Intimacy, concreteness, and the "self-reference effect"

Reference to oneself during incidental learning of words frequently results in better recall performance than reference to other persons. However, this effect occurs under different conditions with differing strength, and sometimes it is even reversed. Meta-analyses and further experimental studies suggest that increased recall performance under a self-referential encoding task occurs only if it is compared with a nonintimate other person and if abstract material is presented, irrespective of the type of previously presented words (adjectives or nouns). In the current paper, two experiments are reported which support the assumption that this intimacy effect on memory only occurs if no pictorial or concrete features of the material (nouns) to be learned can be exploited for an improvement in encoding or remembering the material. All results agree with predicted effect sizes, which were drawn from a meta-analysis and subsequently conducted experimental studies. This suggests that a recall advantage of referring to oneself compared to other persons is subordinate to the effects of concreteness or imageability. Moreover, the current results offer a theoretical explanation of some previously reported but nevertheless puzzling results from imagery instructions, which indicate decreased recall performance for self-reference compared to other-reference.     

"Lesbians, gay men, and their parents": a critique of LaSala and the prevailing clinical "wisdom"

This article challenges the popular assumption that coming out to family of origin is important for lesbians and gay men's mental health and couple relationships. First, I present theory emphasizing the unique position of lesbians/gays in families of origin and the significance of "families of choice." Second, I review the quantitative research on social support received by lesbians/gays from family of origin, friends, and other social network sources. Third, I demonstrate how the dominant clinical opinion about coming out to family is based on an unwarranted use of theory developed for heterosexuals and on overgeneralization of findings from studies of white, upper-middle-class, North American lesbians/gays. Fourth, I propose five determinants of lesbian/gay persons' decisions to come out to family-of-origin members. Fifth, I argue that such decisions are constrained by "realistic" costs/benefits in various sociocultural niches rather than being a simple function of individuals' levels of differentiation. Lastly, I offer an expanded contextual stance for the family therapist working with lesbian/gay clients.     

Mahler's concepts of "symbiosis" and separation-individuation: revisited, reevaluated, refined

Mahler's developmental theories are reviewed in the light of subsequent clinical experience and theoretical and empirical critique. Several modifications are proposed, each tending to particularize and focus the nature and scope of developmental events. Particular attention is accorded the "symbiosis" concept, and focus placed on transmission of psychodynamic issues from mother to infant and on the progressive buildup of self-sustaining pathological systems. Overall, an argument is advanced for the continued developmental import of Mahler's "symbiotic" and "separation-individuation" phase formulations, though with recognition of significant individual differences in their role in individual lives. An argument is advanced also for the clinical utility of these ideas, and illustrations presented, though the link between clinical applications and psychoanalytic theories of early development remains problematic.     

"But still, it moves"

A striking example of our sensitivity to dynamic information is our ability to infer motion from still images depicted in paintings, photographs or cartoons. What are the neural mechanisms that mediate this implied motion perception? In a recent paper, Krekelberg et al. demonstrate that form cues that imply motion are integrated with real motion information, and influence perception in both humans and monkeys and the neural processing in prototypical motion areas of the monkey brain.     

When the "I" looks at the "Me": autobiographical memory, visual perspective, and the self

This article presents a theoretical model of the self processes involved in autobiographical memories and proposes competing hypotheses for the role of visual perspective in autobiographical memory retrieval. Autobiographical memories can be retrieved from either the 1st person perspective, in which individuals see the event through their own eyes, or from the 3rd person perspective, in which individuals see themselves and the event from the perspective of an external observer. A growing body of research suggests that the visual perspective from which a memory is retrieved has important implications for a person’s thoughts, feelings, and goals, and is integrally related to a host of self-evaluative processes. We review the relevant research literature, present our theoretical model, and outline directions for future research.     

Stressful life events, bipolar disorder, and the "kindling model"

A common misconception is that bipolar disorder is an endogenous process. However, previous research suggests a role for life events in the onset of and recovery from bipolar episodes. Yet, there remains some question as to whether the relationship between life events and onset changes over the course of the disorder as a result of the number of episodes an individual has experienced. Using a rigorous interview measure of stressful life events, the current study tested the kindling model (R. M. Post, 1992), which theorizes that major life events play a diminishing role over the course of illness in bipolar patients. Analyses revealed that the number of episodes experienced does not appear to have a significant effect on bipolar 1 patients' reactivity to external stressors. In addition, the results suggest that a more complex relationship exists among age, stress, and onset of new episodes than can be adequately explained by the kindling model.     

