“Das Ding”: Excessive Existence: Discussion of “Melancholic Psychosis”

Derek Hook’s (this issue) excellent paper provides illustrations of complex Lacanian concepts through the relatively rare presentation of Lacanian case material. His paper lends itself to reading Freud with Lacan. This reply to his paper engages such a reading to show that the idea of the over present object emphasised by Lacan is prefigured in Freud in his 1917 paper on Mourning and Melancholia. My reply to Hook affirms the additional clinical themes he introduces and indicates that these themes would be anticipated if, as Lacan argues, melancholia is seen to be underpinned by a psychotic structure. Finally, the reply argues for a resurrection of the Lacanian notion of Das Ding, as it connotes differently to objet a despite overlaps in meaning and the fact that in later Lacan the term Das Ding was dropped.     

Perceptual experience shapes our ability to categorize faces by national origin: A new other-race effect

People are better at recognizing own-race than other-race faces. This other-race effect has been argued to be the result of perceptual expertise, whereby face-specific perceptual mechanisms are tuned through experience. We designed new tasks to determine whether other-race effects extend to categorizing faces by national origin. We began by selecting sets of face stimuli for these tasks that are typical in appearance for each of six nations (three Caucasian, three Asian) according to people from those nations (Study 1). Caucasian and Asian participants then categorized these faces by national origin (Study 2). Own-race faces were categorized more accurately than other-race faces. In contrast, Asian American participants, with more extensive other-race experience than the first Asian group, categorized other-race faces better than own-race faces, demonstrating a reversal of the other-race effect. Therefore, other-race effects extend to the ability to categorize faces by national origin, but only if participants have greater perceptual experience with own-race, than other-race faces. Study 3 ruled out non-perceptual accounts by showing that Caucasian and Asian faces were sorted more accurately by own-race than other-race participants, even in a sorting task without any explicit labelling required. Together, our results demonstrate a new other-race effect in sensitivity to national origin of faces that is linked to perceptual expertise.     

Differential developmental trajectories for egocentric, environmental and intrinsic frames of reference in spatial memory

We studied the development of spatial frames of reference in children aged 3-6 years, who retrieved hidden toys from an array of identical containers bordered by landmarks under four conditions. By moving the child and/or the array between presentation and test, we varied the consistency of the hidden toy with (i) the body, and (ii) the testing room. The toy's position always remained consistent with (iii) the array and bordering landmarks. We found separate, additive performance advantages for consistency with body and room. These effects were already present at 3 years. A striking finding was that the room effect, which implies allocentric representations of the room and/or egocentric representations updated by self-motion, was much stronger in the youngest children than the body effect, which implies purely egocentric representations. Children as young as 3 years therefore had, and greatly favoured, spatial representations that were not purely egocentric. Viewpoint-independent recall based only on the array and bordering landmarks emerged at 5 years. There was no evidence that this later-developing ability, which implies object-referenced (intrinsic) representations, depended on verbal encodings. These findings indicate that core components of adult spatial competence, including parallel egocentric and nonegocentric representations of space, are present as early as 3 years. These are supplemented by later-developing object-referenced representations.     

Smooth pursuit eye movement and schizotypy in the community

Deficits in smooth pursuit eye movements are well documented in schizophrenia and schizotypic psychopathology. The status of eye tracking dysfunction (ETD) as an endophenotype for schizophrenia liability is relatively robust. However, the relation of ETD to schizophrenia-related deviance in the general population has not been confirmed. This study examined smooth pursuit eye tracking and schizotypal personality features in the general population. Smooth pursuit eye movement and schizotypal features were measured in 300 adult community subjects. The sample included both sexes, subjects with a wide age and educational range, and subjects with no prior history of psychosis. Primary outcome measures were peak gain (eye velocity/target velocity), catch-up saccade rate, and schizotypal feature scores. Total schizotypal features were significantly associated with decreased peak gain and were associated at the trend level with increased catch-up saccade rate. These associations were essentially unchanged after controlling for age, sex, and intellectual level effects. These data confirm a hypothesized association between schizotypal features and poorer eye tracking performance (principally, peak gain) in the general population as well as support the conceptualization of ETD as an endophenotype for schizophrenia liability.     

