D. W. Winnicott,transitional objects and the creation of the divine

Religious expressions and religious behaviours are often considered to be mainly mental or spiritual phenomena, to a large degree divorced from or threatened by physical or material forms that may accompany their expression. This paper asks whether the diminution of the material or the condemnation of idols, icons and religious art loses sight of possible benefits that involvement with these forms of material divinity has for believers. Using the concept of transitional objects and transitional phenomena developed by D. W. Winnicott, a mid-twentieth-century psychoanalyst, I argue that idols, icons and religious art often represent transitional objects that form psychological bridges, intermediaries or anticipated “transitions” from humans to unseen divinities who require materialisation in some form to be maintained actively in the believer’s mind. In the process of creating or designing these material forms, the forms themselves often come to be considered “divine”. Illustrations are provided.     

EFFECTS OF A VIDEOTAPE FEEDBACK PACKAGE ON THE PEER INTERACTIONS OF CHILDREN WITH SERIOUS BEHAVIORAL AND EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES

Peer interactions are among the greatest challenges experienced by children who have severe emotional and behavioral problems. This study evaluated an intervention package designed to increase the ratio of these children's desirable to undesirable interactions. The package included three principal components: (a) observation of videotapes following regularly scheduled peer activity sessions; (b) self-evaluation of the children's peer interactions observed on the videotapes; and (c) delayed feedback and reinforcement for desirable peer interactions. Five students from two elementary schools participated. Multiple baseline designs and one reversal were used to evaluate the effects of the intervention package. The results showed that the intervention produced lower levels of undesirable peer interactions and higher ratios of desirable to undesirable interactions for all participants. The results are discussed in regard to their conceptual and applied implications and in terms of specific directions for future research.     

Another look at semantic priming without awareness

In a recent study, McCauley, Parmelee, Sperber, and Carr (1980) reported results indicating that semantic priming had been produced by visual stimuli that were backward masked at durations too brief for greater than chance report. The conclusions drawn from such an experiment are critically dependent upon whether or not the primes were actually masked below the thresh-old for identification during priming trials. The three experiments reported here provide evidence that this requirement was not met. Rather, McCauley et al.’s (1980) methodology allowed for an uncontrolled increase in light adaptation during the actual testing of prime efficacy in the priming session. This increase in light adaptation reduced the effectiveness of the backward mask and resulted in an increase in prime visibility during priming trials. Thus, semantic priming probably occurred under conditions in which commensurate visual information was actually available.     

Slower eating rate reduces the food intake of men, but not women: implications for behavioral weight control

This study tested a central tenet of behavioral weight control: does slower eating rate reduce food intake and positively affect appetite ratings. This study used direct behavioral observation of participants' (n=48; 25BMI35) eating behavior using Universal Eating Monitors. Food intake and ratings of "desire to eat" (collected each minute during meals) were represented as a function of time. Based on an acclimation meal, participants' eating rate was modified by instructing them to eat a bite of food when prompted by a computer, which generated three types of meals: (1) baseline (eating rate was the same as the acclimation meal), (2) reduced-rate (eating rate was reduced by 50%), and (3) combined-rate (eating rate at the beginning of the meal was identical to that of the acclimation meal, subsequently eating rate was reduced by 50%). All meals were ad libitum. Slower eating rate during the reduced-rate and combined-rate meals resulted in less food intake compared to the baseline meal for men, but not women. Ratings of desire to eat, normalized for the amount of food consumed, were lower during the combined-rate meal for men and women. Thus, this basic premise of behavioral weight control was supported for men, but not for women.     

