bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A note on behavioural treatment in the rehabilitation of myocardial infarction patients
Authors: Fielding Richard 
Published: July 2011

Ten patients, diagnosed as suffering acute myocardial infarction were allocated to an Experimental (behavioural counselling with relaxation training) group, or a Control (waiting list) group. Measures of electromyogram activity, covert and self‐rated anxiety, serum enzymes, length of illness and outcome were made. Experimental subjects had 12 weekly sessions of counselling on a variety of topics relating to psychological adaptation to the illness, plus relaxation training.The results show a significant reduction in muscle tension in experimental subjects after training. Significant changes were also found respecting covert anxiety. Self‐rated anxiety and SGOT levels were related. More experimental than control subjects returned to work.
Conditional probabilities and the grid test for schizophrenic thought disorder
Authors: Allon Richard , Stewart M. F. , Lancee W. J. , Brawley Peter 
Published: July 2011

The grid test for schizophrenic thought disorder was administered to a sample of 149 psychiatric patients. This sample was drawn from a population with a known base rate of schizophrenia and an estimated base rate of thought disorder, thus allowing for the calculation of population specific cutting scores for the grid test.The grid test, using these data along with others from previous grid test studies, was then analysed for diagnostic efficiency using conditional probability formulae.The conclusion reached is that the grid test for schizophrenic thought disorder is unsatisfactory as a diagnostic instrument.
Engagement and depressive symptoms in a community sample of elderly people
Authors: Davies Ann D. M. , Gledhill K. J. 
Published: July 2011

Fifty‐three elderly women attending a day centre were interviewed and observed to examine hypotheses about depressive symptoms and behaviour. Observers were blind to interview findings. The Geriatric Mental Status Schedule (GMS) and Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist (MAACL) provided information on current symptoms and mood. Time‐sampling was used to assess clients' level and type of engagement.No significant relation was found between ‘disengagement’ (absence of engaged activity) and symptom level. Those clients reaching the Feighner criteria for depression did not differ from other clients either in level of ‘disengagement’ or in type of engaged activity. Within the whole sample ‘disengagement’ was related to age and to self‐reports of good health. ‘Onlooking’ was correlated with ‘recent loss of interest’ and ‘self‐blame’. Results are discussed in relation to behavioural formulations of depression and studies of engagement.
A reassessment of clinical psychology as an applied science*
Authors: Shapiro M. B. 
Published: July 2011

This paper advocates discarding the notion of clinical psychology as an applied science, with its emphasis upon the use of prevalidated procedures of assessment and treatment. The grounds are that, in scientific principle, there is no difference between practical clinical work and research. Each aims at maximizing the accuracy of our ideas about psychological dysfunctions and their manipulation, both therapeutic and experimental. They differ in: (i) their general purpose; and (ii) the greater accuracy of research. One should therefore think in terms of a scientific approach to practical clinical psychology, conceptualizing it as a branch of psychological science.In assessment, the research finding of the relative specificity of psychological responses leads to (i) describing and explaining each patient's particular psychological dysfunctions; (ii) using information‐seeking interviews supplemented by the few validated procedures, and (iii) seeking guidance from general psychological and interview research and from general scientific method. In treatment, the main consequence is the development, in the course of clinical work, of therapies which: (i) derive from general psychological and clinical research; (ii) are dysfunction‐oriented; (iii) are critically eclectic; (iv) monitor outcome; and (v) evaluate therapists' behaviour. Finally, the scientific approach requires evaluation studies of both assessment and treatment.
Reminiscence: A critical review of the empirical literature
Authors: Thornton Susan , Brotchie Janet 
Published: July 2011

The empirical evidence concerning the prevalence and function of reminiscence among the elderly is reviewed and the relevance of such activity for clinical populations is evaluated. Variations in the ways in which reminiscence is defined and methods of eliciting reminiscence activity are described. Data on frequency of reminiscence and its relationship to age are discussed. Studies investigating the functions of reminiscence are divided into three groups according to experimental design and their findings critically reviewed. It is concluded that there is little evidence of an age‐specific process of reminiscence, that the functions of such a process are unclear and that the role of reminiscence as a therapeutic activity is in doubt.Literary and scientific descriptions have implied that dwelling on past events and remote memories is a specific feature of old age. Furthermore it has been suggested that the activity of reminiscing about past experience may have adaptational significance for the later stages of life (Butler, 1963). More recently the concept of reminiscence has been applied to a clinical population and reminiscence therapy groups are advocated for elderly people in hospital or community settings, including those who are confused (Kiernat, 1979; Norris & Abu El Eileh, 1982). The purpose of this paper is to review the empirical evidence concerning the prevalence and function of reminiscence among elderly people and to address the question of the relevance of such activity for clinical populations.
Abandoning the concept of ‘schizophrenia‘: Some implications of validity arguments for psychological research into psychotic phenomena
Authors: Bentall R. P. , Jackson H. F. , Pilgrim D. 
Published: July 2011

