The therapeutic frame revisited: A contemporary perspective.

Argues that since it was first proposed, the therapeutic "frame" has been widely adopted in a relatively unquestioned manner despite major modifications in clinical theory and practice. A reexamination of the frame from a contemporary perspective is presented. While traditional conceptions of the frame emphasize its function for the client, it is argued that this structure also serves a crucial purpose for the therapist. By minimizing the opportunity for self-indulgence (e.g., by fostering abstinence, anonymity, and neutrality), the frame enables the clinician to maintain a therapeutic stance and to create an environment that fosters comprehension of the client. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maternal evaluation of social reinforcement and time-out: Effects of brief parent training.

28 21–40 yr old middle-class mothers and their noncompliant children, ages 2.6–6.6 yrs, participated in 1 of 3 treatment (social reinforcement, time-out, and social reinforcement plus time-out) conditions or a no-treatment control. Results indicate that in addition to producing greater reductions in noncompliant behavior, time-out is rated as comparable in acceptability to social reinforcement. (6 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Victimization, self-monitoring, and eyewitness identification.

38 undergraduate low self-monitors and 42 undergraduate high self-monitors (as determined by a scale of self-monitoring of expressive behavior) witnessed in small groups a staged crime of either their own wristwatches or a laboratory calculator. Campus police detectives took individual witness statements as if a real crime had occurred, and using biased or unbiased instructions, police administered a suspect-present photospread. Results show that victim witnesses who had been given biased instructions gave the least accurate identifications and that high self-monitoring Ss were least likely to reject the lineup when instructions were biased. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forgetting in primed fragment completion.

Seven experiments examined the time course of primed fragment-completion performance. A pilot experiment and Experiment 1 showed that rapid forgetting occurs immediately after study for a period of approximately 5 min. The rate of this immediate forgetting is independent of the length of the list. Experiment 2 showed that priming effects were still present after 16 months. Experiments 3 and 4 provided further evidence of forgetting over 1 week. Experiment 5 showed that retention performance after 20 min is unaffected by the interpolated study and recall of other lists of words. Experiment 6 showed that 10-min retention performance was substantially reduced as list length was increased from 10 to 100 words; but it showed no evidence of intralist proactive interference. The combined results of the seven experiments illustrate some similarities and differences between forgetting in primed fragment completion and in episodic memory tasks such as recall and recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Life events, relationship quality, and depression: An investigation of judgment discontinuity in vivo.

Relationships among stressful life events, negative affect, and judged quality of intimate relationships were explored. Three studies and a mini-meta-analysis revealed that as negative life events increased, judgments of close relationships gradually became less favorable, jumped back toward positivity, and then, again, gradually became less favorable. The same methods of analysis revealed a relationship between negative life events and negative affect with no evidence of significant discontinuities. Moreover, the correlation between relationship satisfaction and negative affect (with negative events held constant), was maximized at the point of relationship-judgment discontinuity. Although the findings are complex, they are consistent with the authors' theoretical account and represent an initial attempt to conceptualize the effect of negative life events in light of the recent social judgment literature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empirical validation of affect, behavior, and cognition as distinct components of attitude.

Evaluated the validity of a prevalent model of attitude structure that specifies 3 components: affect, behavior, and cognition. Five conditions needed for properly testing the 3-component distinction were identified. Consideration of the tripartite model's theoretical basis indicated that the most important validating conditions are (a) the use of nonverbal, in addition to verbal, measures of affect and behavior; and (b) the physical presence of the attitude object. Study 1—in which 138 undergraduates attitudes toward snakes were examined, through the use of measures such as the Mood Adjective Check List, semantic differential, and distance of approach—indicated very strong support for this tripartite model. The model was statistically acceptable, its relative fit was very good, and the intercomponent correlations were moderate. Study 2, with 105 Ss, was a verbal report analog of Study 1. Results from Study 2 indicate that higher intercomponent correlations occurred when attitude measures derived solely from verbal reports and when the attitude object was not physically present. (74 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stimulus-driven attentional capture: Evidence from equiluminant visual objects.

Previous work has shown that abrupt visual onsets capture attention. Possible mechanisms for this phenomenon include (1) luminance-change detection system and (2) a mechanism that detects the appearance of new perceptual objects. Exps 1 and 2 revealed that attention is captured in visual search by the appearance of a new perceptual object even when the object is equiluminant with its background and thus exhibits no luminance change when it appears. Exp 3 showed that a highly salient luminance increment alone is not sufficient to capture attention. These findings suggest that attentional capture is mediated by a mechanism that detects the appearance of new perceptual objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repeated bereavement, depressed mood, and immune parameters in HIV seropositive and seronegative gay men.

The relationships among bereavement, depressed mood, and immunologic patterns prognostic for the development of AIDS were determined in a sample of HIV seropositive gay men and a comparison group of HIV seronegative gay men. Immunologic parameters were assessed in 45 men who had recently experienced the deaths of close friends and 45 matched nonbereaved men. No immune differences were found between bereaved and nonbereaved men. Among the HIV seropositive nonbereaved men, higher depressed mood was significantly associated with fewer CD4 (helper/inducer) T lymphocytes, more activated CD8 (suppressor/cytotoxic) T cells, and lower proliferative responses to the mitogen phytohemagglutinin. In summary, HIV seropositive men who reported higher levels of depressed mood not associated with bereavement demonstrated immunologic patterns consistent with HIV activity and progression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)