Religion and health.

Comments on the article by M. E. McCullough, et al. (see record 2000-03769-001) which concluded that religious involvement was significantly associated with lower mortality, indicating that people high in religious involvement were more likely to be alive at follow-up than people lower in religious involvement. The authors argue that the relationship between religious involvement and mortality is weak or nonexistent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward relationship-centered supervision: Reply to Veach (2001) and Ellis (2001).

The authors respond to comments made by P. A Veach (2001) and A Ellis (2001) regarding their research articles on supervision conflict and counterproductivity. Their findings are unique in that they provide qualitative perspectives on trainee experiences of negativity in supervision. Some of the criticism directed toward their study seemed grounded in positivistic epistemology, and they address the differences between that perspective and a more meaning-making approach to data analysis. The authors' studies point out that the supervision relationship has the potential to harm trainees. Counseling psychology and related fields need to define skill-based competencies in supervision that can be observed and measured, including relationship-management competencies. Training of supervisors should emphasize the development of clinical skills that permit them to build strong supervisory alliances and manage conflicts in supervision. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the necessity of alignment: Reply to Costello and Keane (2001).

In their article, "Testing two theories of conceptual combination: Alignment versus diagnosticity in the comprehension and production of combined concepts," F. J. Costello and M. T. Keane (see record 2000-14052-015) evaluate the role of alignment in the interpretation of noun–noun combinations. They found that participants were not strongly biased to prefer and produce interpretations with alignable differences. Instead, participants sometimes preferred and produced interpretations with nonalignable differences. These results are surprising given that most research has found advantages of alignable differences over nonalignable differences. Costello and Keane also found that feature diagnosticity better predicted their results, and they concluded that alignment does not play an important role in conceptual combination. However, drawing on recent work, the author of the present article gives an alternative interpretation of Costello and Keane's results, showing that alignment is crucial in conceptual combinations. The author also shows that the dual-process model accounts for their results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does psi exist? Reply to Storm and Ertel (2001).

The authors recently published a nonsignificant meta-analysis of 30 extrasensory perception ganzfeld studies, all conducted after the 1986 publication of important methodological guidelines aimed at reducing sources of artifact noted in earlier studies. In response, L. Storm and S. Ertel (2001) presented a meta-analysis of 79 studies published between 1974 and 1996. They argued that the positive and highly statistically significant overall outcome indicates a replicable paranormal effect. In doing so, they ignored the well-documented and widely recognized methodological problems in the early studies, which make it impossible to interpret the results as evidence of extrasensory perception. In addition, Storm and Ertel's meta-analysis is not an accurate quantitative summary of ganzfeld research because of methodological problems such as their use of an inconsistent method for calculating study outcomes and inconsistent inclusion criteria. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward application of the Therapeutic Workplace: Reply to Higgins (2001), Marlatt (2001), McLellan (2001), and Petry (2001).

Responds to comments by N. M. Petry, S. T. Higgins, A. T. McLellan, and G. A. Marlatt (see records 2001-14365-003, 2001-14365-004, 2001-14365-005, 2001-14365-006 respectively) on the article by K. Silverman et al. (see record 2001-14365-002). The Therapeutic Workplace appears effective at initiating abstinence from heroin and cocaine in pregnant and postpartum women. However, the cost and complexity of the intervention must be reduced before it is ready for widespread application. This treatment is designed to train and employ drug abuse patients, and to use the salary that they earn for working to reinforce abstinence. Limiting teaching to only critical skills can reduce the costs of training. Computerizing the intervention also can reduce its cost and complexity. Major cost efficiencies should be realized when participants become employed in Therapeutic Workplace businesses; these businesses could provide a self-sustaining means of arranging long-term employment and salary-based abstinence reinforcement. Studies are required that simultaneously demonstrate the effectiveness and cost efficiencies of using salary for real work to reinforce drug abstinence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Confirming the X-linked handedness gene as recessive, not additive: Reply to Corballis (2001).

M. C. Corballis (see record 2001-18918-006) has proposed a model for handedness that follows the unified distributional model of G. V. Jones and M. Martin (see record 1999-15930-008) in its assumption that genetic variation relating to handedness is located only on the X chromosome but differs from the unified distributional model in its assumption that the relation between genotype and phenotype is of an additive rather than a recessive type. The accounts provided by the two models are compared for four major sets of findings. It is concluded that the empirical evidence favors the X linked recessive model proposed by G. V. Jones and M. Martin (see record 1999-15930-008). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Process, not representation: Reply to Radavansky (1999).

