The Clown's Use of Empathy: An Interview with Bob Berky

Excerpts from an interview with Bob Berky reveal the clown's keen understanding of empathic attunement, what psychotherapists, pastoral counselors, and persons in pastoral care maintain is a vital correspondence toward authentic interpersonal presence. Berky discusses the use of silence and movement to free the individual with whom he invites to his stage from rigid personas and limiting preconceptions. He underscores the life-giving possibilities of the laugh of recognition—the realization that we share a kindred experience of being human, and can release our unique potentials toward creative connection and difference.     

AN EVALUATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RECEPTIVE SPEECH SKILLS AND EXPRESSIVE SIGNING

We examined the effects of receptive speech on the acquisition of manual signing among three mentally retarded children. In an alternating treatments design, we compared the acquisition of expressive signs that were, versus were not, in a child's receptive vocabulary. The children were trained via total communication in which pictorial referents were named during sign training. Signs corresponding to known words were generally acquired faster and retained better than signs corresponding to unknown words. We conducted posttests to assess the stimulus control of signing and any changes in expressive and receptive signing and speech. Observed changes in performance could be accounted for by attention to aspects of the stimulus complex during training and functional equivalence of stimuli established by training.     

A simple electrode to record fetal EEG for optimal signal analysis

A simple EEG electrode for Intrauterine use In the human fetus is described. The stainless steel screw electrode possesses low noise characteristics, is constructed from commercially available material, and is easily attached to the fetal head during labor. Principles of optical signal analysis as an improved method of spectral analysis of the fetal EEG are also presented. The optical system provides visual display and hard copy output of the fetal EEG.     

ACQUISITION OF EXPRESSIVE SIGNING BY AUTISTIC CHILDREN: AN EVALUATION OF THE RELATIVE EFFECTS OF SIMULTANEOUS COMMUNICATION AND SIGN-ALONE TRAINING

Two methods of training autistic children to use manual signs were compared. Two children, one mute and one capable of some verbal imitation, were taught to use signs as expressive labels for pictures of objects. Using an alternating treatments design, speed of sign acquisition was compared across two training conditions in which signs were presented either accompanied by, or without, the corresponding verbal label. In both conditions, the training procedure incorporated reinforcement, modeling, prompting, fading, and stimulus rotation. The efficacy of training in both treatment conditions was demonstrated by the use of a multiple baseline control across signs, but no clear differences in acquisition speed across conditions were apparent. Posttests conducted to assess stimulus control of signing, and learning of verbal labels when these were present in training, showed that the behavior of the imitative, but not the mute, child was controlled by the verbal stimuli. The implications of the results both for understanding deficits characteristic of autistic children and for developing appropriate language training procedures are discussed.     

Implicit motor sequence learning is not purely perceptual

Many reports have indicated that implicit learning of sequences in a choice response time task is primarily perceptual; subjects learn the sequence of stimuli rather than the sequence of motor responses. Three experiments tested whether implicit motor sequence learning could be purely perceptual: no support was found for that hypothesis. Subjects who merely watched stimuli did not learn the sequence implicitly (Experiment 1), and sequence learning transferred robustly to a different set of stimulus cues (Experiment 2). In the final experiment, the stimulus-response mapping was changed at transfer so that one group of subjects pushed the same sequence of keys but saw new stimuli, whereas another group pushed a different sequence of keys but saw the same stimuli. Transfer to the new mapping was shown only if the motor sequence was kept constant, not the perceptual sequence. It is proposed that subjects learn a sequence of response locations in this and similar tasks.     

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors     

HENRY THOREAU, NATURE, AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

In a famous passage from "Slavery In Massachusetts," Thoreau writes, "The remembrance of my country spoils my walk. My thoughts are murder to the State, and involuntarily go plotting against her."¹ Here is Thoreau the anarchist, the misanthrope, the self-righteous angry young man, as he is so often portrayed in the secondary literature. It would be easy to consider the issue resolved: the conventional wisdom about Thoreau's misanthropy and anarchism are demonstrated, and there is little more to say. It would also be a significant mistake—one that has been made over and over again by commentators on both his political views and his nature writings. Thoreau's comment is not the climax of "Slavery in Massachusetts," but rather is the prelude to the climax. Consider the passage that follows and leads to the conclusion of the essay:     

Mapping grief: A study in practice using a quantitative and qualitative approach to exploring and addressing the range of responses to loss

The Adult Attitude to Grief (AAG) scale was devised for an earlier study (Machin, 2001) to test the validity of a concept of loss, which proposed that grief reactions fall broadly into three categories — ‘overwhelmed’, ‘balanced’ and ‘controlled’. There was statistical support for the proposed differences but the AAG scale, more importantly, provided insight into the diverse reactions taking place in individual bereaved respondents. This paper describes a second study undertaken to examine the clinical usefulness of the AAG scale with clients receiving help within the Psychological Services Operating Unit of the North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare (NHS) Trust. The scale has been used both in its original form with bereaved clients and in a modified form with clients having distress symptoms associated with other losses, such as relationship breakdown or the onset of chronic illness. The use of the AAG scale in this clinical setting suggests that, both as an assessment tool and as a cue for therapeutic dialogue, it provides a promising way of mapping the general and particular characteristics of response to loss in individual clients. Consideration is also given to varying therapeutic approaches needed to help clients regain the equilibrium disturbed by their grief.     

Relative Necessity Reformulated

This paper discusses some serious difficulties for what we shall call the standard account of various kinds of relative necessity, according to which any given kind of relative necessity may be defined by a strict conditional - necessarily, if C then p - where C is a suitable constant proposition, such as a conjunction of physical laws. We argue, with the help of Humberstone (Reports on Mathematical Logic, 31, 33–421, 1981), that the standard account has several unpalatable consequences. We argue that Humberstone’s alternative account has certain disadvantages, and offer another - considerably simpler - solution.