Whose voice are we hearing,really?

This article, written from the position of someone who has lived experience of therapy for ‘psychosis’ and an interest in participation, explores the degree to which qualitative research truly conveys the voice and perspective of research participants. By exploring five papers focused on diverse experiences of psychotherapy, from the perspective of clients and therapists, it draws out some of the tensions inherent in making interpretations and connections within research papers and the impact this may have on the quality of any conclusions drawn. Finally, it makes some suggestions for ways of meaningfully involving research participants in the process and argues for an ongoing dialogue to prevent our own assumptions and theoretical frameworks from obscuring the importance of this involvement to improve the quality of future research.     

Endogenous Ketamine-Like Compounds and the NDE: If So, So What?

This commentary on Karl Jansen's ketamine model for the near-death experience expands upon and raises additional questions about several issues and hypotheses: self-experimentation as a source of data; ketamine's similarities to and differences from classical hallucinogens; the need for quantification of unusual subjective states; clinical research and toxicological implications of this model; drugs as gateways to religious states; and evolutionary versus religious significance of naturally occurring compounds released in the near-death state. I suggest future research that could help explicate several of these areas.Formerly Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine     

What are we doing to the earth's climate and what are we going to do about it?

Climatic considerations are critical if our planet is to survive. The environment, and in particular the atmosphere, is particularly sensitive to man. The time has come to act in favor of that which gives us life. This is why, in a field which knows no boundaries, only an international strategy can be effective.     

What are we frightened of?

I am concerned to understand that relation to a situation which we call fearing it. Some say this cannot be done: it is a brute fact about us that we fear certain things and we understand another's fear when we see that he confronts a situation of this sort (a basic fear object) or one which he understandably associates with this sort. In Section I, I argue that being associated with a basic fear object will not usefully explain a current fear. In Section II, I argue that the obvious candidates for being basic fears will not do the required work. The notion should be rejected. I then argue that to fear an object is to take it as exhibiting one's lack of control and I proceed to describe the nature and content of this notion.     

How do we know that we are unique?

This paper aims to examine the notion of uniqueness as one aspect of the self that is taken for granted in psychotherapy. This paper attempts to address the question 'how do we know that we are unique individuals?' and in so doing, points out some difficulties. One plausible, but not problem-free answer is the notion of privileged access. Some of the problems will be briefly outlined.     

So viel? So oft?

Psychoanalysis is usually only considered as a treatment option when other therapeutic procedures have not resulted in any lasting improvement or in particularly burdensome situations. In psychoanalysis, it is assumed that the unconscious is reflected in a structural pathology of the personality and, based on repetition compulsion, presents itself again and again in the person’s life and relationships with varying psychiatric symptoms. Within the framework of more frequent psychoanalytic treatment in an outpatient clinic, these established structures can be identified and altered as transference and countertransference in the therapeutic relationship. This requires elaborate and systematic reflection on the basis of modern theoretical and clinical developments.     

Treating the core features of autism: are we there yet?

A wide variety of nonestablished treatments have been proposed as "cures" for the core features of autism and are used frequently despite having largely escaped scientific scrutiny. In contrast, a growing body of empirical evidence supports the use of a few forms of theory-based and empirically validated treatment for some aspects of the core features of autism. These include behavioral/psychoeducational interventions and specific forms of medication treatment, which can produce significant improvements in communication, social interaction, and problem behaviors that both maintain over time and generalize across settings. While there is no doubt that treatment and educational services for persons with autism have improved over the past 6 decades, it also appears that significant issues remain with respect to (1) the routine application of validated treatments for the majority of cases with autism, (2) the resistance to even validated forms of treatment for a substantial minority of cases with autism, and (3) the extent to which validated treatments effectively treat the specific core features of autism that are most disabling for persons with autism and their families.     

Epistemic issues in the free will debate: can we know when we are free?

In this paper, I argue that the views of Robert Kane on the one hand and John Fischer and Mark Ravizza on the other both lead to the following conclusion: we should have very low confidence in our ability to judge that someone is acting freely or in a way for which they can be held responsible. This in turn means, I claim, that these views, in practice, collapse into a sort of hard incompatibilist position, or the position of a free will denier. That would at least be an unintended consequence, and it might be regarded as a virtual reductio. Versions of the objection could likely be made against a number of other accounts of free will, but I will limit my focus to Kane and Fischer. Along the way, by way of response to some possible objections to my argument, I make some comments about epistemic closure principles.     

Does the Modality Effect Exist? and if So, Which Modality Effect?

