The Waiting Room: Ontological Homelessness, Sexual Synecdoche, and Queer Becoming

An autobiographical reflection on the experience of being diagnosed as intersex, this essay considers the waiting room an apt metaphor for lives shaped by medical understandings of queer corporealities. Drawing upon the work of Gayle Salamon, Malatino develops the concept of sexual synecdoche as a useful analytic tool for considering the operations of medical pathologization in the realm of non-normative gender. She concludes with a discussion of queer becoming as an alternative ontology of gendered being that offers a resistant, coalitional way beyond contemporary, problematic institutionalized understandings of intersex subjectivities.     

In the Name of Psychoanalysis: Persistent Controversies and Evolution in Psychoanalysis: A Review of Impossible Training: A Relational View of Psychoanalytic Education by Emanuel Berman

In his book Impossible Training, Emanuel Berman stresses the historical roots of current standards of psychoanalytic training and demonstrates the persistence of controversies that have been present in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic training from their inception. This perspective, of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic education as evolving, encourages candidates and practitioners to be participants and creative voices in an evolving field rather than rote followers learning a trade. The author proposes ways that the transference of educators to the younger generation of psychoanalysts can facilitate or interfere with the training of candidates. Berman is applauded for shedding light on current controversies in psychoanalytic education by showing their roots in historical controversies. However, the author points out Berman's tendency to overvalue his side of the controversy rather than embrace controversy itself as in the best interest of the evolution and development of the field.     

Daily fluctuations in the affective states of dancers: A cross-situational test of basic needs theory

ObjectivesThis study tested the generalizability of basic needs theory (BNT; Deci & Ryan, 2000) across situations in which dancers learn and perform within vocational dance. Specifically, we examined the inter-relationships between daily and typical perceptions of autonomy support, basic psychological need satisfaction, and changes in affective states, across dance situations that were divergent in their learning and evaluative potential (dance classes, rehearsals, and performances). Genre differences were also examined.DesignA one-month diary study examined the inter-relationships between typical and daily perceptions of autonomy support, basic psychological need satisfaction and positive and negative affect among dancers studying three distinct genres and in three situations (classes, rehearsals, performances).MethodFifty-five dancers completed a series of scales tapping the variables of interest. Abbreviated versions of the scales were completed before (affective states) and after (affective states, basic needs and autonomy support) dance classes, rehearsals and performances over four weeks. Analyzes tested the BNT sequence across the learning and performance situations. Interactions between typical and state experiences were tested. Cross-genre comparisons were also made.ResultsResults partially supported the BNT sequence across classes, rehearsals and performances. There were situational differences in the salience of each need as a predictor of affective states. When comparing genres, some differences were also found in perceived autonomy support, basic need satisfaction and affective states.ConclusionsFindings point to the importance of promoting autonomy supportive dance teaching to facilitate dancers' day-to-day experiences of well-being.     

Development and Preliminary Validation of a Chinese Version of the Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire in a Population of Hong Kong Chinese

212 blind adults were administered the Sound Test, an auditory projective technique, to study their perceptual style and relate it to their functioning efficiency. The results indicated systematic significant differences between three employment criterion groups, employed in industry, in sheltered workshops and unemployed. The industry group demonstrated a higher ability to integrate, organize and differentiate the stimulus situations. The shop sample was stimulus bound, field dependent and rejected more stimulus situations. The unemployed group was significantly different from the industry and shop groups, exhibiting little or no effort to organize, integrate and differentiate. The results are discussed in terms of Witkin's principles of differentiation, field-dependency and field-independency. A cross validation study supports the results.     

Bias in Cross-Sectional Analyses of Longitudinal Mediation: Partial and Complete Mediation Under an Autoregressive Model

Maxwell and Cole (2007) Maxwell, S. E. and Cole, D. A. 2007. Bias in cross-sectional analyses of longitudinal mediation. Psychological Methods, 12: 23–44. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] showed that cross-sectional approaches to mediation typically generate substantially biased estimates of longitudinal parameters in the special case of complete mediation. However, their results did not apply to the more typical case of partial mediation. We extend their previous work by showing that substantial bias can also occur with partial mediation. In particular, cross-sectional analyses can imply the existence of a substantial indirect effect even when the true longitudinal indirect effect is zero. Thus, a variable that is found to be a strong mediator in a cross-sectional analysis may not be a mediator at all in a longitudinal analysis. In addition, we show that very different combinations of longitudinal parameter values can lead to essentially identical cross-sectional correlations, raising serious questions about the interpretability of cross-sectional mediation data. More generally, researchers are encouraged to consider a wide variety of possible mediation models beyond simple cross-sectional models, including but not restricted to autoregressive models of change.     

