The power of a musical instrument: Franklin, the Mozarts, Mesmer, and the glass armonica

In 1761 Benjamin Franklin invented the armonica (often referred to as the glass harmonica), an instrument designed to simplify the playing of the musical glasses. The instrument immediately became popular and inspired compositions by Wolfgang Mozart, who had the opportunity to hear and play one at the house of Franz Anton Mesmer. Armonica music was used by Mesmer in his séances, because he felt it could promote healing by propagating a mystical fluid that he called animal magnetism through the body. After Mesmer's theories were debunked by a highly respected panel of scientists, the armonica fell out of vogue. Because Franklin was on the panel that examined the discredited mesmerism, he indirectly contributed to his own invention's demise.     

An inquiry into the emotional impact of sight loss and the counselling experiences and needs of blind and partially sighted people

Background: The link between sight loss and depression is well documented. The UK Vision Strategy seeks to bring the emotional impact of sight loss into public awareness and improve access to emotional support for visually impaired people. However, dedicated counselling services for visually impaired people remain scarce, and research into the effectiveness of psychological interventions is predominantly anecdotal rather than evidence based. Aim: To explore the emotional impact of sight loss in four core areas (mood, self concept, social connectedness and loss), and to explore the counselling experiences and needs of blind and partially sighted adults. Method: Data were collected using the mental health and social functioning sub-scales of the National Eye Institute Visual Functioning Questionnaire-25 and semi-structured interviews transcribed and analysed using grounded theory. Results: Participants with a serious eye condition shared a common transition from sight to blindness, starting with diagnosis, coping with deterioration of sight, experiencing loss in different areas of life, experiencing changed perceptions of self in relation to society, experiencing others in a changed way and experiencing rehabilitation. A theoretical model describing the transition from sight to blindness is proposed. Participants reported negative perceptions of counselling and a lack of counselling opportunities in relation to their sight loss. Implications: The implications for policy and practice are discussed, particularly the need for counselling after diagnosis of visual impairment and the specific challenges facing those who deliver counselling to blind and partially sighted clients.     

Hiding in plain sight: Jung,astrology, and the psychology of the unconscious

Astrology was a lifelong interest for C.G. Jung and an important aid in his formulation of psyche and psychic process. Archetypally configured, astrology provided Jung an objective means to a fuller understanding of the analysand's true nature and unique individuation journey. Jung credits astrology with helping to unlock the mystery of alchemy and in so doing providing the symbol language necessary for deciphering the historically remote cosmology of Gnosticism. Astrology also aided Jung's work on synchronicity. Despite astrology's worth to Jung's development of analytical psychology, its fundamental role in guiding his discoveries is all but absent from historical notice. The astrological natal chart seems rarely used clinically, and many clinicians seem unaware of its value as a dynamic diagram of the personality and the potentialities within which nature and nurture foster and/or discourage for individual growth and development over the lifespan. This paper charts Jung's interest in astrology and suggests why his great regard for it and other paranormal or occult practices remains largely neglected and unknown.     

Perspective taking, pictures, and the blind

Congenitally blind, late blind, and blindfolded sighted controls attempted a Piagetian perspective-taking (three-mountain) task. Piaget used the term perspective to mean point of view (Piaget & Inhelder, 1967, p. 210), and the present usage does not imply linear perspective. Subjects used raised-line drawings to depict alternative points of view of an array of three geometric solid forms (cube, cone, and ball). They then identified the point of view of raised-line drawings. The effect of visual status on accuracy was nonsignificant for both response measures. Using alternating vision of the array and drawings, sighted subjects in a control condition performed like the congenitally blind. However, congenitally blind individuals did require more time than the other subjects for the perspective-taking task. In an additional experiment, no difference was found between the three groups in the accuracy or speed of tactile shape matching. The results suggest that visual imagery and visual experience are not necessary for tactile perspective taking.     

The eec, eye-movements and dreams of the blind

It was found that characteristic frontal EEG waves significantly often precede the rapid eye movements of dreaming. The rapid eye movements were absent during dream periods of three men with life-long blindness, and of two men, 30 and 40 years blind respectively, but were present during dream periods in three men blind only 3, 10 and 15 years respectively.     

