The 1-2-3 Magic Program: Implementation Outcomes of an Australian Pilot Evaluation With School-Aged Children

No abstract available for this article.     

Adult Attachment Interview and Psychoanalytic Perspective: A Single Case Study

In this single case study we present a female patient diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder and a borderline organization. The interplay between attachment and psychoanalytic perspective will be focused. The analyst describes his impressions of the initial interview with the patient and essential steps during treatment. The patient was interviewed with the Adult Attachment Interview and classified as “insecure preoccupied” with an “unresolved state of mind” concerning loss and abuse. The analyst was asked to comment the AAI's essential characteristics of this patient. We discuss converging and diverging aspects of clinical and attachment interpretation in this single case.     

What I like is How I Am: Impact of Alexithymia on Aesthetic Preference

Aim of this work was to explore the impact of alexithymia on art works appreciation, to examine the influence of emotion regulation on art judgment. While observing a painting, the viewer's cognitive structure contains several types of information (semantic, episodic, and strategic) and is the repository of personal traits, motivations, and emotional dispositions that are involved in this interaction. The study of how personal traits influence work of art appreciation, and especially the study of the way emotion regulation impacts on art judgment, was aimed at improving the comprehension of the aesthetic experience costruct. One hundred adults, divided into 2 groups (high and low scores in alexithymia), observed 20 works of art and were then asked to give an evalutative judgment on three dimentions: cognitive, emotional, aesthetic. As hypothesized, the two groups had significant differences in their aesthetic preferences. Although subjects without affective regulation disorders preferred excitation related pictures, subjects with alexithymia appreciated works evoching emotions of pleasure inhibition. These results confirm the impact of personality traits on aesthetic preference and support the need to include emotional regulation in a comprehensive model of aesthetic experience.     

Anaxagoras’s Qualitative Gunk

Are there atoms in the constitution of things? Or is everything made of atomless ‘gunk’ whose proper parts have proper parts? Anaxagoras (fifth-century BC) is the first gunk lover in the history of metaphysics. For him gunk is not only a theoretical possibility that cannot be ruled out in principle (as it is for modern gunk lovers). Rather, it is a view that follows cogently from his metaphysical analysis of the physical world of our experience. What is distinctive about Anaxagoras’s take on gunk is not only what motives the view, but also the particular type of gunk that he develops. It is qualitative gunk, rather than material gunk. Anaxagoras’s ontology was developed before matter was ‘invented’. It includes quality tropes only; they are gunky. The resulting metaphysical view – a world of qualitative gunk – is new, in the sense of being hitherto unexplored; and yet, it is derived from Anaxagoras’s writings. Drawing on Anaxagoras’s insights, this paper offers a sketch of what qualitative gunk ontology looks like; it explores what motives it; and it highlights the differences of qualitative gunk from material gunk.     

Personality Correlates of Assessment Center Consensus Competency Ratings: Evidence from Russia

Controversy has revolved around whether assessment center ratings have construct validity to measure intended dimensions of managerial performance. In contrast to much recent research on the internal structure of assessment center ratings, the present studies investigated the relationship of final competency ratings derived by consensus discussion with external questionnaire measures of personality characteristics. Expanding on previous studies showing correlations of dimension scores in relation to individual trait measures, this study investigated the relationship of complex competencies with both single personality traits and with composites of personality traits. Evidence from two samples of managers in Russia shows that final competency ratings are related to predicted composites of personality factors more consistently than to single factors. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that assessment center ratings derived by consensus discussion show construct validity in relationship with predicted composites of personality characteristics.     

Improving the Ability of Elementary School-Age Children to Identify Emotion in Facial Expression

The authors evaluated an intervention program developed to remediate children's deficits in reading emotions in facial expressions. Thirty children from 2 elementary schools in suburban Atlanta participated in 6 30-min sessions over 4 weeks in which they were taught to discriminate, identify, express, and apply facial expression cues. The ability to read emotion in facial expressions significantly improved for the intervention group compared with the control group. Improvement on identifying facial expressions was associated with increased feelings of lower social anxiety and higher self-worth for girls. Boys' self-concept was negatively related to improvement. On the basis of the results, the authors suggested that structured interventions like the present one could be used to improve students' nonverbal processing abilities within public school settings, but with some cautions regarding the impact of new learning for boys.     

Liberalism and Eugenics

‘Liberal eugenics’ has emerged as the most popular position amongst philosophers writing in the contemporary debate about the ethics of human enhancement. This position has been most clearly articulated by Nicholas Agar, who argues that the ‘new’ liberal eugenics can avoid the repugnant consequences associated with eugenics in the past. Agar suggests that parents should be free to make only those interventions into the genetics of their children that will benefit them no matter what way of life they grow up to endorse. I argue that Agar's attempt to distinguish the new from the old eugenics fails. Once we start to consciously determine the genetics of future persons, we will not be able to avoid controversial assumptions about the relative worth of different life plans. Liberal eugenicists therefore confront the horns of a dilemma. Whichever way they try to resolve it, the consequences of widespread use of technologies of genetic selection are likely to look more like the old eugenics than defenders of the new eugenics have acknowledged.     

Can a Neural System Geared to Bring About Rapid,Predictive, and Efficient Function Explain Creativity?

Abstract

Vandervert, Schimpf, and Liu (this issue) have presented a cerebellar model of creativity in the featured article by relating their ideas to processes of working memory in relation to the cerebellum as well as by generalizing the motor control role of the cerebellum to extend to non-motor facets of cognition. In the present article, I discuss the weaknesses of their approach at different levels, ranging from the inadequate definition of the construct under study and the lack of specificity in their claims, to the counterintuitive underlying rationale of their approach, and the inadequate evidence provided to cement their ideas. I end by briefly outlining what would be necessary to propound an account of creativity that is uniquely attributable to cerebellum function.     

Initial job analysis of military embedded behavioral health services: Tasks and essential competencies

Utilization of mental health personnel assigned to operational military units is an area of growth for the US military. What activities they perform, how requirements may differ from working in clinical settings, and how to select and train for these types of positions is still poorly understood. A job analysis was conducted of Air Force mental health providers and enlisted technicians embedded in special operations, intelligence, and high-risk training units. Participants rated 27 tasks on frequency, importance, difficulty, and risks, as well as the importance of 37 knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), with differentiation between KSAs that may be trained versus those that must be present to be assigned to the embedded position. Tasks reflected 4 areas of activity: unit embedding/engagement, behavioral health consultation and support, performance optimization activities, and operational mission tasks. Tasks varied by professional training (psychologist, social worker, enlisted technician) and unit type. The KSAs rated as most important were ethical judgment and ability to manage complex relationships and boundaries while working outside of a clinic, strong interpersonal skills with appropriate assertiveness to advocate for safe, effective courses of action, and understanding of unit missions and organizational dynamics. Results have implications for job design, selection criteria, professional disciplines with KSAs necessary to unit-specific tasks, and training of personnel for integrated operational support positions.     

Bocheński on authority

Józef Maria Bocheński introduced an important distinction between deontic and epistemic authority. A typical example of epistemic authority is the relation of a teacher to his students; a typical example of deontic authority is the relation between an employer and his employee. The difference between the two lies in domains of authority: declarative sentences make up the domain in the case of epistemic authority, orders—in the domain of deontic authority. In the article, I analyze in detail the concepts of the two kinds of authority and propose some new explications. The concept of epistemic authority is distinguished from the concept of infallibility and expertise; and the concept of deontic authority is distinguished from the concept of sovereign. I interpret various kinds of deontic authority in the light of the theory of imperative sentences. The concepts of gradation and de-gradation of authority are introduced and explicated.