A review of: “Dementia reconsidered: The person comes first”

Tom Kitwood (1997) Dementia Reconsidered: the Person Comes First, Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press, pp. 160, $14.99 (pb), $45.00 (hb)     

Psychopathy traits and the processing of emotion words: Results of a lexical decision task

Research has indicated that individuals possessing psychopathic traits exhibit a deficit in the processing of emotional stimuli. Lexical decision task studies found that psychopathic individuals do not demonstrate affective facilitation in processing emotional words relative to nonpsychopathic individuals. However, these investigations have not examined processing of discrete affective categories and their relation to the callous/unemotional (F1) and impulse control/antisocial (F2) factors of psychopathy. Sixty undergraduate men completed a self-report measure of psychopathy traits and a lexical decision task assessing response latencies to anger, sadness, fear, and happiness words. Results reflected an association between F2 and a heightened experience of anger, whereas F1 was associated with a diminished experience of sadness. Findings are discussed in terms of the relation to existing research using alternative methods of processing affect.     

Celtic Wonder

One of the most important lessons in Jungian psychology is that we each have to contain the tension of opposites within ourselves, long past the point of comfort. Early in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien tells us of the natural antipathy that Dwarves and Elves have toward each other, an antipathy that goes back millennia. The representatives of both can hardly stand to be in the company of each other at the great Council of Elrond in Rivendell, the Council that begins the initially awkward Fellowship of the Ring. Yet, over the course of this greatest of all quests, Gimli the Dwarf and Legolas the Elf grow from uneasy allies to inseparable friends, offering all of us an example of the reconciliation of opposites that has to take place in each of our souls.     

Learning to Teach: The Acquisition and Maintenance of Teaching Skills

We reviewed 49 studies which used direct observation procedures to provide data on the effects of pre-service and inservice training in practical classroom teaching behaviors and skills. We found stronger effects for training packages which included classroom practice with performance feedback. The research provided conflicting evidence regarding the value of modeling, role-play, cueing systems, and contingency management components in practical skills training. The weakest training effects were those produced by microteaching, Minicourse, and protocol training packages. Twenty of the evaluations also provided follow-up data but the design of these studies did not permit any conclusions to be drawn regarding the training conditions which are necessary for the maintenance of newly acquired classroom teaching skills. We concluded that identification of the training conditions which are necessary for the maintenance of new teaching skills will require more thoughtful conceptualizations of maintenance and its measurement, and more carefully designed component analyses of those factors suggested by basic research as being necessary for maintenance.     

Two memories for geographical slant: Separation and interdependence of action and awareness

The present study extended previous findings of geographical slant perception, in which verbal judgments of the incline of hills were greatly overestimated but motoric (haptic) adjustments were much more accurate. In judging slant from memory following a brief or extended time delay, subjects’ verbal judgments were greater than those given when viewing hills. Motoric estimates differed depending on the length of the delay and place of response. With a short delay, motoric adjustments made in the proximity of the hill did not differ from those evoked during perception. When given a longer delay or when taken away from the hill, subjects’ motoric responses increased along with the increase in verbal reports. These results suggest two different memorial influences on action. With a short delay at the hill, memory for visual guidance is separate from the explicit memory informing the conscious response. With short or long delays away from the hill, short-term visual guidance memory no longer persists, and both motor and verbal responses are driven by an explicit representation. These results support recent research involving visual guidance from memory, where actions become influenced by conscious awareness, and provide evidence for communication between the “what” and “how” visual processing systems.