THE DREAM'S NAVEL BETWEEN CHAOS AND THOUGHT3

The authors begin by drawing attention to the problem of the transition from the biological to the psychic, noting that Freud himself, with his background in the neurosciences, grappled with it throughout his career. Certain recent paradigms more commonly applied to the natural sciences, such as in particular chaos and complexity theory, can in their view prove fruitful in psychoanalysis too, and it is shown how these notions are inherent in some of Freud's conceptions. The unconscious is stated to operate like a neural network, performing the kind of parallel processing used in the computing of highly complex situations, whereas the conscious mind is sequential. Dreams, in the authors' opinion, are organisers of the mind, imparting order to the turbulence of the underlying wishes and unconscious fantasies and structuring them through the dream work. Through dreams, the structured linearity of conscious thought can emerge out of the non‐linear chaos of the drives. The dream's navel can be seen as the chaotic link, or interface, between the unconscious wish, which constitutes an attractor, and the conscious thought. The attractor may be visualised as having an hourglass or clepsydra shape, the narrow section being the dream's navel, and, being the same at any scale of observation, has the property of fractality.     

Testing the Tripartite Influence Model of body image and eating disturbance among Hungarian adolescents

We tested the Tripartite Influence Model of body image and eating disturbance on two separate samples of Hungarian boys (n = 145) and girls (n = 225), aged 10–16 years. Our results supported the model among Hungarian adolescents; however we found notable gender differences. The associations were stronger in girls compared to boys; moreover, internalization and body dissatisfaction mediated the relationship between appearance-related sociocultural influences and self-esteem only in girls. BMI and weight perception were also involved in the model, and we could present evidence that the sociocultural influence and the weight perception predict independently body dissatisfaction. Our data are in line with previous results; however, further exploration of gender, age, and culture-related differences in the pattern of associations may contribute to the refinement of intervention programs.     

To master or perform? Exploring relations between achievement goals and conceptual change learning

Background. Research is needed to explore conceptual change in relation to achievement goal orientations and depth of processing. Aims. To address this need, we examined relations between achievement goals, use of deep versus shallow processing strategies, and conceptual change learning using a think‐aloud protocol. Sample and Method. Seventy‐three undergraduate students were assessed on their prior knowledge and misconceptions about Newtonian mechanics, and then reported their achievement goals and participated in think‐aloud protocols while reading Newtonian physics texts. Results. A mastery‐approach goal orientation positively predicted deep processing strategies, shallow processing strategies, and conceptual change. In contrast, a performance‐approach goal orientation did not predict either of the processing strategies, but negatively predicted conceptual change. A performance‐avoidance goal orientation negatively predicted deep processing strategies and conceptual change. Moreover, deep and shallow processing strategies positively predicted conceptual change as well as recall. Finally, both deep and shallow processing strategies mediated relations between mastery‐approach goals and conceptual change. Conclusions. Results provide some support for Dole and Sinatra's (1998) Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model of conceptual change but also challenge specific facets with regard to the role of depth of processing in conceptual change.     

On the Patient's Becoming an Individual: The Importance of the Analyst's Personal Response to a Deprived Patient and Her Dreams

What patients mainly want—which Ferenczi noted as early as 1932 in his clinical diary and which Bion later expressed in his Cogitations (1992)—and what some patients need, is to experience how the analyst lives and processes the interpersonal events that lie at the origin of their affective and mental suffering. This is especially true with schizoid patients who were profoundly emotionally deprived in childhood. In this paper, the author investigates this crucial aspect of the intersubjective analytic relationship in his treatment of just such a patient, an extremely silent and inert young woman. Through a detailed examination of clinical material from various stages of her analysis, he explores how the analyst's unconscious emotional response serves as both a tool for comprehension and a key element of environmental facilitation—a “new beginning,” to use Balint's phrase—that may help the patient attain a level of development and emancipation that he or she has never experienced before.     

