Narrative form and identity in the conventionalization of memories of national histories / Forma narrativa e identidad en la convencionalización del recuerdo de historias nacionales

This paper studies the effect of narrative forms on the remembering of historical accounts. Drawing on Bartlett’s method of repeated reproduction, we analyse how two different historical versions of the Irish conflict — constructed with the same historical events but through different narrative forms — are remembered in three recall sessions by subjects with different national feelings of belonging (Spanish and Basque) and positions in relation to that conflict. The conventionalization and rationalization of memories is also analysed by examining the transformation of the material in the three sessions. Results show two different recall profiles resulting from each version of the story. While in the pro-Irish version repressive events justifying the struggle for Irish independence were more remembered, the pro-British version is reconstructed on those more institutional events that legitimize the maintenance of the United Kingdom. The bias of the narrative form on the remembering of the stories is discussed in regard to history teaching.     

Neuronal symphonies: Musical improvisation and the centrencephalic space of functional integration

Musical improvisation is a sophisticated activity in which a performer realizes, real-time, melodic, and rhythmic sequences in harmony with those from other musicians. The study of musical improvisation helps one to understand not only the cognition of creativity, but also the complex neuronal basis of executive functions, the relation between conscious and unconscious action, and even more. So far, the prevailing models, founded on the brain imaging method, have focused on the connection between the cortical areas and their cognitive processes. Little attention, on the other hand, has been given to the huge variety of subcortical activities, especially in the basal ganglia. This fundamental subcortical component, through its implicit procedures and the role it plays in memory, is responsible to produce new information all the time, allowing the prefrontal cortex to transform a huge and disordered amount of data in explicit creative acts. The basal ganglia are strongly related to the activation of chemical signals generated by dissonance or lack of symmetry between perception and expectation, participating even in the responses to environmental demands according to the circumstances. Thus, they interact with the frontal cortex and with the limbic system, playing a key role in planning and selecting appropriate actions and in decision making. In this text, we try to explain in which sense improvisation is connected to the processes of executive functions, to creativity and to the integrated activity of cortical–subcortical areas controlling the free flow of ideas and to expressive spontaneity. Eventually, we purpose a model according to which structure (improvisational field) and process (improvisational time) take part at the centrencephalic space of functional integration, which, through both competing and cooperating dynamics, gives way to spontaneous composition.     

Hysteria,A Century Later: Post-Kleinian Theory and Technique

ABSTRACT

Freud developed many of his theories and technique while attempting to help hysterical patients. This article approaches hysteria not just as a syndrome consisting of a group of signs and symptoms, but primarily as an inner world configuration that fuels object relations patterns. The internal world hysterical profile informs the transference/countertransference experience and the therapeutic process. I attempt to describe some of the technical problems psychoanalysts have to deal with while working with these patients. Hysterical object relations do not necessarily manifest themselves as somatic symptoms—epileptic-like, paralysis, blindness, etc.—even in patients that show the relational hysterical patterns. These object relations modes can appear in any analysis irrespective of the primary diagnostic conceptualization.     

Emotional prosody effects on verbal memory in older and younger adults

Prosody, or the way things are said, can modify the meaning of utterances making qualitatively different affective prosodies useful for understanding how auditory affective information is processed and remembered. In this study, we collected behavioral data from 225 younger (M age = 20.8 years, SD = 2.5 years; 119 males) and 225 older adults (M age = 71.6 years, SD = 6.5 years; 119 males) in order to examine age differences in emotional prosody effects on verbal memory. Participants were randomly divided into three subgroups according to different prosody listening conditions (positive, negative, and neutral) and prosody effects on a yes–no recognition memory task were investigated. The results showed how older adults who listened to the story read with a neutral prosody remembered more words than those who listened to the same story with a positive or negative prosody. Younger adults showed no valence effects. Our findings highlighted an age and affective prosody interaction that affects remembering in older adults alone.     

Learning representation hierarchies by sharing visual features: a computational investigation of Persian character recognition with unsupervised deep learning

In humans, efficient recognition of written symbols is thought to rely on a hierarchical processing system, where simple features are progressively combined into more abstract, high-level representations. Here, we present a computational model of Persian character recognition based on deep belief networks, where increasingly more complex visual features emerge in a completely unsupervised manner by fitting a hierarchical generative model to the sensory data. Crucially, high-level internal representations emerging from unsupervised deep learning can be easily read out by a linear classifier, achieving state-of-the-art recognition accuracy. Furthermore, we tested the hypothesis that handwritten digits and letters share many common visual features: A generative model that captures the statistical structure of the letters distribution should therefore also support the recognition of written digits. To this aim, deep networks trained on Persian letters were used to build high-level representations of Persian digits, which were indeed read out with high accuracy. Our simulations show that complex visual features, such as those mediating the identification of Persian symbols, can emerge from unsupervised learning in multilayered neural networks and can support knowledge transfer across related domains.     

