The time course of predictability effects in reading: Evidence from a survival analysis of fixation durations

To investigate the time course of predictability effects in reading, the present study examined distributions of first-fixation durations on target words in a low predictability versus a high predictability prior context. In a replication of Staub (2011), ex-Gaussian fitting demonstrated that the low predictability distribution was significantly shifted to the right of the high predictability distribution in the absence of any contextual differences in the degree of skew. Extending this finding, the present study used a survival analysis technique to demonstrate a significant influence of predictability on fixation duration as early as 140 ms from the start of fixation, which is similar to prior results obtained with the word frequency variable. These results provide convergent evidence that lexical variables have a fast acting influence on fixation durations during reading. Implications for models of eye-movement control are discussed.     

To Be Is to Betray: On the Place of Collective History and Freedom in Psychoanalysis

This paper explores an open frontier between psychoanalysis and critical theory, the relations between subjective experience and collective history. Its drive is a concern with the question of freedom: How might contemporary psychoanalysis help us think about freedom? How could it, as a practice, help us to be free? On the theoretical level, the paper follows the critique of psychoanalysis offered by Foucault and Adorno, particularly the latter's close reading Ferenczi in Negative Dialectics and his notion of “the spell.” I employ their critique in order to articulate the dilemma psychoanalysis faces vis-à-vis the notion of freedom in social context. I argue that, unlike traditional psychoanalytic discourse, relational psychoanalysis can address this dilemma in a generative way. I find this prospect in the readiness of relational psychoanalysis to realize the potential inherent in the psychoanalytic setting: the creation of a mutually constituted intersubjective space. I tell the story of a young woman for whom love seems impossible, and of a psychoanalytic expedition that finds her ability to love being held hostage. I suggest that what appears in one register as gender and sexual trouble appears in another as a dilemma of attachments and loyalties: my patient's ability to love is spellbound, trapped in a subjective-collective no man's land between her desire to be for herself and the unconscious demands of collective heritage. I argue that for psychoanalysis to be a practice of freedom, it must address the ways in which subjective experience answers to social forces and collective history. I question in this context the relations between freedom, guilt, and responsibility. Re-engaging Adorno, I agree that selfhood may always involve a guilty betrayal of others but argue against him that we must allow this guilt to be reconciled with living. I suggest, in conclusion, that theory is the bearer of collective responsibility.     

Idealization,Splitting, and the Challenge of Homophobia

How can we account for the persistence of homophobia? What makes homophobia so resistant to change? In this paper we discuss the psychic and discursive persistence of homophobia by problematizing the political unconscious. Focusing on Freud's psychic defense mechanisms, idealization and splitting, we show how these forces can be thought of as the psychic work of discourse. To this end we interviewed fathers of homosexual sons who had initially reacted with panic, but eventually came to “accept” their sons' homosexuality. We discuss the paradox that the fathers' narratives raise: their love and adoration of their (masculine) homosexual sons, and on the other hand their hatred and denunciation of homosexuality. We argue that idealization and splitting in this case operate as regulatory psychic mechanisms in the service of social discourse. This psychic power of discourse reappropriates masculinity (as a fetish) and reinstates the naturalization of heterosexuality and the masculine/feminine binary. The notion of the political unconscious is brought up by concluding that in order to change sexual prejudices we need to understand why we fail to change and how psychic mechanisms work in the service of social and cultural discourse.     

DAVID BEN-GURION'S TELEOLOGICAL WESTERNISM

Until 1948, the westernism of the Jewish society in the Land of Israel was apparent and taken for granted, as the vast majority of Zionist immigrants who came to Palestine were of European origin, and they built a western society in the Middle East, socially, politically, culturally and economically. Only after the 1948 War and the immigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over the Middle East and North Africa was Israel's westernism no longer obvious. And indeed, with the arrival of these immigrants from Muslim states, the Israeli government initiated a national-scale endeavour to acculturate the new arrivals to the norms and values of their new home. Scholars suggest various reasons for these actions of the Israeli government, but this article will pay special attention to David Ben Gurion's westernism. Israel's first Prime Minister attributed high importance to the maintenance of Israel's western and modern nature, and he did so not only with the intention of acculturating the newcomers. Based on his profound fear about the ability of the Jewish state to survive in the Middle East, Ben Gurion regarded Westernism and modernism as vital to its survival.     

