Sider,the inheritance of intrinsicality,and theories of composition

I defend coincidentalism (the view that some pluralities have more than one mereological fusion) and restricted composition (the view that some pluralities lack mereological fusions) against recent arguments due to Theodore Sider.     

"This strange disease": adolescent transference and the analyst's sexual orientation

The treatment of adolescents by gay analysts is uncharted territory regarding the impact of the analyst's sexuality on the analytic process. Since a core challenge of adolescence involves the integration of the adult sexual body, gender role, and reproductive capacities into evolving identity, and since adolescents seek objects in their environment to facilitate both identity formation and the establishment of autonomy from primary objects, the analyst's sexual orientation is arguably a potent influence on the outcome of adolescent development. However, because sexual orientation is a less visible characteristic of the analyst than gender, race, or age, for example, the line between reality and fantasy is less clearly demarcated. This brings up special considerations regarding discovery and disclosure in the treatment. To explore these issues, the case of a late adolescent girl in treatment with a gay male analyst is presented. In this treatment, the question of the analyst's sexual orientation, and the demand by the patient for the analyst's self-disclosure, became a transference nucleus around which the patient's individual dynamics and adolescent dilemmas could be explored and clarified.     

Balashov on special relativity, coexistence, and temporal parts

Yuri Balashov has argued that endurantism isuntenable in the context of Minkowskispacetime. Balashov's argument runs through twomain theses concerning the relation ofcoexistence, or temporal co-location. (1)Coexistence must turn out to be an absolute or objective matter; and inMinkowski spacetime coexistence must begrounded in the relation of spacelikeseparation. (2) If endurantism is true, then(1) leads to absurd conclusions; but ifperdurantism is true, then (1) is harmless. Iobject to both theses. Against (1), I arguethat coexistence is better construed as beingrelative to a hyperplane of simultaneity.Against (2), I argue that the consequences of(1) given endurantism are no worse than theconsequences of (1) given perdurantism.     

EGOCENTRIC ACTION IN EARLY INFANCY:

Abstract— The extent to which infants combine visual (i e, retinal position) and nonvisual (eye or head position) spatial information in planning saccades relates to the issue of what spatial frame or frames of reference influence early visually guided action. We explored this question by testing infants from 4 to 6 months of age on the double-step saccade paradigm, which has shown that adults combine visual and eye position information into an egocentric (head- or trunk-centered) representation of saccade target locations. In contrast, our results imply that infants depend on a simple retinocentric representation at age 4 months, but by 6 months use egocentric representations more often to control saccade planning. Shifts in the representation of visual space for this simple sensorimotor behavior may index maturation in cortical circuitry devoted to visual spatial processing in general.     

Role-reversed systematic desensitization in the treatment of a writing phobia

A role-reversal technique was employed to teach cognitive coping skills to a patient with a writing phobia. The patient presented desensitization scenes to the therapist and devised coping strategies for lessening anxiety. Treatment resulted in a reduction of anxiety and an increased ability to write in the presence of other people. A 10-mo. follow-up showed no relapse.     

Sensory and semantic factors in recognition memory for odors and graphic stimuli: elderly versus young persons

In four experiments, young (18-26 years, M = 21) and elderly (over 65 years, M = 72) people were compared for recognition memory of (a) graphic stimuli (faces of presidents and vice presidents, engineering symbols, and free forms) and (b) everyday odors. On graphic stimuli, the elderly consistently matched the young, but on odors the performance of the elderly was worse. Their poorer olfactory performance was observed after only 26 s, but became truly marked after 1 hr or more. Somewhere between 1 hr and 2 weeks, their odor performance fell to chance, but their graphic performance remained well above chance. Although the young did forget both graphic and odor materials progressively, their performance always stayed above chance over a 6-month period. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that the elderly are less sensitive to odors than the young (with thresholds about 10-fold higher), which may explain, in part, their poorer olfactory memory performance. Knowledge that the subjects brought to the tasks by way of familiarity with and ability to name odors and faces played a positive role in recognition memory. Because of this positive role, together with the negative role played by verbal distraction, we conclude that odor recognition memory depends, perhaps heavily, on semantic processing. Impaired semantic processing may result even when odors are simply rendered desaturated, or pastel because of the weakening of olfactory sensitivity with aging.     

An adaptive reference/test paradigm: Application to pulsed fluoroscopy perception

We developed an adaptive forced-choice method whereby reference and test presentations were alternated in order to minimize effects from variables such as subject attention level. In our demonstration example of an X-ray fluoroscopy perception study, we measured detectability of low-contrast objects in noisy image sequences and determined X-ray dose levels for equivalent detectability of identical contrasts for a new test acquisition method (fluoroscopy at 15 acq/sec) as compared with a reference (conventional fluoroscopy at 30 acq/sec). In preliminary experiments, we found a dose savings with the test method. We derived parameter uncertainties for the adaptive procedure and demonstrated their applicability with Monte Carlo simulations. Repeated experiments on a single subject demonstrated reduced standard errors due to the reduction of day-to-day variations. It is believed that the method can be applied in a variety of situations in which one needs to compare perception measurements.