Intellectual performance and ego depletion: role of the self in logical reasoning and other information processing

Some complex thinking requires active guidance by the self, but simpler mental activities do not. Depletion of the self's regulatory resources should therefore impair the former and not the latter. Resource depletion was manipulated by having some participants initially regulate attention (Studies 1 and 3) or emotion (Study 2). As compared with no-regulation participants who did not perform such exercises, depleted participants performed worse at logic and reasoning (Study 1), cognitive extrapolation (Study 2), and a test of thoughtful reading comprehension (Study 3). The same manipulations failed to cause decrements on a test of general knowledge (Study 2) or on memorization and recall of nonsense syllables (Study 3). Successful performance at complex thinking may therefore rely on limited regulatory resources.     

Narrating survival and change in Guatemala and South Africa: the politics of representation and a liberatory community psychology

Peace accords and international interventions have contributed to the suspension of armed conflict and the censuring of repressive regimes in many parts of the world. Some governments and their opposition parties have agreed to the establishment of commissions or other bodies designed to create historical records of the violations of human rights and foster conditions that facilitate reparatory and reconciliatory processes. This paper explores selected roles that community psychologists have played in this process of remembering the past and constructing new identities towards creating a more just future. With reference to two community groups (in Guatemala and South Africa) we show how efforts to speak out about one's own experiences of political and military repression involve complex representational politics that go beyond the simple binary opposition of silencing versus giving voice. The Guatemalan group consisted of Mayan Ixil women who, together with the first author, used participatory action research and the PhotoVoice technique to produce a book about their past and present struggles. The South African group, working within the ambit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in collaboration with the third author and others, explored ways of speaking about their roles in apartheid and post-apartheid society. Although both these initiatives can be seen as moments in on-going struggles to overcome externally-imposed repressive practices that censor the voices of marginalized communities, they also serve to dispel overly romanticized notions of univocal communities now liberated to express themselves in an unmediated and unequivocal fashion. The paper discusses how each group of women instead entered into subtly nuanced relationships with community psychologists involving a continual interplay between the authenticity of their self-representational accounts and the requirements of the discursive technologies into which they were being inducted and the material conditions within their sites of struggle. In both cases the group's agenda also evolved over time, so that what emerged was not so much a particular account of themselves, or even the development of a particular voice for speaking about themselves, but an unfolding process—for the groups and for the community psychologists who accompanied them—of becoming active players in the postmodern, mediated world of self-representational politics and social struggle.     

Emancipatory responses to oppression: the template of land-use planning and the Old Order Amish of Ontario

In this paper I discuss the clash of values between the Old Order Amish community of Ontario and the dominant social paradigm in agriculture. Land-use and agricultural regulations, designed for an industrial style of agriculture, are experienced as a threat to the survival of the Old Order Amish agricultural social economy and community. The paper describes how I have worked with the Old Order Amish to respond to these challenges and to create public policies that will allow them to maintain their human and agricultural diversity and small-scale sustainable farm practices. Four case studies illuminating the oppressive land-use regulations along with the emancipatory responses to the oppression are examined. The social transformation themes include principles and processes for community psychologists, land-use planners, and community economic development practitioners to consider. The article has heuristic value for a practice-based approach to social change.     

Uncertainty in pigeons

Pigeons classified a display of illuminated pixels on a touchscreen as sparse or dense. Correct responses were reinforced with six food pellets; incorrect responses were unreinforced. On some trials an uncertain response option was available. Pecking it was always reinforced with an intermediate number of pellets. Like monkeys and people in related experiments, the birds chose the uncertain response most often when the stimulus presented was difficult to classify correctly, but in other respects their behavior was not functionally similar to human behavior based on conscious uncertainty or to the behavior of monkeys in comparable experiments. Our data were well described by a signal detection model that assumed that the birds were maximizing perceived reward in a consistent way across all the experimental conditions.     

The spatial distribution of inhibition of return

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to the finding that response times (RTs) are typically slower for targets at previously attended (cued) locations than for targets at novel (uncued) locations. Although previous research has indicated that IOR may spread beyond a cued location, the present study is the first to examine the spatial distribution of IOR with high spatial resolution over a large portion of the central visual field. This was done by using a typical IOR procedure (cue, delay, target) with 4 cue locations and 441 target locations (each separated by 1° of visual angle). The results indicate that IOR spreads beyond the cued location to affect the cued hemifield. However, the cues also produced a gradient of RTs throughout the visual field, with inhibition in the cued hemifield gradually giving way to facilitation in the hemifield opposite the cue.     

