Graded motor responses in the time course of categorizing atypical exemplars

The time course of categorization was investigated in four experiments, which revealed graded competitive effects in a categorization task. Participants clicked one of two categories (e.g., mammal or fish) in response to atypical or typical exemplars (e.g., whale or cat) in the form of words (Experiments 1 and 2) or pictures (Experiments 3 and 4). Streaming x, y coordinates of mouse movement trajectories were recorded. Normalized mean trajectories revealed a graded competitive process: Atypical exemplars produced trajectories with greater curvature toward the competing category than did typical exemplars. The experiments contribute to recent examination of the time course of categorization and carry implications for theories of representation in cognitive science.     

Resilience in the Face of Maternal Psychopathology and Adverse Life Events

Maternal psychopathology has long been recognized as a risk factor for psychopathology in offspring; however, some resilient youth achieve a favorable outcome in the presence of maternal psychopathology. We identified factors that predicted resilience among youth who were exposed to adverse life events, and also examined whether the same factors protected youth against maternal psychopathology and adverse life events. Main and interaction effects of child and family factors were examined employing cross-sectional data from a household probability sample of 1285 youth aged 9 through 17 collected at four sites. On average, children exhibited a greater degree of resilience when they had higher IQ, closer parental monitoring, better family functioning, higher educational aspiration, and were female. Interaction between maternal psychopathology and IQ was significant, and there was a trend between maternal psychopathology and gender. A higher IQ is a protective factor against both maternal psychopathology and adverse life events; whereas being a girl seems to be a protective factor against maternal psychopathology, but not adverse life events.     

Erotic overstimulation and the co-construction of sexual meanings in transference-countertransference experience.

This paper attempts to explore the ways in which Western child-rearing practices do not provide an early interpersonal experience in which infantile, sexual, or sensual-erotic experience is held, contained, and given meaning within a safe parent-child dyad. It is the author's basic premise that this normative developmental process fosters a dissociation of unformulated aspects of early sexual and sensual-erotic experience, leaving much of the experience ensconced in unsymbolized and therefore relatively inchoate image, sensation, and affect. The impact of such a dissociation on the patient-analyst relationship is explored, specifically at times when sexual or erotic material begins to impact upon transference-countertransference processes. An extended clinical example is provided.     

Time of day and the representation of text

This article reports an experiment to investigate the idea that time-of-day differences in memory for text are related to type of text processing that is carried out at different times of day. In particular, it was hypothesized that subjects tested in the morning tend to retain more of the exact wording of the text, whereas those tested in the afternoon are more likely to produce a meaning-based representation. The results of a recognition test showed that, in agreement with other studies, immediate text memory is better in the morning than in the afternoon. As predicted, the subjects tested in the morning better remembered the exact wording of the original passages. However, the idea that memory for meaning is better in the afternoon than the morning was not supported by the data. The results suggest that subjects at both times of day produce a meaning-based representation of the text but, in the morning, this representation is supported by good verbatim memory, enabling accurate recall of the text at that time.     

The development of risk-taking in children

Since clear relationships exist between age, gender, and the occurrence of different kinds of accident, safety researchers and educators need to take account of recent work in developmental and environmental psychology, which is leading to a revised view of children’s environmental competence. Studies of the development of risk perception and risk-taking are first reviewed: these have identified three broad phases through which children proceed, culminating in an understanding of the interaction between their own perspective, that of other participants, and characteristics of the situation itself in the causation of accidents. This broad picture is in line with the reformulations of Piagetian stage theory which have occurred in recent years: rather than being “pre-operational” or “egocentric” in a global sense, young children’s main limitations seem to be in applying the principles of routines or drills from one setting to another, and studies of attention and memory show that the amount of information children are able to process improves with age, as does their resistance to distraction. Three aspects of individual differences seem to have an influence upon risk-taking, namelygender, reflection-impulsivity, andfamily structure, and the findings are reviewed in each case. As children get older they experience an increasingly wide variety of unfamiliar situations, and it is essential to understand the interaction between these age changes in environmental circumstances and mechanisms of developmental change in formulating programmes for safety education.     

Multicultural Training in University Counseling Center Predoctoral Psychology Internship Programs: A Survey

Research indicates that graduate programs in counseling and clinical psychology are beginning to include more courses on multicultural issues. Little data is available, however, concerning the inclusion of training in multicultural issues in predoctoral psychology internship training programs. This study examined the amount and type of such training actually occurring at predoctoral psychology internship training programs in university counseling centers.     

Ideational conditioning: bridging the cognitive-behaviourist divide

Classical conditioning has traditionally been referred to as a 'dumb form of learning'; however, psychological activity can be redefined in terms of the conditioned reflex by considering other more complex forms of conditioning, i.e., configural or semantic conditioning. In this paper it is argued that conditioning may underpin both human perception and consciousness and previous experiments involving perceptual conditioning are outlined. Recent experiments which involve a new paradigm of ideational conditioning have shown that cognitions can play a part in conditioning processes. It is shown here that ideational conditioning demonstrates unequivocally that thoughts alone are adequate stimuli for acquisition of behavioural responses and that these experiments may help to bridge the cognitive-behaviourist divide.     

Quantitative and qualitative aspects of memory for picture stimuli

Children aged approximately 8.5–9.5 years were shown either names (NP), or pictures (PP), of objects, for each of which they located the corresponding likenesses among an array of alternatives. Written recall and identification accuracy were assessed at 5 hr and 3 days after presentation. As predicted, NP produced significantly superior recall to PP. The rate of identification for recalled items among Ss in PP was significantly higher than that for NP. This result was interpreted as supporting the view that the superiority of NP in recall derives from the fact that Ss may rely upon retrieval from either name or image of each item whereas those in PP must depend upon image alone. This interpretation was extended to take two unexpected findings into account: (i) the superior overall identification accuracy engendered by PP, particularly at the longer time interval; (ii) the relatively weak relationship between identification accuracy and recall scores among matching Ss.     

Transcendental meditation, mindfulness, and longevity: an experimental study with the elderly

Can direct change in state of consciousness through specific mental techniques extend human life and reverse age-related declines? To address this question, 73 residents of 8 homes for the elderly (mean age = 81 years) were randomly assigned among no treatment and 3 treatments highly similar in external structure and expectations: the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program, mindfulness training (MF) in active distinction making, or a relaxation (low mindfulness) program. A planned comparison indicated that the "restful alert" TM group improved most, followed by MF, in contrast to relaxation and no-treatment groups, on paired associate learning; 2 measures of cognitive flexibility; mental health; systolic blood pressure; and ratings of behavioral flexibility, aging, and treatment efficacy. The MF group improved most, followed by TM, on perceived control and word fluency. After 3 years, survival rate was 100% for TM and 87.5% for MF in contrast to lower rates for other groups.