Family predictors of moral internalization in childhood

This study aimed to analyze the relationship between parents' affection, acceptance, emotional communication, the transmission of values and moral intervention, on the one hand, and children's moral emotions and behaviors on the other (empathy, guilt, internalized behavior and reparation). It also aimed to identify the family variables that influence moral internalization in children. The sample comprised 485 children (244 boys and 241 girls) aged between 6 and 8. The results showed that the principal variable to predict internalized behavior in girls was maternal affection, whereas for boys, the principal variables were maternal emotional communication and transmission of values. The family variables that explain moral internalization in extreme groups of children are basically parents' affection, emotional communication, the transmission of values and moral intervention.     

Spectral Perception and Ghostly Subjectivity at the Colonial Gender/Race/Sex Nexus

This article calls for an examination of the spectral operations of the perceptual architecture of colonization in conjunction with the enactment of a decolonial feminism as proposed by María Lugones. The first section discusses both the notion of ghostly subjectivity from Lugones's early work as well as the echoes of this notion in her recent work on the coloniality of gender that emphasizes the gender/race/sex nexus. Subsequently, through a photographic example, the article presents an analysis of the perceptual operations of specter‐making in practices of colonization in light of Lugones's understanding of the “light” and “dark” sides of the coloniality of gender. This analysis highlights not only the intricate nexus between racialization and gender and sex norms both in the past and in the present context, but it also points to the necessity for of a decolonial feminism attuned to perceptual practices or a decolonial aesthesis.     

Foucault,Freud, and the Repressive Hypothesis

One aspect of Foucault's thought brings him much closer to Freud than many commentators believe. This Freudian “moment” in Foucault is formulated in the following dictum: the soul is the prison of the body. For Foucault, the modern soul is formed when the norms that govern disciplinary training and exercise are internalized. Once internalized, these norms affect our self-understanding and conduct. This paper focuses on Foucault's account of internalization. It shows that this Freudian moment in Foucault mitigates his criticisms of the repressive hypothesis, but it also suggests a conception of interiority that can be interpreted as the modern instantiation of the rapport à soi.     

Fictional Truth and Make-Believe

The statement “Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth” seems true in Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice (even though it may not actually appear in the text) while the statement “Mr. Darcy is a detective” seems false. One explanation for this intuition is that when we read or talk about fictional stories, we implicitly employ the fictional operator “It is fictional that” or “It is part of the story that.” “It is fictional that Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth” expresses a true proposition while “It is fictional that Mr. Darcy is a detective” does not. Fictive statements can be abbreviated as “In F, P”. Determining what statements are fictionally true in a story requires providing truth conditions for statements of the form “In F, P.” This paper proposes an analysis of truth in fiction and examines the notion of make-believe.     

SECOND NATURE AND SPIRIT: HEGEL ON THE ROLE OF HABIT IN THE APPEARANCE OF PERCEPTUAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Hegel's discussion of the concept of “habit” appears at a crucial point in his Encyclopedia system, namely, in the transition from the topic of “nature” to the topic of “spirit” (Geist): it is through habit that the subject both distinguishes itself from its various sensory states as an absolute unity (the I) and, at the same time, preserves those sensory states as the content of sensory consciousness. By calling habit a “second nature,” Hegel highlights the fact that incipient spirit retains a “moment” of the natural that marks a limitation compared to “pure thought” but that also makes perceptual consciousness possible. This makes Hegel's account analogous in important respects to John McDowell's “naturalism of second nature.” But Hegel's account of habit can be seen as a version of a Kantian synthesis of the productive imagination—and hence presupposes a given material that can become one's own by means of habit. This does not mean that Hegel falls into the Myth of the Given, but it does suggest that an appropriate account of second nature might be committed to something McDowell wants to deny: that nonconceptual states of consciousness play a role (even if not a justificatory role) in perception.     