The size of fan effects is determined by processes at retrieval, not by whether or not information is represented as situations. Evidence contradicts G. A. Radvansky's (see record 1999-05245-005) claim that time to retrieve information from a situation does not depend on the number of elements in the situation. Moreover, Radvansky's principles for ascribing situational models to experiments appear to be post hoc ways of redescribing the data. On the other hand, the evidence does support the Adaptive Control of Thought—Rational (ACT-R) assumption that participants can adjust their attentional weightings and so produce differential fan effects. Moreover, the ACT-R theory of the fan effect is consistent with many other findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reply to Strain, Patterson, and Seidenberg (2002).

E. Strain, K. E. Patterson, and M. S. Seidenberg (2002) reported an effect of imageability and a Regularity X Imageability interaction in a regression analysis of naming latencies to 120 words. One of their items (couth) was named correctly by just 5 of their 24 participants, and its reaction time was an outlier on their distribution. When that single item is removed, the significant predictors are age of acquisition (AoA), word frequency, regularity, and length. Analyses of the combined data from J. Monaghan and A. W. Ellis's (2002) Experiments 1-3 indicate that AoA predicts naming latencies for exception words but not consistent words. E. Strain et al.'s other points are considered in the light of these observations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Childhood gender noncomformity remains a robust and neutral correlate of sexual orientation: Reply to Hegarty (2009).

In this issue, P. Hegarty (see record 2009-09998-015) comments on an article by G. Rieger, J. A. W. Linsenmeier, L. Gygax, and J. M. Bailey (see record 2007-19851-006) that compared videos of homosexual and heterosexual people from childhood and adulthood. The current authors claim it is reasonable to treat masculinity–femininity as a bipolar scale and present justification for the approach used in the earlier study. Measures used by Rieger et al. (2008) yielded large differences between homosexual and heterosexual participants, and these differences are likely to be more meaningful than the low and nonsignificant within-group correlations on which Hegarty chose to focus. The authors address his suggestion that they are working within a paradigm detrimental to the well-being of homosexual and gender-nonconforming individuals and suggest that greater openness to research such as theirs could have beneficial consequences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What can be learned from clinical trials? Reply to Devilly and Foa (2001).

G. Devilly and E. B. Foa (see record 2001-14541-013) claimed that the results of the Manchester posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) trial (Tarrier, Pilgrim, et al., see record 1999-00242-002) "significantly differ" from the results of other groups. This claim does not survive scrutiny. G. Devilly and E. B. Foa are unhappy with our report of treatment failures being overrepresented by patients receiving exposure. However, the failure of some patients to respond to exposure is in agreement with the literature, including E. B. Foa's own writing (A. Ehlers et al., 1998). Possible reasons the magnitude of change may differ from other studies are discussed, including differences in sample populations, methods of recruitment, and participant attrition. Attention is drawn to unique characteristics of the Manchester PTSD study, including the use of a baseline symptom-monitoring phase to exclude patients who would respond to minimal intervention and measurement of the psychosocial environment (expressed emotion). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Issues in defining and assessing features of attachment figures: Reply to Kobak (2009).

This reply to Kobak’s (see record 2009-12106-002) comments on my article (see record 2009-12106-001) on dogs as attachment figures addresses three issues in defining and assessing features of attachment figures. These include whether some features are more critical than other features, different ways of assessing safe haven as a critical feature of an attachment figure, and whether attachment hierarchies are necessary to identify figures who fulfill the feature of safe haven. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reply to Pariser (2005).

The author responds to Michael Pariser's critique (see record 2005-01622-013) of her original article (see record 2003-99989-005) by distinguishing between reduction and reductionism, by refusing to see philosophy and neuroscience as competitors, by rejecting the call to adapt psychoanalysis to the demands of managed care, and by using the ideas of Wittgenstein to point out the problems of too-facile translation between the languages of neuroscience and of emotional-relational experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reply to Shill (2004).

Shill's (see record 2004-11107-008) claim that the intersubjective perspective does not address conflict and defense is glaringly mistaken. In his article on signal anxiety, Shill (2004) declared that "the intersubjectivist approach does not address issues of conflict and defense at all" (p. 119). Astoundingly, he seems to have made this absurd pronouncement without being aware of any of the numerous articles and chapters my collaborators and I have written on the subject of psychological conflict and defense over the past three decades, one of which was published in this very journal (Stolorow & Brandchaft, 1987). Our aim has never been to defocus emotional conflict but rather to contextualize it-that is, to locate it within constitutive intersubjective systems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Occlusion, symmetry, and object-based attention: Reply to Saiki (2000).

J. Saiki (see record 2000-13210-027) argued that, because the stimuli used by M. Behrmann, R. S. Zemel, and M. C. Mozer (see record 1998-04674-001) were confounded by symmetry, conclusions about whether amodally completed objects can benefit from object-based attention are unwarranted. Here, the authors, examine J. Saiki's claim further and expand on their view of the mechanisms underlying object-based attention, suggesting that perceptual organization is the process whereby features from a single object are selectively attended. In light of this, they claim that heuristics such as symmetry and collinearity play an important role in the facilitation of features from a single object. In support of this claim, they present data from a further experiment using displays that exploit common fate, another grouping heuristic, and show that, under these conditions, the hallmark of object-based attention, a single-object advantage, is obtained for the occluded (amodally completed) shapes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mentalism, mechanisms, and medical analogues: Reply to Wakefield (1998).

