培养适应时代发展需要并具有健康品质的优秀人才。     

Regression and disorders of thought.

Utilizing 2 tests (see 35: 5236; 36: 4JQ14C) devised to assess use of various kinds of words, the responses of elementary school children were compared with the responses of a previously obtained sample of schizophrenics. The purpose of the comparison was to test the assumption that schizophrenia involves a regression to a more primitive, infantile stage, and that the thinking of the schizophrenic would resemble that of the child. On some of the tasks, the thinking of the children and the schizophrenic were similar; on others, the children and the organics were similar. The literal use of the term regression re: schizophrenia was rejected. Methodological problems of research in this area are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Counterfactual potency.

Counterfactual thoughts typically take the form of implied or explicit if–then statements. We propose that the multiplicative combination of “if likelihood” (the degree to which the antecedent condition of the counterfactual is perceived to be likely) and “then likelihood” (the perceived conditional likelihood of the outcome of the counterfactual, given the antecedent condition) determine the strength and impact of counterfactuals. This construct, termed counterfactual potency, is a reliable predictor of the degree of influence of counterfactual thinking upon judgments of regret, causation, and responsibility. Through 4 studies, we demonstrate the predictive power of this construct in a variety of contexts and show that it plays a causal role in determining the strength of the effects of counterfactual thought. Implications of counterfactual potency as a central factor of counterfactual influence are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological well-being in retirement: The effects of personal and gendered contextual resources.

Although prior research points to the gendered nature of work and private routines, surprisingly few studies have explored the influence of gender on the sources of psychological well-being in retirement. Drawing on resource theories and theories on the gendered division of labor, this study examines how preretirement resources relate to retirees' psychological well-being by using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. It is hypothesized that possessing key resources prior to retirement as well as losing or gaining resources in the transition to retirement influence retirees' well-being and that these effects are partially conditioned by gender. Results indicate that preretirement physical health, tenacity in goal pursuit, and flexibility in goal adjustment are beneficial for men's and women's well-being alike. By contrast, financial assets and job dissatisfaction are more strongly related to men's psychological well-being in retirement and preretirement social contacts to that of women. Thus, the study underscores the importance of considering gendered resources in retirement research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Back Issues of Psychological Journals.

Each issue of the American Psychologist informs us of the death of one or more of our fellow psychologists. No doubt, many of these subscribed to one or more of the many psychological journals. Upon their death, I am wondering what happens to such journals. I imagine that in many cases they "collect dust" until they are given away to some "rubbish collection." This seems like a waste of good material which is not entirely necessary. The current author would like to see a plan for saving and redistributing these back issues of psychological journals. The author presents his own plan to accomplish this. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychological effect of effort.

The present review explores the psychological effect of effort. While the present problem has received little attention, the studies of effort can be divided into two major areas: (a) Is effort an aversive stimulus, to be avoided in a choice situation and resulting in decrements in response strength? (b) Can effort once expended affect the stimulus-event (reward) associated with that effort? The available literature does not provide any conclusive statements concerning the aversive effect of effort. However, effort does seem to enhance the value of a stimulus associated with the expenditure of effort. (38 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)