Michael S Armstrong - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Michael S Armstrong
Archives of Sexual Behavior, Oct 1, 1982
The sexual identity of 65 Malaysian male medical students was investigated by anonymous questionn... more The sexual identity of 65 Malaysian male medical students was investigated by anonymous questionnaire. Of these students, 40% were aware of homosexual feelings prior to age 15 years, and 16% were so aware currently. There were correlations between current homosexual feelings and feminine sex dimorphic behavior during childhood and between current homosexual feelings and feminine gender identity. The results are discussed in light of results of a similar questionnaire completed by 138 male medical students in Sydney, Australia.
British Journal of Psychiatry, Dec 1, 1986
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, Aug 1, 1985
ABSTRACT– Twenty subjects were randomly allocated to receive either imaginal desensitization (ID)... more ABSTRACT– Twenty subjects were randomly allocated to receive either imaginal desensitization (ID) or covert sensitization (CS) to reduce compulsive anomalous sexual behaviours. It was predicted from a behavioural completion model of compulsive urges, that patients’ response to ID would be at least as good as their response to CS and would correlate with reduction in their general levels of tension following treatment. These predictions were supported. Correlations between patients’ expectancies of treatment success and their response were of moderate strength for expectancy measures taken following the first session of both treatments, but much stronger for expectancy measures following the last session of ID. It was suggested that patients experienced a specific response during the further sessions of ID, which enabled them to improve their prediction of response. As aversive therapies remain the standard behavioural therapy for sexual paraphilias, the finding of the present study that imaginal desensitization without traumatic imagery or aversive physical stimuli is at least as effective would seem to require urgent replication, if only on ethical grounds.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, Aug 1, 1983
The semantic confusion in the use of the terms sexual and gender identity and role is discussed. ... more The semantic confusion in the use of the terms sexual and gender identity and role is discussed. Theories concerning the development of the sense of sexual identity in normals have been based largely on the sense of sexual identity in sexually deviant subjects. It is suggested that such subjects may have a stronger and more consistent sense of sexual identity than subjects unaware of sexually deviant impulses. Male medical students in two consecutive years anonymously completed a questionnaire concerning their sexual orientation, preference, role, and identity. In both years, students aware of a homosexual component answered the items investigating their sexual identity with greater consistency than did the students unaware of a homosexual component.
Psychological Medicine, Feb 1, 1980
In an attempt to replicate findings reported by Slade (1976), 12 hallucinating and 12 non-halluci... more In an attempt to replicate findings reported by Slade (1976), 12 hallucinating and 12 non-hallucinating schizophrenic subjects were compared on tests of verbal ability, personality and mental imagery variables and the Verbal Transformation Effect. No significant difference between the groups was demonstrated. When the data from both groups of schizophrenics were combined, a significant correlation was found between 2 measures of the Verbal Transformation Effect and the P-score of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.
Psychological Medicine, 1980
SYNOPSISIn an attempt to replicate findings reported by Slade (1976), 12 hallucinating and 12 non... more SYNOPSISIn an attempt to replicate findings reported by Slade (1976), 12 hallucinating and 12 non-hallucinating schizophrenic subjects were compared on tests of verbal ability, personality and mental imagery variables and the Verbal Transformation Effect. No significant difference between the groups was demonstrated. When the data from both groups of schizophrenics were combined, a significant correlation was found between 2 measures of the Verbal Transformation Effect and the P-score of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.
Behaviour Research and Therapy, 1981
Ethical objections IO the use of behaviour therapy in homosexuality are discussed. It is pointed ... more Ethical objections IO the use of behaviour therapy in homosexuality are discussed. It is pointed out that these objections were often based on a limited view of the aims of the therapy. The need for evaluating such therapy. as it is currently used, is elaborated. Twenty subjects requesting behaviour therapy to reduce compulsive homosexual urges were randomly allocated. half to receive aversive therapy using electric shocks and half to receive covert sensitization. Both groups were studied for one year. There was no consistent trend for one therapy to be more effective than the other in reducing the strength of compulsive homosexuaf urges. and the response to both was similar to that reported in previous studies. It was considered that aversive therapies in homosexuality do not act by establishing a conditioned aversion, nor by altering the subjects' sexual orientation. They reduce aversive arousal produced by behaviour completion mechanisms when subjects attempt to refrain from homosexual behaviour in response to stimuli which have repeatedly provoked such behaviour in the past.
Psychological Medicine, 1977
SynopsisThe concept of allusive thinking is briefly reviewed and a Pavlovian model of thinking ad... more SynopsisThe concept of allusive thinking is briefly reviewed and a Pavlovian model of thinking advanced. It is hypothesized that allusive, as compared with non-allusive thinkers, have a broader but less intense attention process associated with weaker inhibition. From this model it was predicted that on word tests which require judgements of similarity of meaning, allusive thinkers would tend to choose more remote or unusual words as similar in meaning.The Word Halo Test and the Word Sorting Test were administered to 63 university students using the Object Sorting Test as a measure of allusive thinking. The prediction that allusive thinkers would choose more unusual words as similar in meaning was supported. A tendency for allusive thinkers to be more verbose than non-allusive thinkers was also noted.
