Mirror neurons and embodied simulation in the development of archetypes and self-agency

Abstract :  In this paper I explore the role of mirror neurons and motor intentionality in the development of self-agency. I suggest that this will also give us a firmer basis for an emergent view of archetypes, as key components in the development trajectory of self-agency, from its foundation in bodily action to its mature expression in mentalization and a conscious awareness of intentionality. I offer some ideas about the implications of these issues of self-agency for our clinical work with patients whose developmental trajectory of self-agency has been partially inhibited, so that their communications have a coercive effect. I discuss the possibility that this kind of clinical phenomenon may relate to Gallese and Lakoff's hypothesis that abstract thought and imagination are forms of simulated action, and that the same sensory-motor circuits that control action also control imagination, concept formation and understanding, but with a crucial development, that of an inhibition of the connections between secondary pre-motor cortical areas and the primary motor cortex. I shall speculate that in the earlier developmental stages of self-agency, the separation of secondary from primary motor areas is not complete, so that imagination and thought are not entirely independent of physical action.     

Face processing at birth: a Thatcher illusion study

The present study was aimed at exploring newborns’ ability to recognize configural changes within real face images by testing newborns’ sensitivity to the Thatcher illusion. Using the habituation procedure, newborns’ ability to discriminate between an unaltered face image and the same face with the eyes and the mouth 180° rotated (i.e. thatcherized) was investigated. Newborns were able to discriminate an unaltered from the thatcherized version of the same face when stimuli were presented in the canonical upright orientation (Experiment 1), but failed to discriminate the same stimuli when they were presented upside‐down (Experiment 2). The results indicate that sensitivity to fine spatial information (defined as second‐order relational information) in processing upright faces is already present at birth.     

Support vector machines categorize the scaling of human grip configurations

In previous work (Cesari & Newell, 2002), we used a graphical dimensional analysis to show that grip transitions obey the body-scaled relation K = lnL(o) + InM(o)h/(a + bM(h) + cL(h)), where L. and Mo are the object's length and mass, and Lh and Mh the length and mass of the grasper's hand. However, the generality of the equation was limited by the ad hoc graphical method that defined the lines for grip separation and by the assumption that these lines be negatively sloped and parallel to one another. This article reports an independent test of this relation by the geometrical and statistical categorization of body-scaled invariants for the transition of human grip configurations through support vector machines (SVMs). The SVM analysis confirmed the fit of linear, negatively sloped, and approximately parallel transition boundaries in the scaling of human grip configuration within a single hand. The SVM analysis has provided a theoretical refinement to the scaling model of human grip configurations.     

Effects of task difficulty on use of advice

Although prior studies have found that people generally underweight advice from others, such discounting of advice is not universal. Two studies examined the impact of task difficulty on the use of advice. In both studies, the strategy participants used to weigh advice varied with task difficulty even when it should not have. In particular, the results show that people tend to overweight advice on difficult tasks and underweight advice on easy tasks. This pattern held regardless of whether advice was automatically provided or whether people had to seek it out. The paper discusses implications for the circumstances under which people will be open to influence by advisors. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Influences on Career Choice: The Responses of Ethnic-Minority and Ethnic-Majority Girls

In a study concerned with factors affecting career aspirations, 37 Muslim and 32 non-Muslim secondary-school girls were interviewed and their responses compared in four areas: career aspirations and the extent to which these matched examinations being sat; influences on career choice; when respond-entfirst considered her choice; and attitudes to work. In general, there were minimal differences on aspirations and general influences on careers, but Muslim girls reported more parental involvement, thought about choices later, and were somewhat more instrumental in attitudes to work. These results are discussed in the context of culturally mediated attitudes to education and the interrelationships of career and family life.     

Parents, Careers and Culture: The View of Ethnic-Minority and Ethnic-Majority Girls

In a study concerned with factors affecting career aspirations, 45 Muslim and 71 non-Muslim secondary-schoolgirls completed scales requiring them to rate themselves on attributes chosen for their relevance to careers. Subjects also completed these scales as they believed their parents would rate them. Minimal differences were shown between the two groups and, contrary to stereotype, Muslim girls did not indicate that their fathers would rate them low on such attributes. Interviews conducted with 21 of the Muslim pupils indicated little conflict in their homes over vocational issues and revealed that both parents, but especially fathers, were supportive of higher education and careers for their daughters.     

When Thoughts Turn Toward Nuclear War: Stress Responses,Coping Strategies,and the Importance of Trait Anxiety in Moderating Effects on “Mental Health”1

The present investigation attempted to link the concept of Nuclear Anxiety (NA) to theory and research on stress and coping, which would predict that person variables would be extremely important in determining the amount of anxiety precipitated by the hypothetical and ambiguous nature of nuclear war. In Part I of this study, 356 undergraduates were divided into high and low NA groups on the basis of state anxiety experienced while thinking about the threat of nuclear war. Groups were compared on five personality traits (trait anxiety, death anxiety, and three locus of control variables), two “mental health” indices (psychological well-being and expectancy for future goal attainment), five nuclear war-related attitudinal measures, nine nuclear threat orientations, nine strategies for coping with the threat, and a single behavioral measure of approach toward information about nuclear war. In Part II, the relationships between key explanatory variables were explored, and a preliminary model of Nuclear Anxiety was developed. Results revealed that the two NA groups differed on 22 of the 32 dependent measures, and that four variables (i.e., sustained [nuclear] concern, death anxiety, trait anxiety, and psychological well-being) were the best group discriminators. More importantly, path analysis revealed that trait anxiety rather than nuclear anxiety was the variable primarily controlling “mental health” status. Results are discussed with regard to the resiliency and adaptability of young people in dealing with the threat of nuclear war, intergroup differences in coping styles, and questions in need of further empirical attention.