Behavior-analytic repertoires: Where will they come from and how can they be maintained?

The field of behavior analysis faces a number of issues concerning its existence as a discipline and as a profession, including (a) identification of the knowledge and skills comprising the repertoire of competent behavior analysts, (b) the nature of the curricula that will produce the scientists and practitioners needed by the discipline, (c) identification of the generic professional and social skills required for any successful professional career, (d) academic employment opportunities for behavior analysts, and (e) the maintenance of behavior-analytic repertoires. Recommendations are offered as possible solutions to problems raised with respect to each of these issues.     

Developmental differences in working memory: Where do they come from?

Several models assume that working memory development depends on age-related increases in efficiency and speed of processing. However, age-related increases in the efficiency of the mechanisms that counteract forgetting and restore memory traces may also be important. This hypothesis was tested in three experiments by manipulating both the processing duration within a working memory task and the time available to restore memory traces. Third- and sixth-grade children performed a complex span task in which they maintained series of letters while adding numbers to series of digits. When we equated processing and restoration times between ages, the developmental difference in working memory span was reduced but remained significant. However, this residual difference was eliminated when the time available to reactivate memory traces was tailored to the processing speed of each age group. This indicates that children employ active mechanisms for maintenance and restoration of memory traces that develop with age.     

Twin-singleton differences in verbal ability: Where do they stem from?

In a follow-up investigation at age 9, the cognitive and social characteristics of 35 pairs of twins, studied previously at age 2, were compared with those of matched singletons at school. At age 2, twins' lower verbal ability compared with singletons' was attributed to lesser amount of speech by parents—seen as an outcome of the “twoness” of the “twin situation”—rather than to biological handicap or mother's education. At age 9, twins were equal to singletons in physical development and nonverbal ability, but the monozygotic (MZ)—not the dizygotic (DZ)—twins showed lower verbal ability. However, far more variance in verbal ability was accounted for by mother's education and birthweight than by twinship. In the long run, therefore, mothers' educational differences are more influential than the “twoness” of the “twin situation.”     

Incongruent object/context relationships in visual scenes: Where are they processed in the brain?

Rapid object visual categorization in briefly flashed natural scenes is influenced by the surrounding context. The neural correlates underlying reduced categorization performance in response to incongruent object/context associations remain unclear and were investigated in the present study using fMRI. Participants were instructed to categorize objects in briefly presented scenes (exposure duration = 100 ms). Half of the scenes consisted of objects pasted in an expected (congruent) context, whereas for the other half, objects were embedded in incongruent contexts. Object categorization was more accurate and faster in congruent relative to incongruent scenes. Moreover, we found that the two types of scenes elicited different patterns of cerebral activation. In particular, the processing of incongruent scenes induced increased activations in the parahippocampal cortex, as well as in the right frontal cortex. This higher activity may indicate additional neural processing of the novel (non experienced) contextual associations that were inherent to the incongruent scenes. Moreover, our results suggest that the locus of object categorization impairment due to contextual incongruence is in the right anterior parahippocampal cortex. Indeed in this region activity was correlated with the reaction time increase observed with incongruent scenes. Representations for associations between objects and their usual context of appearance might be encoded in the right anterior parahippocampal cortex.     

Are the Russians as Unhappy as they say they are?

Since the 1980s, several polls in Russia have included questions about happiness. The responses to these questions were quite similar. Average happiness was low in comparison to other nations and declined over time. Ten years after the fall of communism Russians are less happy than during the communist period.There are doubts about the validity of these self-reports. One source of doubt is that these data may not reflect Russians' self-appraisals adequately, due to distortions in translation and a differential response bias. A second misgiving is that true discontent could be rather superficial, and be largely due to unfavorable comparison with the West and folklore of negativism.These qualms are checked in this article. It appears that the Russians are as unhappy as they say they are, and that they have good reasons to be so. The current unhappiness is not due to the Russian national character, but has more to do with the troublesome transitions taking place in Russian society.     

Masked phonological priming effects in English: are they real? Do they matter?

For over 15 years, masked phonological priming effects have been offered as evidence that phonology plays a leading role in visual word recognition. The existence of these effects-along with their theoretical implications-has, however, been disputed. The authors present three sources of evidence relevant to an assessment of the existence and implications of these effects. First, they present an exhaustive meta-analytic literature review, in which they evaluate the strength of the evidence for masked phonological priming effects on English visual word processing. Second, they present two original experiments that demonstrate a small but significant masked priming effect on English visual lexical decision, which persists in conditions that may discourage phonological recoding. Finally, they assess the theory of visual word recognition offered by the DRC model (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001) in the context of their empirical data. Through numerous simulations with this model, they argue that masked phonological priming effects might best be captured by a weak phonological (i.e., dual-access) theory in which lexical decisions are made on the basis of phonological information.     

Where is here? When is now?1

With a Kleinian perspective influenced by Betty Joseph, the author describes the distinctive ‘here and now’ of a psychoanalysis as the place and the time of the patient’s inner subjective world as it emerges in the work of patient and analyst. This psychoanalytic ‘here’ and ‘now’ is examined with clinical material from the analysis of Mr X; first, with an account of the way his analysis begins and then through a detailed session five years later.The author identifies Mr X’s problems with place and time, and how these change over the course of the analysis. He moves from sequestered dyadic relationships towards an Oedipal and family space, and from disconnection and timelessness to acquiring a sense of duration, of being in the present with a past and a future – all of which, the paper aims to show, has implications for technique.     

Causal attributions of married couples: when do they search for causes? What do they conclude when they do?

In this study, we examined when and whether married people engage in attributional activity or form causal attributions to explain their partners' behavior. We used an indirect probe to better approximate naturally occurring cognitive activity. We also examined the content of spouses' causal attributions, using both direct and indirect probes. Spouses were asked about frequent as well as infrequent relationship events, and about partner behaviors that had positive or negative impacts on the recipient. Husbands in unsatisfying relationships reported more attributional thoughts than did happily married husbands, whereas wives in the two groups did not differ. Behaviors having negative impacts elicited more attributional activity than did positive behaviors. Behavioral frequency and impact interacted in ways contrary to predictions. Finally, distressed couples were particularly likely to report distress-maintaining attributions and were particularly unlikely to report relationship-enhancing attributions, compared with their nondistressed counterparts.     

Preschool Assessment: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?

This article reviews trends in the assessment of preschool children. Preschool assessment is compared with the assessment of other populations and early history, current status, recent advances, and future needs are discussed. Preschool assessment is seen as having both similarities with and important differences from other types of assessment. Though the last two decades have seen changes in models, procedures, and theories, it is concluded that much remains to be accomplished.     

Where Are All the Pragmatist Feminists?

Unlike our counterparts in Europe who have rewritten their specific cultural philosophical heritage, American feminists have not yet critically reappropriated our own philosophical tradition of classical American pragmatism. The neglect is especially puzzling, given that both feminism and pragmatism explicitly acknowledge the material or cultural specificity of supposedly abstract theorizing. In this article I suggest some reasons for the neglect, call for the rediscovery of women pragmatists, reflect on a feminine side of pragmatism, and point out some common features. The aim is to encourage the further development of a feminist revisioning of pragmatism and a pragmatist version of feminism.