The influence of "preparedness" on autoshaping, schedule performance, and choice.

Two groups of experimentally naive pigeons were exposed to an autoshaping procedure in which the response key was mounted on the wall (the conventional location) or on the floor of the chamber. In two experiments, subjects readily responded to the wall key, but floor-key subjects required shaping. A subsequent experiment compared performance of wall- and floor-key groups on an ascending series of fixed-ratio schedule values, resistance to extinction, differential reinforcement of other behavior, and reversal of key assignment. Each experiment was followed by several sessions of fixed-ratio training; the performance of the wall- and floor-key groups was almost identical throughout. In the final experiment, a fixed-ratio requirement could be completed on either or both keys. Birds initially chose the key on which they had responded during the preceding (reversal of key assignment) experiment. However, within a few sessions both groups showed almost exclusive preference for the floor key. Preference for a key located on the floor may follow from the fact that pigeons are ground feeders and may thus be more "prepared" to peck the floor than to peck a wall. However, autoshaping, under the conditions prevailing here, occurred much more readily to the wall key, suggesting that pecking a vertical surface is more highly prepared. Difficulties in determining relative preparedness seem moot, however, given the lack of between-group differences in the intervening experiments. It is thus unlikely that schedule performances critically depend upon the specific operant response involved.     

CICERO, AMBROSE, AND AQUINAS "ON DUTIES"OR THE LIMITS OF GENRE IN MORALS

To compose a Christian book on exemplary Christian living, Ambrose appropriates and criticizes Cicero's book on “duties,”De officiis. In many passages within the moral part of his Summa of Theology, Thomas Aquinas incorporates quotations from both Cicero and Ambrose. Comparison of the three texts raises issues about the relation of genres to terms, arguments, rules, and ideals in religious teaching. Genre becomes a useful category for analyzing religious rhetoric only when it is conceived as a set of persuasive or pedagogical relations below a text's surface disposition.     

"Roadblocks" revisited: neural change, stuttering treatment, and recovery from stuttering

In light of emerging findings concerning untreated recovery and neural plasticity, this paper re-examines the viability of an NIH conference recommendation [Cooper, J. A. (1990). Research directions in stuttering: Consensus and conflict. In Cooper, J. A. (Ed.), Research needs in stuttering: Roadblocks and future directions (pp. 98-100). Rockville, MD: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.] that adults who have recovered from stuttering might inform our understanding of the nature and treatment of persistent stuttering. It is suggested that those who have recovered could constitute a behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiologic benchmark for evaluating stuttering treatment for adolescents and adults, while helping to identify the limits of recovery from a persistent disorder. This possibility seems especially promising because of findings from recent studies investigating untreated recovery during childhood and adulthood, the emerging evidence concerning neural plasticity and reorganization, and reports of neural system changes during stuttering treatment. Potential obstacles to applying findings from unassisted recovery to treatment do exist, but the benefits of attempts to fully understand stuttering certainly outweigh the difficulties. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: After completing this activity, the learner will be able to: (1) describe two complexities involved in determining whether recovery from stuttering was assisted or unassisted; (2) discuss the implications for stuttering research of two neural plasticity research findings from areas other than stuttering; and (3) evaluate the possible implications for stuttering treatment of a coordinated research program that addresses behavioral, cognitive, and neurological characteristics of assisted and unassisted recovery from stuttering.     

Social Capital, Television, and the "Mean World": Trust, Optimism, and Civic Participation

Robert Putnam argues that much of the decline in social trust and civic engagement in the United States can be attributed to increased television viewing. People who watch a lot of television are likely to believe that the real world is as "mean" as the "television world," and hence withdraw their trust from other people and decline to participate in civic affairs. Using data from the GSS and other surveys, I show that it is not television that makes people less trusting, but optimism for the future that makes people more trusting. When measures of optimism were used as determinants of trust in the estimation of a simultaneous equation model, the effects of television vanished. There is no support for the argument that television makes us less trusting because of the content of the shows we watch, or for the argument that television makes us withdraw from civic engagement because of the amount of time consumed by viewing. In addition, no evidence for specific cohort effects was found.     