An examination of the dynamic relationship between self-efficacy and performance across levels of analysis and levels of specificity

This research used resource allocation theory to generate predictions regarding dynamic relationships between self-efficacy and task performance from 2 levels of analysis and specificity. Participants were given multiple trials of practice on an air traffic control task. Measures of task-specific self-efficacy and performance were taken at repeated intervals. The authors used multilevel analysis to demonstrate differential and dynamic effects. As predicted, task-specific self-efficacy was negatively associated with task performance at the within-person level. On the other hand, average levels of task-specific self-efficacy were positively related to performance at the between-persons level and mediated the effect of general self-efficacy. The key findings from this research relate to dynamic effects--these results show that self-efficacy effects can change over time, but it depends on the level of analysis and specificity at which self-efficacy is conceptualized. These novel findings emphasize the importance of conceptualizing self-efficacy within a multilevel and multispecificity framework and make a significant contribution to understanding the way this construct relates to task performance.     

Teacher organizational citizenship behaviours and job efficacy: Implications for student quality of school life

The present study investigated the impact of teachers' organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) on student quality of school life (SQSL) via the indirect effect of job efficacy. A measure of teacher OCBs was developed, tapping one dimension of individual‐focused OCB (OCBI – student‐directed behaviour) and two dimensions of organization‐focused OCB (OCBO – civic virtue and professional development). In line with previous research suggesting that OCBs may enhance job efficacy, as well as studies demonstrating the positive effects of teacher efficacy on student outcomes, we expected an indirect relationship between teachers OCBs and SQSL via teachers' job efficacy. Hypotheses were tested in a multi‐level design in which 170 teachers and their students (N=3,057) completed questionnaires. A significant proportion of variance in SQSL was attributable to classroom factors. Analyses revealed that the civic virtue and professional development behaviours of teachers were positively related to their job efficacy. The job efficacy of teachers also had a positive impact on all five indicators of SQSL. In regards to professional development, job efficacy acted as an indirect variable in the prediction of four student outcomes (i.e., general satisfaction, student–teacher relations, achievement, and opportunity) and fully mediated the direct negative effect on psychological distress.     

Perception through a perspective-taking lens: Differential effects on judgment and behavior

In contrast to the view that social perception has symmetric effects on judgments and behavior, the current research explored whether perspective-taking leads stereotypes to differentially affect judgments and behavior. Across three studies, perspective-takers consistently used stereotypes more in their own behavior while simultaneously using them less in their judgments of others. After writing about an African-American, perspective-taking tendencies were positively correlated with aggressive behavior but negatively correlated with judging others as aggressive. Similarly, after writing about an elderly man, perspective-takers walked more slowly and became more conservative, but judged others as less dependent. These divergent effects of perspective-taking on judgment and behavior occurred regardless of whether perspective-taking was manipulated or measured, whether judgments were measured before or after behavior, the stereotype that was activated, and participants’ culture (American, Singaporean). These findings support theorizing that judgments and behavior can diverge when individuals’ social strategies are geared towards establishing and maintaining social bonds, as well as provide insight into how perspective-taking helps individuals manage diversity.     

Alternative Factor Models and Heritability of the Short Leyton Obsessional Inventory—Children’s Version

An alternative models framework was used to test three confirmatory factor analytic models for the Short Leyton Obsessional Inventory-Children’s Version (Short LOI-CV) in a general population sample of 517 young adolescent twins (11–16 years). A one-factor model as implicit in current classification systems of Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a two-factor obsessions and compulsions model, and a multidimensional model corresponding to the three proposed subscales of the Short LOI-CV (labelled Obsessions/Incompleteness, Numbers/Luck and Cleanliness) were considered. The three-factor model was the only model to provide an adequate explanation of the data. Twin analyses suggested significant quantitative sex differences in heritability for both the Obsessions/Incompleteness and Numbers/Luck dimensions with these being significantly heritable in males only (heritability of 60% and 65% respectively). The correlation between the additive genetic effects for these two dimensions in males was 0.95 suggesting they largely share the same genetic risk factors.     

Confabulation and the Control of Recollection

It is argued that current models of memory do not adequately account for the confabulations that are found in the recall of certain neurological patients. A model of the relation between control processes and memory involved in recalling autobiographical episodes is put forward. It is based on detailed analysis of the protocols of healthy volunteers' autobiographical recollections of recent everyday events. It is held that damage to different components of the model fits with the different patterns of performance found in confabulators, and examples of the errors that confabulators make are discussed in terms of those made by normal subjects.