Response-dependent point loss and response force as disrupting operations on behavioral resistance to change in humans

Behavioral momentum theory (BMT) provides a theoretical and methodological framework for understanding how differentially maintained operant responding resists disruption. A common way to test operant resistance involves contingencies with suppressive effects, such as extinction or prefeeding. Other contingencies with known suppressive effects, such as response-cost procedures arranged as point-loss or increases in response force, remain untested as disruptive events within the BMT framework. In the present set of three experiments, responding of humans was maintained by point accumulation programmed according to a multiple variable-interval (VI) VI schedule with different reinforcement rates in either of two components. Subsequently, subtracting a point following each response (Experiment 1) or increasing the force required for the response to be registered (Experiments 2 and 3 decreased response rates, but responding was less disrupted in the component associated with the higher reinforcement rate. The point-loss contingency and increased response force similarly affected response rates by suppressing responding and human persistence, replicating previous findings with humans and nonhuman animals when other types of disruptive events (e.g., extinction and prefeeding) were investigated. The present findings moreover extend the generality of the effects of reinforcement rate on persistence, and thus BMT, extending the analysis of resistance to two well-known manipulations used to reduce responding in the experimental analysis of behavior.     

Simultaneous completions of modal and amodal figures: Visual evoked potentials reveal asymmetrical interference effects

Modal and amodal completion processes are thought to affect the emergence and the potency of each other. To see whether one dominates over the other, we measured the Npd, that is, the negativity of visual-evoked potentials whose amplitude increases with perceptual difficulty. In the first experiment, the Npds to illusory (modal) squares and diamonds placed over amodal diamonds and squares, respectively, were found to be greater when targets were the amodal figures than when targets were the modal figures, thus suggesting that modal figures created more interference. A second experiment showed that greater Npds were specific to interference and not to the greater difficulty at focusing on amodal figures rather than on modal figures. A third experiment showed that the interference also occurs with real figures in replacement of modal ones. Overall, the results suggest a certain dominance of modal completion over amodal completion when both occur in the same display.     

Use of Computer-Based Interventions to Teach Communication Skills to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Systematic Review

The purpose of this review is to provide a systematic analysis of studies involving the use of computer-based interventions (CBI) to teach communication skills to children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This review evaluates intervention outcomes, appraises the certainty of evidence, and describes software and system requirements for each included study. This review has three main aims: (a) to evaluate the evidence-base regarding CBI, (b) to inform and guide practitioners interested in using CBI, and (c) to stimulate and guide future research aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of CBI in communication for individuals with ASD. Results suggest that CBI should not yet be considered a researched-based approach to teaching communication skills to individuals with ASD. However, CBI does seem a promising practice that warrants future research.     

Endogenous-like orienting of visual attention in rats

This study investigated the orienting of visual attention in rats using a 3-hole nose-poke task analogous to Posner, Information processing in cognition: the Loyola Symposium, Erlbaum, Hillsdale, (1980) covert attention task for humans. The effects of non-predictive (50% valid and 50% invalid) and predictive (80% valid and 20% invalid) peripheral visual cues on reaction times and response accuracy to a target stimulus, using Stimuli-Onset Asynchronies (SOAs) varying between 200 and 1,200 ms, were investigated. The results showed shorter reaction times in valid trials relative to invalid trials for both subjects trained in the non-predictive and predictive conditions, particularly when the SOAs were 200 and 400 ms. However, the magnitude of this validity effect was significantly greater for subjects exposed to predictive cues, when the SOA was 800 ms. Subjects exposed to invalid predictive cues exhibited an increase in omission errors relative to subjects exposed to invalid non-predictive cues. In contrast, valid cues reduced the proportion of omission errors for subjects trained in the predictive condition relative to subjects trained in the non-predictive condition. These results are congruent with those usually reported for humans and indicate that, in addition to the exogenous capture of attention promoted by both predictive and non-predictive peripheral cues, rats exposed to predictive cues engaged an additional slower process equivalent to human's endogenous orienting of attention. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an endogenous-like process of covert orienting of visual attention in rats.