Unconsciously induced song recall: The process of unintentional rather than so-called spontaneous evocations of music

Summary and Conclusions This paper has presented the basis for a reformulation of the traditional psychoanalytic usage of the termspontaneous evocations. Illustrated with a supervisory example, I have argued for a return to Freud’s original use of the wordunintentional or to equivalent synonyms. The process whereby such unexpected music evocations appear in consciousness has been termed “unconsciously induced song recall.” The role of serendipity in this theoretical reformulation will be addressed separately (see Díaz de Chumaceiro, 1995; Díaz de Chumaceiro and Yáber, 1994). Like dreams, music evocations can be subjected to analysis and interpretation, if when recalled by indirect or direct induction in treatment they are mentioned to the therapist. This baisc principle of induced recall can be generalized to evocations of the art world at large. Cora L. Díaz de Chumaceiro, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Caracas, Venezuela. She is also Editorial Board Member ofThe Arts in Psychotherapy.     

Heidegger’s Temple: How Truth Happens When Nothing is Portrayed

In his essay The Origin of the Work of Art, Martin Heidegger discusses three examples of artworks: a painting by Van Gogh of peasant shoes, a poem about a Roman fountain, and a Greek temple. The new entry on Heidegger’s aesthetics in the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy, written by Iain Thomson, focuses on this essay, and Van Gogh’s painting in particular. It argues that Heidegger uses Van Gogh’s painting to set art, as the happening of truth, in relation to ‘nothing’, which is a key term in Heidegger’s essays leading up to The Origin of the Work of Art. This paper extends a similar analysis to the Greek temple as a way of offering an exposition of Heidegger’s concerns in the essay. It begins by briefly outlining Thomson’s argument that Heidegger relates Van Gogh’s painting to ‘nothing’, and indicating the way this argument can be extended to the Greek temple. It then discusses three ways in which ‘nothing’ can open up the significance of the temple as a work of art in which truth happens: (1) it is not concerned with objective representation; (2) it depicts the primal strife of earth and world, concealing and unconcealing; (3) it is fundamentally historical.     

Pigeons can discriminate “good” and “bad” paintings by children

Humans have the unique ability to create art, but non-human animals may be able to discriminate “good” art from “bad” art. In this study, I investigated whether pigeons could be trained to discriminate between paintings that had been judged by humans as either “bad” or “good”. To do this, adult human observers first classified several children’s paintings as either “good” (beautiful) or “bad” (ugly). Using operant conditioning procedures, pigeons were then reinforced for pecking at “good” paintings. After the pigeons learned the discrimination task, they were presented with novel pictures of both “good” and “bad” children’s paintings to test whether they had successfully learned to discriminate between these two stimulus categories. The results showed that pigeons could discriminate novel “good” and “bad” paintings. Then, to determine which cues the subjects used for the discrimination, I conducted tests of the stimuli when the paintings were of reduced size or grayscale. In addition, I tested their ability to discriminate when the painting stimuli were mosaic and partial occluded. The pigeons maintained discrimination performance when the paintings were reduced in size. However, discrimination performance decreased when stimuli were presented as grayscale images or when a mosaic effect was applied to the original stimuli in order to disrupt spatial frequency. Thus, the pigeons used both color and pattern cues for their discrimination. The partial occlusion did not disrupt the discriminative behavior suggesting that the pigeons did not attend to particular parts, namely upper, lower, left or right half, of the paintings. These results suggest that the pigeons are capable of learning the concept of a stimulus class that humans name “good” pictures. The second experiment showed that pigeons learned to discriminate watercolor paintings from pastel paintings. The subjects showed generalization to novel paintings. Then, as the first experiment, size reduction test, grayscale test, mosaic processing test and partial occlusion test were carried out. The results suggest that the pigeons used both color and pattern cues for the discrimination and show that non-human animals, such as pigeons, can be trained to discriminate abstract visual stimuli, such as pictures and may also have the ability to learn the concept of “beauty” as defined by humans.     

