Cultural psychology and theology: Partners in dialogue

Cultural psychology stresses the importance of the historical and socio-cultural in the formation of the self, and, in its more sophisticated versions, acknowledges the importance of embodiment, emotions and intra-psychic factors too, making it a promising dialogue partner for theology. Following a brief summary of bridging issues between psychology and theology, Benson's recent cultural psychology framework is outlined. Its relevance for theology is considered under three headings: incarnational categories, self-knowing and God-knowing, and theological method. The essay concludes with a short reflection on the self in Eucharistic space, and the limits of cultural psychological accounts.     

Cultural competency and humanistic psychology

Abstract

Developing cultural competence is increasingly important for humanistic psychologists in our ethnoculturally diverse society. In the past, training in ethnocultural issues involved learning about the cultural values and characteristics of a small number of cultural groups. Today, cultural competence requires that the psychologist become aware of their own ethnocultural values and their own ethnocentrism. This process of self‐examination can be emotionally challenging. This paper addresses some of the problems encountered on the path to increasing cultural sensitivity and the effect of unexamined cultural values upon the therapeutic interaction. Psychologists are encouraged to become aware of the privilege associated with European American culture, with the cultural values embedded within psychological theory in general, and with cultural values of humanistic psychology.     

Selective effects of errorful generation on recognition memory: the role of motivation and surprise

ABSTRACT

The current research examined the effects of errorful generation on memory, focusing particularly on the roles of motivation and surprise. In two experiments, participants were first presented with photographs of faces and were asked to associate four facts with each photograph. On Generate trials, the participants guessed two of the facts (Guess targets) before those correct facts, and another two correct facts (Study targets), were revealed. On the remaining Read trials, all four facts were presented without a guessing stage. In Experiment 1, participants also ranked their motivation to know the answers before they were revealed, or their surprise on learning the true answers. Guess targets were subsequently better recognised than the concurrently presented, non-guessed Study targets. Guess targets were also better recognised than Read targets, and recognition of Study and Read targets did not differ. Errorful generation also increased self-reported motivation, but not surprise. Experiment 2 showed that the results of Experiment 1 can outlive a 20-minute delay, and that they generalise to a more challenging recognition test. Together, the results suggest that errorful generation improves memory specifically for the guessed fact, and this may be linked to an increase in motivation to learn that fact.     

On exploring meanings: Combining humanistic and career psychology theories in counselling

The notion of meaning is considered a significant construct in both humanistic psychology and vocational psychology. These two psychological disciplines appear to share some philosophical common ground with respect to the role of meaning making and meaning interpretation in people's life career experiences. This paper intends to take a look at such shared conceptual foundation, and examine the feasibility in incorporating the humanistic meaning construct into career psychology. Career counselling implications are discussed.     

Developmental emergence of holistic processing in word recognition

Holistic processing (HP) of faces refers to the obligatory, simultaneous processing of the parts and their relations, and it emerges over the course of development. HP is manifest in a decrement in the perception of inverted versus upright faces and a reduction in face processing ability when the relations between parts are perturbed. Here, adopting the HP framework for faces, we examined the developmental emergence of HP in another domain for which human adults have expertise, namely, visual word processing. Children, adolescents, and adults performed a lexical decision task and we used two established signatures of HP for faces: the advantage in perception of upright over inverted words and nonwords and the reduced sensitivity to increasing parts (word length). Relative to the other groups, children showed less of an advantage for upright versus inverted trials and lexical decision was more affected by increasing word length. Performance on these HP indices was strongly associated with age and with reading proficiency. Also, the emergence of HP for word perception was not simply a result of improved visual perception over the course of development as no group differences were observed on an object decision task. These results reveal the developmental emergence of HP for orthographic input, and reflect a further instance of experience-dependent tuning of visual perception. These results also add to existing findings on the commonalities of mechanisms of word and face recognition.

