Acquiring Dependence and Independence: A Theoretical Orientation

(Wallach, M. A., and Wing, C. W., Jr. The Talented Student: A Validation of the Creativity-Intelligence Distinction. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969) Reviewed by John G. Nicholls     

POTENTIAL SPACE AND REFLECTIVE FUNCTIONING: TOWARDS CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION AND PRELIMINARY CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

The authors propose that although the psychoanalytic constructs 'reflective functioning' and 'potential space' overlap and are sometimes used interchangeably, a knowledge of their distinctions and the ways in which they interface have important clinical implications. These concepts are similar in that both are capacities considered (1) to originate in the caregiver-child relationship, (2) to involve playing with ideas and symbolic thought, (3) to facilitate the therapeutic process and (4) to represent a desirable treatment outcome. The terms diverge in three important ways. First, potential space is a broader concept that can be applied not only to thinking about internal states but to aspects of human experience (e.g. art, religion) involving a sense of aliveness. Reflective functioning is more circumscribed to representations of mental states and their implications for interpersonal functioning. Second, potential space has more of a conscious introspective element, whereas reflective functioning is based in procedural memory. Third, reflective functioning operates intrapsychically, whereas potential space tends to be thought of as occurring in an interpersonal field. The authors hypothesise and illustrate a possible bi-directional, dialectic relationship between the two constructs. It is suggested that this new understanding might, in some cases, facilitate productive reformulations of clinical formulations, such as working with a perceived resistance.     

Genetic Influence on the Variance in Coincidence Timing and its Covariance with IQ: A Twin Study

Performance measures on a coincidence timing task have previously been associated with psychometric IQ suggesting that the ability of an individual to devote processing resources at the required time may account for some of intelligence test variance. Using the twin design, this study investigates whether genetic variability explains some of the variance in coincidence timing and whether common genetic factors account for the association with intellectual functioning. Fifty-five 16-year old twin pairs (28 MZ, 27 DZ) were tested. Individual differences in number of hits (HITS), mean absolute error (MAE), and intra-individual trial-to-trial consistency (SD) were significantly influenced by genetic factors, accounting for approximately 50 percent of the variance. The correlation between coincidence timing and psychometric IQ was confirmed and ranged from 0.11 to 0.53 with a mean correlation of 0.33. In the limited sample, the correlation between IQ and the coincidence timing measures appeared to be mediated largely by a unique environmental factor, with only a small loading of SD on the genetic factor influencing IQ. However, as the confidence intervals in the other genetic cross loadings are large, we cannot exclude the possibility of a much stronger genetic influence.     

Termination of parental rights: A neglected side effect of infant intervention programs

A significant proportion of infants receiving treatment in programs designed to prevent abuse and psychosocial disorders may be removed from the custody of their parents by social service agencies. In an effort to help distinguish those cases at risk for termination of parental rights (TPR), seven such cases were analyzed and compared to seven similar cases where TPR did not occur. All 14 cases were referred because of abuse/neglect, and were at risk for continued abuse. Results showed that TPR was most likely in families where the parents were viewed as being unpleasant, as having a poor relationship with their child, were seen as retarded by the social service agency, and whose infants showed large gains in developmental level, especially during foster placement. These findings were interpreted as indicating a mixture of actual lack of progress in treatment and a negative attitudinal set about these clients.     

Evaluations of relational aggression as a function of relationship type and conflict setting

The present study examined influences on girls' evaluations of relational aggression situations. Second‐, third‐, fifth‐, and sixth‐grade girls evaluated four relational aggression conflict scenarios in terms of attributions of aggressor's intentions, evaluator's behavioral response, evaluator's affective state, and how likely the situation was to actually occur. Girls evaluated intentions of a best friend more positively, reported being more mad at an enemy, and perceived conflict to be more likely to occur with an enemy than a best friend. Aggressor intentions in direct conflict scenarios (aggressor said something mean to evaluator) were perceived as more negative than aggressor intentions in indirect conflict scenarios (aggressor said something mean about evaluator to another peer). Younger girls reported intentions of their enemy as being more positive than did older girls. Further, older girls reported intentions of their best friend as being more positive than intentions of their enemy. Older girls also were more accurate in conceptualizing variations in the conflict setting (direct, indirect) and responding in a context‐consistent manner. Findings are discussed in terms of the social‐relational and social‐situational processes that influence children's evaluations of relational aggression and how the current study extends previous research on relational aggression. Aggr. Behav. 26:179–191, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Young men’s minimisation of their body dissatisfaction

Abstract

Objective: To examine men’s body dissatisfaction qualitatively.

