Learning Psychoanalysis: A Classification Based on Students' Learning Trajectories

This study was undertaken in an effort to sharpen selection procedures and improve faculty response to the learning needs of students. Eschewing a traditional anticipatory approach in determining suitability for training, the authors undertook a retrospective study to investigate the learning trajectories of candidates. A learning trajectory is defined as the particular way individuals learn, or fail to learn, as they advance through an Institute's training program. The database of this study grew out of the authors' experience with students in classrooms, in supervision, and from discussions about them in Progression, Selection, and The Evaluation of Learning committees. Realizing the reductionism of categorizing a highly complex and diverse group of individuals, the authors, nonetheless, found that candidates tended to group into five rather distinct categories. This paper discusses in detail the characteristics of these five categories and suggests ways in which this grouping may help in both selection and in planning more effective training for candidates. The authors are fully aware that this study has impressionistic qualities and warrants more rigorous research methods, but hope that it will arouse interest in other psychoanalytic centers and stimulate studies to corroborate, refine, or reject the conclusions reached by this group.     

Sudden changes in spectrum of an echo cause a breakdown of the precedence effect

The effect of changing the frequency components of an echo relative to the sound source was examined in a two-choice discrimination task. Subjects sat in an anechoic chamber and discriminated the direction of the lag noise burst within a lead-lag pair presented over loudspeakers. The leading noise burst was broadband, and the lagging burst was either high- or low-pass filtered. On some conditions, this test burst pair was preceded by a conditioning train of burst pairs, which also had a broadband lead and either a high- or low-frequency lag. When the frequency content of the echo was held constant across the conditioning train and test burst pair, echo suppression that was built up during the repeating train was maintained for the test burst pair, shown by the subjects’ poor performance in detecting the location of the lagging burst. By comparison, subjects had little difficulty in localizing the lagging burst when the frequency content of the echo changed between the conditioning train and the test burst, indicating that any buildup of suppression during the train was broken when the lagging burst’s spectrum shifted. The data are consistent with an interpretation in which echo suppression is temporarily broken when listeners’ built-up expectations about room acoustics are violated.     

Heart rate conditioning in the newborn infant

In an attempt to condition heart rate in newborns, 21 infants were assigned to Conditioning, Random Control, and Backward Conditioning Groups. During training trials, the Conditioning Group received an eight-second tone (CS), a six-second ISI, and a ten-second presentation of glucose via nipple (UCS) that overlapped the last two seconds of tone. The Random Control Group received tones at the same intertrial intervals as the Conditioning Group, but glucose varied randomly. The Backward Conditioning Group received glucose during the ten seconds immediately preceding tone onset. The response to both CS and UCS during base trials was HR acceleration. The response to tone habituated in all groups, but the acceleration to glucose was maintained throughout conditioning. Although no conditioned response to the tone developed over trials, a large HR deceleration appeared during extinction to the absence of the UCS in the Conditioning Group only. This deceleration was interpreted as an orienting response to the absence of an expected event.     

Teaching Students as Shapers of the Traditions that Shape Them

An undergraduate liberal arts education can help students be not simply shaped by tradition but also shapers of tradition. Specifically, undergraduate theological education, aimed at ministry preparation in a liberal arts setting, can seek to graduate students who are responsible shapers of the traditions that shape them, that is, who are tradents. The work of a tradent involves active engagement that requires skills and capacities well beyond simply passing on the past formulations of a tradition. The pedagogical question, then, is how to engage in undergraduate theological education if this image of the tradent is what we have in mind for our students. Three aspects of this image can serve as pervasive or recurrent themes across the structure of a major or program. One aspect is the interpretive nature of the tradent's work, a second is facility with traditions, and a third is the creative, constructive work of thinking theologically. Whatever particular traditions characterize a department's context, the image of students as tradents can help focus pedagogical reflection on the department's work: teaching students as shapers of the traditions that shape them.     

Adolescent adaptation before,during and in the aftermath of the Great Recession in the USA

This study examines the impact of the “Great Recession” (from December 2007 to June 2009) on 8th and 10th graders in the USA, using annual nationally representative data from the Monitoring the Future study. Historical changes in youth adjustment (self‐esteem, depressed mood, risk taking, aggression and property crime), school achievement (grade point average [GPA], time spent on homework and educational expectations) and structured and unstructured activities (volunteering, employment, sports and evenings out for fun) were examined between 1991 and 2014. Overall, there were only slight changes in mean levels of adjustment, achievement and most youth activities. However, the percentage of youth working during the school year did decline during the Great Recession. Several longer‐term trends were also evident, though not directly tied to the Great Recession. These include an increase in GPA, a decrease in time spent on homework, rising educational expectations and more time spent volunteering. Future work should assess how the shift to unpaid work activities (e.g. volunteering and internships) among youth is impacting the transition from school to work in the contemporary economy, and whether the Great Recession had deleterious impacts for younger children or among youth whose parents lost work or had their homes foreclosed.     

Social Norms and Egalitarian Values Mitigate Authoritarian Intolerance Toward Sexual Minorities

In the United States, acceptance of sexual minorities (e.g., gay men and lesbians) has increased substantially since the early 1990s. This study examined whether authoritarians' attitudes have been influenced by the societal shift toward greater acceptance of sexual minorities. Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) collected between 1992 and 2012, we tested a model in which authoritarianism, endorsement of egalitarian values, and social norms shifting in the direction of tolerance predict individual attitudes toward sexual minorities and LGBT rights issues. Results indicated that (1) there was a subset of authoritarians who endorsed egalitarian values, (2) authoritarians in general became more tolerant (i.e., held less negative attitudes) toward sexual minorities between 1992 and 2012, and (3) “egalitarian authoritarians” held more positive attitudes toward sexual minorities than other authoritarians. The findings contribute to contemporary theory and research on authoritarianism, which is moving from a monolithic view of authoritarianism to one in which culture and core values activate and shape manifestations of authoritarian tendencies.     

Still no phonological typicality effect on word reading time (and no good explanation of one, either): a rejoinder to Farmer, Monaghan, Misyak, and Christiansen

In this brief rejoinder, we respond to Farmer, Monaghan, Misyak, and Christiansen (2011). We argue that the data still do not support the claim that reading time is affected by the phonological typicality of a word for its part of speech. We also question Farmer et al.'s claim that interleaving syntactic structures in an experiment modifies grammatically based syntactic expectations.