Perverse Spite: The Possessive Gleam in the Mother's Eye and the Struggle to Own One's Soul: Reply to Stern (2004).

In this response to Jeffrey Stern's (2004) (see record 2004-21113-016) commentary on my article, "Giving the Devil His Due: Spite and the Struggle for Individual Dignity" (P. Shabad, 2000) (see record 2000-00917-004), I suggest that in emphasizing the conscious vindictiveness of explicit spite, Stern minimizes the perverse aspects of "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face" as a means of avenging oneself against powerful others. The underlying impetus of perverse spite is to break free from the prison of subtle developmental contingencies and unconscious seductions surrounding maternal possessiveness. When the child's self-assertive strivings are blocked because of the shame and fear of premature separateness, the inward obsessional churning of resentment becomes a fertile ground for perverse spite. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Filial therapy with Native Americans on the Flathead Reservation": Correction to Glover and Landreth (2000).

Reports an error in "Filial therapy with Native Americans on the Flathead Reservation" by Geri J. Glover and Garry L. Landreth (International Journal of Play Therapy, 2000, Vol 9[2], 57-80). This article was originally published with the wrong first page. Printed issues contain the first page for the preceding article, "Effectiveness of Filial Therapy for Korean Parents," by Mikyung Jang. The online version has been revised to present the correct first page. The URL for the corrected online version is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2001-00558-004.) Examined the effectiveness of the 10-wk filial therapy model as an intervention for 25 Native American parents (aged 23–46 yrs) and their 21 children (aged 3–10 yrs) residing on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. Results show that Native American parents significantly increased their level of empathy in their interactions with their children. Children significantly increased their level of desirable play behaviors with their parents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The I of the Storm-Relations Between Self and Conscious Emotion Experience: Comment on Lambie and Marcel (2002).

J. A. Lambie and A. J. Marcel (2002) outlined a framework for understanding varieties of conscious emotion experience. In their analysis, the self plays an important role in conscious emotion experience. In this critique, however, the authors propose that Lambie and Marcel's presentation of the self needs further specification if it is to account for varieties of conflicted emotional experience, particularly those characteristic of dissociative states. The authors propose that a more elaborated self-construct is necessary to account for these phenomena involving either the "splitting off of significant self-related concerns or the existence of multiple self-constructs. These arguments are illustrated by clinical and subclinical case examples. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discussion of "The Challenge of the Strong Adaptive Approach": Comment on Langs (2005).

According to the strong adaptive hypotheses of R. Langs (see record 2005-01622-004), unconscious processes within a patient pick up the precise interactional significance or core emotional impact of each act by the therapist, of which neither the therapist nor the patient is consciously aware. This initiates a search among millions of affect-image units within the mind of the patient until it finds and selects those that assemble around this core emotion to become a narrative that is analogous to the therapist's act. This matching narrative enters the patient's free associations. However, it is now a story about some other persons or interactional events in some other place, while at the same time it is about the meaning and implications of the specific action by the therapist that set this process in motion, of which the therapist and the patient were not consciously aware. An illustrative clinical example is presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety, Consciousness, and Self-Acceptance: Placing the Idea of Making the Unconscious Conscious in an Integrative Framework.

This article examines critically the role of insight and of making the unconscious conscious in the light of contemporary understandings in psychoanalysis, in the broader discipline of psychotherapy, and in research on cognition and consciousness. Developments that led to reconceptualizations based on appreciation of the crucial role of anxiety and defenses are reviewed. Consciousness is seen to be better viewed as a matter of degree of accessibility and articulation than as a sharp division between conscious and unconscious. The implications of these considerations for a broader, more comprehensive, and more integrative therapeutic approach are examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Comment on 'Articulation of values'": Response to Cochran (1988).

We respond to Cochran's critique of our 1986 study, which was in part a replication of Cochran's original grid methodology for the study of career values. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Competing for a Desired Reward in the Stroop Task: When Attentional Control is Unconscious but Effective Versus Conscious but Ineffective.