With great expectations, can two "wrongs" prime a "right"?

The proportion of related prime-target pairs (relatedness proportion, RP) and prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was varied to determine the involvement of strategic priming mechanisms in the reduction in semantic priming that occurs when a target follows an unmasked prime that itself receives immediate repetition priming from a masked prime. At 300-ms and 1,200-ms SOAs, (a) strategic semantic priming was operating, in that priming from a nonrepeated prime increased as RP increased from .25 to .75, and (b) for both RPs, prime repetition reduced semantic priming. At a 167-ms SOA, (a) priming from a nonrepeated prime was unaffected by RP, suggesting that strategic priming was not operating, and (b) for both RPs, prime repetition did not reduce semantic priming. Because prime repetition did not reduce priming at the 167-ms SOA (when only spreading activation should have been mediating semantic priming), the reduction in semantic priming produced by prime repetition is not evidence against spreading activation automaticity. Possible mechanisms through which prime repetition reduces semantic priming are discussed.     

Features versus redundancy: comments on Massaro, Venezky, and Taylor's "Orthographic regularity, positional frequency, and visual processing of letter strings"

Massaro, Venezky, and Taylor (1979) found only a modest effect of familiarity on letter search, apparently because they pitted pseudowords (rather than real words) against nonwords and used lowercase rather than uppercase letters. Precuing the target letter seemed to reduce the familiarity effect they found yet further, but this conclusion is clouded by the fact that reaction time data were compared with accuracy data. Because similarity between target and nontarget letters tended to have more of an effect when familiarity had less of an effect. Massaro et al. proposed a successive model, with features being detected in the first stage and orthographic structure being used in a second stage. However, a concurrent model, with a self-terminating race between lower and higher level processes, can account for the data just as well. Data from Massaro et al. and from Krueger decisively demonstrate that there is a familiarity effect based on sequential redundancy over and above any effect based on spatial redundancy (Mason 1975). The Massaro et al. data also indicate that the relative familiarity effect is constant across various age groups (Krueger, Keen & Rublevich, 1974).     

"A new deal for the drug addict": the Addiction Research Center, Lexington, Kentucky

This article describes the social organization of knowledge production in the formative moments of the substance abuse research enterprise. It describes the institutional arrangements and material conditions of a U.S. Public Health Service laboratory that was housed in a facility run jointly with the federal Bureau of Prisons. The Addiction Research Center (ARC) in Lexington, Kentucky, was dedicated to elucidating the basic underlying mechanisms of drug addiction. The ARC was housed on the rural campus of a prison-hospital called "Narco," one of two "narcotics farms" in Lexington, Kentucky, and Fort Worth, Texas. For its studies on drug effects, the ARC had access to a pool of drug-experienced human subjects drawn from the ranks of convicted felons. Given their unparalleled access to human subjects, the scientists who worked at the ARC made conceptual contributions still acknowledged today. Based on archival work as well as dozens of oral history interviews with individuals who began their research careers at Lexington, the article presents an analytic, intellectual history of the early work of Abraham Wikler, whose lifelong pursuit of the underlying mechanisms of opiate addiction led him to hypothesize the role of conditioning in relapse, as an exemplar of the kind of scientific research that depended on closely listening to and observing "post-addicts," as subject participants were called.     

"A coherent datum of perception": Gordon Allport, Floyd Allport, and the politics of "personality"

This paper examines Floyd and Gordon Allport's early work on "personality" psychology. In the early 1920s, personality was an unorthodox topic, and for the Allports it initially served as an intellectual and personal bond. Floyd proposed the subject to his brother as a dissertation topic, and the two worked closely on developing personality tests. By 1924, however, "personality" had become the site of a dispute between the two brothers over the intellectual and methodological character of American psychology. The present study examines the origins of this dispute, while gauging the personal and professional ramifications of the dispute. On a larger level, this essay explores the role and meaning of "personality" in the academic culture of 1920s America.     