Design: Forty-two British men aged 18–45 years took part in a two-session group intervention across 12 groups. The intervention was designed to improve body dissatisfaction by engaging them in a critique of the appearance ideal through written and behavioural exercises.

Main outcome measures/results: Analysis of the topics discussed during the intervention generated two core themes. Theme 1 showed that, in general, men minimised the existence of their own body dissatisfaction while (somewhat surprisingly) outlining the ubiquity and potency of the appearance ideal for men in general. Theme 2 involved men reporting the problematic impact of body dissatisfaction in their lives (despite earlier minimisation), such as social avoidance, strict eating and supplement regimes, or difficulty in situations where the body was exposed.

Conclusion: The results stress the need to acknowledge that men experience a range of impacts of body dissatisfaction beyond clinical presentations (such as disordered eating) that influence their everyday lives, while also recognising that they tend to minimise this dissatisfaction in conversation. These findings have important implications for advocacy and interventions to improve men’s body dissatisfaction.     

Ocular Movements in Reversibility of Perspective

To explore the role of acoustic factors in visual detection, this study employed 40 deaf and hearing Ss. Ss were requested to cancel all the letters “e” in a passage from Treasure Island. Results were analyzed in terms of probabilities of missing a pronounced or silent e and the e in the word “the.” Hearing and hard of hearing Ss were more likely to miss silent e's than pronounced e's. There was no significant difference between silent and pronounced e's for the profoundly deaf. Deaf and hearing Ss missed significantly more e's in “the” than pronounced or silent e's. The deaf, when compared to the hearing Ss, were more efficient in detecting pronounced and silent e's. They did not differ significantly from the hearing Ss in detecting the e in “the.”     

The Perception of Low Tones and the Resonance-Volley Theory

To investigate the effect of two analgesic dosages of acetophenetidin and of Anacin upon the latency of the pricking-pain sensation under conditions of single and repetitive stimulation of the skin, each of six trained male subjects participated in 12 120-minute sessions (each subject had two sessions with 1.0 gm and with 0.5 gm dosages of each drug, placebos, and no capsule). Threshold (latency) determinations were made every five minutes, each time on a different one of 24 numbered spots on the volar surfaces of the forearms. Concomitantly, Spot A on the left forearm was stimulated repeatedly every five minutes, and Spot B, on the right forearm, every 10 minutes. No analgesic effects were observed on pricking-pain latency. Analyses of variance showed no significant interaction, no consistent time effect, and no significant conditions effect that could be interpreted as resulting from drug action. Repetitive stimulation at five- and 10-minute intervals was thus alone responsible for the latency elevations observed on Spots A and B respectively. It was suggested that such repetitive stimulation may have contributed to an indeterminate extent to the positive results with analgesics reported by Hardy, Wolff, and Goodell (7).     

Towards new work arrangements: The case of telecommuting

Telecommuting is an example of novel ways of organizing work now being implemented in technologically advanced nations. It is the major industrialized countries that have provided the circumstances and the incentives to experiment with new approaches. These approaches were created within, and co‐exist with these models of social organization. They also embrace some elements that undermine basic tenets of industrial models. Telecommuting is discussed below as an example of newly evolving work arrangements which illustrates the interplay of tensions between existing models of work organization and innovative ways of ordering tasks. This paper is based upon graduate research in Rural Extension. The conceptual framework was created by synthesizing material from interdisciplinary sources and primary data collection included in‐depth interviews with key informants engaged in telecommuting.     

Detecting deception: adversarial problem solving in a low base-rate world

The work presented here investigates the process by which one group of individuals solves the problem of detecting deceptions created by other agents. A field experiment was conducted in which twenty-four auditors (partners in international public accounting firms) were asked to review four cases describing real companies that, unknown to the auditors, had perpetrated financial frauds. While many of the auditors failed to detect the manipulations in the cases, a small number of auditors were consistently successful. Since the detection of frauds occurs infrequently in the work of a given auditor, we explain success by the application of powerful heuristics gained from experience with deceptions in everyday life. These heuristics implement a variation of Dennett's intentional stance strategy, which is based on interpreting detected inconsistencies in the light of the Deceiver's (i.e., management's) goals and possible actions. We explain failure to detect deception by means of perturbations (bugs) in the domain knowledge of accounting needed to apply these heuristics to the specific context of financial statement fraud. We test our theory by showing that a computational model of fraud detection that employs the proposed heuristics successfully detects frauds in the cases given to the auditors. We then modify the model by introducing perturbations based on the errors made by each of the auditors in the four cases. The resulting models account for 84 of the 96 observations (i.e., 24 auditors × four cases) in our data.