How central are judgment and agency to epistemology?

Ernest Sosa’s Judgment and Agency marks an important change from his earlier work in epistemology. While belief was at the center of his earlier approach to epistemological issues, a far more sophisticated mental state, judgment, plays the central role here. This paper examines the significance of this change in focus, and argues that there is reason to favor the earlier belief-centered approach over this new judgment-centered account.     

Effects of outcome and trial frequency on the inverse base-rate effect

The inverse base-rate effect is a bias in contingency learning in which participants tend to predict a rare outcome for a conflicting set of perfectly predictive cues. Although the effect is often explained by attention biases during learning, inferential strategies at test may also contribute substantially to the effect. In three experiments, we manipulated the frequencies of outcomes and trial types to determine the critical conditions for the effect, thereby providing novel tests of the reasoning processes that could contribute to it. The rare bias was substantially reduced when the outcomes were experienced at equal rates in the presence of predictive-cue frequency differences (Exp. 2), and when the predictive cues were experienced at equal rates in the presence of outcome frequency differences (Exp. 3). We also found a consistent common-outcome bias for novel cue compounds. The results indicate the importance of both cue and outcome frequencies to the inverse base-rate effect, and reveal a combination of necessary conditions that are not well captured by appealing to inferential strategies at test. Although both attention-based and inferential theories explain some aspects of these data, no existing theory fully accounts for these effects of relative novelty.     

Applying signal-detection theory to the study of observer accuracy and bias in behavioral assessment

We evaluated the feasibility and utility of a laboratory model for examining observer accuracy within the framework of signal-detection theory (SDT). Sixty-one individuals collected data on aggression while viewing videotaped segments of simulated teacher-child interactions. The purpose of Experiment 1 was to determine if brief feedback and contingencies for scoring accurately would bias responding reliably. Experiment 2 focused on one variable (specificity of the operational definition) that we hypothesized might decrease the likelihood of bias. The effects of social consequences and information about expected behavior change were examined in Experiment 3. Results indicated that feedback and contingencies reliably biased responding and that the clarity of the definition only moderately affected this outcome.     

Utility of the Multidimensional Health Profile—Psychosocial Functioning Scales (MHP-P) for Assessing Psychosocial Adjustment in Gastric Bypass Surgery Patients

This study examined the utility of the Multidimensional Health Profile—Psychosocial Functioning (MHP-P) for the preoperative assessment of gastric bypass surgery (GBS) applicants. The MHP-P, a 58-item screening inventory that assesses 4 psychosocial areas relevant to health (mental health, life stress, social resources, and coping skills), was administered to 449 morbidly obese patients who were being considered for GBS. Data were compared with the results of a much more lengthy assessment procedure involving a 273-item comprehensive biographical and medical history interview, the MMPI-2, the Basic Personality Inventory, and the Beck Depression Inventory. The 17 measures of the MHP-P showed highly significant correlations with other measures considered to be of relevance in GBS outcome, confirming the utility of the MHP-P as a cost-effective procedure for use in this clinical medical setting.     

Reply to Bermudez and Bonjour

Helen Beebee has recently argued that David Lewis’s account of compatibilism, so-called local miracle compatibilism (LMC), allows for the possibility that agents in deterministic worlds have the ability to break or cause the breaking of a law of nature. Because Lewis’s LMC allows for this consequence, Beebee claims that LMC is untenable and subsequently that Lewis’s criticism of van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument for incompatibilism is substantially weakened. I review Beebee’s argument against Lewis’s thesis and argue that Beebee has not refuted LMC and concomitantly has not demonstrated that Lewis’s criticism of the Consequence Argument fails.