Doesn’t see,doesn’t know: is anticipatory looking really related to understanding or belief?

Clements and Perner (Cognitive Development, 9 (1994), 377–397) reported that children show understanding of a story character’s belief in their anticipatory looking responses before they show this in their answers to test questions. According to Clements and Perner the anticipatory looking responses provide evidence of implicit understanding of belief. This paper examines the possibility that the anticipatory looking measure is indicative of (a) children using a seeing = knowing rule, i.e. children linking not seeing with ignorance rather than a sensitivity to belief, or (b) a tendency to associate the protagonist with the left‐hand container. Thirty‐two children aged between 2 years 11 months and 4 years were told a false belief story similar to that used in Clements and Perner (1994) except that three containers were used instead of two. The protagonist first looks inside the middle box but then puts the object in the left‐hand box. In his absence, a second character moves the object unexpectedly to the right‐hand box. If children’s anticipatory looking was based on sensitivity to belief then they should have looked clearly to the left‐hand box. If it was based on an association bias or sensitivity to the character not knowing then they should have looked equally to the left‐hand and middle boxes. The results were consistent with the former prediction suggesting that children’s anticipatory looking responses may indeed be governed by an implicit sensitivity to belief.     

Do Suicides’ Characteristics Influence Survivors’ Emotions?

The suicide of a related person can often induce severe negative emotional reactions. The objective of this study was to explore the relationships between sociodemographic and diagnostic data of suicides and survivors' emotions and to close this substantial gap. The main outcome of this study was that survivors' severity of emotional disturbance was inversely correlated with age of suicides. In the multivariable approach, only age remained related to the majority of the assessed survivors' emotions, whereas other characteristics, such as gender, presence of psychiatric disorder, or suicide method were not associated with survivors' emotions. Age had a dominant impact on the relationship between suicides' characteristics and survivors' emotional reactions and supersedes the effect of most suicides' characteristics including diagnoses.     

Why ‘spiritism’?

Some of the early representatives of psychoanalysis had a lifelong interest in certain ‘occult’ phenomena. Although several theories were born for the purpose of understanding the interest of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung or Sándor Ferenczi in spiritualism and related phenomena, interpreters usually ignore the changing cultural meaning and significance of modern occult practices like spiritualism. The aim of the present essay is to outline the cultural and historical aspects of spiritualism and spiritism in Hungary, and thus to shed new light on the involvement of Ferenczi – and other Hungarian psychoanalysts like Géza Róheim, István Hollós, and Mihály Bálint – in spiritualism and spiritism. The connections between spiritualism and the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis will be discussed, highlighting the cultural and scientific significance of Hungarian spiritualism and spiritism in the evolution of psychoanalysis. Taking into account the relative lack of the scientific research in the field of spiritism in Hungary, it can be pointed out that Ferenczi undertook a pioneering role in Hungarian psychical research.     

Whither ‘TRS’?

Books reviewed in this article:
Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (eds), Guide to the Study of Religion
J'annine Jobling and Ian Markham (eds), Theological Liberalism, Creative and Critical     

‘Who am I?’

The dreams and existential questions of those, who came into being in order to replace a dead person, pivot around a central cry: ‘Who am I?’ If conceived, born or designated as a replacement child, such an individual may suffer—even as an adult—from a rarely recognized unconscious confusion of identity, compounded by grief and survivors’ guilt. From before the child is born, the archetypal forces of death and life are joined in a fateful constellation; the soul of the replacement child bears the shadow of death from the very beginning of life. Hope for the replacement child lies in an emergence of true self as soul recreates original life. Analysis can help the replacement child experience a ‘rebirth into true life’, not as ‘the one who returned’, but as a psychologically newborn individual; the path of individuation countering the replacement child‘s identification with the dead. Jungian analysis offers unique concepts for understanding and healing the replacement child; C.G. Jung himself was born after two stillborn babies and an infant that lived only five days.     

Do you see what I see? The effect of members’ cognitive styles on team processes and errors in task execution

This research investigates the effect of members’ cognitive styles on team processes that affect errors in execution tasks. In two laboratory studies, we investigated how a team’s composition (members’ cognitive styles related to object and spatial visualization) affects the team’s strategic focus and strategic consensus, and how those affect the team’s commission of errors. Study 1, conducted with 70 dyads performing a navigation and identification task, established that teams high in spatial visualization are more process-focused than teams high in object visualization. Process focus, which pertains to a team’s attention to the details of conducting a task, is associated with fewer errors. Study 2, conducted with 64 teams performing a building task, established that heterogeneity in cognitive style is negatively associated with the formation of a strategic consensus, which has a direct and mediating relationship with errors.     

A Rose by Any Other Name? From ‘Christian Doctrine’ to ‘Systematic Theology’

Christian thought is uniquely resistant to systematization, yet over the centuries has produced remarkable systematic accounts of Christian truth, including those of the patristic and medieval eras before Christian theology became systematically self-conscious in modernity. The more recent fate of the notion of system is traced in Schleiermacher, Hegel and Kierkegaard, and an argument advanced that systematic theology is the expression of personal skill learned in community, and its unity and integrity are aesthetic and moral as much as rationalistic.     

What are ‘Universalizable Interests’?