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 1996
Elmer This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribut... more Elmer This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Psychological Medicine, 1978
SynopsisPrevious work suggests that allusive thinkers have a broader attentional process associat... more SynopsisPrevious work suggests that allusive thinkers have a broader attentional process associated with weak central inhibition. The method of dichotic stimulation was used to investigate this concept. Sixty-three university students completed a battery of tests including 2 dichotic listening tasks. The Object Sorting Test was used as a measure of allusive thinking.Allusive thinkers showed a trend towards impaired shadowing performance. Mislabelling of shadow as distractor words and vice versa, on recall and recognition tasks, showed the strongest correlation with allusive thinking. Such mislabelling was considered to reflect impaired discrimination learning, and provides further support for a hypothesis relating allusive thinking to weak Pavlovian central inhibition.
Auditory evoked potentials were recorded in healthy medical students who were grouped according t... more Auditory evoked potentials were recorded in healthy medical students who were grouped according to whether they obtained a high or low score on an Object Sorting Test (OST), on which schizophrenics also obtain high scores. High-OST scoring male students compared to Low-OST scoring male students showed reduced P200 latency. This finding was replicated in a second study of medical students. The authors believe these results support the hypothesis that schizophrenic thought disorder and an equivalent loosening of thinking in nonschizophrenic populations (allusive thinking) have a neurophysiological basis in common, namely a relative weakness of inhibition operating on cortical and subcortical structures.
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry., 1996
British Journal of Psychiatry., 1986
Psychological Medicine., 1978
Psychological Medicine, 1977
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 1994
Summary - Thirty-six patients with PTSD were randomly allocated to individual treatment with imag... more Summary -
Thirty-six patients with PTSD were randomly allocated to individual treatment with imaginal exposure (image habituation training - IHT), or applied muscle relaxation (AMR) or eye movement desensitization (EMD). Assessment by a blind independent rater and self-report instruments applied pre and posttreatment and at 3-month follow-up indicated that all groups improved significantly compared with a waiting list and that treatment benefits were maintained at follow-up. Despite a failure to demonstrate differences among groups, there was some suggestion that immediately after treatment EMD was superior for intrusive memories.
Behavior Modification, 1988
... The men gambling on poker machines spent several hours, three to seven days a week drinking a... more ... The men gambling on poker machines spent several hours, three to seven days a week drinking and playing the machines; most of the ... first, the eighth, and the final sessions of treatment, subjects completed percentage scale measures of the degree to which they felt their urge ...
Archives of Sexual Behavior, Oct 1, 1982
The sexual identity of 65 Malaysian male medical students was investigated by anonymous questionn... more The sexual identity of 65 Malaysian male medical students was investigated by anonymous questionnaire. Of these students, 40% were aware of homosexual feelings prior to age 15 years, and 16% were so aware currently. There were correlations between current homosexual feelings and feminine sex dimorphic behavior during childhood and between current homosexual feelings and feminine gender identity. The results are discussed in light of results of a similar questionnaire completed by 138 male medical students in Sydney, Australia.
British Journal of Psychiatry, Dec 1, 1986
Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, Aug 1, 1985
ABSTRACT– Twenty subjects were randomly allocated to receive either imaginal desensitization (ID)... more ABSTRACT– Twenty subjects were randomly allocated to receive either imaginal desensitization (ID) or covert sensitization (CS) to reduce compulsive anomalous sexual behaviours. It was predicted from a behavioural completion model of compulsive urges, that patients’ response to ID would be at least as good as their response to CS and would correlate with reduction in their general levels of tension following treatment. These predictions were supported. Correlations between patients’ expectancies of treatment success and their response were of moderate strength for expectancy measures taken following the first session of both treatments, but much stronger for expectancy measures following the last session of ID. It was suggested that patients experienced a specific response during the further sessions of ID, which enabled them to improve their prediction of response. As aversive therapies remain the standard behavioural therapy for sexual paraphilias, the finding of the present study that imaginal desensitization without traumatic imagery or aversive physical stimuli is at least as effective would seem to require urgent replication, if only on ethical grounds.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, Aug 1, 1983
The semantic confusion in the use of the terms sexual and gender identity and role is discussed. ... more The semantic confusion in the use of the terms sexual and gender identity and role is discussed. Theories concerning the development of the sense of sexual identity in normals have been based largely on the sense of sexual identity in sexually deviant subjects. It is suggested that such subjects may have a stronger and more consistent sense of sexual identity than subjects unaware of sexually deviant impulses. Male medical students in two consecutive years anonymously completed a questionnaire concerning their sexual orientation, preference, role, and identity. In both years, students aware of a homosexual component answered the items investigating their sexual identity with greater consistency than did the students unaware of a homosexual component.
