«Modelos de Mundo», como marco de referencia de una psicología del conocimiento

RESUMEN

En el estado actual de cosas es importante apuntar dos reflexiones. En primer lugar, existe un desfase entre la psicología que se desea hacer y la que efectivamente se logra construir, entre los motivos profundos de este desfase se puede situar la confusión epistemológica, la desconexión teórica y la falta de una orientación hacia la eficacia real. Una segunda reflexión, se situaría sobre nuestro propio trabajo y, especialmente, sobre las discusiones y reflexiones que lo acompañan. Nuestro trabajo parece tomar un rumbo determinado y resulta epistemológicamente relevante el intento de su explicación. En el presente artículo se trata de ofrecer algunos de los resultados de esta labor. Estos resultados se concretan en un enfoque metodológico desde el enfoque de Modelos del Mundo (MDM), consistente en predecir actuaciones a partir del modelo de sujeto y su mundo que, operativizados en forma de conducta, se contrasten con la realidad.     

Procesamiento de información en la esquizofrenia: hacia una interpretación alternativa

RESUMEN

En el presente trabajo aceptamos el reto que implica adoptar un pensamiento proposicional y, en consecuencia, presentamos, en primer lugar, evidencia de que los esquizofrénicos parecen tener una ejecución deficiente en multitud de tareas cognitivas que ha sido interpretada en función de un déficit en una fase específica del procesamiento; en la segunda parte, reformulamos tales déficits en términos de lo que para un buen número de investigadores constituye el problema central, esto es, el déficit atencional; a continuación cuestionamos también el propio déficit atencional en favor de un desorden en el arousal para, finalmente, proponer un interpretación de la esquizofrenia a la luz del enfoque de los “Modelos del Actuación en el Mundo”.     

La adquisición del lenguaje: un análisis interaccional

Resumen

El principal objetivo de esta investigación fue analizar functionalmente las interacciones verbales niño-adulto, en seis sujetos, de edades comprendidas entre los 18 y los 30 meses, y sus familias, observados en ambiente natural. Un segundo objetivo fue definir y poner a prueba un sistema de Categorías funcionales para el análisis del lenguaje infantil. También se realizó un estudio del lenguaje adulto («input parental») en cuanto a una pluralidad de características, incluyendo las similitudes y diferencias entre el lenguaje de los padres y las madres.

Los resultados ponen de relieve que el lenguaje de los niños, a pesar de las limitaciones formales de estas primeras etapas, es altamente funcional e interaccional. También se ha puesto de manifiesto que el lenguaje que el adulto dirige al niño reviste unas características (en cuanto a claridad, corrección, simplicidad, etc.) en sí mismo facilitadoras de los procesos de transmisión-adquisición del lenguaje. Al mismo tiempo se ha evidenciado la existencia de estrategias educativas no intencionales en las interacciones verbales niño-adulto. Estas estrategias poseen cierto valor explicativo respecto a los procesos de desarrollo del lenguaje.

Los niños del estudio y sus familias eran catalano-parlantes, por tanto este trabajo es asimismo un estudio longitudinal sobre la adquisición del catalán como primera lengua.     

Acoustic correlates of emotional dimensions in laughter: Arousal,dominance, and valence

Although laughter plays an essential part in emotional vocal communication, little is known about the acoustical correlates that encode different emotional dimensions. In this study we examined the acoustical structure of laughter sounds differing along four emotional dimensions: arousal, dominance, sender's valence, and receiver-directed valence. Correlation of 43 acoustic parameters with individual emotional dimensions revealed that each emotional dimension was associated with a number of vocal cues. Common patterns of cues were found with emotional expression in speech, supporting the hypothesis of a common underlying mechanism for the vocal expression of emotions.     

Sabina Spielrein: a bibliography

The work on this bibliography was carried out mostly in 2002. Though it aims at being exhaustive, the research in different languages and translations may not have yielded every document and some may still be unknown to me. It is also likely that more material have been translated since. Besides, the Spanish and Brazilian-Portuguese literature has not been researched. This is why this bibliography must be considered as a 'work in progress' which any addition can only enrich. Victor Ovcharenko has made a list of the writings of Sabina Spielrein starting with 1911, the year of her medical thesis in Zürich, and covering the years to 1931. He points out, however, that between the date of the last paper that she is known to have written and her death in 1942, there are eleven years and that it would be truly astonishing if she had neither written nor published anything during that period. Up to this date no document by her during that time has been found (Journal of Analytical Psychology, 44, 3, 1999).     

