Lost in Eden: Dementia From Paradise

I look at dementia from an eschatological perspective through personal experience as I supported my husband through his journey into Alzheimer’s disease. Building on the notion of a monastic garden, I draw from the contemplatives to understand my own “kairos” moment that changed my perspective on the way church and other providers offer care. Comparing the church to a garden, I argue that people with dementia are priest-bearing sacraments in whose faces God is seen. Looking into the faces of those with dementia, these priests shepherd us to recognize our illusions about life calling us to greater humility.     

The Relative Potential of Self-Concept and Intelligence as Predictors of Achievement

The feasibility of using self-concept measures along with intelligence measures to improve the prediction of achievement was explored. Two self-concept tests, an intelligence test, and an achievement test battery were administered to 47 male and 49 female sixth graders. Achievement was found to be related to academic success self-concept, but not to physical maturity, peer relations, or school adaptiveness self-concepts. Achievement in the content areas of reading, language, and mathematics was most directly related to self-concept measures that were specifically reflective of academic success in these content areas. In each of these areas, the combination of intelligence and the related academic success self-concept measure accounted for more achievement variance than did intelligence alone. This last finding was interpreted as evidence suggesting that content area specific self-concept measures might facilitate the prediction of academic success, and researchers wishing to control for self-concept in studies of academic achievement should use measures of self-concept that are specifically reflective of academic success in the content area being investigated.     

The Moderating Effects of Mindfulness on Psychological Distress and Emotional Eating Behaviour

Current evidence and theory suggests that emotional eating resulting from attempts to manage psychological distress, such as anxiety, depression, and stress, is considered to be a major contributor to obesity. Mindfulness has been shown to be related to disordered eating behaviours. Employing a non‐clinical sample of 42 males and 115 females, the present study investigated the contribution of mindfulness as a potential moderator between psychological distress and engagement in emotional eating, while controlling for the effects of gender and general nutrition knowledge. Consistent with predictions, psychological distress was positively associated with engagement in emotional eating, while mindfulness was found to share an inverse relationship. Moreover, after controlling for gender and general nutrition knowledge, the interaction between psychological distress and mindfulness was found to significantly predict the tendency to engage in emotional eating over and above the individual effects of these variables. The findings from the current study add to the current literature supporting the use of mindfulness‐based interventions for treatment of emotional eating practices in individuals experiencing anxiety, stress, and lower levels of depression.     

Freud and the Psychoanalysis of Telepathy: Commentary on Claudie Massicotte’s “Psychical Transmissions”

Freud was interested in and eventually accepted the diverse forms of telepathic communication as psychoanalytic rather than occult phenomena, particularly as manifested in dreams. Massicotte revisits the topic of Freud and his interest in the occult in a manner that invites serious reconsideration of this aspect of his work, long the subject of intense controversy in the history of psychoanalysis. In my response to Massicotte’s paper I argue that Freud’s interest in telepathy or thought transference belongs to his psychoanalytic theories of the unconscious and transference. His approach to telepathy parallels his approach to religious beliefs: He accounts for both as creations of the human mind as individuals attempt to make sense and meaning of their real experiences. What Freud meant by telepathy is what contemporary psychoanalysis refers to as unconscious communication, and the strange, often inexplicable forms it takes in clinical contexts. For Freud, instances of telepathy or unconscious communication are to be understood contextually and relationally, revealing important data about the nature of affectively charged human relationships.     

Visuospatial bootstrapping: Long-term memory representations are necessary for implicit binding of verbal and visuospatial working memory

It has recently been shown that presenting additional visuospatial information alongside to-be-remembered numbers in a digit span task enhances participants’ memory for those items. However, the mechanisms behind this visuospatial bootstrapping effect have remained unspecified. In this article, we report evidence that this effect involves an integration of information from verbal and visuospatial temporary memory with long-term-memory (LTM) representations and that the existence of a relevant LTM representation is necessary for bootstrapping to occur.