Reimagining Humpty Dumpty with Play’s Therapeutic Action

ABSTRACT

At the center of the Humpty Dumpty fable there is a fall. The efforts to re-integrate Humpty Dumpty after the fall were unsuccessful. Using the metaphor as a frame, the author explores the role of play therapy and by extension, incorporates parents into the work with the child, to facilitate repair from traumatic experience. The repair to the intergenerational relationship in the clinical work described relied on the use of a non-linear dynamic system’s view of the therapeutic action of play benefitting the development of the child. The privileging of the play space in child mental health comes at a time in our cultural dialogue that under appreciates its’ value.     

The Humpty Dumpty blues: Disaggregation bias in the evaluation of tax systems

Three experiments carried out on the World Wide Web assessed the consistency of attitudes toward various tax regimes that differed in their overall levels and degrees of tax rate graduation in the presence of framing manipulations. The regimes had two components: an income and a payroll tax. One frame involved aggregation. Subjects were asked either to design a single, global tax system or to vary one component of a tax system (payroll or income tax) with the other component held constant. The idea was to replicate the effects of income tax reform given a constant payroll tax system. Consistent with the experimental hypothesis—though not with “rational” decision making—subjects focused on the component they were asked to manipulate and did not respond fully to changes in the other component, across conditions, reflecting an under-adjustment bias as well as a framing effect. The results are akin to Thaler’s “mental account” model for personal financial behavior. A second manipulation involved a “metric” frame: whether putative tax burdens were given in dollars or percent terms. Once again consistent with the experimental hypothesis, subjects preferred higher rates of graduation when matters were stated in percent terms. The results point to the lability of public opinion about important questions of public finance, and they illustrate a specific category of biases concerning disaggregation.     

The "Humpty Dumpty Problem" in the Study of Early Cognitive Development: Putting the Infant Back Together Again

ABSTRACT— In this article, I propose that the big question for the field of infant cognitive development is best characterized as the "Humpty Dumpty problem": Now that we have studied cognitive abilities in isolation, how do we put the developing cognitive system (and the infant) back together again? This problem is significant because cognitive abilities do not occur in isolation. Infants remember the items they have attended to and perceived, and their emotional state will influence their perception and representation of the events they encounter. Moreover, by examining the development of the whole cognitive system, or the whole child, we gain a deeper understanding of mechanisms developmental change. Thus, the big question for the study of infant cognition is like the question confronting all the king's horses and all the king's men: How do we put the infant's cognitive system back together again?     

Therapeutic Action in the Work of a Playful Clinician: A Reflection on Dr. Silber’s Reimagining of Humpty Dumpty

ABSTRACT

In my discussion of Dr. Silber’s paper, Reimagining Humpty Dumpty: The Therapeutic Action of Play, I mirror Dr. Silber’s playful posture in her use of the Humpty Dumpty fable to talk about children and their care by society. My reflections on Dr. Silber’s therapeutic work with her two young patients focus on her co-creating meaning with each child’s parents as well as with the child. I discuss that by holding in her mind both the subjectivities of the child and his parents, Dr. Silber is able to practice a fundamentally relational therapy. I would have liked to have heard more about her emotional reactions in her work with both cases as another important dimension of her work. Finally, I emphasize through my play with Humpty Dumpty several ways that society can support children and families that are essential for their development: parental leave, developmentally approptiate expectations for children in school, and the facilitation and protection children’s open ended time and ability to play.     

Extraversion and attitude towards capital punishment

Male and female Canadian undergraduate students identified as extraverts or introverts on the basis of the Eysenck Personality Inventory were administered a questionnaire measuring attitude towards Capital Punishment. Both effects of sex and personality were significant, males and extraverts reporting stronger beliefs in Capital Punishment than females and introverts. These results were interpreted as providing support for Eysenck's proposal that the social attitude dimension of Toughmindedness reflects the personality trait of Extraversion.     

The attitude of the Moscow Patriarchate towards other Orthodox churches

Abstract

The Moscow Patriarchate is a transnational subject of political relations which acts both inside and outside the Russian Federation. It has specific goals: to maintain the integrity of its canonical territory and to gain dominance within the Universal Orthodox Church. It is in competition with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, it makes alliances with Slavic Orthodox churches and it pursues diplomacy. The activity of the Moscow Patriarchate is of interest to the Russian government. This article examines relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox churches and their significance for Russian foreign policy.     

A Vindication of Program Verification

Fetzer famously claims that program verification is not even a theoretical possibility, and offers a certain argument for this far-reaching claim. Unfortunately for Fetzer, and like-minded thinkers, this position-argument pair, while based on a seminal insight that program verification, despite its Platonic proof-theoretic airs, is plagued by the inevitable unreliability of messy, real-world causation, is demonstrably self-refuting. As I soon show, Fetzer (and indeed anyone else who provides an argument- or proof-based attack on program verification) is like the person who claims: ‘My sole claim is that every claim expressed by an English sentence and starting with the phrase “My sole claim” is false’. Or, more accurately, such thinkers are like the person who claims that modus tollens is invalid, and supports this claim by giving an argument that itself employs this rule of inference.     