Electrophysiological evidence of automatic early semantic processing

This study investigates the automatic-controlled nature of early semantic processing by means of the Recognition Potential (RP), an event-related potential response that reflects lexical selection processes. For this purpose tasks differing in their processing requirements were used. Half of the participants performed a physical task involving a lower-upper case discrimination judgement (shallow processing requirements), whereas the other half carried out a semantic task, consisting in detecting animal names (deep processing requirements). Stimuli were identical in the two tasks. Reaction time measures revealed that the physical task was easier to perform than the semantic task. However, RP effects elicited by the physical and semantic tasks did not differ in either latency, amplitude, or topographic distribution. Thus, the results from the present study suggest that early semantic processing is automatically triggered whenever a linguistic stimulus enters the language processor.     

On the way to assess emotions in animals: do lambs (Ovis aries) evaluate an event through its suddenness, novelty, or unpredictability?

Appraisal theories provide a framework that gives insight into emotions and could allow comparisons across species. According to these theories, events are first evaluated on their suddenness, novelty, and unpredictability. The authors examined the ability of lambs (Ovis aries) to evaluate an event according to these 3 criteria through 3 tests. The lambs responded to suddenness with a startle response coupled with an increase in heart rate and to novelty with an orientation response coupled with an increase of vagal activity. There was no clear evidence that lambs can detect the predictability of an event. Those results support the usefulness of appraisal theories to assess emotion in animals.     

The misunderstanding (le malentendu)

The idea that misunderstanding is simply a problem in both the psychoanalytic situation, between analyst and patient, and in translation between one language and another, is turned on its head in this paper. Originally written in French, this paper addresses both Francophone and Anglophone psychoanalytic communities in the realization that misunderstanding is the ground from which we start in analysis. The author portrays two patients who illustrate that, even when analyst and patient speak the same language, the patient may speak in a style that the analyst must first learn to hear as a kind of dialect, to hear his own misunderstanding, in order for meaning to appear.     

Reading strategies and prior knowledge in learning from hypertext

In two experiments, we identified two main strategies followed by hypertext readers in selecting their reading orders. The first consisted in selecting the text semantically related to the previously read section (coherence strategy), and the second in choosing the most interesting text, delaying reading of less interesting sections (interest strategy). Comprehension data revealed that these strategies affected learning differently as a function of the reader's prior knowledge. For low-knowledge readers, the coherence strategy supported better learning of the content. This effect seems to rely on the improvement of reading order coherence induced by this strategy. By contrast, for intermediate-knowledge readers the coherence and the interest strategies benefited comprehension equally. In both cases, learning was supported through the active processing induced by these strategies. Discussion focuses on resolving inconsistencies in the literature concerning whether or not hypertext supports better comprehension than does traditional linear texts.     

The Impact of the Built Environment on Children’s School Conduct Grades: The Role of Diversity of Use in a Hispanic Neighborhood

A population-based study examined the relationship between diversity of use of the built environment and teacher reports of children’s grades. Diversity of use of the built environment (i.e., proportion of a block that is residential, institutional, commercial and vacant) was assessed for all 403 city blocks in East Little Havana, Miami—a Hispanic neighborhood. Cluster analysis identified three block-types, based on diversity of use: Residential, Mixed-Use, and Commercial. Cross-classified hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine the impact of diversity of use, school, gender, and year-in-school on academic and conduct grades for 2857 public school children who lived in these blocks. Contrary to popular belief, mixed-use blocks were associated with optimal outcomes. Specifically, follow-up analyses found that a youth living on a residential block had a 74% greater odds of being in the lowest 10% of conduct grades (conduct GPA <2.17) than a youth living on a mixed-use block. In fact, an analysis of the population attributable fraction suggests that if the risk associated with residential blocks could be reduced to the level of risk associated with mixed-use blocks, a 38% reduction in Conduct GPAs <2.17 could be achieved in the total population. These findings suggest that public policy targeting the built environment may be a mechanism for community-based interventions to enhance children’s classroom conduct, and potentially related sequelae.