After more than 90 years of research in which the presence or absence of a diagnosis of schizophrenia has been used as an independent variable, little of certainty has been found out about the aetiology of the hypothesized schizophrenia disease process. One possible reason for this lack of progress is that schizophrenia is not a valid object of scientific inquiry. Data from published research (mainly carried out by distinguished psychiatrists) are reviewed casting doubt on: (i) the reliability, (ii) the construct validity, (iii) the predictive validity, and (iv) the aetiological specificity of the schizophrenia diagnosis. It is argued that continued research into the aetiology of schizophrenia is likely to prove fruitless and that psychologists should adopt alternative methods of studying psychosis. Two alternative strategies ‐ the development of empirical methods of psychiatric classification and the study of individual symptoms ‐ are discussed.The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever a name must be an entity or being, having an independent existence of its own. And if no entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious.J. S. Mill (quoted in Gould, 1981)
Evidence of reduced ‘cognitive inhibition’ in schizophrenia
Authors: Beech Anthony , Powell Trevor , McWilliam Jonathan , Claridge Gordon 
Published: July 2011

An experiment is described which investigated cognitive inhibition in schizophrenia. It is noted that both the abnormal and cognitive literatures use the concept of inhibition. Frith (1979) suggests that the more cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia may be due to the failure to limit the current contents of consciousness due to a failure adequately to inhibit the output of preconscious processes.Current thinking in cognitive psychology suggests that in the process of selective attention there is active inhibition of distractor information. A technique used to investigate this is termed negative priming (Tipper, 1985). The general nature of this paradigm is as follows: if a distractor, which has been previously ignored, is subsequently re‐presented, there is an increased reaction time associated with the response, due to inhibition of the information when it was originally a distractor.It was found that inhibition of such distracting information was reduced in schizophrenics. This finding is seen as providing some support for Frith's (1979) theory that the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia are due to awareness of processes that normally occur preconsciously.
Assessing everyday memory in patients with dysphasia*
Authors: Cockburn Janet , Wilson Barbara , Baddeley Alan , Hiorns Robert 
Published: July 2011

An assessment of the current memory status of patients referred for speech therapy is rarely provided, but may be useful in indicating whether there is memory loss in addition to language deficits. Failure to progress during treatment could be due to failure to remember the content of the previous sessions.Most existing memory tests are unsuitable for assessing subjects with dysphasia. For that reason we sought to modify the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT: Wilson, Cockburn & Baddeley, 1985), which was developed to measure the existence and extent of everyday memory problems and which contains both verbally and non‐verbally mediated items.The study described here, based on a sample of 176 brain‐injured patients, showed that a mild to moderate language deficit did impair performance on the RBMT. The influence was found to be limited to a subset of verbal memory items. A shortened version of the test was developed and shown to be sensitive to memory deficits and insensitive to the effects of dysphasia.Revised norms for this version of the test are provided. These should enable an estimate to be made of the presence and magnitude of memory deficits in dysphasic patients, allowing treatment to be optimized.
A new technique for treating post‐traumatic stress disorder
Authors: Muss D. C. 
Published: July 2011

Post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are notoriously difficult to treat. The need for a simple, easily reproducible technique, that could inactivate the repetitive intrusive imagery of the traumatic event, prompted the trial of a technique originally devised for phobias.Nineteen members of the West Midlands Police Force, who qualified as PTSD sufferers, were offered the ‘re‐wind’ technique. On average only three therapeutic sessions were required per patient. During a two‐year follow‐up, all victims remained free of intrusive images and resumed their occupations.It is hoped that such a consistently rapid and effective technique will open the way for more victims to be treated and for controlled trials to be facilitated.
An experimental analysis of Perfectionism and Dissatisfaction
Authors: Slade Peter D. , Newton Tim , Butler Nina Mary , Murphy Peter 
Published: July 2011