Psychological Medicine, Feb 1, 1980
In an attempt to replicate findings reported by Slade (1976), 12 hallucinating and 12 non-halluci... more In an attempt to replicate findings reported by Slade (1976), 12 hallucinating and 12 non-hallucinating schizophrenic subjects were compared on tests of verbal ability, personality and mental imagery variables and the Verbal Transformation Effect. No significant difference between the groups was demonstrated. When the data from both groups of schizophrenics were combined, a significant correlation was found between 2 measures of the Verbal Transformation Effect and the P-score of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.
Psychological Medicine, 1980
SYNOPSISIn an attempt to replicate findings reported by Slade (1976), 12 hallucinating and 12 non... more SYNOPSISIn an attempt to replicate findings reported by Slade (1976), 12 hallucinating and 12 non-hallucinating schizophrenic subjects were compared on tests of verbal ability, personality and mental imagery variables and the Verbal Transformation Effect. No significant difference between the groups was demonstrated. When the data from both groups of schizophrenics were combined, a significant correlation was found between 2 measures of the Verbal Transformation Effect and the P-score of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.
Behaviour Research and Therapy, 1981
Ethical objections IO the use of behaviour therapy in homosexuality are discussed. It is pointed ... more Ethical objections IO the use of behaviour therapy in homosexuality are discussed. It is pointed out that these objections were often based on a limited view of the aims of the therapy. The need for evaluating such therapy. as it is currently used, is elaborated. Twenty subjects requesting behaviour therapy to reduce compulsive homosexual urges were randomly allocated. half to receive aversive therapy using electric shocks and half to receive covert sensitization. Both groups were studied for one year. There was no consistent trend for one therapy to be more effective than the other in reducing the strength of compulsive homosexuaf urges. and the response to both was similar to that reported in previous studies. It was considered that aversive therapies in homosexuality do not act by establishing a conditioned aversion, nor by altering the subjects' sexual orientation. They reduce aversive arousal produced by behaviour completion mechanisms when subjects attempt to refrain from homosexual behaviour in response to stimuli which have repeatedly provoked such behaviour in the past.
Psychological Medicine, 1977
SynopsisThe concept of allusive thinking is briefly reviewed and a Pavlovian model of thinking ad... more SynopsisThe concept of allusive thinking is briefly reviewed and a Pavlovian model of thinking advanced. It is hypothesized that allusive, as compared with non-allusive thinkers, have a broader but less intense attention process associated with weaker inhibition. From this model it was predicted that on word tests which require judgements of similarity of meaning, allusive thinkers would tend to choose more remote or unusual words as similar in meaning.The Word Halo Test and the Word Sorting Test were administered to 63 university students using the Object Sorting Test as a measure of allusive thinking. The prediction that allusive thinkers would choose more unusual words as similar in meaning was supported. A tendency for allusive thinkers to be more verbose than non-allusive thinkers was also noted.
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 1996
Elmer This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribut... more Elmer This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Psychological Medicine, 1978
SynopsisPrevious work suggests that allusive thinkers have a broader attentional process associat... more SynopsisPrevious work suggests that allusive thinkers have a broader attentional process associated with weak central inhibition. The method of dichotic stimulation was used to investigate this concept. Sixty-three university students completed a battery of tests including 2 dichotic listening tasks. The Object Sorting Test was used as a measure of allusive thinking.Allusive thinkers showed a trend towards impaired shadowing performance. Mislabelling of shadow as distractor words and vice versa, on recall and recognition tasks, showed the strongest correlation with allusive thinking. Such mislabelling was considered to reflect impaired discrimination learning, and provides further support for a hypothesis relating allusive thinking to weak Pavlovian central inhibition.
Auditory evoked potentials were recorded in healthy medical students who were grouped according t... more Auditory evoked potentials were recorded in healthy medical students who were grouped according to whether they obtained a high or low score on an Object Sorting Test (OST), on which schizophrenics also obtain high scores. High-OST scoring male students compared to Low-OST scoring male students showed reduced P200 latency. This finding was replicated in a second study of medical students. The authors believe these results support the hypothesis that schizophrenic thought disorder and an equivalent loosening of thinking in nonschizophrenic populations (allusive thinking) have a neurophysiological basis in common, namely a relative weakness of inhibition operating on cortical and subcortical structures.
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry., 1996
British Journal of Psychiatry., 1986
Psychological Medicine., 1978
Psychological Medicine, 1977
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 1994
Summary - Thirty-six patients with PTSD were randomly allocated to individual treatment with imag... more Summary -
Thirty-six patients with PTSD were randomly allocated to individual treatment with imaginal exposure (image habituation training - IHT), or applied muscle relaxation (AMR) or eye movement desensitization (EMD). Assessment by a blind independent rater and self-report instruments applied pre and posttreatment and at 3-month follow-up indicated that all groups improved significantly compared with a waiting list and that treatment benefits were maintained at follow-up. Despite a failure to demonstrate differences among groups, there was some suggestion that immediately after treatment EMD was superior for intrusive memories.
Behavior Modification, 1988
... The men gambling on poker machines spent several hours, three to seven days a week drinking a... more ... The men gambling on poker machines spent several hours, three to seven days a week drinking and playing the machines; most of the ... first, the eighth, and the final sessions of treatment, subjects completed percentage scale measures of the degree to which they felt their urge ...