Madness strikes back

This commentary is concerned with the involvement of mental health service users in research. It will argue that research carried out by service users is one way of giving voice to a previously silenced group—the mad. It is one way in which ‘Madness Strikes Back’. The main theoretical model to be used is that of the early Foucault. I will not be concerned with what has become known as ‘Foucauldian discourse analysis’ since nowhere in Foucault's writing is there reference to conversation or talk. I will, however, be concerned with power as mental health service users are amongst the most disempowered of groups in all societies. I will also be concerned with Foucault's claim that, since the Enlightenment, madness has been positioned as the antithesis of reason, as ‘unreason’. This distinction can be argued to persist in the field of research. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘It's not racist. It's common sense’. A critical analysis of political discourse around asylum and immigration in the UK

This paper looks at a political speech given by the leader of the opposition party during the run up to the UK elections in 2005. Using this speech as a starting point, we attempt to trace the path of ‘racism’ within a text that makes explicit claims to being ‘not racist’. Drawing on a number of theoretical and methodological resources, this paper approaches the analysis by focusing on a number of conceptually heterogeneous elements that, in relation with each other, function to produce, re‐produce and stabilize ‘racism’. One of the difficulties commonly encountered in social psychological work, we would suggest, is that an explicit statement of allegiance to a particular methodological and theoretical tradition can also result in a restriction of theorization to a particular ‘level of analysis’. That is to say, a methodological process that constructs a pre‐given category, presets the criteria by which ‘racism’ can be identified and fixes the ‘level of analysis’ at which it can be studied risks ignoring the multiple points of contact at which ‘racism’ can be made visible or made to disappear. The concern here it that such a process can work to reinscribe the very ‘racisms’ we aim to disrupt. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perseverative interference with object-in-place scene learning in rhesus monkeys with bilateral ablation of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

Surgical disconnection of the frontal cortex and inferotemporal cortex severely impairs many aspects of visual learning and memory, including learning of new object-in-place scene memory problems, a monkey model of episodic memory. As part of a study of specialization within prefrontal cortex in visual learning and memory, we tested monkeys with bilateral ablations of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in object-in-place scene learning. These monkeys were mildly impaired in scene learning relative to their own preoperative performance, similar in severity to that of monkeys with bilateral ablation of orbital prefrontal cortex. An analysis of response types showed that the monkeys with lesions were specifically impaired in responding to negative feedback during learning: The post-operative increase in errors was limited to trials in which the first response to each new problem, made on the basis of trial and error, was incorrect. This perseverative pattern of deficit was not observed in the same analysis of response types in monkeys with bilateral ablations of the orbital prefrontal cortex, who were equally impaired on trials with correct and incorrect first responses. This may represent a specific signature of ventrolateral prefrontal involvement in episodic learning and memory.     

Moving From Efficacy to Effectiveness in Eating Disorders Prevention: The Sorority Body Image Program

Although eating disorders prevention research has begun to produce programs with demonstrated efficacy, many such programs simply target individuals as opposed to engaging broader social systems (e.g., schools, sororities, athletic teams) as participant collaborators in eating disorders prevention. Yet, social systems ultimately will be responsible for the real-world delivery of eating disorder prevention programs, suggesting that an important issue has yet to be addressed. Namely, it is unclear to what degree efficacious individual-focused eating disorder prevention programs remain effective when incorporated into critical social systems under real-world conditions. Over the past 5 years, we have collaborated with the campus sororities in the development of a sustainable eating disorders prevention program that is based on the prevention efficacy literature. This paper describes both challenges and helpful strategies that we encountered in tailoring an evidence-based eating disorders prevention program to the needs of a relevant social system.     

Collective rationality in interactive decisions: evidence for team reasoning

Decision theory and game theory rest on a fundamental assumption that players seek to maximize their individual utilities, but in some interactive decisions it seems intuitively reasonable to aim to maximize the utility of the group of players as a whole. Such team reasoning requires collective preferences and a distinctive mode of reasoning from preferences to decisions. Findings from two experiments provide evidence for collective preferences and team reasoning. In lifelike vignettes (Experiment 1) and abstract games (Experiment 2) with certain structural properties, most players preferred team-reasoning strategies to strategies supporting unique Nash equilibria, although individually rational players should choose equilibrium strategies. These findings suggest that team reasoning predicts strategy choices more powerfully than orthodox game theory in some games.     

The referential communication skills of children with imaginary companions

The present study investigated the referential communication skills of children with imaginary companions (ICs). Twenty-two children with ICs aged between 4 and 6 years were compared to 22 children without ICs (NICs). The children were matched for age, gender, birth order, number of siblings, and parental education. All children completed the Test of Referential Communication (Camaioni, Ercolani & Lloyd, 1995). The results showed that the children with ICs performed better than the children without ICs on the speaker component of the task. In particular, the IC children were better able to identify a specific referent to their interlocutor than were the NIC children. Furthermore, the IC children described less redundant features of the target picture than did the NIC children. The children did not differ in the listening comprehension component of the task. Overall, the results suggest that the IC children had a better understanding of their interlocutor's information requirements in conversation. The role of pretend play in the development of communicative competence is discussed in light of these results.     

Gaze motion clustering in scan-path estimation

Visual attention is considered nowadays a paramount ability both in Cognitive Sciences and in Cognitive Vision to bridge the gap between perception and higher level reasoning functions, such as scene interpretation and decision making. Bottom-up gaze shifting is the main mechanism used by humans when exploring a scene without a specific task. In this paper we investigated which criteria allow for the generation of plausible fixation clusters by analysing experimental data of human subjects. We suggest that fixations should be grouped in cliques whose saliency can be assessed through an innovation factor encompassing bottom-up cues, proximity, direction and memory components.     

Evaluating the invariance of the factor structure of the EPQ-R-N among adolescents

We examined the factor structure of the Neuroticism scale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R-N; S. B. G. Eysenck, Eysenck & Barrett, 1985) and its factor invariance across sex and racial/ethnic groups in a sample of 1,979 adolescents. Using confirmatory factor analyses, we compared a hierarchical model to previous models of the EPQ-R-N and to single-factor and 3-factor structures. The hierarchical factor structure in which a general factor coexists with 3 group factors (depression, social concerns, and worry) was superior to alternative models. The general factor accounted for more than 60% of the variance in EPQ-R-N total scores and was invariant across sex and ethnicity. The 3 group factors varied across ethnicity and sex. We discuss the implications of these findings for conceptualization and assessment of neuroticism using the EPQ-R-N.     

Fictional coreference as a problem for the pretense theory

There seems to be a perfectly ordinary sense in which different speakers can use an empty name to talk about the same thing. Call this fictional coreference. It is a constraint on an adequate theory of empty names that it provide a satisfactory account of fictional coreference. The main claim of this paper is that the pretense theory of empty names does not respect this constraint.

Personality correlates of equity sensitivity for samples of Canadian, Bulgarian, and Mexican business people

Equity sensitivity concerns perceptions of what is or is not equitable. Previous studies have shown that equity sensitivity is associated with one's relationship orientation. Relationships are also influenced by personality variables. As both personality and equity sensitivity influence relationships, equity sensitivity and personality may be correlated also; so, this study examined that possibility. The relations of equity sensitivity with 3 personality variables were explored across three culturally different samples. This allowed validation across cultures of the proposed equity-personality relationship which has traditionally been assessed in a U.S. setting. In general, personality-equity sensitivity relationship was not supported across the samples.