The striving after perfection has been often mentioned in clinical literature; however, there have been few systematic analyses of the concept. In the present study, a questionnaire measure of Perfectionism and General Dissatisfaction (the SCANS) together with the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and measures thought to gauge aspects of perfectionistic thinking, were administered to a mixed group of 148 subjects, including 25 eating disorder patients. Perfectionism was found to correlate negatively with Psychoticism (as measured by the EPQ) and positively with the Lie scale. Thus Perfectionism appears to be associated with a tendency to deny personally deviant behaviour and to present oneself in the best possible light. It is also associated with greater accuracy in a visual search task.General Dissatisfaction was correlated significantly with Neuroticism, Introversion and Psychoticism. It thus appears to be related to a combination of ‘neurotic introversion’ and ‘personality deviance’. It is also associated with a tendency to be under‐inclusive, that is to find difficulty in ruling out irrelevant stimuli when forming categories. Dissatisfaction was also associated with increased reaction time in the visual search task, perhaps also a reflection of an inability to ignore irrelevant stimuli.Only the EPQ N and P scales successfully differentiated neurotic or dissatisfied perfectionists from normal or satisfied perfectionists, although several measures derived from the visual search task produced results which were approaching significance.
Epistemology and learning disabilities: Invited commentary on Hastings and Remington
Authors: Clegg J. A. 
Published: July 2011

The effect on service provision of describing a variety of actions as challenging behaviour is discussed: it is suggested that studying stereotyped, aggressive and self‐injurious acts in their own right has yielded more useful psychological debate, and ignoring such conceptual thinking leads to implicit theorizing where assumptions go unquestioned.Evidence for the relevance of staff actions on different topographies of client responses is critically reviewed, alongside discussion of the authors' rhetoric. The importance of adjusting language and frameworks to make room for alternative conceptualizations is discussed. The article concludes by recommending that research into staff attitudes and actions will be better served by reflexive methods and reporting which emphasize mutuality.
Acting on command hallucinations: A cognitive approach
Authors: Beck‐Sander Alison , Birchwood Max , Chadwick Paul 
Published: July 2011

This study explores factors influencing compliance with command hallucinations. The most widely acknowledged factor is the content of the command. Three categories of command content were found to be discrete in terms of compliance: ‘innocuous’ commands, ‘severe’ commands and commands to self‐harm. This study takes a cognitive approach and highlights the importance of the beliefs individuals hold about their voices. Beliefs appear to be important in determining whether or not individuals comply with commands and the affect generated.A belief that the voice is benevolent was associated with compliance with both innocuous and severe commands. In addition, participants who believed they retained subjective control over their voices were less likely to comply with all types of command. Furthermore, qualitative evidence suggested that several other beliefs may influence compliance with command hallucinations such as beliefs about the effects of transgression, beliefs about the power and authority of the commander, beliefs about the social acceptability of the action (which may be closely correlated or synonymous with severity) and its effectiveness in achieving a valued goal. Further research is necessary to investigate the importance of these beliefs and their interrelationships more fully.
Social problem solving and autobiographical memory in non‐clinical depression
Authors: Goddard Lorna , Dritschel Barbara , Burton Andrew 
Published: July 2011

Objectives. We examine the proposal that specific autobiographical memories may play a major role in successful social problem solving (SPS).Design and Methods. Depressed and control students report on the types of memories they retrieve while performing an SPS task and a cueing task.Results. The retrieval of specific memories on the cueing task and during SPS was found to be positively related to SPS skill.Conclusions. Specific memories are important for successful SPS. However, the relationship between a specific memory deficit and poor SPS is mediated by severity of depression.
Interpersonal responses to threats to status and interpersonal relatedness: Effects of dependency and self‐criticism
Authors: Santor Darcy A. , Zuroff David C. 
Published: July 2011

Objectives. Previous research investigating the interpersonal environments of dependent and self‐critical individuals has focused primarily on attachment issues, such as relationship satisfaction.Design. In the present study, we examined how dependent and self‐critical individuals respond to experimentally manipulated events that threaten or bolster selfworth and status.Method. Forty pairs of female college students were allowed to believe, first, that they outperformed a close friend or were outperformed by a close friend on 14 trials of a behaviour detection task and, second, that friends generally agreed or disagreed with them on a second 14 trials, in which participants informed friends who had the better response.Results. Dependent women were more concerned with maintaining interpersonal relatedness, whereas self‐critical women were more concerned with preserving selfworth and status. Dependent women adopted the responses of friends they outperformed, praised friends even when friends disagreed, and minimized disagreement with disagreeing friends. In contrast, self‐critical individuals contested threats to status and self‐worth, withheld praise from friends who challenged them, and did not minimize disagreement with disagreeing friends.Conclusions. Results support the utility of an interactional framework in which depressive personality styles, such as dependency and self‐criticism, and situational events interact to regulate interpersonal behaviour.
The effect of self‐referent material on the reasoning of people with delusions
Authors: Dudley R. E. J. , John C. H. , Young A.W. , Over D. E. 
Published: July 2011