Research Highlights

• Children showed less of an advantage for upright versus inverted trials compared to adolescents and adults.
• Relative to the other groups, lexical decision in children was more affected by increasing word length.
• Performance on holistic processing (HP) indices was strongly associated with age and with reading proficiency.
• HP emergence for word perception was not due to improved visual perception over development as there were no group differences on an object decision task.

     

Taken by surprise: The paradox of the surprise test revisited

A teacher announced to his pupils that on exactly one of the days of the following school week (Monday through Friday) he would give them a test. But it would be a surprise test; on the evening before the test they would not know that the test would take place the next day. One of the brighter students in the class then argued that the teacher could never give them the test. It can't be Friday, she said, since in that case we'll expect it on Thurday evening. But then it can't be Thursday, since having already eliminated Friday we'll know Wednesday evening that it has to be Thursday. And by similar reasoning we can also eliminate Wednesday, Tuesday, and Monday. So there can't be a test!The students were somewhat baffled by the situation. The teacher was well-known to be truthful, so if he said there would be a test, then it was safe to assume that there would be one. On the other hand, he also said that the test would be a surprise. But it seemed that whenever he gave the test, it wouldn't be a surprise.Well, the teacher gave the test on Tuesday, and, sure enough, the students were surprised.     

On the recognition of emotional vocal expressions: motivations for a holistic approach

Human beings seem to be able to recognize emotions from speech very well and information communication technology aims to implement machines and agents that can do the same. However, to be able to automatically recognize affective states from speech signals, it is necessary to solve two main technological problems. The former concerns the identification of effective and efficient processing algorithms capable of capturing emotional acoustic features from speech sentences. The latter focuses on finding computational models able to classify, with an approximation as good as human listeners, a given set of emotional states. This paper will survey these topics and provide some insights for a holistic approach to the automatic analysis, recognition and synthesis of affective states.     

On the recognition of emotional vocal expressions: motivations for a holistic approach

Human beings seem to be able to recognize emotions from speech very well and information communication technology aims to implement machines and agents that can do the same. However, to be able to automatically recognize affective states from speech signals, it is necessary to solve two main technological problems. The former concerns the identification of effective and efficient processing algorithms capable of capturing emotional acoustic features from speech sentences. The latter focuses on finding computational models able to classify, with an approximation as good as human listeners, a given set of emotional states. This paper will survey these topics and provide some insights for a holistic approach to the automatic analysis, recognition and synthesis of affective states.     

Making sense of surprise: an investigation of the factors influencing surprise judgments

Surprise is often defined in terms of disconfirmed expectations, whereby the surprisingness of an event is thought to be dependent on the degree to which it contrasts with a more likely, or expected, outcome. The authors investigated the alternative hypothesis that surprise is more accurately modeled as a manifestation of an ongoing sense-making process. In a series of experiments, participants were given a number of scenarios and rated surprise and probability for various hypothetical outcomes that either confirmed or disconfirmed an expectation. Experiment 1 demonstrated that representational specificity influences the relationship that holds between surprise and probability ratings. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the inclusion of an enabling event lowers surprise ratings for disconfirming outcomes. Experiment 3 explored the reason for this effect, revealing that enabling events lower surprise by reducing uncertainty, thus enhancing ease of integration. Experiment 4 evaluated the contrast hypothesis directly, showing that differences in contrast are not correlated with differences in surprise. These results provide converging support for the view that the level of surprise experienced for an event is related to the difficulty of integrating that event with an existing representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).     

An examination of two-process theories of false recognition

Contemporary theories of false memory suggest there are two processes that combine to produce false memory: one that increases false memory (error-inflating processes) and one that counteracts false memory (error-editing processes). Two experiments using the DRM paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) explored the influence of manipulating the number of associates studied, study item presentation frequency, backward associative strength, and study time on error-inflating and error-editing processes separately by examining speeded and unspeeded recognition decisions. The results of these studies indicate that (1) increasing the number of associates studied primarily influenced error-inflating processes; (2) increasing backward associative strength increased error-inflating processes and impaired error-editing processes; (3) increasing study item presentation frequency increased both error-inflating and error-editing processes; and (4) increasing study time had a weak effect on error-editing processes. Further, the results of these studies suggest that comprehensive theories of false memory phenomena must propose the existence of two different factors: one that increases false memory and is available early in memory retrieval, and one that usually, but not always, decreases false memory and is available later in retrieval.     