The modality effect is a central issue in multimedia learning [see Mayer (Cambridge University Press, 2005a), for a review]. Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), for example, presumes that an illustrated text is better understood when presented visually rather than orally. The predictive power of CLT lies in how it links in to Baddeley’s (1986) model of working memory and Penney’s (Mem Cognit 17:398–442, 1989) Separate-Streams Hypothesis. Ginns’s (Learn Instr 4:313–331, 2005) recent meta-analysis also supports the modality effect (d = 0.72, based on 43 independent effects). This article replicates the meta-analysis of the modality effect based on 86 independent effects (with within-study subgroups as the unit of analysis and with mean of the outcomes as the dependent measure), with results showing a reduction of the overall effect size by almost half (d = 0.38), and even more when Duval and Tweedie’s Trim and Fill method is used to correct publication bias (d = 0.20). This article also widens the scope of the analysis of moderator variables (e.g. Pace of presentation, Type of visualization, Research group) as well as their potentially confounded effects. Finally, it is argued that, for theoretical reasons, the so-called modality effect cannot be based on Penney’s or Baddeley’s theories and must be explained in a different way.     

Born lucky? The relationship between feeling lucky and month of birth

Research suggests that season of birth is associated with several psychiatric and neurological disorders, and also with adult monoamine neurotransmitter turnover. Personality traits are modulated in part by neurotransmitters; and population studies show season of birth variations in adult personality traits such as novelty seeking. Also, neurotransmitters are involved in suicidal behavior; and studies have found season of birth associations with suicide methods. The present general population survey was conducted via the Internet, and involved 29,584 self-selected participants (51.6% women) from 67 countries. For those born in the UK (75.6%), we investigated the relationship between season of birth, the participant’s belief in being a lucky person, and personality attributes related to this belief. In both genders and in all age groups, birth during the summer half-year was associated with significantly higher belief in being lucky, as compared to birth during the winter half-year, with a maximum around birth in May and a minimum around birth in November. Women scored significantly higher on listening to intuition and employing techniques to improve intuition, in perseverence, believing in positive long-term outcomes, and chatting to strangers. Men scored significantly higher on feeling lucky, not worrying or dwelling on failures, and expecting good things in life.     

Consciousness and identity: who do we think we are?

This article proposes that the epistemological concerns raised by the inherent incoherence of thought requires a dialogical approach to understanding consciousness and identity. It is argued that such an approach leads to (a) a fundamentally spiritual view of self, (b) a radical view of consciousness as a non-local field that shapes the limits of our perception, and (c) a determination of the degree of gap between reality and thought's representation of it. A method of measuring this kind of consciousness is examined, and examples of insights gained through this methodology are provided. Implications of this perspective are explored, and conclusions arising from this inquiry are presented.     

How do we know what we are doing? Time, intention and awareness of action

Time is a fundamental dimension of consciousness. Many studies of the "sense of agency" have investigated whether we attribute actions to ourselves based on a conscious experience of intention occurring prior to action, or based on a reconstruction after the action itself has occurred. Here, we ask the same question about a lower level aspect of action experience, namely awareness of the detailed spatial form of a simple movement. Subjects reached for a target, which unpredictably jumped to the side on some trials. Participants (1) expressed their expectancy of a target shift during the upcoming movement, (2) pointed at the target as quickly and accurately as possible before returning to the start posiment to the target shift if required and (3) reproduced the spatial path of the movement they had just made, as accurately as possible, to give an indication of their awareness of the pointing movement. We analysed the spatial disparity between the initial and the reproduced movements on those with a target shift. A negative disparity value, or undershoot, suggests that motor awareness merely reflects a sluggish record of coordinated motor performance, while a positive value, or overshoot, suggests that participants' intention to point to the shifting target contributes more to their awareness of action than their actual pointing movement. Undershoot and overshoot thus measure the reconstructive (motoric) and the preconstuctive (intentional) aspects of action awareness, respectively. We found that trials on which subjects strongly expected a target shift showed greater overshoot and less undershoot than trials with lower expectancy. Conscious expectancy therefore strongly influences the experience of the detailed motor parameters of our actions. Further, a delay inserted either between the expectancy judgement and the pointing movement, or between the pointing movement and the reproduction of the movement, had no effect on visuomotor adjustment but strongly influenced action awareness. Delays during either interval boosted undershoots, suggesting increased reliance on a time-limited sensory memory for action. The experience of action is thus strongly influenced by prior thoughts and expectations, but only over a short time period. Thus, awareness of our actions is a dynamic and relatively flexible mixture of what we intend to do, and what our motor system actually does.     

What are we studying? Student jurors,community jurors,and construct validity

Jury researchers have long been concerned about the generalizability of results from experiments that utilize undergraduate students as mock jurors. The current experiment examined the differences between 120 students (55 males and 65 females, mean age = 20 years) and 99 community members (49 males and 50 females, mean age = 42 years) in culpability evaluations for homicide and sexual assault cases. Explicit attitude measures served as indicators of bias for sexual assault, defendant, and homicide adjudication. Results revealed that student and community participants showed different biases on these general explicit attitude measures and these differences manifested in judgments of culpability (guilt likelihood, convincingness of state's arguments, convincingness of defendant's arguments, and the defendants' criminal intentions) in sexual assault and homicide case scenarios. The results also showed that student mock jurors were more lenient when assigning guilt in homicide cases than were community members. The implications for future mock jury research are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.