Mother,Melancholia, and Art in Erik H. Erikson’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Toys and Reasons</Emphasis>

In three earlier articles (2007a, 2007b, 2007c), I focused on the theme of the relationship of melancholia and the mother, and suggested that the melancholic self may experience humor, play, and dreams as restorative resources. In this article, I want to make a similar case, based on Erik H. Erikson’s Toys and Reasons (1977), for art (in this particular case, a painting of the Annunciation). I have made a similar case for the restorative role of art in articles on Leonard da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (Capps, Pastoral Psychology, 53, 107–137, 2004) and James McNeill Whistler’s painting of his mother (Capps, Pastoral Psychology, 2007d). In the present article, however, I focus on the special biographical circumstances in Erikson’s own development of a melancholy self and the painting he discusses in Toys and Reasons, thereby suggesting that individuals may find a particular work of art especially relevant to their own experience of melancholy. I conclude with Erikson’s testimonial at the memorial service of a colleague and friend who translated her own melancholy into her service to others.

Part-list cuing and the dynamics of false recall

False recall of an unpresented critical word after studying its semantic associates can be reduced substantially if the strongest and earliest-studied associates are presented as part-list cues during testing (Kimball & Bjork, 2002). To disentangle episodic and semantic contributions to this decline in false recall, we factorially manipulated the cues’ serial position and their strength of association to the critical word. Presenting cues comprising words that had been studied early in a list produced a greater reduction in false recall than did presenting words studied late in the list, independent of the cues’ associative strength, but only when recall of the cues themselves was prohibited. When recall of the cues was permitted, neither early-studied nor late-studied cues decreased false recall reliably, relative to uncued lists. The findings suggest that critical words and early-studied words share a similar fate during recall, owing to selective episodic strengthening of their associations during study.     

Diego Duarte <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">ii</Emphasis> (1612–1691): a <Emphasis Type="Italic">converso</Emphasis>’s experience in seventeenth-century Antwerp

From the early sixteenth century onward, many conversos or New Christians left Spain and Portugal and went to Antwerp. One member of the converso community in Antwerp was Diego Duarte ii (1612–1691). Diego Duarte ran a thriving jewel business and had a large commercial network. He was also a highly cultured man, who forged many friendships through his love for music and paintings. Antwerp was, however, still off-limits for Jews. This article seeks to explore Diego’s professional, religious and, in particular, his artistic background seen against the place and time in which he lived.     

Desired,Repeated, Replaced: Power and Loss in Titian’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Noli Me Tangere</Emphasis>

The depiction of larger unconscious symbols, such as popular Gospel themes, can become particularized through the individual experience of the artist. They can express sublimated desires or displaced wishes, disguised like dream-elements in a work of art. Classical Freudian theory explores the process of sublimation and dream-work as two sides of the psychoanalytic interpretation of art. Titian’s Noli Me Tangere represents his efforts to sublimate his sexual and aggressive drives through this Gospel theme. It also suggests his Oedipal feelings of love and competition for his mentor Giorgione, as he anxiously maneuvered to take his mentor’s place. The death of his mentor and his own anxiety are worked out in his art, exemplified by his appropriation of Giorgione’s style and the repetition of Giorgione’s landscapes in Titian’s early work. As Titian reworked and radically changed this painting, he expressed his own ambivalence through this most ambivalent of Gospel scenes.     

Revisiting backward recall and benchmark memory effects: a reply to Bireta et al. (2010)

When participants are asked to recall lists of items in the reverse order, known as backward recall, several benchmark memory phenomena, such as the word length effect, are abolished (Bireta et al. Memory & Cognition 38:279–291, 2010). Bireta et al. (Memory & Cognition 38:279–291, 2010) suggested that in backward recall, reliance on order retention is increased at the expense of item retention, leading to the abolition of item-based phenomena. In a subsequent study, however, Guérard and Saint-Aubin (in press) showed that four lexical factors known to modulate item retention were unaffected by recall direction. In a series of five experiments, we examined the source of the discrepancy between the two studies. We revisited the effects of phonological similarity, word length, articulatory suppression, and irrelevant speech, using open and closed pools of words in backward and forward recall. The results are unequivocal in showing that none of these effects are influenced by recall direction, suggesting that Bireta et al.’s (Memory & Cognition 38:279–291, 2010) results are the consequence of their particular stimuli.     

State-dependent recall decrements with moderate doses of alcohol

Thirty-two adult volunteers were asked to memorize a simplified geographical map, visually displayed, together with an auditorially presented 19-item set of instructions regarding a particular route. During this session, half the subjects were sober and half were under the effects of a moderate dose of alcohol (mean blood alcohol concentration = 81mg/100ml). Twenty-four hours later they were tested under the same or different conditions. Learning performance on Day 1 was unaffected by alcohol. Learning transfer (tested on Day 2) was equally good when subjects were intoxicated during both sessions or were sober during both sessions. There were significant decrements in recall on Day 2, when subjects were in a different drug state. This ‘dissociation of learning’ was found to be symmetrical in that the recall decrement was the same whether the initial learning was acquired in a sober or a drugged state.     

