Self-reported versus measured weight and height by adolescent girls: a Croatian sample

Self-reported and measured weight and height of 234 Croatian girls in Grades 5, 8, and 11 were used to explore the validity of these measures for calculating Body Mass Index. For both weight and height, the correlations between self-reported and measured values were over .93. Overweight girls underreported their weight and overreported their height.     

Feeling guilty as a source of information about threat and performance

OCD patients experience increased feelings of guilt, threat and uncertainty about harm prevention. As to the relation between these phenomena, it was hypothesised that the experience of guilt acts as "information" that increases the sense of threat and decreases the sense that preventive action is effective. We tested whether state guilt is used as information about risk and prevention effects and whether people high in trait guilt do so more than others. Participants high and low in trait guilt were included. Three types of affect were experimentally induced: guilt, anxiety and a neutral affect. Then, participants estimated the likelihood and severity of a negative outcome, and the dissatisfaction with preventive performances in two OCD relevant scenarios. Relative to low-trait guilt participants, people high in trait guilt had higher ratings of risk after induction of state guilt. With regards to dissatisfaction with preventive performance, there was only a trend for high-trait guilt participants to respond stronger to state guilt. The results suggest that people with a general inclination to feel guilty use temporary feelings of guilt as information about the threat content of a situation and do so even if the source of state guilt is unrelated to the situation. Implications for the understanding of OCD are discussed.     

Casper or 'the cabinet of horrors'

This paper is an account of a four-times-a-week analysis with a very deprived, feral-like child. The author, who has come to understand feral children as very deprived children, turns to an historical account written in 1826 by Anselm von Feuerbach, the jurist who was asked to make enquiries into the identity of a savage and mysterious boy, Kaspar Hauser. The author describes how she has made use of the observations and thoughts of Anselm von Feurbach in her attempts to process her own thoughts and reflections around the unfolding clinical material and how the exploration of the differences and similarities between Casper and Kaspar Hauser helped her to gradually grasp the psychological essence of the patient. The question of an appropriate reading of the clinical material for theoretical purposes remains open.     

Retro-cue benefits in working memory without sustained focal attention

In working memory (WM) tasks, performance can be boosted by directing attention to one memory object: When a retro-cue in the retention interval indicates which object will be tested, responding is faster and more accurate (the retro-cue benefit). We tested whether the retro-cue benefit in WM depends on sustained attention to the cued object by inserting an attention-demanding interruption task between the retro-cue and the memory test. In the first experiment, the interruption task required participants to shift their visual attention away from the cued representation and to a visual classification task on colors. In the second and third experiments, the interruption task required participants to shift their focal attention within WM: Attention was directed away from the cued representation by probing another representation from the memory array prior to probing the cued object. The retro-cue benefit was not attenuated by shifts of perceptual attention or by shifts of attention within WM. We concluded that sustained attention is not needed to maintain the cued representation in a state of heightened accessibility.     

Modified Taylor Complex Figure: Normative data from 290 adults

Data for copying and delayed recall (after a 15‐min delay) of the Modified Taylor Complex Figure (MTCF), an alternative form of the Rey‐Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF), were collected from 290 healthy participants. Normative data are provided. Age and education were significantly correlated with MTCF scores and must be corrected for to interpret results accurately. More specifically, increasing age adversely affected performance, whereas a higher education resulted in a better performance. Twenty‐five participants were tested with both complex figures (MTCF and ROCF) in two separate sessions to assess correlation, which proved to be high. The collected data allow using the MTCF as a valid alternative material for testing visual long‐term memory avoiding implicit learning that can occur when the same version of the ROCF is used for repeated testing sessions.     

Nietzsche on the Diachronic Will and the Problem of Morality

In this paper I offer an innovative interpretation of Nietzsche's metaethical theory of value which shows him to be a kind of constitutivist. For Nietzsche, I argue, valuing is a conative attitude which institutes values, rather than tracking what is independently of value. What is characteristic of those acts of willing which institute values is that they are owned or authored. Nietzsche makes this point using the vocabulary of self‐mastery. One crucial feature of those who have achieved this feat, and have consequently become agents, is that they possess a diachronic or long will and are consequently capable of the rational governance of future behaviour. The possession of a will of this sort is crucial because it is a necessary condition for engaging in temporally unified activities which are a requisite of authorship. Nietzsche, I argue, makes these points in his doctrine of eternal recurrence which provides a test that acts of will must pass to count as laws. In the final section of the paper I argue for the superiority of this interpretation over some of its competitors.