Evaluative language,cognitive effort and attitude change

The present article deals with the effects of the use of evaluatively biased language on attitudes, and with the role of cognitive effort. We tested whether active information processing — formulating arguments on the basis of evaluatively biased language — was a necessary condition for attitude change. Results of the present study support the prediction that using evaluative language can infuence attitudes, but that these effects depend on the amount of cognitive effort.     

Involvement and response language effects in attitude scaling

An analytic procedure was developed for separating the effects of involvement from the number of response language categories the subject employs in judging a set of sentence stimuli. The procedure treats category usage as an independent variable and an aspect of the subject's response language. Category usage was shown to have significant influence on several attitudinal judgment processes: Informational complexity, mean judgment functions, and a successive intervals analysis testing Thurstone's assumption of the effect of involvement on equal category spacing. The decrement in scale responding typically associated with involvement is shown to depend on category usage operating either singly or in interaction with involvement. Some tentative conclusions about category usage as a response language variable are discussed.     

Empirical Vindication of Moral Luck

In resultant moral luck, blame and punishment seem intuitively to depend on downstream effects of a person’s action that are beyond his or her control. Some skeptics argue that we should override our intuitions about moral luck and reform our practices. Other skeptics attempt to explain away apparent cases of moral luck as epistemic artifacts. I argue, to the contrary, that moral luck is real—that people are genuinely responsible for some things beyond their control. A partially consequentialist theory of responsibility justifies moral luck. But this justification is no mere rationalization of the status quo. Recent experimental and evolutionary work on punishment and learning suggests that the very same reasons that justify moral luck have also shaped the evolution of our luck‐sensitive moral practices.     

On Ignorance: A Vindication of the Standard View

Rik Peels has once again forcefully argued that ignorance is not equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge. In doing so, he endeavors to refute the Standard View of Ignorance according to which they are equivalent, and to advance what he calls the “New View” according to which ignorance is equivalent (merely) to the lack or absence of true belief. I defend the Standard View against his new attempted refutation.     

Intensity and color of language in attitude change and emotion

This study examined whether messages using or not using emotionally intense language combined with certain colors, i.e., red, white, or blue, to effect attitude change. Emotionally intense messages were more positively associated with attitude change than were those with low emotional intensity, but no interaction effects or main effects for color were found.     

Psychiatric nurses' attitudes towards inpatient aggression: preliminary report of the development of attitude towards aggression scale (ATAS)

Professional skills to adequately manage patient aggression are a prerequisite for nurses working in psychiatric hospitals. These ‘technical’ skills, however, are necessary but not sufficient for effective nurse intervention. The attitude of nurses' towards client aggression also contributes to their response to a patient's behaviour. In order to study the domains (types) of attitudes towards aggression, a sample was taken of nurses working in the fields of general psychiatry (n=288), psychiatry for children and adolescents (n=242) and psychogeriatrics (n=88). A cross‐sectional survey design was adopted for the study. The Attitudes Towards Aggression Scale (ATAS) consisting of 32 items is presented, representing three types of attitudes towards aggression: aggression as a ‘harming’ reaction, a ‘normal’ reaction and a ‘functional’ reaction. The strongest predictors of the type of attitude respondents had towards the aggressive behaviour of their clients were (1) field, (2) setting they worked in, (3) gender and (4) type of shifts they predominantly had. Although the measure of domains of nurses' attitudes towards aggression needs further psychometric testing, it can be a useful tool in clinical practice for the assessment of staff attitudes towards aggression. This can support the decision‐making about the management of aggressive behaviour on a ward. Aggr. Behav. 00:1–10, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Connotative meaning of abortion and attitude towards M.T.P

Acceptance of India's Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill, enacted in 1972 to liberalize abortion, has been affected by cultural and psychological factors. To clarify the affective meaning accorded the term "abortion," the Osgood Semantic Differential technique was used with 354 subjects from South Delhi. Attitudes toward abortion were more favorable among men than women, unmarried women than married women, women with at least 2 living children, and those with at least a high school education as opposed to less educated men and women. The 6 abortion-related factors with the highest loadings were: volition, safety, morality, evaluation, legality, and potency. Analysis of mean composite attitude scores revealed a polarity profile of concepts, with rape, infanticide, promiscuity, and premarital abortion eliciting negative association and physician, baby, small family, and marital relationship eliciting positive associations. Of the 20 concepts that emerged from factor analysis, 2 clusters were identified: 1) goal-oriented concepts baby, doctor, small family, fertility, pregnancy, marital relationship, delivery, population control, birth control, and child as gift of God; and 2) means-oriented concepts Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, sterilization, abortion, infertility, morbidity, premarital abortion, promiscuity, quacks, infanticide, and rape. These findings suggest that minimal use of the term "abortion" should be made when referring to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, since this term provokes a negative affective meaning. Moreover, given the positive affective connation awarded doctors, more emphasis should be placed on their role in imparting health education material.