Counseling session impact as viewed by novice counselors and their clients.

The Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ) was used to measure the perspectives of 17 graduate-student counselors and their 72 17–39 yr old clients on 942 individual counseling sessions along 2 evaluative dimensions—depth and smoothness—and 2 dimensions of postsession mood—positivity and arousal. A components-of-variance analysis showed that, from both perspectives, SEQ ratings varied greatly from session to session; ratings were only modestly predictable from differences among counselors or among counselor–client dyads. However, averages across 6–20 sessions permitted adequately reliable differentiation among dyads, for example, for comparisons with outcome measures. Correlations between corresponding counselor and client dimensions ranged from moderate to negligible, whether calulated across sessions, across clients, or across counselors, Novice counselors' judgments of session depth and value may have had little relation to their clients' evaluations. On the other hand, counselors' comfort in sessions and postsession positive mood were moderately predictive of client reactions. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A model for radar images and its application to adaptive digital filtering of multiplicative noise

Standard image processing techniques which are used to enhance noncoherent optically produced images are not applicable to radar images due to the coherent nature of the radar imaging process. A model for the radar imaging process is derived in this paper and a method for smoothing noisy radar images is also presented. The imaging model shows that the radar image is corrupted by multiplicative noise. The model leads to the functional form of an optimum (minimum MSE) filter for smoothing radar images. By using locally estimated parameter values the filter is made adaptive so that it provides minimum MSE estimates inside homogeneous areas of an image while preserving the edge structure. It is shown that the filter can be easily implemented in the spatial domain and is computationally efficient. The performance of the adaptive filter is compared (qualitatively and quantitatively) with several standard filters using real and simulated radar images.     

The development of drawing in children with congenital focal brain injury: evidence for limited functional recovery

Children with pre- or perinatal injury to right hemisphere (RH) brain regions show impairment of spatial integrative functions similar to that observed among adults with comparable injury. Unlike adults, children show considerable improvement with development on a range of spatial construction tasks which require spatial integration. Such gains could reflect true recovery of spatial integrative abilities. Alternatively, the improvement could be more limited in scope, reflecting the development of compensatory strategies which are task specific and allow the children to circumvent, rather than overcome, their primary spatial disorders. The studies presented here examined this distinction within the context of drawing tasks in which the child was first asked to draw a house and then an impossible house. The impossible house task was designed to examine the extent to which children rely on graphic formulas in generating organized drawings. The results showed that while all of the children with RH injury make considerable progress in free drawing into the school age period, they are very reliant on the use of graphic formulas. When given a task which requires them to alter their drawings, they did not change the spatial configuration of the depicted object. Rather they found alternate ways to render the object 'impossible'.     

Developmental trends in visuospatial analysis and planning: I. Copying a complex figure.

An existing scoring system was used to assess the accuracy of the children's ability to copy the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure. The authors also developed additional measures to more precisely describe the process used by children in copying this figure. The findings suggest that children between the ages of 6 and 9 break the figure up into simple components but improve in their ability to integrate the figure with age. Younger children demonstrated a similar pattern of performance when copying the main features of the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure in isolation. The results of this study suggest that when faced with tasks requiring more advanced types of spatial analysis, children adopt strategies that proved successful when they were younger. Children have a variety of spatial analytic strategies available by age 6, but the strategy that they use is a function of pattern complexity and the capabilities of the child. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developments in Humidity Standards and the Psychrometer Equation

Determination of the wet-bulb temperature at the surface of a material is the basis of one class of humidity measuring instruments, and is important in industrial applications such as dryer modelling and simula tion. The psychrometer equation is a frequently used method of estimating wet-bulb temperature, and contains a psychrometer"constant". Analysis shows that this is in fact a variable coefficient affected by temperature, pressure, radiation and conduction effects, and the identity of the gas and vapour. Radiation and conduction affect the difference between adiabatic saturation temperature and indicated wet-bulb temperature. Inconsistencies in currently recommended values for the psychrometer coefficient, including published international standards, are identified and explained. Particular problems arise when the enhancement factor is applied to vapour pressure to account for non-ideality of gases. Special considerations are also needed for wet-bulb temperatures approaching the boiling point, where     

Verbal response mode correlates of experiencing.

This study, one in a series seeking indices of good psychotherapy process in the client's verbal behavior, compared specific verbal response mode (VRM) indices with the more global Experiencing (EXP) Scale, a measure reported to correlate with positive psychotherapy outcome. W. B. Stiles's (1978, 1979) VRM taxonomy was used to code the 90 transcribed interview segments published in the EXP manual. As predicted, the strongest VRM correlate of EXP level was the percentage of utterances that were Disclosure in form (1st person; "I") and intent (revealing subjective experience). Results suggest that good process may be measurable on an utterance-by-utterance basis. (5 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of bilateral olivocochlear lesions on vowel formant discrimination in cats

Operant conditioning procedures were used to measure the effects of bilateral olivocochlear lesions on the cat's discrimination thresholds for changes in the second formant frequency (deltaF2) of the vowel /epsilon/. Three cats were tested with the formant discrimination task under quiet conditions and in the presence of continuous broadband noise at signal-to-noise ratios (S/Ns) of 23, 13, and 3 dB. In quiet, vowel levels of 50 and 70 dB produced average deltaF2s of 42 and 47 Hz, respectively, and these thresholds did not change significantly in low levels of background noise (S/Ns = 23 and 13 dB). Average deltaF2s increased to 94 and 97 Hz for vowel levels of 50 and 70 dB in the loudest level of background noise (S/N = 3 dB). Average deltaF2 thresholds in quiet and in lower noise levels were only slightly affected when the olivocochlear bundle was lesioned by making bilateral cuts into the floor of the IVth ventricle. In contrast, post-lesion deltaF2 thresholds in the highest noise level were significantly larger than pre-lesion values; the most severely affected subject showed post-lesion discrimination thresholds well over 200 Hz for both 50 and 70 dB vowels. These results suggest that olivocochlear feedback may enhance speech processing in high levels of ambient noise.