From rat sexual behavior to schizophrenia: a tribute to Professor Emeritus Knut Larsson

In July of 2002 Knut Larsson celebrated his 80th birthday. He could by then have looked back at a long and distingusihed career in the field of biological psychology. His research on sexual behavior had contributed to a basic understanding of many behavioral, endocrine and neural phenomena associated with or underlying sexual activity. Instead of looking back at his past achievements, Knut has preferred to look forward, constantly trying to find ways to stimulate interest in his own field and in biological psychology in general. This issue is a humble contribution to the noble end of enhancing the standing of biological psychology, particularly in Scandinavia. Foremost, however, it is a homage to a man of outstanding vision and intellectual integrity: Knut Larsson.     

Teaching Otherwise

In this paper I discuss some conditions forunderstanding teaching as an act ofresponsibility towards an other, rather than asan instrumental act identified throughepistemology. I first put the latter intocontext through a critical reading of teachingas it is inscribed in humanistic discourses oneducation. Within these discourses, I explorehow students are treated as objects ofknowledge that reinforce the teacher's ego. Icontend that the taking up of this positionmakes not only an ethical relation to thestudent impossible, but also disqualifies anytype of meaningful social relation. Therefore Iargue that teachers have to give up theirposition on the safe side of knowledge andparticipate in the time of risk when meetingthe other means to take responsibility for thatother from a position of vulnerability.Moreover, it is precisely because of this riskthat teaching as an ethical relation becomespossible and where it begins to resound withpoetry.     

Partners in Crime: How Liars in Collusion Betray Themselves1

The paradigmatic task for participants in studies on deception is to assess veracity on the basis of a single statement. However, in applied contexts, lie catchers are often faced with multiple statements (reported by one or several suspects). To appreciate this mismatch, we conducted a study where each member of 10 truth‐telling pairs and 10 lying pairs (reporting fabricated alibis) was interrogated twice about an alibi. As predicted, lying pair members were more consistent between themselves than were truth‐telling pair members, and single liars and truth tellers were equally consistent over time. Furthermore, truth tellers made more commissions than did liars. Although in line with our repeat vs. reconstruct hypothesis, these findings contrast sharply with beliefs held by professional lie catchers and recommendations found in literature on deception detection. The results are translated into an applied psycholegal context.     

Memory skills mediating superior memory in a world-class memorist

Laboratory studies have investigated how individuals with normal memory spans attained digit spans over 80 digits after hundreds of hours of practice. Experimental analyses of their memory skills suggested that their attained memory spans were constrained by the encoding time, for the time needed will increase if the length of digit sequences to be memorised becomes longer. These constraints seemed to be violated by a world-class memorist, Feng Wang (FW), who won the World Memory Championship by recalling 300 digits presented at 1 digit/s. In several studies we examined FW’s memory skills underlying his exceptional performance. First FW reproduced his superior memory span of 200 digits under laboratory condition, and we obtained his retrospective reports describing his encoding/retrieval processes (Experiment 1). Further experiments used self-paced memorisation to identify temporal characteristics of encoding of digits in 4-digit clusters (Experiment 2), and explored memory encoding at presentation speeds much faster than 1 digit/s (Experiment 3). FW’s superiority over previous digit span experts is explained by his acquisition of well-known mnemonic techniques and his training that focused on rapid memorisation. His memory performance supports the feasibility of acquiring memory skills for improved working memory based on storage in long-term memory.     

Witnesses appearing live versus on video: effects on observers' perception,veracity assessments and memory

The study is an experiment examining how different presentation modes (live vs. video) affect observers' perception, veracity assessments and memory of witnesses and their statements. Three weeks after seeing a staged accident, six truth telling and six lying witnesses testified about the event. Mock jurors (N = 122) viewed the witnesses' testimony either live or on video and rated their perception of the witnesses' statement and appearance as well as the credibility of the witnesses. Live observers rated the witnesses' appearance in a more positive way and perceived them as being more honest than did video observers. Truth tellers were rated as having to think less hard than liars. Moreover, observers were not better than chance in assessing veracity, regardless of presentation mode. Live observers incorrectly believed they had a better memory of the witnesses' statements than video observers. Observers who had watched truthful statements showed a significantly better memory performance than observers who had watched deceptive statements. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

No compelling evidence for a bilingual advantage in switching or that frequent language switching reduces switch cost

Participants completed three cued-switching tasks, responded to two category-fluency probes, two letter-fluency probes, and two probes to alternate between two targets. Correlations across the three cued-switching tasks were significant for both switching costs and mixing costs. The bilingual advantage hypothesis was tested both by forming language groups and treating bilingualism as a continuous variable. No bilingual advantages were observed. In verbal-fluency monolinguals generated more correct responses but the bilingual disadvantage on the category task was not reduced in the letter-fluency scores. The bilingual disadvantage was eliminated when the groups were matched on vocabulary size. The verbal-fluency measures obtained when participants alternated between targets weakly correlated with the switching-costs obtained in the cued-switching tasks.     

Right hemisphere has the last laugh: neural dynamics of joke appreciation

Understanding a joke relies on semantic, mnemonic, inferential, and emotional contributions from multiple brain areas. Anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) combining high-density whole-head MEG with anatomical magnetic resonance imaging allowed us to estimate where the humor-specific brain activations occur and to understand their temporal sequence. Punch lines provided either funny, not funny (semantically congruent), or nonsensical (incongruent) replies to joke questions. Healthy subjects rated them as being funny or not funny. As expected, incongruous endings evoke the largest N400m in left-dominant temporo-prefrontal areas, due to integration difficulty. In contrast, funny punch lines evoke the smallest N400m during this initial lexical–semantic stage, consistent with their primed “surface congruity” with the setup question. In line with its sensitivity to ambiguity, the anteromedial prefrontal cortex may contribute to the subsequent “second take” processing, which, for jokes, presumably reflects detection of a clever “twist” contained in the funny punch lines. Joke-selective activity simultaneously emerges in the right prefrontal cortex, which may lead an extended bilateral temporo-frontal network in establishing the distant unexpected creative coherence between the punch line and the setup. This progression from an initially promising but misleading integration from left frontotemporal associations, to medial prefrontal ambiguity evaluation and right prefrontal reprocessing, may reflect the essential tension and resolution underlying humor.     

Dynamics of psychoanalytic supervision: a heuristic model

This paper presents a heuristic model for the dynamics of psychoanalytic supervision. It is not a manual for how to perform supervision, but a model for how to identify and think about the complex elements and forces influencing the supervisory process. The point of departure is that psychoanalysis is a composite craft in which seemingly contrary elements like strict rules and creative intuitions have their place and interact. Several aspects of supervision are discussed: aims, learning processes, teaching methods, relationship, emotional atmosphere and evaluation. Competence is given a pivotal place in the model. The main feature of the model is that these aspects of supervision are all seen as suspended in a field of dynamic tensions between phenomena in real or apparent opposition. One example of this is the tension in the supervisory relationship between supervisor as instructor acting as an authority for the candidate whilst being a mentor fostering autonomy in the candidate. It is argued that related kinds of dynamics characterize several aspects of psychoanalytic supervision and that these tensions are inherent in analytic work. In conclusion a key word picture of the model is presented.