The great escape: World War II, neo-freudianism, and the origins of U.S. psychocultural analysis

Psychocultural analysis stands as a signal accomplishment of the 1930s U.S. assimilation of European refugee-intellectuals. Scholars in the U.S. had been moving toward a kind of psychocultural analysis well in advance of the Great Migration--the U.S. was not an intellectual vacuum or wasteland--nevertheless, it was through their interdisciplinary collaboration, fueled by the specter of war, that these international peers stimulated one of the most wide-ranging, dynamic, and productive exchanges of ideas of the century. Through the lens of Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom, this article explores psychoculturalism's emergence in the interstices between cultures, nations, ideas, and disciplines--between Europeans and Americans, psychoanalysts and social scientists.     

Delaying feedback by three seconds benefits retention of face–name pairs: the role of active anticipatory processing

In three experiments, we used face–name learning to examine the puzzling feedback delay benefit—the tendency for feedback to be more effective when it is delayed rather than presented immediately. In Experiment 1, we found that feedback presented after a 3-s blank screen was more effective than feedback presented immediately, even after controlling for the exposure time to the material. In Experiment 2, we replicated the benefit of a feedback delay even when participants were given extra time to view the feedback or to try to retrieve the answer, indicating that this benefit is specific to a delay before feedback. Finally, in Experiment 3, we showed that the 3-s delay is beneficial only if it involves a blank screen, not if the delay is filled with an unrelated distracter task. These results suggest that the feedback delay benefit in this paradigm could arise from an active anticipatory process that occurs during the delay.     

Cues to deception in context: response latency/gaps in denials and blame shifting

Over 40 years of work on lying in psychology and communication has investigated numerous 'cues to deception'- the subtle signals people show when they are lying. One of these cues to deception is 'response latency' or the gap that occurs between questions and the lying response. The current investigation uses the methodology of conversation analysis to re-consider the question of response latency in the context of lying. Drawing on data from two naturalistic sources, the television shows COPS and the Jeremy Kyle Show, this investigation analyses response latencies in order to show the regular organization of gaps between turns in both lies and non-lies. The current investigation demonstrates that in blame shifting turns which are lies, any gaps between turns result from a display of upcoming 'trouble', rather than being related to lying per se. The investigation highlights the need to analyse lies in the contexts in which they are told, taking prior and subsequent talk into account.     

But is it evolution…?

We applaud Müller & Schumann (M&S) for bringing needed attention to the problem of motivation for common non-addictive drug use, as opposed to the usual focus on exotic drugs and addiction. Unfortunately, their target article has many underdeveloped and sometimes contradictory ideas. Here, we will focus on three key issues.     

Effects of training condition on the contribution of specific items to relational processing in baboons (Papio papio)

Relational processing involves learning about the relationship between or among stimuli, transcending the individual stimuli, so that abstract knowledge generalizable to novel situations is acquired. Relational processing has been studied in animals as well as in humans, but little attention has been paid to the contribution of specific items to relational thinking or to the factors that may affect that contribution. This study assessed the intertwined effects of item and relational processing in nonhuman primates. Using a procedure that entailed both expanding and contracting sets of pictorial items, we trained 13 baboons on a two-alternative forced-choice task, in which they had to distinguish horizontal from vertical relational patterns. In Experiment 1, monkeys engaged in item-based processing with a small training set size, and they progressively engaged in relation-based processing as training set size was increased. However, in Experiment 2, overtraining with a small stimulus set promoted the processing of item-based information. These findings underscore similarities in how humans and nonhuman primates process higher-order stimulus relations.     

Is It OK If Mommy Dates? The Influence of Mother’s Post-Divorce Dating Transitions for Children’s Behaviors

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Despite many mothers’ interest in establishing romantic relationships following divorce, some worry about the impacts of dating transitions, such as...     

Memory rehabilitation: restorative,specific knowledge acquisition,compensatory, and holistic approaches

Cognitive Processing - Memory impairment following an acquired brain injury can negatively impact daily living and quality of life—but can be reduced by memory rehabilitation. Here, we review...