Use of evidence in a categorization task: analytic and holistic processing modes

Category learning performance can be influenced by many contextual factors, but the effects of these factors are not the same for all learners. The present study suggests that these differences can be due to the different ways evidence is used, according to two main basic modalities of processing information, analytically or holistically. In order to test the impact of the information provided, an inductive rule-based task was designed, in which feature salience and comparison informativeness between examples of two categories were manipulated during the learning phases, by introducing and progressively reducing some perceptual biases. To gather data on processing modalities, we devised the Active Feature Composition task, a production task that does not require classifying new items but reproducing them by combining features. At the end, an explicit rating task was performed, which entailed assessing the accuracy of a set of possible categorization rules. A combined analysis of the data collected with these two different tests enabled profiling participants in regard to the kind of processing modality, the structure of representations and the quality of categorial judgments. Results showed that despite the fact that the information provided was the same for all participants, those who adopted analytic processing better exploited evidence and performed more accurately, whereas with holistic processing categorization is perfectly possible but inaccurate. Finally, the cognitive implications of the proposed procedure, with regard to involved processes and representations, are discussed.     

Tactile short-term memory for stimuli presented on the fingertips and across the rest of the body surface

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which tactile information that is unavailable for full conscious report can be accessed using partial-report procedures. In Experiment 1, participants reported the total number of tactile stimuli (up to six) presented simultaneously to their fingertips (numerosity judgment task). In another condition, after being presented with the tactile display, they had to detect whether or not the position indicated by a (visual or tactile) probe had previously contained a tactile stimulus (partial-report task). Participants correctly reported up to three stimuli in the numerosity judgment task, but their performance was far better in the partial-report task: Up to six stimuli were perceived at the shortest target-probe intervals. A similar pattern of results was observed when the participants performed a concurrent articulatory suppression task (Exp. 2). The results of a final experiment revealed that performance in the partial-report task was overall better for stimuli presented on the fingertips than for stimuli presented across the rest of the body surface. These results demonstrate that tactile information that is unavailable for report in a numerosity task can nevertheless sometimes still be accessed when a partial-report procedure is used instead.     

Exploring the factors contributing to empowerment of Turkish migrant women in the UK

This study examined the role of demographic factors (length of stay, education and language level), perceived discrimination, social support, four acculturation attitudes, and psychological distress in predicting empowerment among Turkish migrant women in the UK. The study sample comprised 248 Turkish migrant women (mean age: 34.38; SD: 7.6) living in London. Self-report questionnaires were used to assess empowerment, social support, acculturation attitude and psychological distress. The study hypothesized that perceived discrimination; acculturation attitudes of separation, assimilation and marginalization; and psychological distress would be negative predictors of empowerment and that social support and an integration acculturation attitude would be positive predictors of empowerment. To some extent, the study findings supported this hypothesis. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated psychological distress to be the most significant predictor of empowerment, with other significant predictors including level of education and social support. More specifically, lower levels of psychological distress and higher levels of education and social support appeared to predict greater empowerment. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that level of education and social support may function as protective factors and that psychological distress may function as a risk factor for empowerment in the migration context. The paper discusses the findings of this study in relation to the previous literature and notes their implications for future research and practice.     

To what extent do Gestalt grouping principles influence tactile perception?

Since their formulation by the Gestalt movement more than a century ago, the principles of perceptual grouping have primarily been investigated in the visual modality and, to a lesser extent, in the auditory modality. The present review addresses the question of whether the same grouping principles also affect the perception of tactile stimuli. Although, to date, only a few studies have explicitly investigated the existence of Gestalt grouping principles in the tactile modality, we argue that many more studies have indirectly provided evidence relevant to this topic. Reviewing this body of research, we argue that similar principles to those reported previously in visual and auditory studies also govern the perceptual grouping of tactile stimuli. In particular, we highlight evidence showing that the principles of proximity, similarity, common fate, good continuation, and closure affect tactile perception in both unimodal and crossmodal settings. We also highlight that the grouping of tactile stimuli is often affected by visual and auditory information that happen to be presented simultaneously. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and applied benefits that might pertain to the further study of Gestalt principles operating in both unisensory and multisensory tactile perception.     

Moment/History Duality in Prior’s Logics of Branching-Time

The basic notions in Prior’s Ockhamist and Peircean logics of branching-time are the notion of moment and that of history (or course of events). In the tree semantics, histories are defined as maximal linearly ordered sets of moments. In the geometrical approach, both moments and histories are primitive entities and there is no set theoretical (and ontological) dependency of the latter on the former. In the topological approach, moments can be defined as the elements of a rank 1 base of a non-Archimedean topology on the set of histories. In this paper, it will be shown that the topological approach, and hence the other approaches, can be reconstructed in a framework in which the basic notions are those of history and of relative closeness relation among histories.