Bernstein’s levels of movement construction: A contemporary perspective

Explanation of how goal-directed movements are made manifest is the ultimate aim of the field classically referred to as “motor control”. Essential to the sought-after explanation is comprehension of the supporting functional architecture. Seven decades ago, the Russian physiologist and movement scientist Nikolai A. Bernstein proposed a hierarchical model to explain the construction of movements. In his model, the levels of the hierarchy share a common language (i.e., they are commensurate) and perform complementing functions to bring about dexterous movements. The science of the control and coordination of movement in the phylum Craniata has made considerable progress in the intervening seven decades. The contemporary body of knowledge about each of Bernstein’s hypothesized functional levels is both more detailed and more sophisticated. A natural consequence of this progress, however, is the relatively independent theoretical development of a given level from the other levels. In this essay, we revisit each level of Bernstein’s hierarchy from the joint perspectives of (a) the ecological approach to perception-action and (b) dynamical systems theory. We review a substantial and relevant body of literature produced in different areas of study that are accommodated by this ecological-dynamical version of Bernstein’s levels. Implications for the control and coordination of movement and the challenges to producing a unified theory are discussed.     

Visual imagery: The past and future as seen by patients with Alzheimer’s disease

We investigated visual imagery for past and future thinking in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). We invited AD patients and controls to retrieve past events and to imagine future events. Participants also provided a “Field” response if they see the event through their own eyes, or an “Observer” response if they see themselves in the scene as a spectator would. Less “Field” and more “Observer” responses were observed in AD participants than in controls during past and future thinking, suggesting a diminished ability to mentally visualize past and future events in AD. Results also demonstrated significant positive correlations between the production of “Field” responses and specificity during past and future thinking, suggesting a relationship between the ability to mentally visualize past and future events and autobiographical overgenerality in AD.     

Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics: its origin and relevance

This paper offers an exposition of Husserl's mature philosophy of mathematics, expounded for the first time in Logische Untersuchungen and maintained without any essential change throughout the rest of his life. It is shown that Husserl's views on mathematics were strongly influenced by Riemann, and had clear affinities with the much later Bourbaki school.

A social mind: The context of John Turner’s work and its influence

We review John Turner’s contribution to social psychology and his ongoing influence on the field. We provide an account of his research and theorising framed by the two major theoretical frameworks which he developed: social identity theory (together with Henri Tajfel) and self-categorisation theory. We elaborate the contribution of his work in developing an understanding of intergroup relations (in social identity theory) and specifying the social nature of the self, the salience of social identities, and of the importance of social identity for social influence, stereotyping, power, and leadership (within self-categorisation theory). We then locate these research programmes within Turner’s broader meta-theoretical goal of addressing major problems, issues, and themes within social psychology. These centre on (a) a critique of the pervasive anti-collectivism within much of social psychology, (b) a normative/political agenda for social change, and (c) a commitment to the social nature of the individual mind. These themes explicitly or implicitly infused his research and continue to inspire much of the work in the theoretical tradition that he pioneered.     

Sexuality and corrections: An administrator’s perspective

Any consideration of human sexuality inevitably refers to fundamental and powerful physical, psychological, behavioral, attitudinal, and social forces that permeate many important aspects of human life and culture. As with many issues impacting society in general, these become magnified within the correctional environment.     

Allan Paivio’s response to Delprato’s review of Mind and its evolution: A dual-coding theoretical approach

The Psychological Record -     

Developmental and cognitive perspectives on humans’ sense of the times of past and future events

Mental time travel in human adults includes a sense of when past events occurred and future events are expected to occur. Studies with adults and children reveal that a number of distinct psychological processes contribute to a temporally differentiated sense of the past and future. Adults possess representations of multiple time patterns, and these representations take several different forms. Memory for the times of past events is built upon reconstruction of temporal locations, impressions of distances in the past, and order-codes. The times of future events are understood primarily as locations in represented time patterns, but propositions active in memory contain information that particular events are coming soon. Young children have difficulty distinguishing the past–future status of some events, showing that basic memory processes do not make the distinction clear. Concepts of the past and future may be required for differentiating these two categories of experience.     

Levels of processing: past,present. and future?

In this article I first briefly survey some enduring legacies of the Craik and Lockhart (1972) article on levels of processing (LOP) and address some common criticisms. In the next section I discuss whether memory can be regarded as "pure processing", the role of short-term memory in an LOP framework, measurement of "depth" in LOP, encoding-retrieval interactions, the concept of consolidation, and the reality of "levels" of processing. In the final section I offer some speculations on future directions, discussing the notion of levels of representation and a possible continuing role for LOP in memory research.     

Canada’s Same-Sex Marriage Law: Exception to or Exemplar of Canada’s Family Policy?

Family policy in Canada is primarily concerned with assisting parents raise their children. This fairly singular approach to family policy is ironic given that Canada does not have a nationally-coordinated family policy. The development of a national family policy has been hampered by Canada’s decentralized governmental structure (i.e., federal and provincial, as well as territorial, governments) and other factors such as diverse geography and different traditions (e.g., a tradition of common law in English Canada, and civil law in Quebec). A recent addition to Canada’s family policy is Bill C-38, The Civil Marriage Act (2005), the law legalizing same-sex marriage. To put Canada’s same-sex marriage law into context, this article presents some preliminary statistics about same-sex marriage in Canada, and considers whether same-sex marriage legislation is a good example of Canadian family policy, or an exception to the rule that Canadian family policy focuses primarily on helping parents socialize their children.     

