The style of processing scale: normative and reliability data.

Three student samples (ns=624, 653, and 566) yielded normative data for the Style of Processing scale. Analysis of subsamples found acceptable internal reliability (overall r=.78) and good test-retest reliability (overall r=.81, 6-mo. interval). The scale appears to have satisfactory reliability for assessing verbal-visual cognitive style, but further work is needed to test the scale's validity.

Towards a functional model of chronic headaches: investigation of antecedents and consequences.

The traditional approach to classifying headache based on symptoms and assumed mechanisms is criticized as having limited utility when applied to tension-type headache and migraine. The study reported here was designed to explore an alternative method of conceptualizing chronic headaches based on functional characteristics or controlling variables. One hundred and ninety nine chronic headache sufferers completed questionnaires which enquired about the antecedents and consequences of their headaches. An attempt to build a categorical model driven by functional characteristics using cluster analysis was unsuccessful but a subsequent attempt to construct a dimensional model using factor analysis proved more successful. This approach led to the emergence of five antecedent dimensions and six consequences dimensions (three pertaining to the responses of sufferers and three to the reactions of significant others) which were readily identifiable. The functional dimensions were significantly related to traditional diagnostic categories but at a low level. Three functional dimensions predicted response to psychological treatment.

Cognitive therapy vs. self-management training in the treatment of chronic headaches.

In view of the association between chronic headaches and depression, this study compared a cognitive therapy package designed for depression with a relatively standard behavioural treatment package designed for headaches (self-management training), in terms of their effects on headaches and depressive symptoms. Fifty-five subjects suffering from chronic headaches (tension, migraine and combined) were randomly assigned to the two treatment conditions. Cognitive therapy and self-management training were equally effective at decreasing headaches and depressive symptoms on most measures. Changes in headaches and depressive symptoms were not significantly correlated in either condition, however. Greater headache improvement was associated with high pre-treatment headache activity for both conditions but, whilst self-management training was more effective for subjects low on depression, cognitive therapy was more effective for subjects high on chronicity. This suggests that the latter approach, or some variation of it, may be the treatment of choice for more chronic headache sufferers with depressive symptoms.

The nature and specificity of the language coding deficit in autistic children.

The subjects, 12 autistic, 12 retarded and 12 normal children, range-matched on digit span and mental age, were asked to learn and recall sequences of words. Four types of sequence were used: sequences were constructed to be either grammatically well formed or not and were constructed so that the elements had a high or low degree of semantic relatedness. Sequences were presented in an auditory-verbal serial recall task and performance was assessed with three measures: serial recall, cluster recall and free recall. In general, recall was better when the degree of semantic relatedness was high rather than low, and the improvement was similar for all groups. Similarly, recall was better for sequences which were grammatically well formed than for sequences which were not, but the improvement of normal children was significantly greater than that of autistic children. While contemporary theories view the linguistic deficit evidenced by autistics as a deficit in the processing of semantic information, these results show that autistics have a deficit in processing syntactic information. However, this study does not resolve the issue of whether the deficit is specific to autism or a more general, developmental deficit, for while autistics differed from matched normal children, they did not differ from matched retarded children. Methodological problems in the construction of natural language sequences which vary independently in semantic and syntactic features are discussed, and it is suggested that sequences with artificial syntactic and semantic (associational) structures should be used to resolve the question of whether autistics have a deficit in processing semantic information.