Remembering and knowing: Two means of access to the personal past

The nature of recollective experience was examined in a recognition memory task. Subjects gave “remember” judgments to recognized items that were accompanied by conscious recollection and “know” judgments to items that were recognized on some other basis. Although a levels-of-processing effect (Experiment 1) and a picture-superiority effect (Experiment 2) were obtained for overall recognition, these effects occurred only for “remember” judgments, and were reversed for “know” judgments. In Experiment 3, targets and lures were either preceded by a masked repetition of their own presentation (thought to increase perceptual fluency) or of an unrelated word. The effect of perceptual fluency was obtained for overall recogrntion and “know” judgments but not for “remember” judgments. The data obtained for confidencejudgments using the same design (Experiment4) indicated that “remember”/”know” judgments are not made solely on the basis of confidence. These data support the two-factor theories of recognition memory by dissociating two forms of recognition, and shed light on the nature of conscious recollection.     

Effective interactions: Communication and high levels of marital satisfaction

Of all the significant relationships in the lives of human-beings, the marital relationship remains one of the most central and important to their well-being. For this rapid review the authors accessed four online databases (PsycINFO, PsychARTICLES, JSTOR Journals, and ScienceDirect) to examine the evidence on aspects of communication which contribute to high levels of marital satisfaction and to synthesise these findings. The search yielded 103 unique articles, of which 15 were ultimately included. Principal results found the following activities to relate to high marital satisfaction: 1) communication activities such as engaging in small talk and providing verbal and non-verbal messages of affection; 2) “positive” exchanges which include any interactions perceived by both parties as constructive; 3) effective conflict management including the use of responses of recalibration and reaffirmation (R-R response), the use of we-pronouns, and the Listener-Speaker technique; 4) possessing and implementing effective communication skills such as using “I” instead of “you” messages; and 5) using “positive” communication skills such as clarification to elicit “positive” affect such as feeling understood. The evidence suggests that mental health professionals working with married couples should seek to promote quality dyadic communication as part of treatment interventions.     

Meeting Mitchell's Challenge: A Comparison of Relational Psychoanalysis and Intersubjective Systems Theory

A human being is part of the whole, called by us, the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and foundation for inner security. ^{1 1}From Dan Siegel's Web site (www.drdansiegel.com).      

Hypnotic experience and the autism spectrum disorder. A phenomenological investigation

In recent decades, the focus in autism research progressively expanded. It presently offers extensive material on sensorimotor disturbances as well as on perceptive-cognitive preferences of people with autism. The present article proposes not only a critical interpretation of the common theoretical framework in autism research but also focuses on certain experiences common to some people with autism and which can be appropriately understood by phenomenology. What I will call “hypnotic experiences” in autism are moments in which some individuals withdraw into intense sensorial and perceptive experiences. Following their examples, I use the term “hypnosis” primarily to describe a trance state in which the individuals become highly alert to and awake for an experience of a totally new kind. Through a close analysis of autobiographical writings from people with autism I defend the idea that the particularity of hypnotic experiences in autism consists in a certain qualitative shift within experience itself: what changes, in the hypnotic moments, is the way a person with autism relates to his/her own bodily experiences. If this qualitative shift is indeed difficult to account for within a reifying and intellectualist research perspective, phenomenology offers a large conceptual framework for understanding it. Phenomenology, and precisely, phenomenological psychopathology, will thus emerge as a major device in accounting for such “hypnotic experiences”. The argument mainly draws on the twofold structure of experience which is traditionally used in phenomenological research: it claims that in hypnotic experience people with autism are inclined to focus on non-reified “sensings”, “perceivings” and “movings”, and thus leave aside the object itself and any intentional reification of it. Finally, I will claim that this restriction to mere non-reified sensings might lead to a completely new conception of self and world. In the hypnotic experiences of autism, neither the subject nor the object come to a full-blown and independent existence. A thorough phenomenological analysis of hypnotic experience in autism therefore also has to face the question of a corresponding ontology of these experiences.     

