Effect of Concurrent Visual Feedback Frequency on Postural Control Learning in Adolescents

The purpose was to find better augmented visual feedback frequency (100% or 67%) for learning a balance task in adolescents. Thirty subjects were divided randomly into a control group, and 100% and 67% feedback groups. The three groups performed pretest (3 trials), practice (12 trials), posttest (3 trials) and retention (3 trials, 24 hours later). The reduced feedback group showed lower RMS in the posttest than in the pretest (p = 0.04). The control and reduced feedback groups showed significant lower median frequency in the posttest than in the pretest (p < 0.05). Both feedback groups showed lower values in retention than in the pretest (p < 0.05). Even when the effect of feedback frequency could not be detected in motor learning, 67% of the feedback was recommended for motor adaptation.     

Optic aphasia, optic apraxia, and loss of dreaming

A 47-year-old man with a left temporo-occipital infarct in the area of the posterior cerebral artery is presented. The neuropsychological examination did not reveal aphasia or gross mental deficits. The patient presented with alexia without agraphia, color agnosia, but few visual perceptual deficits. The main impairment was in confrontation naming; he was incapable of naming objects and pictures, not from lack of recognition (excluding visual agnosia) but from lack of access to the appropriate word (optic aphasia). The patient also exhibited a deficit in the evocation of gesture from the visual presentation of an object (optic apraxia) and a difficulty in "conjuring up" visual images of objects (impaired visual imagery) and loss of dreams. The fundamental deficit of this patient is tentatively explained in terms of visuoverbal and visuogestural disconnection and a deficit of mental imagery.     

Types of Aggression,Responsiveness to Provocation,and Callous-unemotional Traits in Detained Adolescents

The present study investigated differences in the behavioral and psychophysiological responses to provocation and in the level of callous-unemotional traits in boys exhibiting different patterns of aggression. Eighty-five boys (ages 13-18) in a juvenile detention center played a competitive computer task against a hypothetical peer who provided low and high levels of provocation. Youth high on both self-reported reactive and proactive aggression showed different behavioral responses to provocation than youth high on only reactive aggression. Specifically, the combined group showed high levels of aggressive responses without any provocation, whereas the group high on reactive aggression showed an increase in aggressive responding to low provocation. Further, results revealed a trend for the combined group to show lower levels of skin conductance reactivity to low provocation if they were also high on callous-unemotional traits.     

Implicit orientation toward family and school among bilingual Latino college students

The authors examined the associations that underlie the orientations of bilingual Latino college students toward family and school. Participants completed, in English or Spanish, 3 implicit association tests assessing their attitude toward family vs. school, identifications with these concepts, and self-esteem. Results revealed a more positive attitude toward, and stronger identification with, family than school. Identification with family was stronger among participants who completed the study in English, suggesting self-definition in terms of distinctions from the context. Last, the more participants valued family over school and identified with family rather than school, the higher was their self-esteem. These findings shed light on the subtle, yet crucial, mechanisms by which cultural knowledge is incorporated in the self-concept of bilingual Latino college students.     

Entrevista con J. D. Frank

RESUMEN

Jerome Frank, posiblemente el autor más provocativo en la línea de considerar que las psicoterapias pueden ser placebos o que éstos deben considerarse como auténticas terapias, responde en la entrevista a algunas de las cuestiones que su reconocimiento de los factores comunes a todas las terapias han planteado a otros profesionales. Comienza explicando que desde la publicación de Persuasion and Healing se han acumulado más datos a favor de su hipótesis de la desmoralización, e introduce algunas clarificaciones terminológicas en relación con el “efecto placebo”. Seguidamente aborda, entre otras, cuestiones tales como las características que se deben considerar al diseñar un grupo control placebo, cómo deben emplearse éstos en el campo de la psicología clínica o su defensa del terapeuta ecléctico, finalizando con algunos comentarios acerca de la eficacia de varias formas de psicoterapia.     

Job Conditions,Coping and Wellness/Health Outcomes in Spanish Secondary School Teachers

This cross-sectional study is part of EUROTEACH; a project aimed at examining the possible relationships between job conditions and wellness/ health outcomes in teachers from 11 European countries. The Spanish sample consists of 198 (53% female) teachers working in mixed public secondary schools in Alicante. The Job Demand-Control-Social Support (JDCS) model (Johnson and Hall, <citeref rid="bib18">1988</citeref>; Karasek and Theorell, <citeref rid="bib22">1990</citeref>) provides the theoretical framework for the study and specific instruments measuring additional job conditions and coping are applied to investigate these variables in the teaching profession. Moreover, the relationships between the variables are studied to clarify their possible interaction. Results confirm the expected relationship between job conditions and wellness/health effects, and also show the presence of an interaction between coping and the variables in the JDCS model. The need to perform further research on the role of coping, as well as considering other individual variables that might influence teacher occupational stress, is pointed out.     

Deweyan Multicultural Democracy,Rortian Solidarity,and the Popular Arts: Krumping into Presence

Curiously, while the efficacy of the arts for the development of multicultural understandings has long been theorized, empirical studies of this effect have been lacking. This essay recounts our combined empirical and philosophical study of this issue. We explicate the philosophical considerations that shaped the development of the arts course we studied, which was grounded in rather traditional humanist educational thought, informed by Deweyan considerations for pedagogy and multiculturalism. We also provide an overview of the course and of the study design: the ways in which the course worked to teach aesthetic theory through a combination of popular and canonical works, and the ways in which it sought to instill a sense of cross-cultural appreciation and solidarity among students through the inclusion of art from different cultures and generations. We then share our research findings and our return to the realm of philosophy to interpret them. Our postcolonial analysis incorporates emerging discussions of the arts as a tool for resistance and dialogue within the system of public education, and revisit and reconsider the very concept of education for pluralistic democracy. This approach problematizes traditional conceptions of pluralism, in which an attempt is made to dissolve difference in a common understanding, and instead advocates that works from among the contemporary popular arts and works drawn from the artistic “canon” alike must be considered and employed for their instrumental value to the educational process—especially for their ability to prompt an intersubjectivity that is accompanied by a heightened awareness of difference.