Work-related stress, the blind men and the elephant

Progress in understanding and developing effective responses to work-related stress has been elusive, patchy, and inconsistent. The reasons for this are reviewed, and the inadequacy of traditional stress management techniques and organisational interventions to tackle it are examined. Although necessary, clinical responses to distressed individuals and organisations in isolation can never deal effectively with the overall increasing levels of stress found. Neither can attempts to 'fit' individuals to cope with ever more demanding work patterns and practices. The reviewed evidence suggests that an integrated approach that acknowledges how social, economic, political, and organisational factors impact on individual needs and values is needed. This integrated approach is described, with its required input from communities and politicians, as well as occupational health specialists. The article concludes that work-related stress is the result of complex psychosocial interactions that simply cannot be effectively understood or treated by any one professional group or theoretical approach.     

Losing sight of oneself in the above-average effect: When egocentrism, focalism, and group diffuseness collide

Four experiments examined the relative influence of three causal processes in the above-average effect (AAE) and related comparative biases: (a) egocentrism, (b) focalism, and (c) referent group diffuseness. By manipulating the inclusion or exclusion of the self from the referent group (Experiments 1-3) or target group (Experiment 4), the relative contributions of each influence were assessed. In direct comparisons, single peers were systematically judged more favorably relative to groups including the self, suggesting that egocentrism plays a lesser role than focalism or group diffuseness. Thus, in response to the question such as “How friendly is Nancy compared to the rest of us?” the answer tends to be “More friendly.”     

Picture and pattern perception in the sighted and the blind: the advantage of the late blind

Two experiments are reported on the contribution of visual experience to tactile perception. In the first experiment, sighted, congenitally blind, and late blind individuals made tactual matches to tangible embossed shapes. In the second experiment, the same subjects attempted tactile identification of raised-line drawings. The three groups did not differ in the accuracy of shape matching, but both groups of blind subjects were much faster than the sighted. Late blind observers were far better than the sighted or congenitally blind at tactile picture identification. Four of the twelve pictures were correctly identified by most of the late blind subjects. The sighted and congenitally blind performed at comparable levels in picture naming. There was no evidence that visual experience alone aided the sighted in the tactile task under investigation, since they performed no better than did the early blind. The superiority of the late blind suggests that visual exposure to drawings and the rules of pictorial representation may help tactile picture identification when combined with a history of tactual experience.     

Out of sight,out of mind: Occlusion and the accessibility of information in narrative comprehension

Do readers encode the perceptual perspectives of characters during narrative comprehension? To address this question, we conducted two experiments using stories that sometimes described situations in which certain information was occluded from the protagonists’ views. We generated two related hypotheses concerning the potential impact of occlusion events on text representations. One, theevent boundary hypothesis, suggested that any salient narrative event would reduce the accessibility of prior story information. The second, theperceptual availability hypothesis, suggested that accessibility would decrease most for information no longer visible to story protagonists. In Experiment 1, the participants were slowest to respond to verification questions that asked about occluded information. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that this effect did not extend to other, nonoccluded information. These results suggest that readers encode text information from the perceptual perspective of story protagonists. This is consistent with recent perceptual symbol views of language comprehension.     

Written expression, Hooper, and blind rating

Much research has supported the assertion of Hooper, et al.'s 1994 claims that specific stimuli perform better than others in eliciting well-developed written responses; however, previous research was conducted with raters who were aware of the hypotheses. The present study of 29 middle school children validated previous support for Hooper, et al.'s assertions by implementing blind rating and, once again, finding that significant differences between Hooper-like and non-Hooper-like prompts existed for structural items but not for items of mechanics.     

Discrimination of size by sight and tough

The experiment was designed to discover whether accuracy of discrimination differs when the discrimination is made in only one sense from when it is made across two senses. The evidence produced by the experiment does not warrant one to conclude that such a difference exists. The absence of such differences has been considered in relation to more general perceptual problems.     

Binocular rivalry and semantic processing: out of sight, out of mind

Previous studies of binocular rivalry have shown that some aspects of a phenomenally suppressed stimulus remain available for visual analysis. The question remains, however, whether this analysis extends to the case of semantic information. This experiment examines that question using a semantic-priming paradigm in which prime words were briefly flashed to an eye during either dominance or suppression phases of binocular rivalry. Reaction times on a lexical-decision task were significantly shortened (the semantic-priming effect) only when prime words were presented to an eye during dominance; suppression acted to impair word recognition and to eliminate semantic priming. These results are inconsistent with certain cognitive models of binocular rivalry.