Serendipity and Pseudoserendipity in Career Paths of Successful Women: Orchestra Conductors

Chance affects careers, and being prepared is of essence. This article draws attention to the silence in the creativity literature on the impact of positive chance events in careers of successful women in the traditional male field of orchestra conducting. Typical serendipity and pseudoserendipity patterns in this domain of the performing arts are underscored and illustrated with case histories of some prominent women visible in the media. The social context of the field is also discussed with additional examples, and avenues for future research are suggested. Public data support empirical results on serendipity in women's careers in many fields.     

LOGICAL SYNTAX IN WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS

P.M.S. Hacker has argued that there are numerous misconceptions in James Conant's account of Wittgenstein's views and of those of Carnap. I discuss only Hacker's treatment of Conant on logical syntax in the 'Tractatus'. I try to show that passages in the 'Tractatus' which Hacker takes to count strongly against Conant's view do no such thing, and that he himself has not explained how he can account for a significant passage which certainly appears to support Conant's reading.     

Two types of serial dependence in visual working memory

Stimulus representations in working memory depend on memory traces of past stimuli both from previous trials and from the current trial. However, it is unclear whether the same or different mechanisms underlie this serial dependence across and within trials. We directly contrasted estimates of bias for pairs of immediately successive stimuli across and within trials. In each trial, participants memorized two consecutive motion direction stimuli (S1 and S2) and after a short delay were cued to report one of them. We found serial dependence across trials: The current S1 was attracted towards the preceding S2 when the latter had been cued for report. In contrast, within the same trial S2 was repulsed from S1. In addition, repulsion within a trial occurred for a broader range of motion direction differences between stimuli than attraction across trials. A second experiment in which 25% of trials did not require a response demonstrated that across‐trial attraction did not depend on whether the previous S2 actually had to be reported. Our findings provide evidence for two types of serial dependence operating across and within trials. They support the notion of different mechanisms integrating or segregating current from similar past memory contents depending on their task relevance.     

Cocaine-induced brainstem seizures and behavior

A variety of abnormal sensory/motor behaviors associated with electrical discharges recorded from the bilateral brainstem were induced in adult WKY rats by mechanical (electrode implants) and DC electrical current stimulations and by acute and chronic administration of cocaine. The electrode implant implicated one side or the other of the reticular system of the brainstem but subjects were not incapacitated by the stimulations. Cocaine (40 mg/kg) was injected subcutaneously for an acute experiment and subsequent 20 mg/kg doses twice daily for 3 days in a chronic study. Cocaine generated more abnormal behaviors in the brainstem perturbation group, especially the electrically perturbated subjects. The abnormal behaviors were yawning, retrocollis, hyperactivity, hypersensitivity, “beating drum” behavior, squealing, head bobbing, circling, sniffing, abnormal posturing, and facial twitching. Shifts in the power frequency spectra of the discharge patterns were noted between quiet and pacing behavioral states. Hypersensitivity to various auditory, tactile, and visual stimulation was present and shifts in the brainstem ambient power spectral frequency occurred in response to tactile stimulation. These findings suggest that the brainstem generates and propagates pathological discharges that can be elicited by mechanical and DC electrical perturbation. Cocaine was found to activate the discharge system and thus induce abnormal behaviors that are generated at the discharge site and at distant sites to which the discharge propagates. Cognitive functions may also be involved since dopaminergic and serotonergic cellular elements at the brainstem level are also implicated.     

Induced Recall of Film Music: An Overlooked Mirror of Transference-Countertransference Interactions

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Therapist Self-disclosure and Culturally Competent Care with Mexican–American Court Mandated Clients: A Phenomenological Study

Therapist self-disclosure (TSD) is a skill with numerous potential benefits and risks for the therapeutic alliance. While its effects have been established, little empirical research has examined the impact of TSD in cross-cultural treatment settings with court-mandated clients, a context with unique considerations. In an effort to help fill this gap, results of a phenomenological study examining the effects of TSD on Mexican–American men working with Anglo American therapists in a mandated treatment setting are presented. The results of this study indicate that TSD is a culturally competent intervention with several benefits for mandated clients, including strengthening the therapeutic alliance, normalizing client problems, lessening the therapist-client hierarchy, and modeling the acceptability of self-disclosure. Clinical and marriage and family therapy educational implications are also discussed.     

Extending Research on a Computer-Based Sight-Word Reading Intervention to a Student with Autism

A multiple-baseline design across tasks (i.e., word lists) was used to evaluate the effects of a computer-based sight-word reading intervention (CBSWRI) on the sight-word reading of a sixth-grade student with Autism. Across 3 lists of primer and first-grade Dolch words, the student showed immediate increases in sight-word reading after the CBSWRI was applied. As the student learned 25 words in 16 brief (i.e., 200 s) sessions, the efficiency and sustainability of the CBSWRI are discussed along with future research.