Sport and children’s spirituality: an Australian perspective

The benefits of sport and physical activity are endorsed by a number of professionals as a means of improving children’s health and their sense of well-being, and their unity with the natural world, other people and the Transcendent. For children, sport is a spiritual source of joy and wonder. Using Champagne’s ‘spiritual modes of being’, my recent study of Victorian children demonstrated their heightened sensory awareness, enriched relationships and robust sense of personal identity, arising from active and passive participation in sport. The children in the study seemed to benefit in each of these areas from Australian culture’s high value of sporting participation and achievement.     

Dasein’s Shadow and the Moment of its Disappearance

In his 1937 lectures, Heidegger searches for Nietzsche’s initial thought of “the Moment”. This paper mimics Heidegger’s pursuit of Nietzsche’s Moment by tracing Heidegger’s own early arrival at the Moment in Being and Time, published 10 years prior to his lectures on Nietzsche. Both Zarathustra and Dasein are chased in and out of an authentic relationship with the Moment by their own shadows, which disappear at midday. Dasein’s shadow is the being that is always closest-at-hand, the being in whom I lose myself in everyday care. Dasein forgets itself in inauthentically securing its identity in that which it cares for and that which it is not, darkness. Yet Dasein also confronts its own finitude in its negative double as it witnesses the daily dwindling of its shadow—the everyday passing away of time.     

Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A Content Analysis of Black- and White-Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazines

This article represents an analysis of the sexual images of women in magazine advertisements. I examined advertisements in Black- and White-oriented, mens and womens magazines to compare the images of womens sexuality that are constructed for each specific audience. Over 600 images of women were analyzed based on seven dimensions, including function/role, relative function/authority, physical/body position, relative size/height, character traits, body view, and physical characteristics. The images of womens sexuality vary depending on the race of the intended audience and the race of the women in the advertisements. Advertisements for White audiences portray women in roles and with characteristics that suggest dependency and submissiveness, whereas advertisements for Black audiences portray women as independent and dominant. I also found that White women are objectified much more than Black women are.     

Putnam’s account of apriority and scientific change: its historical and contemporary interest

In the 1960s and 1970s, Hilary Putnam articulated a notion of relativized apriority that was motivated to address the problem of scientific change. This paper examines Putnam’s account in its historical context and in relation to contemporary views. I begin by locating Putnam’s analysis in the historical context of Quine’s rejection of apriority, presenting Putnam as a sympathetic commentator on Quine. Subsequently, I explicate Putnam’s positive account of apriority, focusing on his analysis of the history of physics and geometry. In the remainder of the paper, I explore connections between Putnam’s account of relativized a priori principles and contemporary views. In particular, I situate Putnam’s account in relation to analyses advanced by Michael Friedman, David Stump, and William Wimsatt. From this comparison, I address issues concerning whether a priori scientific principles are appropriately characterized as “constitutive” or “entrenched”. I argue that these two features need to be clearly distinguished, and that only the constitutive function is essential to apriority. By way of conclusion, I explore the relationship between the constitutive function a priori principles and entrenchment.     

The impact of post-migration stressors on refugees’ emotional distress and health: A longitudinal analysis

Refugees often experience poor physical and mental health outcomes following resettlement. These outcomes have been linked to the conditions that are experienced by refugees in the post-migration context, but little is known about the mechanisms by which these conditions influence health. We therefore conducted secondary analyses of the Survey of New Refugees, a large longitudinal study commissioned by the UK Home Office with data collected at four time points spanning 21 months. Refugees’ experience of emotional distress such as feeling stressed, worried, and depressed fully mediated the relationship between post-migration stressors and longitudinal general health. There was no evidence that perceived social support influenced this relationship. These findings suggest that emotional distress contributes to poor health outcomes among refugees and thus that interventions might target emotional distress.     

Roots of the Pavlovian Society’s missions of the past and present: The Pavlov dimension

This paper offers an interpretation of the relation between Pavlov’s life and work and the missions of the Pavlovian Society, both past (“observation and observation”) and present (“interdisciplinary research on the integrated organism”). I begin with an acount of Pavlov's life and his influence on contemporary thought. I then indicate the relation of some of Pavlov's attitudes (e.g., his motto, his epistemological stance) to the Society's past mission. In the concluding and most controversial section, I argue for six guiding principles derived from Pavlov, to be applied to the Society’s mission. These are: (a) a confident methodological behaviorism; (b) a significant role assigned to both physiological and psychological factors in the prediction and control of the integrated organism; (c) approximately equal taxonomic precision of physiological and psychological explanatory concepts; (d) distrust of toleological explanatory concepts; (e) rejection of psychology’s instrumentalist “cognitive paradigm shift”; and (f) rejection of the representational theory of knowledge.     

Deconstructing Canada’s discourse of immigrant integration

The term “integration” is commonly used in Canada’s immigration discourse to refer to the desirable way by which newcomers should become members of the receiving society. Policy-makers, immigration critics, and academics adopt different languages and conceptual tools to articulate integration, but the subtext of their discourse is similar. This paper deconstructs the integration discourse in policy statements, immigration debates, and academic writings. The analysis shows that the discourse endorses a conformity model in assessing immigrants and a monolithic cultural framework that preaches tolerance in the abstract but remains intolerant toward cultural specificities deemed outside the mainstream. The subtext is unequivocal: Becoming similar to Canadians is integration and maintaining cultural difference is opposite to integration. The paper advocates a more inclusive approach toward integration.