Recent studies using Stroop's paradigm have shown that word recognition processes can be controlled when the local context of the task is manipulated. In the present study, factors related to the participants' broader context (i.e., presence vs. absence of a competitor and of a desired reward) were manipulated. The results (1) support the conclusion that control of semantic-level activation can be unconscious but effective versus conscious but ineffective, (2) suggest that unconscious control alone operates on line (i.e., when the participant is responding), and (3)clarify the impact of socio-contextual factors that have been confounded in past research. Taken together, these findings strengthen the view that word recognition processes are controllable and offer new reasons to pay constant attention to the social environment of cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Attribution and expressed emotion in the relatives of patients with schizophrenia": Correction to Brewin, MacCarthy, Duda, and Vaughn (1991).

Reports an error in "Attribution and expressed emotion in the relatives of patients with schizophrenia" by Chris R. Brewin, Brigid MacCarthy, Karin Duda and Christine E. Vaughn (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1991[Nov], Vol 100[4], 546-554). An incorrect sentence was published. The sentence that ends the fourth paragraph on p. 547 ought to read: A more recent onset of illness would be expected to produce more unstable attributions, and more disturbed behavior (particularly involving violence toward the relative) would be expected to produce attributions that were more internal and personal to the patient but more external and uncontrollable as regards the relative. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1992-12907-001.) Indexes of expressed emotion (EE) in 58 relatives of patients with schizophrenia were related to those relatives' spontaneously expressed causal beliefs about the illness and about related symptoms and behaviors. Relatives made attributions predominantly to factors external, universal, and uncontrollable from their own perspective, and to factors internal, universal, and uncontrollable from the patient's perspective. Low-EE relatives were similar in their attributions to emotionally overinvolved relatives. Compared with these 2 groups, critical and/or hostile relatives made more attributions to factors personal to and controllable by the patient. Subsequent analyses suggested that hostile relatives were further characterized by making more attributions to factors internal to the patient and by making attributions with fewer causal elements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unawareness is more than a chance event: Comment on Lovibond and Shanks (2002).

P. F. Lovibond and D. R. Shanks (see record 2002-00340-001) suggested that expectancy of the unconditional stimulus and emotional ratings are valid indexes of awareness in Pavlovian conditioning and that participants are aware if they can discriminate the conditional stimuli. However, research suggests that processes that are irrelevant to awareness affect these measures. Further, as awareness refers to conscious experience, a valid measure needs to index subjective state rather than discrimination ability. In support research using subjective measures has demonstrated qualitatively different effects depending on whether participants reported being aware or unaware of the stimuli. In this research, participants reported being unaware of the stimuli even though they were clearly able to discriminate the stimuli. These findings question the validity of Lovibond and Shanks' concept of awareness and their suggestion of a close association between conditioning and awareness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"The practice of forensic psychology: A look toward the future in light of the past": Comment on Otto and Heilbrun (2002).

Comments on the article by R. K. Otto and K. Heilbrun (see record 2002-10575-001) discussing the state of the field of forensic psychology. The current author objects to what he perceives as Otto and Heilbrun's attempt to discredit all but closely protected American Psychological Association (APA) affiliated organizations, and their subsequent biased comments based on poor research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"An examination of the relations among career subscales": Correction to Fuqua and Newman (1989).

Reports an error in "An examination of the relations among career subscales" by Dale R. Fuqua and Jody L. Newman (Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1989[Oct], Vol 36[4], 487-491). It was incorrectly reported that a principal-components analysis with varimax rotation was performed. In fact, principal-axis factoring with varimax rotation was performed, and it is the results of this analysis that are reported in Table 2 of the article. In principal-axis factoring communalities are used on the main diagonal of the correlation matrix. Initially, these communalities are equal to the squared multiple correlation of the variable with the other variables in the set. An iteration procedure is used to improve these initial estimates of communalities. Another point of clarification is that in the principal-axis factoring reported in Table 2, we used listwise deletion of missing data, whereas we calculated the correlations reported in Table 1 by using pairwise deletion of missing data. The effect of these different procedures is that the factor analysis (N = 98) was based on a slightly different correlation matrix that the one reported in Table 1, and consequently, Table 2 cannot be exactly reproduced by factoring the correlations reported in Table 1. Also, the sign of the correlation of the Career Decision Profile Choice-Work Importance (row 13) and Decidedness (column 7) subscales (.37) is given as positive in Table 1, whereas it was in fact negative. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1990-03287-001.) We examined 13 career subscales contained in 4 measures of career indecision to determine how different measures relate to one another and how many dimensions may exist across these different instruments. Ss completed career instruments and measures of state and trait anxiety, which were included to aid in the interpretation of factors. Correlations provide some evidence of the convergent validity of the subscales. A factor analysis yielded a three-factor solution accounting for 55.9% of the variance. The first and most general factor was interpreted as a component that represented information about occupations and self. The second factor was interpreted as a more indecisive component and was positively correlated with anxiety. The third factor seemed to be an affective comfort component but failed to relate to anxiety as was expected. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Return of the ego--Self-referent information as a filter for social prediction: Comment on Karniol (2003).

