Is Culture Learned? The Neglected Role of Evoking Events.

Although no one disputes that the transmission of culture depends on social learning, a capacity that has enabled humans, unlike other animals, to modify cultural practices across generations, this review argues that cultural change can also be evoked by environmental events leading to an alteration in the configuration of an habitual behavioural repertoire. An evoked mechanism allows latent or normally suppressed behaviour to emerge. Cannibalism and warfare are put forward as examples.

Development of a training programme in individual case formulation skills and a scale for assessing its effectiveness.

Background: Little is known about the skills involved in clinical formulation. The individual case formulation (ICF) approach, based on functional analysis, employs clinical descriptions that are theory-free and depicts formulations constructed according to a set of basic conventions.

Aims: We report a test of whether this method could be taught and if the quality of the resulting diagrams could be reliably rated.

Conversation tactics in persons with normal hearing and hearing-impairment.

Objectives: To investigate the tactics people use when aural communication fails owing to environmental circumstances or impaired hearing.

Design: Persons with different degrees of self-reported hearing impairment completed an online questionnaire constructed from items taken from the literature on communication strategies but reworded to be understood by people with normal hearing. Tactics were examined for frequency of use in two severities of impairment and between genders.

Persons with acquired profound hearing loss (APHL): how do they and their families adapt to the challenge?

The study examined the impact of acquired profound hearing loss (APHL) on the relationship between the hearing impaired person and their normally hearing close family member, usually a partner, and identified the kinds of adjustment leading to maintenance or deterioration of the relationship. The participants were 25 people with APHL and 25 family members, interviewed separately in their own home. Analysis of the interview transcripts adopted a grounded theory methodology.

Acquired profound hearing loss: mental health and other characteristics of a large sample.

The study investigated the mental health and other characteristics of people with acquired profound hearing loss (APHL) and contrasted this group with acquired hearing loss (AHL) in general. A survey was completed over the internet by 95 adults and by 27 people who had attended a one-week course of rehabilitation. The latter group completed questionnaires of anxiety and depression, post-traumatic stress, and hearing handicap.

CBT for psychosis: a qualitative analysis of clients' experiences.

Objectives: The study explored clients' understanding and experience of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for psychosis.

Design: Four inpatients and one outpatient who received CBT for psychosis were interviewed following a semi-structured format, designed for the purpose of the study.

Method: The transcribed interviews were analysed using discourse analytic methods and focused in particular on the way clients positioned themselves in relation to their therapists.