The old and thee, uh, new: disfluency and reference resolution

Most research on the rapid mental processes of on-line language processing has been limited to the study of idealized, fluent utterances. Yet speakers are often disfluent, for example, saying "thee, uh, candle" instead of "the candle." By monitoring listeners' eye movements to objects in a display, we demonstrated that the fluency of an article ("thee uh" vs. "the") affects how listeners interpret the following noun. With a fluent article, listeners were biased toward an object that had been mentioned previously, but with a disfluent article, they were biased toward an object that had not been mentioned. These biases were apparent as early as lexical information became available, showing that disfluency affects the basic processes of decoding linguistic input.     

Identification of tone duration, line length, and letter position: an experimental approach to timing and working memory deficits in schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia display numerous cognitive deficits, including problems in working memory, time estimation, and absolute identification of stimuli. Research in these fields has traditionally been conducted independently. We examined these cognitive processes using tasks that are structurally similar and that yield rich error data. Relative to healthy control participants (n = 20), patients with schizophrenia (n = 20) were impaired on a duration identification task and a probed-recall memory task but not on a line-length identification task. These findings do not support the notion of a global impairment in absolute identification in schizophrenia. However, the authors suggest that some aspect of temporal information processing is indeed disturbed in schizophrenia.     

Grammatical intuitions about irregular verb inflections

If people possess a rule that the root of a verb plus -ed produces the past tense, why does this rule produce an unacceptable form when applied to an irregular verb (e.g., comed)? One possibility is that the unacceptability of comed is the result of lexical priming. That is, comed primes the correct form came, and the awareness of came causes comed to be perceived as unacceptable. If so, then the acceptability of a misinflected form should be determined by the factors that influence the priming of its correct form, such as the frequency and hence speed of retrieval of its correct form. Three experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, subjects were faster to reject misinflected irregular verbs when the correct irregular form had a higher frequency than when it had a lower frequency. Furthermore, the higher the frequency of the correct form, the more unacceptable the misinflected form seemed. Experiment 2 used the naming task to confirm that the presentation of a misinflected form facilitated the naming of its correct form. In Experiment 3, subjects were faster to accept an irregular verb when it was primed by a misinflected irregular verb than with a correct regular verb. This was taken as evidence that the misinflected irregular verb accesses the correct form.     

The course of 253 analyses from selection to outcome

Two studies of the clinical work of experienced psychoanalysts are presented. Study I is a retrospective study of all the analytic work--161 cases--of sixteen analysts from 1973 to 1977, including their evaluations of the treatments at outcome. Study II is a prospective study of the ninety-two cases started in analysis by a group of twenty analysts between 1984 and 1989 and followed to termination, including their reports. The history of each treatment as reported and evaluated by the analyst is examined in terms of: nature of the population, the analyst's view of the case when the initial recommendation was made, duration of treatment, therapeutic benefit, rating of analyzability at termination of treatment, nature of the termination, and cases changed to psychotherapy. Some old shibboleths are challenged as perspective on both the limitations and achievements of psychoanalysis emerges from the findings of the study.     

Issues of Power, Control, and Status in Group Interaction: From Ferenczi to Foucault

Examination of the issues of power, control, and status in human interaction is made from the works of Kafka, Ferenczi, and Foucault. Ferenczi's confusion of tongues theory as a model is used to describe the dynamics of charismatic group leadership in training group for analyst group candidates.     

Boundaries as pre-conditions.

Boundaries in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy can be considered either as indicators of moral transgressions or as guidelines for therapeutic intervention. This paper suggests that these categories be better delineated in the hope that less attention be paid to that of moral mistakes and more to that of treatment effectiveness.     

Ferenczi's Rise and Fall from “Analytic Grace”: The Ferenczi Renaissance Revisited

In the last 20 years a Ferenczi Renaissance has been slowly building. There has been a rediscovery of the significance of Sándor Ferenczi, who can be considered the clinical genius of psychoanalysis. The politics of psychoanalysis led to the suppression of Ferenczi's ideas, removing his influence from psychoanalysis for about 50 years. Ferenczi's ideas and methods significantly deviated from his mentor, Sigmund Freud; he offered an alternative theory, The Confusion of Tongues and a new method, Relaxation Therapy. Ferenczi's pioneering contributions to analytic therapy include: the introduction of empathy into the analytic relationship; the curative function of the relationship in the analytic encounter; the role of activity in analytic therapy; the importance of non-interpretative behavior by the analyst; the function of the experiential and emotional dimensions in analytic therapy; analyst self-disclosure; and mutual analysis.