The work presents a computer-aided method of content analysis applicable to verbatim transcripts of psychotherapy: the Automated Co-occurrence Analysis for Semantic Mapping (ACASM). ACASM is able to perform a context-sensitive strategy of analysis aimed at mapping the meanings of the text through a trans-theoretical procedure. The paper is devoted to the presentation of the method and testing its validity. To the latter end we have compared ACASM and independent blind human coders on two tasks of content analysis: (a) estimating the semantic similarity between two utterances; (b) the semantic classification of a set of utterances. Results highlight that: (a) ACASM's estimates of semantic similarity are consistent with the corresponding estimates provided by coders; (b) coders' agreement and coder-ACASM agreement on the task of semantic classification have the same magnitude. Results lead to the conclusion that the content analysis produced by ACASM is indistinguishable from that performed by human coders.

The problem of the measurement of emotion is a widely debated one. In this article we propose an instrument, the Homogenization of Classification Functions Measure (HOCFUN), designed for assessing the influence of emotional arousal on a rating task consisting of the evaluation of a sequence of images. The instrument defines an indicator (κ) that measures the degree of homogenization of the ratings given over 2 rating scales (pleasant–unpleasant and relevant– irrelevant). Such a degree of homogenization is interpreted as the effect of emotional arousal on thinking and therefore lends itself to be used as a marker of emotional arousal. A preliminary study of validation was implemented. The association of the κ indicator with 3 additional indicators was analyzed. Consistent with the hypotheses, the κ indicator proved to be associated, even if weakly and nonlinearly, with a marker of the homogenization of classification functions derived from a separate rating task and with 2 indirect indicators of emotional activation: the speed of performance on the HOCFUN task and an indicator of mood intensity. Taken as a whole, such results provide initial evidence supporting the HOCFUN construct validity.

No validated instruments for assessing school users’ satisfaction are available. This paper means to contribute to address this lack. It outlines a new instrument of measurement of school users’ satisfaction – QUASUS (QUestionnaire for the Analysis of the School User’s Satisfaction). The main peculiarity of QUASUS lies in the fact that it pays specific attention to the dimension of prosumership, namely the view of the client-service co-constructive relation as a constitutive component of the service’s construction and delivery. The study reports the output of an initial validation study of the instrument. Based on two samples of parents (N = 2802 and N = 1365) from Italian schools, analyses provided support to the hypotheses tested: QUASUS proved to be characterized by a good level of reliability (HP1); is able to detect the component comprising the school users’ satisfaction (HP2); proves a global connotation of the experience of the school by a unidimensional measure of the overall satisfaction (HP3), associated significantly with the prosumership (HP4).

This study investigates the relationship between a client’s rate of speech (ROS) and emotional-cognitive regulation during a psychotherapy session. The ROS was measured in words per second on the timed transcript of a single session of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Emotional-cognitive regulation was assessed using the therapeutic cycles model on emotional tone (ET), abstraction (AB), and their combination in emotion-abstraction patterns (EAPs). The results were mostly consistent with our hypotheses and showed that: i) the ROS negatively correlated with the conjoined ET and AB; and ii) the ROS in the connecting EAP (high ET and high AB) was significantly lower than in other EAPs. The results support the hypothesis that a significant reduction in the client’s ROS may be a reliable marker of in-session change processes. Clinical implications and future developments are discussed.

Il lavoro illustra le 3 linee di lavoro nell’ambito della process research su cui si concentra l'interesse degli autori: A) l’analisi concettuale delle premesse teoriche e metodologiche che fondano la ricerca sullo scambio clinico; b) la definizione di un modello generale del processo clinico; C) lo sviluppo di strategie di analisi dello scambio clinico coerenti con tale modello generale. Ciascuna linea di sviluppo viene presentata e discussa in ragione dei suoi presupposti concettuali, di alcuni dei risultati rilevanti che ha prodotto, così come delle prospettive future ad essa associata.