VOLITION: A NEW EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH

The subjects were presented with a drawing task, i.e. to follow a straight line. Later, without the subjects' knowledge, the experimenter inserted a mirror so that the subjects were looking at another person's hand in a mirror, placed so that the subjects still thought they were looking at their own hands. When both the subjects' and the stooge's hand were following the straight line, the subjects experienced the alien hand as their own and that its movements were controlled by themselves (voluntary movements). When the stooge drew a curve to the right, the subjects still experienced the hand as their own, but now making involuntary movements. Thus, 'the visual hand' dominated 'the kinesthetical hand' despite the fact that the subjects objectively made compensatory movements to the left.     

Women's Magazine Fiction: A Content Analysis of the Roles,Attributes, and Occupations of Main Characters

A content analysis of the fiction stories in seven national women's magazines revealed that the primary problem for most of the main characters is romantic. Most of the characters are atractive, single, white Americans younger than 45. They live in the city, have zero to two children, are middle class, and college educated, and they have careers or jobs. Less than half of them are able to solve their own problems, and occupations are assigned sterotypically by gender. The conclusion drawn is that the fiction in these magazines is, in many ways, as traditional as has been found in the past.     

Book reviews

Gott ist schön und Er liebt die Schönheit: God is Beautiful and He Loves Beauty. Alma Giese and J. Christoph Bürgel, 1994. Bern, Peter Lang. 474 pp., hb. n.p., ISBN 3–906750–90–6.

The Concept of Islamic International Criminal Law. Farhad Malekian, 1994. London, Graham & Trotman. 213 pp., £55.00, $92, ISBN 1859660851.

Religion in Europe: contemporary perspectives. S. Gill, G. D'Costa, and U. King (Eds), 1994. Kampen, Kok Pharos. 213 pp., pb., Fl 49.90, ISBN 90–390–0508–7.

Religious Freedom and the Position of Islam in Western Europe. W. A. R. Shadid and P. S. van Koningsveld, 1995. Kampen, Kok Pharos. 229 pp., pb., Fl 64.90, ISBN 90–390–0065–4.

Christianity in the Arab World. HRH Crown Prince El Hassan Bin Talal, 1994. Amman, Arabesque. 120pp., hb.

Holymen of the Blue Nile: the making of an Arab‐Islamic community in the Nilotic Sudan 1500–1850. Neil MHugh. Evanston Illinois, Northwestern University Press. 280pp., hb., $54.95, ISBN 0–8101–1069–5.     

The argumentative impact of causal relations — An exemplary analysis of the free predicate in the promotional discourse

The semantic relations between and within utterances are marked by the use of connectors and adverbials. One type of semantic relations is causal relations expressed by causal markers such as because, therefore, so, for, etc. Some of these markers cover different types of causal relations such as causality, explanation and justification. In certain types of discourse, causal relations also imply an intentional element. This paper describes the way in which the semantic and pragmatic functions of causal markers can be accounted for in terms of linguistic and rhetorical theories of argumentation.     

H-Comp: A program to calculate information complexity

Scott’s (1969)H is a statistic that represents the number of independent dimensions in a set of binary (1,0) data.H has been used by personality and social psychologists to measure the complexity of thought people have about themselves (self-complexity) and about other people. This article describesH-Comp, a program that calculatesH. Using data input from either the keyboard or from an ASCII data file,H-Comp calculatesH and writes the resulting score and raw data to output files.H-Comp provides an accurate and efficient way to calculateH.     

Is Optimism Always Best?: Future Outlooks and Preparedness

ABSTRACT— Although people generally appear optimistic about the future, they shift from optimism under certain circumstances. Drawing from a recent review of the literature, we describe how both optimism and shifts from optimism serve the common goal of preparedness, which includes a readiness to deal with setbacks and a readiness to take advantage of opportunities. Shifts from optimism occur in response to available information and to the possibility that things may not turn out as hoped. People tend to shift from optimism when feedback is anticipated in the near future, when the outcome is important, when negative outcomes are easily imagined, and when the outcomes are uncontrollable. In addition, people with low self-esteem shift from optimism more readily than do people with high self-esteem. Finally, both optimism and shifts from optimism have unique benefits in terms of preparedness.     

Eye movements of monkey observers viewing vocalizing conspecifics

Primates, including humans, communicate using facial expressions, vocalizations and often a combination of the two modalities. For humans, such bimodal integration is best exemplified by speech-reading - humans readily use facial cues to enhance speech comprehension, particularly in noisy environments. Studies of the eye movement patterns of human speech-readers have revealed, unexpectedly, that they predominantly fixate on the eye region of the face as opposed to the mouth. Here, we tested the evolutionary basis for such a behavioral strategy by examining the eye movements of rhesus monkeys observers as they viewed vocalizing conspecifics. Under a variety of listening conditions, we found that rhesus monkeys predominantly focused on the eye region versus the mouth and that fixations on the mouth were tightly correlated with the onset of mouth movements. These eye movement patterns of rhesus monkeys are strikingly similar to those reported for humans observing the visual components of speech. The data therefore suggest that the sensorimotor strategies underlying bimodal speech perception may have a homologous counterpart in a closely related primate ancestor.     

Concurrent therapies: a model for collaboration between psychoanalysts and other therapists

Many psychoanalysts treat individuals who are simultaneously in couples therapy or whose partners are in individual therapy. If such cases stall, some analysts may seek consultation from a colleague, though most have accepted the tacit historical prohibition against communication between therapists treating members of the same family. Experience, however, suggests that a certain form of communication between such therapists can have a powerfully enhancing effect on the concurrent therapies. After a review of the literature, the advantages, disadvantages, and impediments to collaborative cross-communication are examined. A model is then presented for use in ongoing discussion between therapists, and is illustrated with two clinical examples. The proposed model centers on the transference-countertransference configurations within the therapeutic field, and serves as an organizer highlighting areas for discussion.