A note on temporal relations between language and gestures

The initiation of the spontaneous gestures of Wernicke's aphasics was analyzed in relation to shifts in semantic content between the syntactic boundaries of main clauses and embedded clauses. Gestures proved more likely to arise at the initial boundaries of embedded clauses when these were semantically discontinuous with the main clause than when these were semantically related to the main clause. Spontaneous gestures may signal underlying shifts in semantic intention, thereby reflecting the difficulties encountered by Wernicke's aphasics in maintaining a coherent stream of thought across syntactic boundaries.     

A note on the relationship between graphs and information protocols

Information protocols (IP’s) were developed to describe players who learn their social situation by their experiences. Although IP’s look similar to colored multi-graphs (MG’s), the two objects are constructed in fundamentally different ways. IP’s are constructed using the global concept of history, whereas graphs are constructed using the local concept of edges. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for each theory to be captured by the other. We find that the necessary and sufficient condition for IP theory to be captured by MG theory, which we call SE, excludes relevant game situations. Hence, we conclude that IP theory remains a vital tool and cannot be replaced by MG theory.     

A note on the relationship between graphs and information protocols

Information protocols (IP’s) were developed to describe players who learn their social situation by their experiences. Although IP’s look similar to colored multi-graphs (MG’s), the two objects are constructed in fundamentally different ways. IP’s are constructed using the global concept of history, whereas graphs are constructed using the local concept of edges. We give necessary and sufficient conditions for each theory to be captured by the other. We find that the necessary and sufficient condition for IP theory to be captured by MG theory, which we call SE, excludes relevant game situations. Hence, we conclude that IP theory remains a vital tool and cannot be replaced by MG theory.

     

A note on the relation between area and intensity in taste

Taste thresholds as a function of area previously published [Hara, 1955) are reanalyzed and found to be described better by the hyperbolic relation C×Aⁿ=k than an exponential equation. The exponent. n, and the constant, k, were found to differ among taste compounds.     

A note on relations between trait and state measures of arousal

Analysis of Eysenck Personality Inventory measures of personality and measures of mood obtained by the Nowlis Mood Adjective Check List revealed four main factors. Neuroticism was associated with a cluster of mood variables related to anxiety and depression and extraversion to a cluster related to self -confidence, but not to activation. Implications for the use of these measures in cognitive and other research are indicated.     

A note on the interference between verbal output and a cognitive task

Verbal output has been shown to depress cognitive performance. Examining the durations of speech and silence in a secondary verbal task suggests that the processing load even of practiced speech is sufficient to limit the parallel processing of a cognitive task forcing serial processing during the silent gaps in speech.     

A note on a seventeenth-century distinction between feral man and man-like apes

A critical examination of a passage from a text by Athanasius Kircher in 1667 indicates that a distinction between feral man and man-like apes had been made on lines compatible with contemporary views almost a century before Linnaeus produced a classification which led to many years of controversy.     

A note on notes: note taking and containment

In extreme situations of massive projective identification, both the analyst and the patient may come to share a fantasy or belief that his or her own psychic reality will be annihilated if the psychic reality of the other is accepted or adopted (Britton 1998). In the example of' Dr. M and his patient, the paradoxical dilemma around note taking had highly specific transference meanings; it was not simply an instance of the generalized human response of distracted attention that Freud (1912) had spoken of, nor was it the destabilization of analytic functioning that I tried to describe in my work with Mr. L. Whether such meanings will always exist in these situations remains a matter to be determined by further clinical experience. In reopening a dialogue about note taking during sessions, I have attempted to move the discussion away from categorical injunctions about what analysis should or should not do, and instead to foster a more nuanced, dynamic, and pair-specific consideration of the analyst's functioning in the immediate context of the analytic relationship. There is, of course, a wide variety of listening styles among analysts, and each analyst's mental functioning may be affected differently by each patient whom the analyst sees. I have raised many questions in the hopes of stimulating an expanded discussion that will allow us to share our experiences and perhaps reach additional conclusions. Further consideration may lead us to decide whether note taking may have very different meanings for other analysts and analyst-patient pairs, and whether it may serve useful functions in addition to the one that I have described.