An examination of two-process theories of false recognition

Contemporary theories of false memory suggest there are two processes that combine to produce false memory: one that increases false memory (error-inflating processes) and one that counteracts false memory (error-editing processes). Two experiments using the DRM paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) explored the influence of manipulating the number of associates studied, study item presentation frequency, backward associative strength, and study time on error-inflating and error-editing processes separately by examining speeded and unspeeded recognition decisions. The results of these studies indicate that (1) increasing the number of associates studied primarily influenced error-inflating processes; (2) increasing backward associative strength increased error-inflating processes and impaired error-editing processes; (3) increasing study item presentation frequency increased both error-inflating and error-editing processes; and (4) increasing study time had a weak effect on error-editing processes. Further, the results of these studies suggest that comprehensive theories of false memory phenomena must propose the existence of two different factors: one that increases false memory and is available early in memory retrieval, and one that usually, but not always, decreases false memory and is available later in retrieval.     

The melody of surprise: maternal surprise vocalizations during play with her infant

Two groups of mothers and their infants (24 infants, mean age=3.5 months and 24 infants, mean age=5.5 months) were video‐ and audio‐taped in their homes while playing with a Jack‐in‐the‐box. The mean fundamental frequency of spontaneous surprise exclamations of mothers when opening the toy were analysed, and infant and maternal facial expressions of surprise were coded in three regions of the face. A t‐test established that significantly more of the older children in comparison with younger children showed surprise (t=?2.96, df=46, p<0.005, 2‐tailed). Twenty‐nine per cent of the younger infants, in comparison with 67% of the older children showed facial expressions of surprise. A t‐test of maternal pitch height (Hz) indicated that mothers exclaimed in surprise with a higher pitch when the child did not show a surprise facial expression (mean=415.61 Hz) in comparison with the child showing surprise (mean=358.97 Hz; t=2.9, df=46, p=0.006, 2‐tailed). A multiple regression established that infant's expression was a stronger predictor of maternal vocal pitch than was the age of the infant. These results are discussed in terms of maternal use of emotional expressions as ‘social signals’. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Differentiation of holistic processing in the time course of letter recognition

Pairs of letters, pseudo-letters, and basic geometrical shapes were presented in a sequential same-different task, in which the time between the first and second items was varied. The second item was either presented in isolation or surrounded by an irrelevant geometrical shape that could be congruent or incongruent to the target. Congruence effects were obtained for shapes and pseudo-letters, but not for letters if the interval between the first and second items was short. Absence of congruence effects was interpreted, in accordance with earlier findings, as categorical influence on early visual integration processes; letters are processed less holistically than non-letter shapes. The present result indicates that categorical influence of letters depends on the time course of stimulus processing. As a highly automatized process, it is effective for stimuli appearing at a relatively fast rate, whereas, a slower rate of stimulus presentation eliminates task-irrelevant categorical influences.     

Face gender recognition in developmental prosopagnosia: Evidence for holistic processing and use of configural information

Face identification deficits in developmental prosopagnosics (DPs) have been thought to be due to general difficulties with processing configural face information and integrating configural and parts information into a coherent whole (holistic processing). Gender recognition provides a further opportunity to more fully examine this issue as this ability may be intact in DPs and it has been shown to depend on processing configural information and holistic processing in neurotypical individuals. In the present study we first determined that, indeed, gender discrimination performance was similar in DPs and controls. Second, we found that inversion and scrambling (which we propose measures holistic processing and sensitivity to configural information, respectively) produced comparable deficits in DPs and controls, suggesting that both groups use holistic processing and configural information to recognize gender. This indicates that holistic processing and using configural face information are not general impairments in DP and may be more specific to face identity.