Repressed memories: The real story.

Repression exists. Four commentaries by J. Giglio (1998), A. Piper (1998), S. Q. Lilienfeld and E. F. Loftus (1998), and M. Pendergrast (1998) deny the existence of repression. But every psychodynamic therapist regularly observes the phenomenon. Experimental as well as clinical evidence for repression clearly exists; these critics ignore or misrepresent both sources of data. More detailed case history material that shows the phenomena is readily available from current cases. The case in the authors' previous article (B. P. Karon & A. J. Widener, 1997) illustrated the hundreds of cases of WWII veterans who experienced battlefield trauma, repressed the trauma and displayed neurotic symptoms, and experienced alleviation of the symptoms when the trauma was remembered in therapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading words: Simple task, complex story.

Reviews the book, Orthography and Word Recognition in Reading by Leslie Henderson (1982). The scope of this book is perhaps broader than the title might suggest to the uninitiated. The diverse range of topics covered includes the nature of different writing systems, speech recognition, the structure of lexical information in memory, models of word recognition, speech production, language disorders, subliminal perception, contextual effects on word recognition, and several others. Each of these areas supports an enormous web of theories, data and controversies, for which Henderson has set himself the difficult task of reviewing and critically evaluating. He covers a lot of ground and has succeeded, in my opinion, in creating an essential resource. In sum, this is an excellent book because of the wealth of material that is clearly presented and closely analyzed. Much of the discussion is critical of recent research and theory, sometimes strongly so, but the criticism is fair, and insightful, and it appropriately reflects the state of the field. It helps that the book is as gracefully written as technical prose can be. The best compliment that I can offer is that in reading the book I often had to put it down--to mull the author's thought-provoking ideas. While the book is nicely printed and securely bound, there are quite a number of typographical errors and misprints (e.g., the numbering of the footnotes runs out of sequence, and Jim Neely is turned into a she). Something to consider when the book goes into its second edition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading ability and use of a story schema in recalling and reconstructing information.

Examined the differences between 48 good and 48 poor 6th-grade readers' use of a story schema in recall and reconstruction tasks. Ss heard a story either in canonical (standard) or interleaved (a form of scrambling) format and were instructed to recall the story and reconstruct the order of story events either directly as they heard it or as it should be. Performance in the reconstruction and recall tasks showed that both good and poor readers could use a story schema when the story followed canonical format; however poor readers' story schema was either not as well-developed or as efficiently used. Both recall and reconstruction data provided evidence that schematic retrieval is not obligatory for either type of reader. Good readers could use a story schema when cued to do so in any task, but poor readers could do so only in the reconstruction task. Differential improvement of poor readers' performance relative to that of good readers' in a 2nd phase of the experiment due to previous experience in the 1st phase was obtained only in the reconstruction task. Conclusions support the view that poor readers perform differently from younger normal children. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading skills in hyperlexia: A developmental perspective.

Hyperlexia is characterized by advanced word-recognition skills in individuals who otherwise have pronounced cognitive, social, and linguistic handicaps. Language, word recognition, and reading-comprehension skills are reviewed to clarify the nature and core deficits associated with the disorder. It is concluded that hyperlexia should be viewed as part of the normal variation in reading skills, which are themselves associated with individual differences in phonological, orthographic, and semantic processing, short-term memory, and print exposure. A compulsive preoccupation with reading may also be crucial to the development of a hyperlexic reading profile. A theoretical framework, based on recent connectionist models of reading development, is described. This perspective provides a satisfactory account for how individual differences in a number of different skills can lead to a variety of manifestations of reading behavior, including hyperlexia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A close look at conflictual supervisory relationships: The trainee's perspective.

In a qualitative study of negative supervision, 13 master's and doctoral trainees were interviewed about a supervision experience that had a detrimental effect on their training. Many supervisors were described as not being invested in the relationship and as being unwilling to own their role in conflicts. Many trainees described being overworked without proper supervision, some felt expected to support their supervisors, and many underwent extreme stress and self-doubt. Most participants reported ongoing power struggles with angry supervisors, and most relied on peers, other professionals, and therapists for support. Qualitative themes were consistent with trainees' high scores on the Role Conflict and Role Ambiguity Inventory (M.E. Olk & M.L. Friedlander, 1992) and with their low ratings of their supervisors' attractiveness and interpersonal sensitivity on the Supervisory Styles Inventory (M.L. Friedlander & L.G. Ward, 1984). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What is a good treatment decision? The client's perspective.

63 adult outpatient clients of a community mental health center evaluated 5 methods of clinical decision making: intuition, research, therapist's informal successful experience, professional recommendation therapist, and no rationale. Clients rated their therapists' informal successful experience and the use of research as favorable decision methods. Clients thought that their therapists would also rate these methods as favorable. We conclude that clients want their therapists to make clinical decisions on the basis of informal experience in which the efficacy of the recommendations is demonstrated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Virtually real: A psychological perspective on massively multiplayer online games.