The protocentrism paradigm of social prediction (R. Karniol, 2003) challenges the egocentrism paradigm tacitly accepted by many researchers. The author reviews the 2 paradigms comparatively by focusing on 3 conceptual and 3 empirical issues. On conceptual grounds, the author suggests that the egocentrism paradigm has been proven useful because of (a) its greater breadth and parsimony, (b) the difficulties in documenting the origin of protocenters, and (c) the indeterminate nature of self-as-distinct tags (which are crucial to protocentrism). On empirical grounds, the author argues that in research on perceptions of self-other similarities, the egocentric process of social projection is well-established. Self-referent knowledge (a) is most readily accessible, (b) receives greater weight in prediction tasks than does other-referent knowledge, and (c) tends to be suppressed only temporarily, with effort, and incompletely. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Common factors in the identification of an assortment of brief everyday sounds": Correction to Ballas (1993).

Reports an error in "Common factors in the identification of an assortment of brief everyday sounds" by James A. Ballas (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1993[Apr], Vol 19[2], 250-267). A previous notice regarding this article incorrectly identified the volume number and date of publication of the journal in which this article appeared. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1993-28211-001.) Acoustic, ecological, perceptual and cognitive factors that are common in the identification of 41 brief, varied sounds were evaluated. In Exp 1, identification time and accuracy, causal uncertainty values, and spectral and temporal properties of the sounds were obtained. Exp 2 was a survey to obtain ecological frequency counts. Exp 3 solicited perceptual–cognitive ratings. Factor analyses of spectral parameters and perceptual–cognitive ratings were performed. Identification time and causal uncertainty are highly interrelated, and both are related to ecological frequency and the presence of harmonics and similar spectral bursts. Exps 4 and 5 used a priming paradigm to verify correlational relationships between identification time and causal uncertainty and to assess the effect of sound typicality. Results support a hybrid approach for theories of everyday sound identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditioning, Expectancy, and the Placebo Effect: Comment on Stewart-Williams and Podd (2004).

Comments on article by Stewardt-Williams and Podd (2004; see record 2004-11156-007). Classical conditioning is included as a component in the response expectancy model of placebo responding. Though introspectable when attention is drawn to them, expectancies need not be in awareness while guiding behavior. Most placebo effects are linked to expectancies, and classical conditioning is one factor (but not the only factor) by which these expectancies can be produced and altered. Conditioned placebo effects without expectancies exist but are relatively rare in humans. The adaptive advantage of cognition is increased response flexibility. For it to convey that benefit, however, it must be capable of overriding the influence of simpler automatic processes. Thus, the higher up the phylogenetic scale, the smaller the role of nonconscious conditioning processes and the larger the role of cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Effect of defining features on inhibition in a spatial localization task": Correction to Simone et al (1998).

