Book Reviews Sándor Ferenczi: The Psychotherapist of Tenderness and Passion,by Arnold Wm. Rachman,Jason Aronson, 1997, 464 ps.

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

The good, the strong, and the accurate: preschoolers' evaluations of informant attributes

Much recent evidence shows that preschoolers are sensitive to the accuracy of an informant. Faced with two informants, one of whom names familiar objects accurately and the other inaccurately, preschoolers subsequently prefer to learn the names and functions of unfamiliar objects from the more accurate informant. This study examined the inference process underlying this preference. We asked whether preschoolers make narrow inferences about informants, broader trait-based inferences, or more global evaluative inferences. We further asked what inferences preschoolers make about a potential informant based on distinctions in the unrelated domain of physical strength. The results indicate that preschoolers make relatively narrow inferences when observing individual differences in accuracy even though they are prone to global evaluative inferences when observing individual differences in strength. Preschoolers’ burgeoning understanding of others as expert language users may underlie their selective endorsement of a more accurate informant.     

Health Status and Peer Relationships in Early Adolescence: The Role of Peer Contact, Self-esteem, and Social Anxiety

We examined associations between children’s health status and the quality of their peer relationships, as well as factors that may account for individual variation in the quality of chronically ill and healthy children’s peer relationships. Our sample included 268 children (138 boys; 130 girls) with 149 European-Americans and 119 African-Americans. There were 91 children with a chronic illness; 35 with asthma, 26 with diabetes, and 30 with obesity. Chronically ill children were characterized by teachers as displaying less prosocial behavior, less overt aggression, and less relational aggression with peers than healthy children. Chronically ill children reported lower levels of peer contact and higher levels of social anxiety than healthy children. Among chronically ill children those with high self-esteem were more prosocial and less aggressive than those with low self-esteem. Our findings suggest that chronically ill children are at risk for peer relationship difficulties, but that self-esteem may serve as a protective factor against poor peer relationships for some chronically ill children.     

The points of concepts: their types,tensions, and connections

ABSTRACT

In the literature seeking to explain concepts in terms of their point, talk of ‘the point’ of concepts remains under-theorised. I propose a typology of points which distinguishes practical, evaluative, animating, and inferential points. This allows us to resolve tensions such as that between the ambition of explanations in terms of the points of concepts to be informative and the claim that mastering concepts requires grasping their point; and it allows us to exploit connections between types of points to understand why they come apart, and whether they do so for problematic ideological reasons or for benignly functional reasons.     

The intercultural recognition of emotional expressions by three national racial groups: English,Italian and Japanese

Similar samples of English, Italian and Japanese subjects were asked to identify 8 emotional states and 4 interpersonal attitudes from video-taped expressions of 2 performers from each of these cultures. AN sets of judgements were above chance, except Italians judging Japanese. The Japanese subjects were no different from English and Italian subjects in recognition ability but the Japanese performances were harder to recognize supporting Ekman's theory of display rules; in fact all Japanese expressions were difficult to recognize, with the exception of happy-friendly. The Japanese (performers) make a clearer distinction between sad and depressed than other cultural groups, but did not distinguish between happy and friendly, or between angry and hostile.     

The Effects of Relaxation and Postural Training on External Perception: Improvement of Visual Acuity, Visual Field, and Hearing Acuity

This study examined the effects of muscular relaxation and postural training on external perception using a visual acuity test, a visual field test, and a hearing acuity test. Eighteen undergraduate students were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group underwent muscular relaxation and postural training. Each subject in this group was administered the tests before and after the training. Each subject in the control group carried out the tests before and after participating in a 30-min conversation with the experimenter. On all three tests, the experimental group improved significantly more than the control group.     

Category and perceptual interference in second-language phoneme learning: an examination of English /w/-/v/ learning by Sinhala, German, and Dutch speakers

The present study investigated the perception and production of English /w/ and /v/ by native speakers of Sinhala, German, and Dutch, with the aim of examining how their native language phonetic processing affected the acquisition of these phonemes. Subjects performed a battery of tests that assessed their identification accuracy for natural recordings, their degree of spoken accent, their relative use of place and manner cues, the assimilation of these phonemes into native-language categories, and their perceptual maps (i.e., multidimensional scaling solutions) for these phonemes. Most Sinhala speakers had near-chance identification accuracy, Germans ranged from chance to 100% correct, and Dutch speakers had uniformly high accuracy. The results suggest that these learning differences were caused more by perceptual interference than by category assimilation; Sinhala and German speakers both have a single native-language phoneme that is similar to English /w/ and /v/, but the auditory sensitivities of Sinhala speakers make it harder for them to discern the acoustic cues that are critical to /w/-/v/ categorization.     

The gender-stereotyped nature of christmas toys received by 36-, 48-, and 60-month-old children: A comparison between nonrequested vs requested toys

This research provides normative information on the gender-stereotyped nature of Christmas toys that children received from their parents. A list of over 500 toys was obtained from the parents of 86 children between the ages of 31 and 65 months. The toys were rated and placed into gender-stereotyped groups, and were categorized into child requested or nonrequested groups. It was found that the children had considerable input into the types of toys they received from their parents for Christmas, requesting approximately one half of the toys. Toys the children requested were judged to be more gender stereotyped than nonrequested toys. Very few boys received either requested or nonrequested toys considered stereotyped for the opposite sex. In contrast, one third of the girls received at least one toy judged to be stereotyped for the opposite sex. Also, boys appeared to develop sex-typed interests in toys at an earlier age than girls, and they requested 72%, 76%, and 75% gender-stereotyped toys in the corresponding age groups of 36-, 48-, and 60-months. The girls' sex-typed interests in toys lagged behind the boys', with girls requesting 29%, 51%, and 73% gender-stereotyped toys for the same age groups. In the nonrequested condition, parents selected types of toys judged to be traditionally more sex role neutral and emphasized musical instruments, art supplies, and educational toys for their sons and educational toys for their daughters.     

An Annotated Catalogue of Protestant Editions in English of Works by and Relating to Saint Augustine of Hippo, 1529-1700

Abstract

Adducing works attributed to Augustine in support of reformist doctrine dates back to Reformation beginnings, and in England early writers like Tyndale (Christian Obedience) and E. Fox (Determinations) appealed to him. In both cases, ancient authority is brought to bear on current issues. Such use of Augustine then and later is closely tied to contemporary events, making a clear understanding of the role of Augustine essential to interpretation of the period. Due to confusable names and variant spellings, an exact figure of editions of works connected with Augustine in English in the early modern era is not quite possible yet, but Early English Books Online (TCP) suggests up to 1000. The catalogue here is an annotated list of forty-four separate works in ninety-six editions which can fairly be described as ‘Protestant Augustinian'. These are either translations of his works, or texts substantially based on his works. Included is an appendix of a further ninety-four Protestant works in 209 editions in which a significant Augustinian element can be detected, a summary table of the pattern of publication of the items listed, and a brief survey of Augustine's English Protestant readership.