Distinct neural correlates for two types of inhibition in bilinguals: response inhibition versus interference suppression

To examine the effects of bilingualism on cognitive control, we studied monolingual and bilingual young adults performing a flanker task with functional MRI. The trial types of primary interest for this report were incongruent and no-go trials, representing interference suppression and response inhibition, respectively. Response times were similar between groups. Brain data were analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) to identify brain regions where activity covaried across conditions. Monolinguals and bilinguals activated different sets of brain regions for congruent and incongruent trials, but showed activation in the same regions for no-go trials. During the incongruent trials, monolinguals activated the left temporal pole and left superior parietal regions. In contrast, an extensive network including bilateral frontal, temporal and subcortical regions was active in bilinguals during the incongruent trials and in both groups for the no-go trials. Correlations between brain activity and reaction time difference relative to neutral trials revealed that monolinguals and bilinguals showed increased activation in different brain regions to achieve less interference from incongruent flankers. Results indicate that bilingualism selectively affects neural correlates for suppressing interference, but not response inhibition. Moreover, the neural correlates associated with more efficient suppression of interference were different in bilinguals than in monolinguals, suggesting a bilingual-specific network for cognitive control.     

What Makes the Political Personal? Openness,Personal Political Salience,and Activism

ABSTRACT People who attach personal meaning to social and political events or are high in Personal Political Salience (PPS) are more likely to engage in political activism ( Duncan & Stewart, 2007 ). Although research suggests that PPS is consequential for activism, we know little about its origins or, more generally, about indirect effects of personality on activism. In this study we examined the possibility that the personality trait of Openness to Experience may be one source of PPS and an indirect predictor of activism. In addition, we proposed that Openness would also be directly related to political activism in young adults but not in middle‐aged and older adults. Analyses confirmed these predictions in cross‐sectional and over‐time data from six samples. We argue that Openness may predispose some individuals both to find personal meaning in distant political events and to engage in social activism in their youth.     

The prevalence of false confessions in experimental laboratory simulations: A meta‐analysis

We assessed experimental false confession studies using a meta‐analysis to evaluate the prevalence of false confessions across methodologies and several moderator variables. False confessions were more likely in typing task studies than in collaborative or individual cheating studies. In typing studies, speed of typing did not affect false confession rates, but placement of the forbidden key in locations that rendered errors less plausible lowered the false confession rates. False‐evidence ploys increased the likelihood of false confessions. We explore implications for courts, expert witnesses, scholars, and police interrogators.     

The fruits of a functional approach for psychological science

The current paper introduces relational frame theory (RFT) as a functional contextual approach to complex human behaviour and examines how this theory has contributed to our understanding of several key phenomena in psychological science. I will first briefly outline the philosophical foundation of RFT and then examine its conceptual basis and core concepts. Thereafter, I provide an overview of the empirical findings and applications that RFT has stimulated in a number of key domains such as language development, linguistic generativity, rule‐following, analogical reasoning, intelligence, theory of mind, psychopathology and implicit cognition.     

Typicality effects in contingency-shaped generalized equivalence classes

Two experiments were conducted using match-to-sample methodologies in an effort to model lexical classes, which include both arbitrary and perceptual relations between class members. Training in both experiments used a one-to-many mapping procedure with nonsense syllables as samples and eight sets of abstract stimuli as comparisons. These abstract stimuli differed along a number of dimensions, four of which were critical to the experimenter-defined class membership. Stimuli in some comparison sets included only one of the class-defining features, but stimuli in other sets included two, three, or all four of the critical features. After mastery of the baseline training, three types of probe tests were conducted: symmetry, transitivity/equivalence, and novel probe tests in which the training nonsense syllables served as samples, and comparisons were novel abstract stimuli that included one or more of the class-defining features. Symmetry and transitivity/equivalence probe tests showed that the stimuli used in training became members of equivalence classes. The novel stimuli also became class members on the basis of inclusion of any of the critical features. Thus these probe tests revealed the formation of open-ended generalized equivalence classes. In addition, typicality effects were observed such that comparison sets with more critical features were learned with fewer errors, responded to more rapidly, and judged to be better exemplars of the class. Contingency-shaped stimulus classes established through a match-to-sample procedure thus show several important behavioral similarities to natural lexical categories.