Reports an error in "Effect of defining features on inhibition in a spatial localization task" by Patricia M. Simone, Elizabeth A. Carlisle and Eileen B. McCormick (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1998[Jun], Vol 24[3], 993-1005). Analysis of variance (ANOVA) main effects and interactions reported in the article were incorrect owing to an error in programming. Electronic mail requests for a table of corrected ANOVAs may be sent to psimone@scu.edu. Planned comparisons altered by the corrected analyses occur in the results of Experiments 2 and 4. The corrected results are presented in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1998-02354-022.) In selective attention tasks, inhibition appears to be limited to the reported feature of a stimulus, suggesting that reported features determine inhibition (S. P. Tipper, B. Weaver, & G. Houghton, see record 1995-20194-001). This article examines whether defining features can also determine inhibition when participants are required to make a cognitive search on the basis of a target feature (color or shape). In 2 spatial localization experiments in which a touch-sensitive monitor was used, results indicated that distractor inhibition depended on both defining and reported stimulus features. Two additional experiments examined the locus of discrepancy between these results and other findings (e.g., B. Milliken, S. R Tipper, & B. Weaver, see record 1994-35938-001). The researchers concluded that defining features can determine inhibition in a selective attention task involving spatial localization. However, defining-feature inhibition may depend on level of analysis of the stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of child sexual abuse: Comment on Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998).

Comments on the article by B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman (see record 1998-04232-002) which examined the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) by meta-analyzing studies of college students. The authors reported that effects "were neither pervasive nor typically intense" and that "men reacted much less negatively than women" (p. 22) and recommended value-neutral reconceptualization of the CSA construct. The current analysis revealed numerous problems in that study that minimized CSA-adjustment relations, included use of a healthy sample, an inclusive definition of CSA, failure to correct for statistical attenuation, and misreporting of original data. Rind et al.'s study's main conclusions were not supported by the original data. As such, attempts to use their study to argue that an individual has not been harmed by sexual abuse constitute a serious misapplication of its findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Narratives and Culture: "Thickening" the Self for Cultural Psychotherapy.

The dominant framework for understanding selfhood in contemporary psychology has been one that privileges a highly individualistic conception of self. This is reflected in both the language and approaches of psychotherapy where the influence of contextual factors (factors outside of the individual) are given marginal consideration in order to maintain some type of 'objectivity' or 'neutrality' in counseling. We argue that an understanding of selfhood which does not take into account the 'relational' nature of selfhood as well as the cultural or historical context of the client, will likely alienate clients who do not view their self through the individualized lenses of (North American) psychology. In order to deal with this problem, we adopt an approach to cultural (and cross-cultural) psychology that views the self as a relational narrative. Such a narrative does not imply an unrestricted freedom to construct our self, but understands the limits to selfhood implied in the web of meanings constitutive of our culture and the web of relations from which our self emerges. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Perceptual and memorial constructs in children's judgments of quantity: A law of across-representation invariance": Correction to Wolf and Algom (1987).

Reports an error in "Perceptual and memorial constructs in children's judgments of quantity: A law of across-representation invariance" by Yuval Wolf and Daniel Algom (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1987[Dec], Vol 116[4], 381-397). The sentence found on p. 381, right-hand column, line 15, was printed incorrectly. The corrected statement is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1988-07144-001.) Children at three different ages made judgments of physically presented (perceptual estimation) or symbolically represented (memorial estimation) rectangles. Height and width were integrated according to different, age-dependent algebraic rules. Memorial data obeyed the same integration rules that operated in the original perceptual judgments even when younger children and older children used completely different combination models. Valuation operations were the same in perception and memory for the youngest group (6-year-olds) but became discriminably different at older ages (for the 8- and 10-year-olds). Three additional experiments on judgments of volume, liquid quantity, and visual length yielded strong cross-validation support for the general invariance claim (with respect to integration rule theory) but less strong support for the specific invariance claim (with respect to valuation function for the 6-year-old subjects). Results are interpreted as demonstrating lawful and long-enduring ecological constraints on internal representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Five methods for computing significant individual client change and improvement rates: Support for and individual growth curve approach." Correction to Speer and Greenbaum (1995).

Reports an error in "Five methods for computing significant individual client change and improvement rates: Support for an individual growth curve approach" by David C. Speer and Paul E. Greenbaum (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1995[Dec], Vol 63[6], 1044-1048). In this article, the values reported for hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) in Table 2 (p. 1046) were incorrect. This erratum provides the correct values and further information on the conclusion of the study. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1996-00402-019.) Interest has been renewed in methods for determining individual client change. Currently, there are at least 4 pretreatment–posttreatment (pre-post) difference score methods. A 5th method, based on a random effects model and multiwave data, represents a growth curve approach and was hypothesized to be more sensitive to detecting significant (p?p?