Pragmatic Assessment and Therapy for Persons with Brain Damage: What Have Clinicians Gleaned in Two Decades?

Pragmatic competence comprises a number of interrelated skills which manifest in real-time in a range of adaptive behaviors and which are driven by underlying cognitive processes that appear to be variably compromised in brain damage. Differential neurological profiles reflect different pragmatic outcomes. The essence of pragmatic assessment and therapy for clinicians is therefore to capture accurately, measure, and, where possible, enhance the ability of the individual to adapt to a changing communicative environment. Assessment measures differ along a number of dimensions. A distinction is drawn between testing and assessment and the argument proposed that for clinical purposes, it is helpful to keep the notions of functional and pragmatic distinct.     

Neural Recruitment and CognitiveAging: Two Hemispheres Are Better Than One, Especially as You Age

Several neuroimaging studies have reported that older adults show weaker activations in some brain areas together with stronger activations in other areas, compared with younger adults performing the same task. This pattern may reflect neural recruitment that compensates for age-related neural declines. The recruitment hypothesis was tested in a visual laterality study that investigated age differences in the efficiency of bihemispheric processing. Letter-matching tasks of varying complexity were performed under two conditions: (a) matching letters projected to the same visual field (hemisphere) and (b) matching letters projected to opposite visual fields (hemispheres). As predicted by the recruitment hypothesis, older adults generally performed better in the bilateral than unilateral condition, whereas younger adults showed this pattern onlyfor the most complex task. We discuss the relation between these results and neuroimaging evidence for recruitment, and the relevance of the present bihemispheric advantage to other evidence for age-related changes in interhemispheric transfer.     

Individualism-collectivism and self-concept: Social or contextual?

The cultural constructs of individualism and collectivism (I-C) have been closely identified with different conceptions of the self. In contrast to autonomous, abstract self-concepts, it has been argued that collectivists have concepts of self which are interdependent with others and connected with particular contexts. This study investigated the extent to which spontaneous social and contextual self-concepts were connected to each other and to individual-level I-C measures. Questionnaires were administered to adult employee samples in Australia and South-East Asia (N = 581). Although closely intertwined, social and contextual statements were able to be independently tested in relation to I-C. I-C was primarily related to the social-autonomous dimension of self. Controlling for social self-responses, contextual self-concepts were not independently related to any of the measures of I-C.     

Counseling in the Philippines: Past,Present, and Future

The history of colonization and persistent attempts at self‐governance in the Philippines parallel the beginnings of counseling in the country, which were largely influenced by the United States. Because of the Guidance and Counseling Act of 2004 and the Psychology Act of 2009, counseling is on its way to professionalization and regulation. Counseling is growing in depth and credibility, as evidenced by applications in practice that are not only indigenous but powerfully relevant.     

Understanding of Genetic Inheritance among Xhosa-Speaking Caretakers of Children with Hemophilia

Hemophilia A and B are X-linked recessive inherited bleeding disorders that have a profound impact on the family of affected individuals. Education is vital to enable women to appreciate the implications of being a carrier and the implications for a prospective child. Prior research has shown that cultural, socio-economic and linguistic issues in South Africa are major barriers to communication for first-language Xhosa-speakers. This exploratory study aimed to investigate the basic knowledge of genetic inheritance among this cultural group in order to promote culturally-sensitive, effective genetic counseling. Ten in-depth interviews were conducted with Xhosa-speaking mothers or caregivers of boys with hemophilia. Results suggest that the participants had a very limited understanding of the clinical management, genetic consequences and cause of hemophilia. While treatment and care by health care service providers was fully accepted, several participants believed that traditional methods would provide them with more satisfactory explanations. These findings suggest that there is a critical need for socio-culturally tailored, language-specific education for families with hemophilia.     

The end of analysis for the analyst (Translated by Ann Kutek)

This paper is an account of an analyst's personal exploration to make conceptual sense of the delicate closing stages of an analysis. Jung's theory of complexes provides a model of the functioning of the analytic relationship as an integral whole which itself is the locus of the process that brings an analysis to completion. Clinical vignettes are used to illustrate this.     

EARLY RESPONSE DISTRIBUTION AND OUTCOMES OF RESPONSE-RESTRICTION ANALYSES

We examined whether the results of a response‐restriction analysis (RRA) could be predicted on the basis of response distribution in early sessions, when these sessions indicated interaction with multiple items. Four preschool‐aged children participated. For 3 of the 4 participants, the results from sessions conducted prior to restriction of the first item corresponded closely with results of the full RRA.     

CHARACTER,PSYCHOANALYTIC IDENTIFICATION,AND NUMERICAL IDENTITY

Identification figures prominently in moral psychological explanations. I argue that in identification the subject has an ‘identity‐thought’, which is a thought about her numerical identity with the figure she identifies with. In Freud's psychoanalytic psychology character is founded on unconscious identification with parental figures. Moral philosophers have drawn on psychoanalysis to explain how undesirable or disadvantageous character dispositions are resistant to insight through being unconscious. According to Richard Wollheim's analysis of Freud's theory, identification is the subject's disposition to imagine, unconsciously, her bodily merging with the figure she identifies with. I argue that this explanation of identification is not adequate. Human character is held to be capable of change when self‐reflection brings unconscious identifications to conscious self‐knowledge. I argue that for self‐knowledge these identifications must be an intelligible part of the subject's self‐conception, and that Wollheim's ‘merging phantasy’ is not intelligible to the subject in this way. By contrast, the subject's thought that she is numerically identical to the figure she identifies with does provide an intelligible starting‐point for reflecting on this identification. This psychoanalytic account provides a clear conception of identification with which to investigate puzzle cases in the moral psychology of character.