Understanding person acquisition using an interactive activation and competition network

Face perception is one of the most developed visual skills that humans display, and recent work has attempted to examine the mechanisms involved in face perception through noting how neural networks achieve the same performance. The purpose of the present paper is to extend this approach to look not just at human face recognition, but also at human face acquisition. Experiment 1 presents empirical data to describe the acquisition over time of appropriate representations for newly encountered faces. These results are compared with those of Simulation 1, in which a modified IAC network capable of modelling the acquisition process is generated. Experiment 2 and Simulation 2 explore the mechanisms of learning further, and it is demonstrated that the acquisition of a set of associated new facts is easier than the acquisition of individual facts in isolation of one another. This is explained in terms of the advantage gained from additional inputs and mutual reinforcement of developing links within an interactive neural network system.     

Book Reviews of Death,ritual and belief: the rhetoric of funerary rites (second edition) DOUGLAS J. DAVIES Continuum International Publishing Group,London, 2002, 320 pp. £17.99 (pb) ISBN 0 826 45484 4

This paper considers the role of Islamic scholars as non-statutory providers of support for individuals with issues of psychological distress and wellbeing. A qualitative phenomenological analysis of the experiences of six Imams (Islamic religious officials) who saw this type of support as being part of their role is presented. Four themes were identified: “Building a personal relationship with the ultimate authority”; “Treating the whole person”; “God's medicine” and “Duty bound to help”. Clinical implications for the current and potential relationship between this type of support and mental health and psychological services are presented and discussed.     

安史之乱到晚唐的道教与政治

本文是英国学者巴雷特教授代表作《唐朝道教研究——中国历史上黄金时期的宗教与帝国》一书的第四部分,从宗教与政治的角度论证了安史之乱到唐末道教与皇权之间的关系,着重分析了这段时期道教经典在朝廷科考中的地位和作用,并通过日本僧人圆仁的日记生动地再现了武宗灭佛事件的场景,同时研究了上清派、天师道和地方民间道派的关系,突出了杜光庭在唐朝道教中的重要地位。     

Values and Social Justice in Counseling

The construct of social justice in counseling is defined and operationalized in this article. This is followed by a discussion about the intersection between social justice in counseling and philosophy, ethics, and spirituality. A call to action for counseling professionals is offered.     

Prolonged exposure therapy for combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder: comparing outcomes for veterans of different wars

There is significant support for exposure therapy as an effective treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) across a variety of populations, including veterans; however, there is little empirical information regarding how veterans of different war theaters respond to exposure therapy. Accordingly, questions remain regarding therapy effectiveness for treatment of PTSD for veterans of different eras. Such questions have important implications for the dissemination of evidence based treatments, treatment development, and policy. The current study compared treatment outcomes across 112 veterans of the Vietnam War, the first Persian Gulf War, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. All subjects were diagnosed with PTSD and enrolled in prolonged exposure (PE) treatment. Veterans from all three groups showed significant improvement in PTSD symptoms, with veterans from Vietnam and Afghanistan/Iraq responding similarly to treatment. Persian Gulf veterans did not respond to treatment at the same rate or to the same degree as veterans from the other two eras. Questions and issues regarding the effectiveness of evidence based treatment for veterans from different eras are discussed.     

Spare the rod: The figure of the dominatrix in the literary canon

The commonly cited maxim, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” is often traced incorrectly back to the biblical book of Proverbs when its point of origin lies instead first in Langland’s Piers Plowman and then, in the highly satirical and sexualized text of Samuel Butler’s Hudibras. Thus, from a religious origin, it has metamorphosed into a woman-man relationship. Indeed to follow the evolution of this phrase is to uncover the extent to which the disciplining impulses of religious rhetoric are eroticized in one Western European literary theme, that of feminine dominance, from the tenth century when the word Dominatrix appeared in the writings of Hroswitha of Gandersheim. The period leading up to the 1650s, when Butler turned the phrase into one line of a heroic iambic couplet in the middle of a stanza on an amorous jaileress, was also a time when medical research on human and animal anatomy and physiology had unravelled the pathways of libido-lifting buttock-beating. Far from demonizing woman the literary image of the whip-wielding mistress did not degrade the female sex but instead apotheosized the dominatrix as a major erotic image of the twentieth century.     

Precipitating crises in families: patterns which connect

This paper proposes that a stage in treatment common in all successful approaches to therapy is the precipitating of some degree of crisis, and that failure to provoke an element of crisis in terms of behaviour or beliefs in the family represents a 'crisis' for the therapist. Before considering the different approaches of three major schools of family therapy, it is first suggested that, at a more abstract level, 'the patterns which connect' (Bateson, 1979) the different schools provide a unifying framework to understand one of the aims of therapy. This is the intention to challenge established patterns to precipitate crisis. Three models of Family Therapy, Structural, Strategic, and Milan/Systemic, are outlined and their manner of precipitating crises described.     

Anagram solving: Does effort have an effect?

The purpose of these studies was to explore the role of effort in remembering anagrams and their solutions. In Experiment 1, we compared the effects on memory of copying words, typing them as solutions for easy anagrams, or typing them as solutions for difficult anagrams. Solving anagrams involved more effort than did simply typing words, as indexed by response time. However, this effort facilitated recall for solutions to easy anagrams but not for solutions to difficult anagrams. In Experiment 2, we compared memory for anagrams and their solutions using a frequency-judgment task. Memory for solutions was better than memory for anagrams, and this difference was not affected by anagram difficulty. The results of these studies have implications for our understanding of the role of effort in remembering.     

Twin-singleton differences in verbal ability: Where do they stem from?

In a follow-up investigation at age 9, the cognitive and social characteristics of 35 pairs of twins, studied previously at age 2, were compared with those of matched singletons at school. At age 2, twins' lower verbal ability compared with singletons' was attributed to lesser amount of speech by parents—seen as an outcome of the “twoness” of the “twin situation”—rather than to biological handicap or mother's education. At age 9, twins were equal to singletons in physical development and nonverbal ability, but the monozygotic (MZ)—not the dizygotic (DZ)—twins showed lower verbal ability. However, far more variance in verbal ability was accounted for by mother's education and birthweight than by twinship. In the long run, therefore, mothers' educational differences are more influential than the “twoness” of the “twin situation.”     

Which skills how: options for family therapy training

This paper looks at some of the issues associated with attempting to provide training in family therapy on a low budget of time and money. It also considers some more general points to do with providing training. The more extensive programmes referred to which take place in the U.S.A. are not yet viable in the U.K. It is not suggested that they should be copied, since professional cultures differ, but some learning can usefully take place. The aims and methods of teaching on introductory and intermediate low budget short courses are described and compared, and some vignettes given in order to propose ways of making such training effective. Course outlines and trainee evaluation of such training are given in the appendices.