Reasoning about make-believe and hypothetical suppositions: Towards a theory of belief-contravening reasoning

The present study explores how suppositions which conflict with accepted beliefs are represented and reasoned about. Two studies test the predictions regarding the nature and developmental changes in children's ability to represent and reason about hypothetical or make-believe suppositions which violate their everyday knowledge and beliefs. In Study 1, 46 4th- and 5th-graders were introduced to a hand puppet, Freddy, who made claims inconsistent with generally accepted beliefs (e.g., “all dogs meow”) because he was pretending (Make-Believe Condition) or believed them (Hypothetical Condition). Participants were asked to think like Freddy and judge whether a conclusion (“There's a dog; does it meow?”) follows logically from the claim. In Study 2, 40 kindergarten (6-year-olds), 3rd–4th grade (10-year-olds), and college students were asked to represent belief contravening make-believe (pretend in a make-believe world that dogs meow) and hypothetical (imagine what the real world would be like if dogs meow) premises, evaluate conclusions of the premises (Rover is a dog, does Rover meow?) and make judgments about the attributes (growl, wag tail, purr, and eat mice) of the entity (a meowing dog) they created. The prediction that it would be easier to represent and reason from belief-contravening suppositions in the Make-Believe than Hypothetical conditions was confirmed in each study, although the two forms of reasoning were directly correlated (Study 2). The results were discussed in terms of the similarities (compartmentalization and integration) and differences (reconciliation) of processes involved in fancifully (make-believe) or seriously (hypothetical) representing and reasoning about belief-contravening suppositions.     

Face recognition algorithms and the other‐race effect: computational mechanisms for a developmental contact hypothesis

People recognize faces of their own race more accurately than faces of other races. The “contact” hypothesis suggests that this “other‐race effect” occurs as a result of the greater experience we have with own‐ versus other‐race faces. The computational mechanisms that may underlie different versions of the contact hypothesis were explored in this study. We replicated the other‐race effect with human participants and evaluated four classes of computational face recognition algorithms for the presence of an other‐race effect. Consistent with the predictions of a developmental contact hypothesis, “experience‐based models” demonstrated an other‐race effect only when the representational system was developed through experience that warped the perceptual space in a way that was sensitive to the overall structure of the model's experience with faces of different races. When the model's representation relied on a feature set optimized to encode the information in the learned faces, experience‐based algorithms recognized minority‐race faces more accurately than majority‐race faces. The results suggest a developmental learning process that warps the perceptual space to enhance the encoding of distinctions relevant for own‐race faces. This feature space limits the quality of face representations for other‐race faces.     

Intimacy and the face of the other: A philosophical study of infant institutionalization and deprivation

The orphans of Romania were participants in what is sometimes called “the forbidden experiment”: depriving human infants of intimacy, affection, and human contact is an inhuman practice. It is an experiment which no ethical researcher would set out to do. This paper examines historical data, case histories, and research findings which deal with early deprivation and performs a phenomenological analysis of deprivation phenomena as they impact emotional and physical development. A key element of deprivation is the absence of intimate relationships with other human beings. However, the absence of intimacy impacts not only the social/emotional abilities of infants, but their very ability to perceive the world. Philosophically and from a radically Merleau-Pontean perspective, the intimate face of the other appears to be a world opening event for the child. Its absence has a profound impact on the child's experience of embodiment, coexistence, spatiality, temporality, and language. When seen through early deprivation, intimacy appears as a necessary foundation for establishing the transcendence of the world beyond perceptual presence, and it provides the possibility for language, culture, and history.     

Husserl’s hyletic data and phenomenal consciousness

In the Logical Investigations, Ideas I and many other texts, Husserl maintains that perceptual consciousness involves the intentional “animation” or interpretation of sensory data or hyle, e.g., “color-data,” “tone-data,” and algedonic data. These data are not intrinsically representational nor are they normally themselves objects of representation, though we can attend to them in reflection. These data are “immanent” in consciousness; they survive the phenomenological reduction. They partly ground the intuitive or “in-the-flesh” aspect of perception, and they have a determinacy of character that we do not create but can only discover. This determinate, non-representational stratum of perceptual consciousness also serves as a bridge between consciousness and the world beyond it. I articulate and defend this conception of perceptual consciousness. I locate the view in the space of contemporary positions on phenomenal character and argue for its superiority. I close by briefly arguing that the Husserlian account is perfectly compatible with physicalism (this involves disarming the Grain Problem).     