Massively multiplayer games (MMOs) are immersive virtual three-dimensional fantasy worlds in which people cooperate and compete with each other, as well as with the computer-generated denizens of that particular game world. Although typically seen as games, their strong social aspect suggests that they are a form of online communication tool, with which players interact to form friendships, create communities, and work together to accomplish a variety of goals. After an introduction to MMOs, this review explores how social aspects of the game imitate the real world in terms of choices that players make when interacting with others. Furthermore, player-to-player interactions are examined in terms of in-game group formation and how efficient communication is imperative for goal achievement. The review also explores how leadership skills learned in-game may be transferred to real-world scenarios. The reasons why people play MMOs are examined in terms of player motivations and how aspects of game play may have both positive and negative consequences for a player's well-being. The latter half of the review describes how MMOs are used as afterschool virtual teaching environments where students can use aspects of game play to learn, for example, leadership qualities. The review concludes with recommendations for using MMOs as virtual laboratories to explore aspects of human behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Future time perspective, response rates, and older persons: Another chapter in the story.

Data quality is compromised when response rates to items vary with age group. D. Shmotkin (1992) found a 29% nonresponse rate to future-oriented items in persons older than 60 yrs and suggested future apprehension as a cause. The authors administered similar items to 251 older Ss and found fewer instances of nonresponding to future-oriented items. On the basis of the high response rate to an enlarged Cantril ladder measuring future quality of life, presented in interview, the authors question the generality of future apprehension as a determinant of nonresponding. The authors suggest that mode of administration, size of items, and scale complexity, as well as future apprehension, are determinants of nonresponding to future-oriented items and scales. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Young children's memory for the true and pretend identities of objects.

Two studies examined how children conceive of the true and pretend identities of an object used in object-substitution pretense. In each study, 3- and 4-year-olds were assessed for their memory for each identity of an object that they used in a previous episode of pretend play (Study 1) or observed someone else using (Study 2). More children correctly remembered the true than the pretend identity of the objects, and there was no contingency between their tendency to remember each identity Additionally, children's tendency to correctly specify each identity was related to their age and when (i.e., during or after the pretend episode) the task was given. The results were explained by factors affecting young children's ability to manage separate representations of true and pretend identities of objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tell me a story: Psychoanalysis and its contents.

"Whose Freud/Who's Freud?, a cutting-edge conference held at Yale University, illustrated the great importance of stories for the psychoanalytic adventure and disclosed a rich picture of the constantly changing theory of analysis. New views of the mother and father, of incest, of sexuality, of object choice, of mourning and celebration, of the analyst–analysand relationship as well as of the mind–brain connection were presented by such imaginative and diverse thinkers as Judith Butler, Juliet Mitchell, Toril Moi, Kaja Silverman, Leo Bersani, Robert Jay Lifton, John Forrester, Jonathan Lear, and Morton Reiser. The conference concluded that the place of psychoanalysis in contemporary culture is every place. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The disappearance of cognitive gender differences: What you see depends on where you look.

Comments on A. Feingold's (see record 1988-18577-001) review of gender differences (GDs) on the Differential Aptitude Tests and Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/Scholastic Aptitude Test, which argues that cognitive GDs are disappearing. The present author offers observations regarding sampling issues in high school populations, verbal abilities (VAs), and visual–spatial abilities (VSAs), suggesting that Feingold's conclusions regarding VAs and VSAs are unwarranted. It is contended that (1) the implicit assumption that the disappearance of cognitive GDs is good and (2) the prevailing notion that differences denote deficiencies may also be unwarranted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Freudian case history: A detective story or a dialectical progression? Reflections on psychoanalytic narratives from a Lacanian perspective.

In response to the recent tendency to discard Freud's contributions as anachronistic and reductionistic, this article critically examines D. P. Spence's (1982, 1987) contention that the Freudian style of case reporting is ensnared in an outdated positivistic tradition. Spence mistakenly reduces Freud's method of historical construction to a form of naive commitment to the Sherlock Holmes detective story genre. By employing J. Lacan's (1952 [1982]) rereading of Dora's case history, the article conversely demonstrates that in the psychoanalytic situation the analysand's past unfolds in a series of dialectical reversals yielding not a linear, detective-like story with a single solution, but an ever-unfolding and subversive narrative, a life story that stubbornly resists premature closure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age and schooling effects in story recall and story production.