Memories of "Bad" Days Are More Biased Than Memories of "Good" Days: Past Saturdays Vary, but Past Mondays Are Always Blue

In a survey of 202 participants, Monday was cited most frequently as the worst morning (65%) and evening (35%); whereas Friday (43%) and Saturday (45%) were the best evening and morning, respectively. Test–retest reliability was higher for worst morning (.89) and evening (.83) judgments, compared to best morning (.44) and evening (.61) judgments. In a second survey of 353 participants, ratings of typical moods were lowest on Monday, rising to a peak on Saturday, but actual momentary moods showed little or no variation by day. Remembered moods from the previous Monday were more strongly related to typical moods than to actual moods, but the reverse was true of remembered moods from the previous Friday and Saturday.     

"La manie d'ecrire": psychology, auto-observation, and case history

This essay examines the modern psychiatric case study as a scientific method and as a genre of writing about the self. As psychological discourse became a privileged language of selfhood at the fin de siècle, the penultimate signifier of the self came to be found in the realm of sexuality, in the particular contours of an individual's sexual desire. The investigative tool used to uncover these secrets of identity was the case history. This article concerns an influential project of sexual research based on "auto-observations"-autobiographical patient narratives-conducted by Dr. Georges Saint-Paul, who published under the inverted pseudonym "Laupts." The article focuses on the central autobiography of his collection, the "roman d'un inverti," and related sexological literature to suggest how this emphasis on patient stories in psychiatric writing engendered new narrative possibilities for doctors and patients alike. Putting patient stories at the center of psychiatric investigation created a new relationship between patient and doctor, observation and diagnosis, subject and discourse. The tools of psychological observation simultaneously placed a subject's confession more firmly at the center of the investigation and made it more open to interpretation by nonspecialists. Rather than simply confirming the authority of the trained observer, the story of Laupts's enquête suggests that the method actually authorized inquiry by others.     

The founding of the psychological laboratory, University College London: "Dear Galton...yours truly, J Sully"

The events leading up to the founding of the Psychological Laboratory at University College London are examined in the light of correspondence from James Sully to Francis Galton. The correspondence reveals the dependence of Sully on Galton for detailed advice at every stage of the process, possible reasons for which are discussed. It also provides sufficient clues to enable identification of a hitherto anonymous donor. Although Galton may have inspired and advised on the initial setting up of the laboratory, his influence on its work did not become apparent until after his death.     

"It's time, you must wake up now".

Seven subjects who claimed to be able to awake accurately from sleep at a predetermined time were required to awake in the sleep laboratory at 03:30 and 05:30 on two separate nights. Eight of the 12 spontaneous awakenings were within +/- 20 min. from the target time, and 8 awakenings were from REM sleep. The two best performing subjects were tested for additional 7 nights in the laboratory but accuracy deteriorated considerably with only 2 awakenings within +/- 20 min. from target time. Approximately 50% of all awakenings, however, were from REM sleep. It is concluded that some individuals are able to awake at predetermined times and that this ability might be dependent on motivational level and the sleep stage.     

Collaborative Teaching and Making Sense of Symbols: Comment on Lampert's "Knowing,Doing, and Teaching Multiplication"

Despite the progress research in cognitive science has made in the last few decades, it remains a challenge to demonstrate important practical benefits of this research. Too often it seems that the practical implications researchers can draw from their theories are either obvious to experienced practitioners or have small or tenuous effects in the real world. The article by Chandler and Sweller (1991) contrasts dramatically to this customary state of affairs: They apparently have found a simple characteristic of instructional materials that has dramatic effects on performance in real-world tasks. However, their article raises a number of deeper questions regarding the relation between research and application that will be the focus of this commentary. I argue that the best way to generate important practical results is to develop and test theories of mental processing that are concerned with variables and tasks that are important in the real world. Chandler and Sweller have not taken this approach, and this may limit the implications that can be drawn from their results.     

Fine-Tuning, Multiple Universes, and the "This Universe" Objection

Abstract: When it is suggested that the fine-tuning of the universe for life provides evidence for a cosmic designer, the multiple-universe hypothesis is often presented as an alternative. Some philosophers object that the multiple-universe hypothesis fails to explain why this universe is fine-tuned for life. We suggest the "This Universe" objection is no better than the "This Planet" objection. We also fault proponents of the "This Universe" objection for presupposing that we could not have existed in any other universe and that the values of the free parameters of the Universe could have been different. Lastly, we reflect on why fine-tuning for life needs explaining