People with delusions have been shown to have both generalized (Huq, Garety & Hemsley, 1988) and content‐specific biases in reasoning (Bentall, 1994). Our concern here was whether the hastiness that has been found when people with delusions reason on relatively abstract tasks would be present on a more realistic task. A second concern was whether reasoning with salient or emotional material would increase the hastiness bias in people with delusions.Two versions of a probabilistic reasoning task were used to study the data gathering of people with delusions. The first version employed realistic but emotionally neutral material. People with delusions requested less evidence before making a decision than psychiatric and normal comparison groups. Therefore, the hastiness found previously with abstract materials was seen to generalize to a more realistic task. In the second version participants were required to reason with material that had an emotional content and may have been regarded as being personally meaningful. In this condition all groups reduced the amount of evidence requested before making a decision.
Assessing the reliability and abnormality of subtest differences on the Test of Everyday Attention
Authors: Crawford J. R. , Sommerville J. , Robertson Ian H. 
Published: July 2011

Objectives. To assist clinicians with the analysis of an individual's profile of subtest strength and weaknesses on the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA).Design. The study applied psychometric methods for the quantitive analysis of subtest profiles (Silverstein, 1982, 1984a, b).Methods. Formulae to compute the standard error of the difference and standard deviation of the difference between a subtest and a client's mean subtest scores were applied to determine critical values for reliable and abnormal differences. The data used were derived from the TEA standardization sample (N = 154).Results. Tables for examining whether an individual's TEA subtest profile contains reliable and abnormal subtest discrepancies are presented.Conclusions. Elegant methods of analysing a subtest profile were extended for use with the Test of Everyday Attention. In keeping with the rationale underlying the measurement of neuropsychological deficit (Lezak, 1995), these methods complement the existing TEA normative comparison standards by providing individual comparison standards for a client's performance. Guidance on the use of the tables is offered; the distinction between reliable and abnormal differences is highlighted.
Processing of facial expressions of emotion and alexithymia
Authors: Pandey Rakesh , Mandal Manas K. 
Published: July 2011

Objective. The primary objective was to examine emotional responsiveness in alexithymia.Design. A quasi‐experimental design was followed with the alexithymia variable being manipulated by subject stratification based on Toronto Alexithymia Scale‐ 20‐H.Method. Alexithymics (N=12) and non‐alexithymics (N=12) were asked to match, label and verbally describe photographs displaying facial emotions along with TAT card II.Results. Alexithymics did not differ from non‐alexithymics in emotional matching and labelling tasks but had significant difficulty in verbally describing emotional expressions as evident by less duration of utterance, greater response latency and increased linguistic‐type speech disruptions. Speech disruptions did not produce a group difference for TAT card II.Conclusion. Such difficulty in alexithymics may be associated with their inability to use emotional words in the appropriate context.
The effects of imagery and sensory detection distractors on different measures of pain: How does distraction work?
Authors: Johnson Malcolm H. , Breakwell Guy , Douglas Wanda , Humphries Steven 
Published: July 2011

Objectives. Two experiments compared the effects of different distraction tasks on pain. Based on multiple‐resource theory, Expt 1 predicted that the more a distractor shares processing resources with pain perception the greater the interference between the two. Experiment 2 tested whether the emotional content of the distractor would differentially effect measures that are supposedly reflective of the affective component of pain.Design. Both experiments used repeated measures designs, with counterbalanced distraction conditions.Methods. In Expt 1 20 participants indicated their pain threshold. No instructions, or one of three distraction conditions were presented across four blocks of potassium iontophoresis. The distractors were: thermal and light detection, and neutral imagining. In Expt 2 30 participants had three blocks of pain threshold, pain tolerance, and pain rating trials. For threshold, tolerance, and rating trials, one block was without distraction, a second block was completed during light detection, and a third block while imagining an enjoyable holiday.Results. In Expt 1 all the distractors increased pain threshold. The two detection tasks were similarly effective, and more so than the imagination task. Performance on the two detection tasks was impaired by painful stimulation similarly for both tasks. In Expt 2 the visual detection distractor increased pain threshold and tolerance and reduced pain ratings while pleasant imagery only increased pain threshold.Conclusions. These results indicate that a task that requires attention to external cues has more impact on pain than either a positive or neutral imagination task. However, it is not clear that the specific resources used by the distraction tasks moderated pain differentially as predicted by multiple‐resource theory.