Explicit risk of getting caught does not affect unethical behavior

Research showed that given the opportunity, people behave dishonestly only to the degree that will allow them to maintain a positive self‐concept. These experiments did not include the probability of getting caught cheating, although in everyday life, this risk always exists. If it is shown that people behave more honestly when faced with an explicit risk of getting caught, the ecological validity of these experiments may be at risk. This study showed that explicit risk, framed as the probability of getting caught or as the complementary probability of not getting caught, did not reduce participants’ dishonest behavior relative to no risk. These findings support the ecological validity of previous research on unethical behavior.     

Immigration,Belonging, and the Tension Between Center and Margin in Psychoanalysis

Immigration is in the unconscious of the unconscious of psychoanalysis. Immigration as a dramatic instance of the always precarious social and political registers of human living. Immigration as the movement of people from one place to another, across regions and national borders and oceans, by choice or necessity. Immigration as movement across other types of social boundaries, always defining an outside and a way into a desired inside. Immigration as an inverted reflection of our deep need to belong. This paper reflects on immigration as a clinical reality and as a clinical metaphor. It uses the notion of immigration to question the perceived, often if not always illusory settledness of the analytic practice, and its tendency to privilege a sense of well-inhabited center vis-à-vis the margins we all travel through and persist in. My aim is to join Veronica Csillag in deliberating a more uncertain and daring potential for our theory making and practice.     

What do Non-clergy Spiritual Care Providers Contribute to End of Life Care in Israel? A Qualitative Study

Spiritual care is an increasingly important component of end of life care. As it emerges in Israel, it is intentionally built on a nonclerical model. Based on interviews with spiritual care providers in Israel, we find that they help patients and families talk about death and say goodbyes. They encourage the wrapping up of unfinished business, offer diverse cultural resources that can provide meaning, and use presence and touch to produce connection. As spiritual care emerges in Israel, providers are working with patients at the end of life in ways they see as quite distinct from rabbis. They offer broad frames of meaning to which patients from a range of religious traditions can connect.     

The effect of construal level on unethical behavior

Construal level theory predicts that people will judge immoral events more harshly when these are presented in a way that elicits a higher construal level, relative to a lower construal level. Previous research supported this prediction using an Israeli sample but not a U.S. sample. This article compared Israeli and U.S. samples with respect to the interactive effect of utility and construal level on unethical behavioral intentions. We found that construal level did not affect unethical behavioral intentions in either the U.S. samples for low-utility level or the Israeli samples for low- and high-utility levels. In contrast, construal level affected unethical behavioral intentions in the U.S. sample for high-utility level: unethical behavioral intentions were higher in the low-construal level compared to the high-construal level. We discuss these findings and suggest additional factors that challenge arguments concerning the direct effect of construal level on unethical behavior.     

Information‐Theoretic Measures Predict the Human Judgment of Rhythm Complexity

To formalize the human judgment of rhythm complexity, we used five measures from information theory and algorithmic complexity to measure the complexity of 48 artificially generated rhythmic sequences. We compared these measurements to human prediction accuracy and easiness judgments obtained from a listening experiment, in which 32 participants guessed the last beat of each sequence. We also investigated the modulating effects of musical expertise and general pattern identification ability. Entropy rate and Kolmogorov complexity were correlated with prediction accuracy, and highly correlated with easiness judgments. A logistic regression showed main effects of musical training, entropy rate, and Kolmogorov complexity, and an interaction between musical training and both entropy rate and Kolmogorov complexity. These results indicate that information‐theoretic concepts capture some salient features of the human judgment of rhythm complexity, and they confirm the influence of musical expertise on complexity judgments.