Does perceived direct gaze boost detection in adults and children with and without autism? The stare-in-the-crowd effect revisited

This study extended that of von Grünau and Anston (1995) and explored whether perceived direct gaze is easily detected by individuals with and without autism, utilizing a visual-search paradigm. Participants detected target faces with either direct gaze or averted gaze. Laterally averted faces were used to eliminate the involvement of lower perceptual characteristics such as symmetry, which were inherent with the “straight gaze” used by von Grünau and Anston. Both typically developed adults and children detected targets with direct gaze more quickly than those with averted gaze, but face inversion distorted this asymmetrical performance, suggesting the contribution of configurative facial processing. In contrast, children with autism were not affected by the gaze direction presented by realistic facial stimuli. They were, however, faster to detect straight gaze defined solely by local features, which suggests that their impairment might be specific to the detection of direct gaze presented within a facial context.     

Recognition memory and awareness: A large effect of study-test modalities on “know” responses following a highly perceptual orienting task

Abstract

Two experiments investigated the effects of varying the correspondence between presentation and test modes on states of conscious awareness in recognition memory. Experiment 1 used visual test items and showed that auditory and visual study modes differentially affected recollective experience and feelings of familiarity assessed by “remember” and “know” responses accompanying recognition: “know” responses were slightly enhanced following visual presentation, but this was largely offset by a similarly small increase in “remember” responses. Experiment 2 employed conditions designed to maximise any effect on “know” responses of the correspondence between presentation and test modes by using a highly perceptual orienting task at study. Under these conditions, there was a large mode correspondence effect on “know” responses. The results support the idea that “know” responses are particularly sensitive to perceptual factors.     

Therapeutic activities and the assimilation model: A preliminary exploratory study on the Insight stage

The assimilation model describes the process of change assuming that the self is enriched when there is a dialogue between nondominant voices or problematic experiences and the dominant voices. This dialogue is best seen in the Insight stage. The aim of this paper is to study the Insight stage during the assimilation process in relation to the main therapeutic activities performed by the therapist. All the Insights from the assimilation process of a patient, María, were analysed. In assimilation terms, María could be described through the nondominant voices of “dizziness,” “tiredness,” and “inability to cope with daily demands,” and through the dominant voices of “control,” “overcome and solve,” and “why something is happening.” María showed a successful assimilation of her problematic experiences. The therapeutic context was the Linguistic Therapy of Evaluation (LTE), a kind of cognitive therapy based on the theory of General Semantics. María was considered a good outcome case in the LTE sample. Results showed that there were some general therapeutic activities related to these Insights. A high percentage of activities pointed to one of the main issues of LTE: the development of an extensional orientation. At the same time, some of these activities were related to María’s voices. Results are discussed in relation to the relevance of the development of an extensional orientation for the assimilation process; how voices are recognized or challenged in therapy, and to the importance of considering relationship issues during the assimilation process.     

Culture and attention: Recent empirical findings and new directions in cultural psychology

Over the past 3 decades, cultural psychologists have empirically investigated the influence of cultural meaning systems on human psychology. Under the rubric of holistic versus analytic thought, researchers have demonstrated that there are substantial cultural variations in social cognition, and that such variations are observable even in so‐called fundamental psychological processes, such as attention. The aim of this paper is to review 3 major themes in culture and attention: (1) culture and attention to nonsocial scenes, (2) culture and attention to social scenes, and (3) culture and aesthetics. The paper also discusses 4 major strands of research that could be considered important candidates to further advance the understanding of culture and attention: (1) research on “culture ? human psychological processes,” where we investigate how culture influences modes of attention; (2) research on “human psychology ? cultural processes,” where we investigate how those who hold a specific mode of attention create cultural products and tangible representations of culturally shared meanings; (3) research on cultural neuroscience, where we investigate underlying mechanisms and processes of specific modes of attention; and (4) research on cultural transmission processes, where we investigate how specific modes of attention is taught by adults and internalized by children.