The relative influences of age- and schooling-related experiences on story memory and storytelling were examined. 40 kindergarten and 39 Grade 1 children whose birth dates clustered around the cutoff date for school entrance listened to and recalled short, 1-episode stories (story recall task) and completed other stories (story production task) for which they were given beginning information. Children were tested in fall (at 5.6 years) and spring (at 6.3 years) of the school year and in spring of the following school year (at 7.3 years). For the story recall task, significant age-related effects were obtained for overall amount of recall, whereas schooling-related effects in kindergarten were obtained for patterns of recall as a function of causal relations. For the story production task, age-related as well as schooling-related effects of kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 were obtained for structural complexity. Age-related effects are attributed to general development in memory capacity and deployment of cognitive resources, whereas schooling-related effects are attributed to restructuring of the story representation in memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sequences in the development of competent play with peers: Social and social pretend play.

In Study 1, 48 children participated in a longitudinal study of peer play development, from infancy through preschool. Children developed play forms in the expected sequence and at the expected ages. Children showed stability in both proportion and emergence of complex play. Children's pattern of play form emergence and proportion of time in more complex play forms related to subsequent indexes of social competence. In Study 2, the peer play of children aged 10–59 mo was assessed. One sample (n?=?259) attended minimally adequate child-care centers. The other sample (n?=?48) attended a model child-care center. Children in the model center showed complex play form emergence at earlier ages and engaged in greater proportions of complex play than children in the minimally adequate centers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The marathon encounter group--vision and reality: Exhuming the body for a last look.

The marathon group, touted in the 1960s and 1970s as a near-miraculous massed-time tool accelerating true encounter with self and others, emerged as one form of the human potential movement with the power to influence both individuals and organizations. A melding of aspects of group psychotherapy, sensitivity training, and encounter groups, it suffered the fate of a technique grown too popular too fast without the tempering effect of sufficient scientific examination to slow its runaway expansion into a full-fledged social movement. This article combines a look at the history, development growth, and personal appearance of the marathon with the personal experience of the author of one of the two first dissertations on the topic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Categorizing objects in isolation and in scenes: What a superordinate is good for.

Many studies have shown that subjects are faster at categorizing objects into "basic" concepts than into more general superordinate concepts. However, all of these studies have used a categorization task in which single, isolated objects are identified. There is good reason to believe that superordinate concepts are typically used to refer to collections of objects rather than to individual objects. For example, people more often use the term furniture to refer to a number of pieces of furniture rather than to name a single piece. This suggests that superordinate concepts include information about multiple objects and their common relations, particularly the typical scenes in which such objects appear. Four experiments examined this possibility by investigating whether the basic concept advantage will decrease or reverse itself when subjects are asked to categorize an object as part of a scene. The results showed that the basic-superordinate difference did decrease when subjects categorized objects in scenes. Furthermore, when an object was placed in an inappropriate scene, there was more interference for superordinate identifications. The results suggest qualitative differences in the representations of superordinate and basic concepts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disinhibitory psychopathology: A new perspective and a model for research.

The syndrome produced by septal lesions in animals can serve as a functional research model of human disinhibitory psychopathology which appears to span several traditionally separate psychological categories—psychopathy, hysteria, hyperactivity, antisocial and impulsive personality, and alcoholism. It is proposed that these categories are separate manifestations of the same genetic diathesis and that the "septal syndrome" may constitute a valid model of behavioral aspects of this diathesis. A program of experimentation utilizing this animal model is outlined. (65 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dreams and psychoanalysis: A love-hate story.

This article explores the early and contemporary relationship between dreams and psychoanalysis. Dreams, once at the center of psychoanalytic theory and practice, have lost their singular importance, having been replaced by other concerns (e.g., the therapeutic relationship). The causes of this decline are many and complex, but include, in this hypothesis, a long-standing underlying ambivalence (both love and hate) toward dreams and their interpretation in psychoanalysis. Aspects of this unacknowledged ambivalence include significant cultural, personal, and systemic factors, which are elaborated. Both appreciation, pleasure, and interest, on the one hand, and fear, suspicion, and domination, on the other, are described. The classical method and the interpersonal and relational approaches are examined in relation to dreams, and both are found to reflect difficulties in approaching dreams. Finally, the love–hate story is extended into the relation between dreams, psychoanalysis, and the new electronic era. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The reliability of psychiatric diagnosis: a new look.

"Each of 426 state hospital patients was diagnosed independently by pairs of psychiatrists using official psychiatric nomenclature. Reliability of the schizophrenic diagnosis was indicated by values of γ between .73 and .95, depending on the range of discrimination required. Classification of the diagnosis into 3 major categories—organic, psychotic, and characterological—showed that about four-fifths of such classifications of one psychiatrist were confirmed by another. Agreement with respect to diagnoses of the specific subtype occurred in about only half the cases and was almost absent in cases involving personality pattern-and-trait disorders and the psychoneuroses." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)