CAN-4, an advanced author language for CAI,computer-based testing and psychological experimentation: PDP-9 implementation

The effective use of computers for tutorial (programmed instruction) teaching and on-line testing requires that curriculum authors have powerful special-purpose languages. One such language, CAN-4, has been designed and implemented to run on the PDP-9. The language includes advanced scoring, data recording, computation, timing, and file control facilities. The language and its implementation are described in relation to the instructional problems which the facilities are designed to meet.     

AIDS and ‘dirt’: Reflections on the ethics of ritual cleanliness

AIDS and the responses and attitudes it evokes surpass the analytic abilities of standard bioethics. These responses and attitudes are explored in terms of literary and anthropological categories, such as dirt, disorder, pollution and ritual cleanliness. Implications for medical education are suggested.     

Hermeneutics in science and medicine: A thesis understated

Drew Leder's “Clinical Interpretation: The Hermeneutics of Medicine” [1] is an essay which understates its case and thereby opens itself to misinterpretation. This response to Leder argues for a more thorough-going hermeneutic for both medicine and science. At the conceptual as well as the practical level, modern medicine and its scientific foundations are hermeneutic enterprises. The purpose of this essay is to argue that we should not back away from this more radical thesis. Embracing it will result in less alienation of physicians from patients, and of physicians from the tasks of medicine.     

Sociology and psychoanalysis in the liberal arts

Abstract

This paper posits that an infusion of psychoanalytic concepts into the teaching of sociology in undergraduate liberal arts curricula offers a route to expanding students’ understanding of how self and society are entwined in a condition of mutual crisis in contemporary society. We argue that the liberatory project at the core of the liberal arts is served well by linking the critical perspectives found in these two disciplines. We provide as specific examples from our own teaching: (1) a demonstration of how Freud’s concept of neurosis has an affinity with Marx’s concept of alienation; and (2) a discussion of how the torture sequence in Orwell’s 1984 presents an inversion of a psychoanalytic treatment through which the power of propaganda is illuminated. We conclude that teaching the two disciplines in tandem helps students grasp how the self is a socially constructed entity and how the orthodoxies of neurosis and social control are available for critique and change.     

Psychological type and conceptions of empathy in experienced counsellors

Definitions of empathy vary widely. One explanation is that the different conceptions reflect personality differences. We investigated this idea with a sample of fifteen experienced counsellor, using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to measure aspects of personality and semistructured interviews to measure conceptions and reported practice of empathy. Counsellors who preferred sensing were found to make more references to empathy as a state and intuitive types to process. Those who preferred thinking and judging had a more active conception and reported practice, while feeling and perceiving types referred to a passive approach. Further relationships predicted by Myer-Briggs theory, between preference for thinking and cognitive empathy, and feeling and affective empathy, were close to statistical significance. Therefore, different psychological types do seem to define empathy differently. Implications for counselling theory, practice and training and education are discussed.     

Treating aerophagia with contingent physical guidance

Contingent physical guidance was used to treat chronic aerophagia. This consisted of guiding the participant's hand over her mouth following each attempt to engage in aerophagia. A wristwatch was then correlated with the contingent physical guidance procedure. Responding remained low in the presence of the wristwatch, even after contingent physical guidance was withdrawn.     

Psychological type and conceptions of empathy in experienced counsellors: Qualitative results

Different conceptions of empathy appear to be explained by psychological type theory. For example, counsellors who prefer 'thinking' to 'feeling' and 'judging' to 'perceiving' have an active conception and reported practice while feeling and perceiving types refer to a passive approach. This paper reports qualitative data on conceptions of empathy in counsellors and relates them to psychological type. Four categories and 30 themes were identified. The categories were: definitions of empathy; operationalizing empathy; what influences empathy; and empathic communication. Twenty of the themes were related to the psychological types of the participants. Implications of these findings for the concept of empathy, for counsellor education and training, and for research are briefly discussed.     

Discrimination reversal conditioning of an eyeblink response is impaired by NMDA receptor blockade

In the present study we examined the effects of the specific NMDA receptor antagonist CPP on discrimination reversal learning in rabbits. We report two primary findings. First, the institution of NMDA receptor blockade had no effect on a learned discrimination. Second, after stimulus reversal, CPP treatment impaired acquisition of the discrimination reversal. This impairment manifested itself early in training as a retardation in acquisition of a CR to the new CS+ and late in training as an inability to suppress responsiveness to the new CS-. Given the comparability of the present results with previously published results for phenytoin-treated rabbits, we suggest that the effects of phenytoin on learning in this paradigm is at least in part mediated by its effects on NMDA receptors. We further suggest that these findings emphasize the need to better define the role of NMDA receptor activation and hippocampally-mediated circuits in a variety of associative learning paradigms.     

“Be True to Your School”: An Open Letter to Students and Practitioners of Human Science Research

This editorial discusses some of the challenges that we face in striving toward being shepherds of our discipline, as well as toward “being original.” The question is how to make an original contribution to the field while following in the footsteps of one's forbearers. Many researchers (and even research mentors) have a desire to carve out their own place in the field, and doing so often means emphasizing what is new and different about their approach. Shepherding, however, means bearing the weight together, participating in the spirit of a “we phenomenon,” or more simply, being a team player. As psychologists climbing our individual career ladders while working together toward a common goal, the challenge is being true to yourself and to your “school” of fellow researchers. This means being faithful and acknowledging toward the community, including one's peers, one's former mentors, and the seminal thinkers whose work inspires one's own. When writing up research, we therefore should to be attuned to the possibility of communicating our pedigree more faithfully—a challenge that calls upon us to remember the ground from which we, ourselves, spring forth.