Reviews

Enjuto Bernal, Jorge. La filosofía de Alfred North Whitehead. Madrid: Editorial Tecnos, 1967. pp. 332. García Bacca, Juan David. “A. N. Whitehead o la Metafísica del Ser actual,” in Nueve grandes filòsofos contemporáneos y sus temas. Caracas: Publicaciones del Ministerio de Education Nacional de Venezuela, 1947. Vol. II. Pp. 187–360.     

Personality and judgements of abstract,pop art,and representational paintings

This study was concerned with the question of which personality variables are most predictive of judgements of particular types of painting. One hundred and twenty‐one participants rated 24 slides of abstract, pop art, and representational paintings. They then completed two questionnaires which measured sensation seeking (SS) and the ‘Big Five’ personality dimensions. Thrill and Adventure Seeking was positively correlated with a liking of representational art while Disinhibition was associated with positive ratings of abstract art and pop art. Neuroticism was positively correlated with positive ratings of abstract and pop art, while conscientiousness was linked to liking of representational art. Openness to Experience was linked to positive ratings of all three art types. Agreeableness was negatively linked to liking of pop art. It was also found that art education and frequency of visits to art galleries were linked to positive ratings of abstract paintings. Regressional analyses showed about a fifth of the variance could be accounted for by personality and demographic variables. Personality variables were most strongly linked to positive judgements of representational art and least related to ratings of pop art. Overall the sensation seeking variables accounted for more of the variance than the big five dimensions. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Appreciating art verbally: Verbalization can make a work of art be both undeservedly loved and unjustly maligned

Two experiments examined whether appreciating art verbally would aesthetically confuse viewers. Participants were asked to verbalize why they either liked or disliked two different kinds of paintings; one piece was representational, the other piece was abstract. Those who verbalized their reasons for liking the artworks were more likely to prefer the representational painting, whereas those who verbalized their reasons for disliking the paintings were also more likely to dislike the representational painting. While it was easy to describe reasons for both liking and disliking representational art, the same proved difficult for abstract art. The findings suggest that due to its figurative qualities people will be encouraged to generate reasons to describe representational art, rather than abstract art, and that these reasons could potentially be biased and cause them to change their preferences in line with these reasons.     

The effects of frontal lobe functioning and age on veridical and false recall

Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri Older adults’ heightened susceptibility to false memories has been linked to compromised frontal lobe functioning as estimated by Glisky and colleagues’ (Glisky, Polster, & Routhieaux, 1995) neuropsychological battery (e.g., Butler, McDaniel, Dornburg, Price, & Roediger, 2004). This conclusion, however, rests on the untested assumption that young adults have uniformly high frontal functioning. We tested this assumption, and we correlated younger and older adults’ frontal scores with veridical and false recall probabilities with prose materials. Substantial variability in scores on the Glisky battery occurred for younger (and older) adults. However, frontal scores and age were independent contributors to recall probabilities. Frontal functioning is not the sole cause of older adults’ heightened susceptibility to false memories.     

L-eye to me: the combined role of Need for Cognition and facial trustworthiness in mimetic desires

Recent studies showed that stimuli are evaluated more favourably when they are perceived to capture others' attention, an effect coined "mimetic desire". The aim of the present research was to examine the combined role of Need for Cognition and target's facial trustworthiness in this effect. Participants saw movie excerpts of trustworthy and untrustworthy 3D faces (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008) turning their attention towards one art painting and away from another art painting. Results showed that looked-at paintings were preferred to looked-away paintings when associated with a trustworthy face. However, the reversed finding was observed for paintings associated with untrustworthy faces. The latter interaction was in turn moderated by participant's Need for Cognition, with a larger reversal effect for participants scoring lower on the NFC scale. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Art in support of life: Caravaggio and the plague

In the struggle with COVID-19, art offered a way to face the solitude of the lockdown. The focus of this paper is primarily on Caravaggio’s painting The Seven Works of Mercy, with references to other paintings to amplify some aspects of the artist’s approach to life and his uniqueness in the artistic landscape of his time. Darkness was part of Caravaggio’s research for spiritual truth and by entering the stories of his life and exploring the tales told through imaginative expression in his paintings, it is possible to understand his process of exploration of ancestral darkness. The author uses her imagination to reflect on how art can help to contact the profound fears buried in the unconscious which are now being awakened by the pandemic. The contemplation of this painting facilitated the emergence of emotions related to the darkness of our time, with the discovery that empathy and mercy offer a way to come to terms with the pandemic. This approach demands a different understanding of reality with Caravaggio’s dark creative world becoming a companion that permits the exploration of what is not yet thinkable in daily life. Images accompany the author’s research that relies on her imagination and amplifications.     