Familiarity and pronounceability of nouns and names

Ratings of familiarity and pronounceability were obtained from a random sample of 199 surnames (selected from over 80,000 entries in the Purdue University phone book) and 199 nouns (from the Ku?era-Francis, 1967, word database). The distributions of ratings for nouns versus names are substantially different: Nouns were rated as more familiar and easier to pronounce than surnames. Frequency and familiarity were more closely related in the proper name pool than the word pool, although both correlations were modest. Ratings of familiarity and pronounceability were highly related for both groups. A production experiment showed that rated pronounceability was highly related to the time taken to produce a name. These data confirm the common belief that there are differences in the statistical and distributional properties of words as compared to proper names. The value of using frequency and the ratings of familiarity and pronounceability for predicting variations in actual pronunciations of words and names are discussed.     

The threat of logical inversion and our need for philosophical attention: from thought-expression to discourse and discussion

Thought-expressions are not simply good; instead, they become good for us when they make sense, empower action, and support health. From time to time, we may need to (re)consider the difference between thought-expression and discourse, or thought-expression that really makes sense, and the difference between discourse and discussion, or a discourse-situation that makes genuine agreement or disagreement possible for us. In this essay, I explore a problem that D. Z. Phillips and Randy Ramal have termed “logical inversion,” and I argue that wherever logical inversions have gained a foothold in our thought-expressions, they threaten to render us incapable of authentic discourse and discussion by ensuring that we misunderstand the understandings of others such that we deceive ourselves and others by picturing the knowledge and truth of our perspective against an unreal background of conceivable falsehoods which we have falsely attributed to the perspectives of others. Where this has taken place, practices of philosophical attention and conceptual clarification are needed to help us move from a situation of endless thought expression toward authentic discourse and discussion.     

Wilhelm Reich in Soviet Russia: Psychoanalysis,Marxism, and the Stalinist reaction

Abstract

In 1929, Wilhelm Reich lectured on “Psychoanalysis as a natural science” before the Communist Academy in Moscow; he was the only Freudian-trained Central European psychoanalyst to do so. That same year, his article “Dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis” was published in the Academy's journal, Under the Banner of Marxism, in both Moscow and Berlin. By this time, Reich's involvement with political activism aligned with the Austrian Communist Party was increasing, while simultaneously psychoanalysis in the Soviet Union was in decline. Our paper places these events in their proper historical context and includes a discussion of the various attempts to determine the compatibility of psychoanalysis and Marxism. We offer analyses of both the article, “Dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis,” and the lecture, “Psychoanalysis as a natural science,” and the reactions to both by Reich's Russian critics. We show the ways in which responses to his lecture foreshadow what becomes the standard Soviet assessment of psychoanalysis. As an appendix to this paper, we provide the first English translation of the Russian account of his lecture, as published in the Herald of the Communist Academy.     

Examining mental health symptoms in male and female incarcerated juveniles

Varying risk factors for both incarceration and mental health diagnoses have been identified for female juveniles, highlighting the need for gender-specific assessments and treatment protocols. The purpose of this study is to determine how the prevalence rates of mental health symptoms differ in male and female juvenile offenders. It was hypothesized that the prevalence rates would be greater for females than males. This study found significant differences between males and females on several clinical scales. These findings are consistent with past studies that have identified differences in mental health symptoms between genders.     

Antinomism, trinity and the challenge of Solov’?van pantheism in the theology of Sergij Bulgakov

The paper argues that Sergej Bulgakov??s sophiology was an attempt, via antinomism or the philosophy of antinomies, to overcome the rationalism, monism, and determinism (in a word, ??pantheism??) of Vladimir Solov???v??s philosophy of the Absolute understood as an abstract Trinitarianism. After detailing Solov???v??s thought on the Trinity and Bulgakov??s criticisms of it, the study then describes Bulgakov??s antinomism and its application to the doctrine of God. However, it is contended that Bulgakov??s antinomism ultimately falls into the same problems with pantheism found in Solov???v and so the last part of the paper tentatively proposes resources in his work, stated in the form of a suggested ??fourth (Bulgakovian) antinomy?? between ousia (divine Being as such) and Sophia (the revelation in God and the world of the divine Being), that might help to avoid a collapse of God and the world by making the divine Being proper utterly transcendent and unknowable.