J. C. Wakefield's (1998) critique of W. C. Follette and A. C. Houts's (1996) article is addressed by raising questions about (a) mentalism as a framework for studying psychopathology, (b) the nature of inferred mechanisms and the process of making such inferences, and (c) the accuracy of claiming that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; American Psychiatric Association) expansion is analogous to the success of physical medicine. The authors argue that Wakefield's analysis of mental disorders leads to the conclusion that the modern DSMs are not reflective of the progress of physical medicine. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress and specificity: Reply to Miller (2009).

T. F. Denson, M. Spanovic, and N. Miller (see record 2009-19763-001) meta-analytically tested the hypotheses that specific appraisals and emotions would predict cortisol and immune responses to laboratory stressors and emotion inductions. Although the cortisol data supported the integrated specificity hypothesis, G. E. Miller (see record 2009-19763-002) raised questions concerning the extent to which the immunity data supported specificity. The authors respond to these concerns. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time to let go of the illusion that psychotherapy extends the survival of cancer patients: Reply to Kraemer, Kuchler, and Spiegel (2009).

Replies to comments from Kraemer, Kuchler, and Spiegel (see record 2009-02580-001) on the authors original article Psychotherapy and survival in cancer: The conflict between hope and evidence (see record 2007-06095-001). The authors recently reviewed evidence related to the notion that psychotherapy extends survival in cancer patients (J. C. Coyne, M. Stefanek, & S. C. Palmer, 2007). The authors found that no study to date, including several designed and powered to test this hypothesis, can be reasonably interpreted as evidence that cancer patients live longer as a result of receiving psychotherapy. The authors concluded that the evidence against psychotherapy as a life-prolonging intervention in cancer is sufficiently robust to discontinue funding studies in this area. H. C. Kraemer, T. Kuchler, and D. Spiegel (2009) critiqued the authors' review. The authors respond directly to numerous misrepresentations made by Kraemer et al. More importantly, the authors provide readers with an accurate overview of the main issues being debated and the reasons for their conclusions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Laboratory research, treatment innovation, and practice guidelines: A reply to Enns (2001) and Courtois (2001).

In response to "Guided Imagery and Memory" by K. D. Arbuthnott, D. W. Arbuthnott, & L. Rossiter (2001), C. Z. Enns (2001) and C. A. Courtois (2001) elaborated on implications for the use of guided imagery techniques in psychotherapy, particularly for the treatment of trauma (see records 2001-00732-001 -002 and -003 respectively). In general, the authors endorse these elaborations and the practice guidelines recommended by the American Psychological Association task force for working with clients who may have experienced delayed memories for child abuse. However, they disagree with statements about the limited utility of laboratory research to inform clinical practice and discuss what they consider to be a more productive rapprochement between laboratory and clinical research. As an example of how practice guidelines can evolve with developing knowledge from laboratory studies, the authors discuss emerging evidence that is relevant to the mechanisms underlying guided imagery misattributions, which may significantly influence the caution necessary when using realistic imagery in psychotherapeutic treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson (2001).

Reports an error in "Executive coaching: A comprehensive review of the literature" by Sheila Kampa-Kokesch and Mary Z. Anderson (Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 2001[Fal], Vol 53[4], 205-228). The author would like to indicate that unfortunately, Peterson’s (1993) dissertation on executive coaching outcomes was excluded from the original literature review conducted by Kampa-Kokesch and Anderson (2001). Later, Kampa and White (2002) stated that Peterson’s (1993) dissertation was excluded due to the programmatic nature of the coaching conducted in the study. Specifically, it was written, “this research did not investigate executive coaching as practiced by consultants in the field,” (p. 145). However, all of the coaches in Peterson’s study were field-based PDI consultants and the individuals being coached did receive individual coaching from those consultants. In the future, Peterson’s research, which was a well-designed long-term outcome study of 370 coaching participants, should be reviewed when considering executive coaching outcomes. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2002-00097-001.) Executive coaching as a consultation intervention has received increased attention in the literature within the past decade. Executive coaching has been proposed as an intervention aimed toward helping executives improve their performance and consequently the performance of the overall organization (R. R. Kilburg, 1996c). Whether or not it does what it proposes, however, remains largely unknown because of the lack of empirical studies. Some also question whether executive coaching is just another fad in the long list of fads that have occurred in consultation and business. To explore these issues and the place of executive coaching in consulting practice, this article critically examines the literature on executive coaching. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)