Discrimination of painting style and quality: pigeons use different strategies for different tasks

Birds have visual cognition as well developed as humans. Sometimes, the birds show visual discrimination similar to humans, but the birds may use different cues. Previous reports suggest that global configuration cues are salient for humans, whereas local elemental cues are salient for pigeons. I analyzed the discriminative behavior of pigeons with scrambled images because scrambled images keep the local elemental cues of the original images but lose the global configuration cues. If pigeons use local elemental cues, then, they should show transfer of discrimination from the original images to their scrambled images and also transfer from the scrambled images to their original images. In Experiment I, I trained pigeons on painting style discrimination (Japanese paintings vs. Western impressionist paintings) using either the original or scrambled images and found that the pigeons showed bidirectional transfer. In Experiment II, I trained pigeons on discrimination of “good” versus “bad” paintings using children’s paintings. The birds showed poor transfer from the original images to their scrambled images and vise versa. Thus, the pigeons discriminated good and bad paintings based mostly on global configuration cues in this case. These results suggest that the pigeons use different cues for different discriminations.     

THINKING THROUGH KIERKEGAARD'S ANTI-CLIMACUS: ART, IMAGINATION, AND IMITATION

What place do imagination and art have in Christian existence? This paper examines this question through the writings of Kierkegaard's pseudonym Anti‐Climacus: The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity. I focus on the latter work in particular because it best illustrates the importance of imagination in following after (Efterfølgelse) Christ in imitation, which Anti‐Climacus presents as the proper task of faithful Christian existence. After outlining both his critique and his affirmation of the imagination, I then consider what role the notion of ‘Christian art’ might play in his account of the imitation of Christ. Anti‐Climacus gives a severe critique of Christian art, insofar as it disposes the viewer to detached observation and admiration – rather than imitation – of Christ. However, an earlier passage in the same text gives a provocative yet cryptic indication of the sort of art that would not succumb to this danger. Taking a cue from the phenomenology of Jean‐Luc Marion, I draw out this suggestion and argue for the important role that visual art can play in imitating Christ. The final section illustrates this point briefly with three paintings: Matthias Grünewald's Crucifixion, Hans Holbein's The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, and Albrecht Dürer's Self‐Portrait (1500).     

Phonological similarity in free and serial recall: The effect of increasing retention intervals