Many of Habermas's critical commentators agree that Discourse Ethics fails as a theory of the validity of moral norms and only succeeds as a theory of the democratic legitimacy of socio-political norms. The reason they give is that the moral principle (U) is too restrictive to count as a necessary condition of the validity of norms. Other commentators more sympathetic to his project want to abandon principle (U) and remodel Discourse Ethics without it. Still others want to downplay the role of universalizing moral discourse and to make more of Habermas's less demanding, though still somewhat vague, conception of ethical discourse. Against this chorus of critical voices Habermas maintains that his conception of moral discourse and the moral principle (U) are central to Discourse Ethics in general, and to the normative heart of his political theory in particular. The conflict may have arisen in part because the concept of a 'universalizable interest' which is central to Habermas's understanding of moral discourse and of the moral principle (U) remains opaque even after nearly two decades of critical debate. Actually Habermas's concept of interest is pretty obscure too. But the obscurity surrounding the concept of interest is not the source of the confusion. For our present purposes we can simply stipulate that an interest is a reason to want. The notion of reason rests loosely on the notion of a need, and the concepts of need and desire are take left deliberately vague. The source of the current confusion lies in the notion of universalizability that is in play. Once we pay due attention to the conditions of the universalizability of interests contained in Habermas's formulation of the moral principle (U), we can distinguish between a weaker and a stronger version of the principle. I argue that only the weaker version is defensible. But I also want to show that Habermas is tempted into defending the stronger version, and to explain why he does so.     

Is there a ‘psychosomatogenic’ family?*

Review of the literature revealed two family theories of psychosomatic illness: the ‘enmeshed’ family of Minuchin and the family with affect disturbances. We interviewed twelve families, each containing a child with eczema. Most, but not all, of the families do fit in with one or other or both of the proposed interactional patterns, but the theory of a single family type, the ‘psychosomatogenic family’, is not supported. This complements the studies of individuals where specificity hypotheses have proved oversimplified.     

Is transference the ‘total situation’?

This paper examines through the detailed explication of analytic material the author's experience of a psychoanalytic and a Jungian way of understanding the interactions between him and his patient. This comparative approach considers where the differences lie with respect to timing and content of interpretations and where the differences are essentially tactical rather than theoretical.     

‘Kierkegaard’: A Reasonable Fideist?

The task I set myself is to identify whether Climacus is an extreme or moderate fideist, and to go on to evaluate how convincing or persuasive I find Climacus' position. Separating metaphysical and epistemological fideism, I spend the first section of the article denying that Climacus is a 'metaphysical fideist'. This involves looking at the notion of 'truth as subjectivity'. I will claim that in expounding this notorious maxim Climacus can be seen as expressing something almost trivially obvious and/or something substantially wrong. I will further argue that even the obvious version of the maxim needs to be heavily qualified before it can be a sufficient account of 'religious truth'.
In the second section of the article I argue that Climacus should be understood as a moderate fideist, who considers that reason should assent to its own limitations. Although I will approve of reason-exhausting projects, I will complain that the paradox which is supposed to so exhaust my reason does not perplex me in the relevant sense.     

Do you see what I see? How social differences influence mindreading

Disagreeing with others about how to interpret a social interaction is a common occurrence. We often find ourselves offering divergent interpretations of others’ motives, intentions, beliefs, and emotions. Remarkably, philosophical accounts of how we understand others do not explain, or even attempt to explain such disagreements. I argue these disparities in social interpretation stem, in large part, from the effect of social categorization and our goals in social interactions, phenomena long studied by social psychologists. I argue we ought to expand our accounts of how we understand others in order to accommodate these data and explain how such profound disagreements arise amongst informed, rational, well-meaning individuals.     

‘Sluts’ or ‘Sleazy Little Animals’?: Young People's Difficulties with Carrying and Using Condoms

Qualitative data from a Western Australian study of sexual behaviour in young people were used to describe difficulties experienced in carrying and using condoms. Both men and women were concerned for their sexual reputation if they carried condoms, although this was more of a problem for the women than the men. However, these fears were not matched by the attitudes of the opposite gender: in general, there was less negativity about condom-carrying than was feared. Many of those who described using condoms had experienced condom failure and other difficulties, and it appeared that they were unfamiliar with the correct way to use condoms. It is suggested that many of these barriers to condom use can be removed with appropriate education and information strategies.     

‘Perceived ownership’ or cognitive dissonance?

In 1992 a study by Beggan claimed it had confirmed the existence of Nuttin's ‘mere ownership effect’. This study examined an alternative mechanism for Beggan's findings in the form of forced compliance cognitive dissonance. Seventy‐three participants volunteered for the study (66 females and seven males). Results support the view that cognitive dissonance, accepting ownership of a target that was earlier perceived with negative affectivity, is a sufficient condition to enhance estimates of a target object. Ownership per se was not found to be a sufficient condition to enhance owner's estimates of an owned object. In light of this finding cognitive dissonance is offered as a possible mechanism for explaining the previous reports of a perceived ownership effect. This mechanism may also be applicable to instant endowment and mere ownership phenomena. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Theologia Incurvata In Se Ipse?: One Feminist Theologian’s Reading of Eberhard Jüngel’s Theology

Books reviewed in this article:
Eberhard Jüngel, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith
Eberhard Jüngel, God's Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. A Paraphrase