‘As in a theatre’: scientific spectacle in Bacon's New Atlantis

Essay review of Reclaiming Reality, by Roy Bhaskar, London: Verso, 1989, 218 pages, pb £10.95.     

The effects of local and global processing orientation on eyewitness identification performance

Recent work has demonstrated that performance on a simultaneous target-present photographic line-up can be enhanced by prior global processing orientation, and hindered by prior local processing orientation induced by processing Navon letter stimuli. A series of studies explore the generality of this processing bias effect using either videotaped scenarios or live interactions. Five experiments demonstrate that these effects are seen across a range of test stimuli, test formats, and test instructions. These data inform the processes engaged in by witnesses when making line-up identifications and indicate that it may be possible to improve the accuracy of witnesses making such judgements.     

A Brief History of Ghosts: Commentary on Paper by Laurel Moldawsky Silber

Although Gerhardt's commentary points to substantial points of agreement between us—the claim that human being is embodied being, the critique of rationalisms, and the resistance to relativisms—we also have important differences. The chief of these, from my point of view, concern (1) the functions of theoretical language, (2) the level of commitment psychoanalysts owe to traditional language for the sake of community and continuity, and (3) the issue of reification. My reply suggests that Gerhardt has confused the functions of expressive and theoretical language; that, for the sake of a “gossipy connection,” she seems to deprive the psychoanalytic community of the self-reflective criticism of its own shared assumptions; and that there is a difference between metaphor and the misplaced concreteness that is sometimes called reification.     

Jonah: His Story,Our Story; His Struggle,Our Struggle: Commentary on Paper by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

The Book of Jonah, one of the best known of the biblical tales, is much more than a children's fable about a man and a whale. This brief narrative about a prophet who refuses to be a prophet is our story—how we too often give in to our nature which pulls us toward resentment, parochialism, and narrowness, too often avoid what we need to face within ourselves and our responsibilities, too often are crippled by our inability to transcend our anger and forgive. After examining Aviva Zornberg's analysis of the Book of Jonah in which she argues that the message, like the latent dream à la Freud, is obscure, I argue that the meaning of the Book of Jonah is clear. Psychic unity requires that we face our objects—God and conscience, Nineveh and storm and mother, self and other—struggle with them, stare at them, allow them to breathe and live in the same room. As God, Jonah's “psychoanalyst,” argues, it is only then that we can find our way to where His analysand Jonah never quite arrives—forgiveness of the self and of the other.     

Reminiscence,Ritual, and Beyond Working Through: Commentary on Papers by Joyce Slochower and by Laura Impert and Margaret Rubin

The author examines, contextualizes, and elaborates upon Slochower's psychoanalytic exploration of commemorative rituals and, more specifically, the Jewish tradition of Yitzor as well as upon Impert and Rubin's understanding of embodied nostalgic reminiscences, considering them within a therapeutic context for the mourner entering into the clinical situation. Slochower's experience with commemorative rituals as facilitating environments for the restoration or support of potential space and memorial activity suggests that they can aid in the re-construction and re-shaping of emotional memory, going beyond a notion of “working through.” Impert and Rubin suggest that generative nostalgic reminisces, a soma-sensory based form of memory that holds the potential for activating arrested mourning, may be clinically usefully in awakening dormant or dissociated grief so that patients can access mourning. Extending upon these contributions, the author further considers the possibility that mourning might be more usefully conceived as processes of transformational work for which a fixed resolution or outcome is neither proscribed nor prescribed. This transformational work may be seen, in part, as ongoing cycles of self-surrender to the mourner's swirling constructions of attachments lost, re-found, re-remembered, and re-conceived.     

Using Point-Of-View Video Modeling and Forward Chaining to Teach a Functional Self-Help Skill to a Child with Autism

This study examined the effectiveness of point-of-view video modeling in a forward-chaining procedure to teach a 4-year-old boy with autism to serve himself an afternoon snack. Task analysis was undertaken, and the task was divided into 3 phases with 1 video produced for each phase. A changing criterion design was used to evaluate the effects of the intervention on the participant’s ability to independently prepare and serve himself Weetbix. The results indicated that the combination of point-of-view modeling and forward chaining was effective in teaching the child to serve himself a snack without any prompting. The results also indicated that although the skill was maintained at follow-up, generalization to snacks other than Weetbix and to a different setting was limited. Parents reported satisfaction both with the procedures undertaken and with the outcomes of the intervention.     

Why does ingroup essentialism increase prejudice against minority members?

A study with British participants (N = 90) tested a potential mediator of the effect of essentialist beliefs about the national ingroup on prejudice against immigrants. Essentialist beliefs were defined as beliefs in genetic determinism, a basic assumption that group membership is “written in the blood” and that the groups’ boundaries and characteristics are determined by genetic and/or biological factors. Essentialist beliefs were expected to play an important role in the formation of prejudice. They were predicted to be associated with a reduction in the perceived possibility of immigrants’ adopting the mainstream culture. Further, it was expected that essentialist beliefs would be positively associated with perceptions of intergroup threat, which in turn would be associated with a stronger demand for immigrants adopting the mainstream culture. Taken together, essentialist beliefs were predicted to be associated with a greater discrepancy between the demand for and perceived feasibility of culture adoption. This discrepancy was hypothesized to mediate the effect of essentialist beliefs on prejudice against immigrants. Structural equation modeling analysis and mediation analysis supported the hypotheses, showing that essentialism attributed to the national ingroup results in people demanding something seemingly impossible from immigrants, and that this situation in which immigrants have little chance of fulfilling majority members’ expectations results in prejudice against them. Thus, results show that perceptions of the ingroup are associated with attitudes to the outgroup, and they outline an explanatory mechanism for the positive correlation between essentialism and prejudice which has been found in previous research. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.     

Toward Meaningful Noise Research

The present review considers a series of studies of noise conducted in collaboration with Dr. Michel Loeb. This review attempts to provide a theoretical perspective as well as to summarize the most important findings of those studies. The work reviewed shows that noise effects interact with other variables, such that a noise effect on one sex is reversed for the other, and is also reversed at different times of the day. A second experiment confirmed this finding with a different arithmetic task. Further work indicated parallels between noise and fatigue, with aftereffects depending upon both work and noise. The final experiment repeated some of these findings with a different task battery of information processing tasks while showing that noise effects further depend on the meaningfulness of the noise background.