Becoming a high‐fidelity – super – imitator: what are the contributions of social and individual learning?

In contrast to other primates, human children's imitation performance goes from low to high fidelity soon after infancy. Are such changes associated with the development of other forms of learning? We addressed this question by testing 215 children (26–59 months) on two social conditions (imitation, emulation) – involving a demonstration – and two asocial conditions (trial‐and‐error, recall) – involving individual learning – using two touchscreen tasks. The tasks required responding to either three different pictures in a specific picture order (Cognitive: Airplane→Ball→Cow) or three identical pictures in a specific spatial order (Motor‐Spatial: Up→Down→Right). There were age‐related improvements across all conditions and imitation, emulation and recall performance were significantly better than trial‐and‐error learning. Generalized linear models demonstrated that motor‐spatial imitation fidelity was associated with age and motor‐spatial emulation performance, but cognitive imitation fidelity was only associated with age. While this study provides evidence for multiple imitation mechanisms, the development of one of those mechanisms – motor‐spatial imitation – may be bootstrapped by the development of another social learning skill – motor‐spatial emulation. Together, these findings provide important clues about the development of imitation, which is arguably a distinctive feature of the human species.     

Thirty years on – a large anti‐Flynn effect? The Piagetian test Volume & Heaviness norms 1975–2003

Background. Volume & Heaviness was one of three Piagetian tests used in the CSMS survey in 1975/76. However unlike psychometric tests showing the Flynn effect – that is with students showing steady improvements year by year requiring tests to be restandardized – it appeared that the performance of Y7 students has recently been getting steadily worse. Aims. A sample of schools sufficiently large and representative was chosen so that the hypothesis of worsening performance could be tested, and estimated quantitatively. Sample. Sixty‐nine Y7 school year groups containing pupil data on the Volume & Heaviness test and the University of Durham CEM Centre MidYIS test were located giving a sample of 10, 023 students covering the years 2000 to 2003. Method. Regression of the students' school mean on Volume & Heaviness on the schools' mean MidYIS 1999 standardized score, and computing the regression at MidYS = 100 allows comparison with that found in 1976. Results. The mean drops in scores from 1976 to 2003 were boys = 1.13 and girls = 0.6 levels. A differential of 0.50 standard deviations in favour of boys in 1976 had completely disappeared by the year 2002. Between 1976 and 2003 the effect‐size of the drop in the boys' performance was 1.04 standard deviations, and for girls was 0.55 standard deviations. Conclusion. The idea that children leaving primary school are getting more and more intelligent and competent – whether it is viewed in terms of the Flynn effect, or in terms of government statistics on performance in Key Stage 2 SATS in mathematics and science – is put into question by these findings.     

‘Who is my Jung?’ The progressive,though sometimes ambivalent,expansion of Jung's idea of the collective unconscious: from an ‘unconscious humanity’ to – in all but name – the soul of the world

This paper discusses Jung's idea of myth as a projection of the collective unconscious, suggesting that the term ‘projection’ separates human beings from nature, withdrawing nature's life into humanity. Jung's discovery of a realm independent of consciousness – in conversations with his soul in The Red Book, and in synchronicity, began a dialogue which finally brought him, through the Alchemical Mercurius, closer to the idea of a world‐soul.     

Parenting adult children – invisible ties that bind?

This paper presents the authors' ideas about parenting adult children, describes some of the results of a larger qualitative research study and explores possible implications for practice. The study is based on in‐depth analyses of narratives from interviews of a non‐clinical population of parents of adult children. It represents part of an ongoing study to develop an understanding of an under‐researched area of family life.     

‘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.     

序列依赖效应——一种全新的“历史效应”

自2014年来, 研究者在视觉加工中发现一种全新的历史效应——序列依赖效应(当前刺激加工向先前刺激方向偏移的吸引性加工偏差)。近期研究发现：该效应广泛存在于视觉加工的各个层面(既包括朝向、空间位置、数量等低级特征, 也包括身份、吸引力、美感等高级属性); 其来源极为复杂(包括感觉编码、高级皮层的反馈调节、工作记忆、决策模板、感知与决策的级联等), 反映出不同层次的过往加工痕迹向当前认知的投射。针对该效应的典型特征、影响因素、认知与神经机制, 已涌现大量研究, 同时也存在严重争论, 亟待研究者深入探讨和厘清。     

Freud's “A Case of Successful Treatment by Hypnotism (1892–1893)”: An Uncommon Therapy?

Freud's first reported successful treatment by hypnosis included suggestions that have much in common with some recent developments in family systems therapy. The case is discussed within the context of the evolution of psychoanalytic and family systems theories with the view that intrapsychic and contextual forces are not mutually exclusive. The author agrees with Haley in his recent book, Uncommon Therapy, regarding the value of viewing psychiatric symptoms as manifestations of a disturbance in family relations, occurring especially at transitional stages of family development. However, the emphasis on behavior change and symptom removal restricts the potentiality of the family approach to that of psychoanalysis in 1895, when it was a naive, simplistic, and mechanistic therapy.     

Consciousness or the Physical Universe – Which Came First?

Historically, many have seen the intelligibility of the physical universe as showing that it is somehow ultimately dependent upon conscious intelligent pre‐existing being – ‘God’. Today, however, many believe that modern advances in our scientific understanding of the origins and nature of the universe, and of the conscious intelligent beings it contains, render God, as Laplace said, an ‘unnecessary hypothesis’. This article considers whether the findings of modern science do indeed diminish the plausibility of belief in a creator God. Or, on the contrary, whether there are features of current scientific understanding which may reasonably be thought to support the belief that conscious intelligent being pre‐existed the physical universe and caused it to be. In short: can science reasonably be thought to support the view that consciousness created the physical universe rather than that the physical universe created consciousness?