The phonological similarity effect (or acoustic confusion effect) consists of poor serial recall performance for lists composed of similar‐sounding words compared to lists of dissimilar‐sounding items. Building on the work of Nairne and Kelley (1999), the extent to which this classical verbal short‐term memory effect changes over the course of a retention interval was investigated. The impact of the phonological similarity on memory performance over time was compared in three paradigms: order reconstruction, serial recall, and free recall. Participants were presented with two blocks of 15 lists composed of five monosyllabic words, one block containing phonologically similar words and the other phonologically distinct words. Recall occurred either after 2, 8, or 24 seconds retention interval filled with a digit shadowing task. Our results confirmed and extended those of Nairne and Kelley. In order reconstruction and serial recall tasks, a classical phonological similarity effect (i.e., decrement in performance with similar lists) was observed for the 2‐s retention interval. This effect disappeared after a brief period of digit shadowing (i.e., 8‐s delay) and a beneficial effect of similarity was observed for the 24‐s retention interval. In the free recall task, the phonological similarity produced better performance whatever the delay between presentation and recall. Those results are discussed in the light of Nairne's (1990a) feature model and confirm the role of item‐specific and inter‐item processes in order reconstruction, serial recall, and free recall. L'effet de similarité phonologique se manifeste par une performance de rappel plus faible lorsque les listes sont composées de mots dont la sonorité est proche que lorsque les mots sont de sonorité éloignée. Sur la base de la recherche de Nairne et Kelley (1999), nous nous sommes intéressés à la manière dont évolue cet effet classique de mémoire à court terme verbale dans le temps, C'est‐à‐dire à L'issue d'intervalles de rétention de durées variables. L'impact de la similarité phonologique sur la performance mnésique a été évaluée sur la base de trois paradigmes, la reconstruction de L'ordre, le rappel sériel et le rappel libre. Les participants ont été soumis à deux blocs de 15 listes comportant 5 mots monosyllabiques, un bloc comprenant des mots similaires phonologiquement et un bloc comprenant des mots dissimilaires phonologiquement. Le rappel est demandé après un intervalle de rétention d'une durée de 2, 8 ou 24 secondes durant lequel une tâche de shadowing de chiffres est proposée. Nos résultats confirment et étendent ceux obtenus par Nairne et Kelley. Pour les tâches de reconstruction de L'ordre et de rappel sériel, un effet de similarité phonologique classique (i.e., chute des performances pour les listes similaires) est observé avec un intervalle de rétention de 2 secondes. Cet effet disparaît après une courte période consacrée au shadowing de chiffres (i.e., 8 secondes) et un effet bénéfique de la similarité est observé pour un intervalle de rétention de 24 secondes. En rappel libre, la similarité phonologique provoque une amélioration des performances quel que soit le délai entre présentation et rappel. Ces résultats sont discutés à la lumière du modèle des traits de Nairne (1990a). Ils confirment le rôle des traitements spécifiques à L'item et des traitements inter‐items lors de tâches telles que la reconstruction de L'ordre, le rappel sériel et libre. El efecto de la similitud fonológica (o efecto de confusión acústica) se manifiesta en fallas en el recuerdo de series para las listas compuestas por palabras que tienen sonidos similares en comparación con aquéllas que poseen elementos distintos. Con base en el trabajo de Nairne en Kelley (1999), se investigó la medida en la que este efecto clásico de memoria reciente cambia a lo largo del curso de un intervalo de retención. El impacto de la similitud fonológica sobre el desempeño de la memoria a lo largo del tiempo se comparó en tres paradigmas, reconstrucción del orden, recuerdo de series y recuerdo libre. Se presentó a los participantes dos bloques de 15 listas compuestas por 5 palabras monosilábicas, un bloque contenía palabras fonológicamente similares y, el otro, palabras fonológicamente distintas. El recuerdo ocurrió después de un intervalo de retención de 2, 8 ó 24 segundos lleno de una tarea digital de sombreado. Los resultados confirmaron y extendieron los de Nairne en Kelley. En las tareas de reconstrucción del orden y en la recuerdo de series, se observó un efecto clásico de similitud fonológica para el intervalo de retención de 2 segundos (es decir, disminución de la ejecución con listas similares). Este efecto desapareció después de un breve periodo de sombreado digital (es decir, un retraso de 8 segundos) y se observó un efecto benéfico de similitud para el intervalo de retención de 24 segundos. En la tarea de recuerdo libre, la similitud fonológica produjo mejor ejecución independientemente del retraso entre la presentación y el recuerdo. Tales resultados se discuten a la luz del modelo de Nairne (1990a) y confirman el papel que desempeñan los procesos de reactivo específico e interreactivo en la reconstrucción del orden, y en el recuerdo de series y libre.     

Listening to Pictures

A review of Peter Steele’s: The Whispering Gallery: Art into Poetry, in which Steele writes poems on and to paintings and the sculpture Black Sun (By Inge King) in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Each work on which there is a poem is reproduced. In this book Steele writes more to the ‘contour’ of the topic-work than he did in Plenty. His poems – as ever sidenoted – are tensed between the topicality of the work of art in question, and Kant’s aesthetic which involves ‘the free play of the cognitive faculties’. In ths tension lies the particular pleasure of Steele’s poetry.     

Cued vs. free recall in long-term memory of the fifty united states

Subjects were asked to recall the names of the fifty United States under varied conditions. These conditions included free recall and cued recall. The recall of the fifty United States was poorer than expected for college students. The average recall was approximately 41 out of 50 states. When subjects were asked to fill in the names of the states on a blank map, recall dropped to approximately 32 out of 50 states. It appears that subjects can recall some states better than others. For example, recall is better for states in close proximity to a subject’s current residence. Perhaps subjects have a geographic bubble when it comes to recalling the names of the states.