Religious Fundamentalism and Terror Management

The study reported herein tested the following hypothesis: Religious fundamentalism can serve a protective function against existential anxiety, such that the need to engage in secular worldview defense when mortality is made salient is reduced for high fundamentalists. The results showed that high fundamentalists engaged in less worldview defense after thinking about their own death versus a control topic. Low fundamentalists, however, engaged in more worldview defense after thinking about their deaths versus a control topic. Exploratory analyses revealed that high fundamentalists' writings about death had a more positive emotional tone and that reactions to the death salience manipulation moderated the impact of fundamentalism on worldview defense. Fundamentalists who saw their deaths in terms of peace and acceptance appeared most protected against terror management concerns.     

Linking cognitive and reaching trajectories via intermittent movement control

Theories of decision-making have traditionally been constrained by reaction time data. A limitation of reaction time data, particularly for studying the temporal dynamics of cognitive processing, is that they index only the endpoint of the decision making process. Recently, physical reaching trajectories have been used as proxies for underlying mental trajectories through decision space. We suggest that this approach has been oversimplified: while it is possible for the motor control system to access the current state of the evidence accumulation process, this access is intermittent. Instead, we demonstrate how a model of arm movements that assumes intermittent, not continuous, access to the decision process is sufficient to describe the effects of stimulus quality and viewing time in curved reaching movements.     

Suspended judgment

In this paper I undertake an in-depth examination of an oft mentioned but rarely expounded upon state: suspended judgment. While traditional epistemology is sometimes characterized as presenting a “yes or no” picture of its central attitudes, in fact many of these epistemologists want to say that there is a third option: subjects can also suspend judgment. Discussions of suspension are mostly brief and have been less than clear on a number of issues, in particular whether this third option should be thought of as an attitude or not. In this paper I argue that suspended judgment is (or at least involves) a genuine attitude.     

The Structural Aspects of Schizophrenic Responses to Auditory Stimuli

The function of reinforcement as a performance versus a learning variable was examined with the use of a number of varying imitation training conditions. Forty white and 40 black Ss were used. The analysis consisted of five 2 (Testing Situation) × 2 (White versus Black children) × 8 (Training Conditions) factorials with the use of an analysis of variance technique. The results question the hypothesis that reinforcement is only a performance variable. Partial support is provided for the assumption that imitative behavior may be maintained through similarity of responding where imitation has been acquired through a strong history of reinforcement for imitation. Few racial differences were discovered.     

False memory and importance: Can we prioritize encoding without consequence?

Given the large amount of information that we encounter, we often must prioritize what information we attempt to remember. Although critical for everyday functioning, relatively little research has focused on how people prioritize the encoding of information. Recent research has shown that people can and do selectively remember information assigned with higher, relative to lower, importance. However, the mechanisms underlying this prioritization process and the consequences of these processes are still not well understood. In the present study, we sought to better understand these prioritization processes and whether implementing these processes comes at the cost of memory accuracy, by increasing false memories. We used a modified form of the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, in which participants studied DRM lists, with each list paired with low, medium, or high point values. In Experiment 1, encoding higher values led to more false memories than did encoding lower values, possibly because prioritizing information enhanced relational processing among high-value words. In Experiment 2, disrupting relational processing selectively reduced false memories for high-value words. Finally, in Experiment 3, facilitating relational processing selectively increased false memories for low-value words. These findings suggest that while prioritizing information can enhance true memory, this process concomitantly increases false memories. Furthermore, the mechanism underlying these prioritization processes depends on the ability to successfully engage in relational processing. Thus, how we prioritize the encoding of incoming information can come at a cost in terms of accurate memory.     

THE FREUDIAN UNCONSCIOUS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE COGNITIVE ORIENTATION

The essence of the story of King Oedipus forms a cornerstone of psychoanalysis since Freud. Oedipality means the painful experience of the child who is left outside the mutual relationship between the parents and the child's wish to kill one parent and marry the other one. The life-long oedipal attitude and relationship develop in dyadic and triadic relationships. An example is given of a boy whose dyadic relationships are threatened by triads, and whose triads are threatened by integrated oedipality. Only after the oedipal situation is worked through does it become possible to live and love in reality, and to maintain manifold relationships. This development is also reflected in thinking, which only slowly develops into multidimensional levels of symbolization and thought. Prior to this development, we continue to “marry dyads” and “kill triads” and remain driven by dyadic and triadic wishes in all fields of our life.     

Charles Brenner: a practitioner's theorist

To avoid certain errors in practice, Charles Brenner offered an holistic substitute for the Freudian structural model of the mind. He used the term compromise formation ambiguously to refer to both actions and states, so as to render unnecessary what he considered artificial, judgmental attitudes embodied in images of psychic structures. He believed that a theory of conflicting structures transforms the phenomenological drama of the patient's actual life-world into an artificial drama of contending intrapsychic parties that may reflect the analyst's values. According to Brenner, the meaning of life, with its desires, fears, and regrets, is structured forever in the first articulation of the family drama, and that is all the structure a practitioner should have in mind. In principle, the ambiguity of the term compromise formation allows for observed continuities in human life, and might have inspired an ambitious theoretician to exploit that option for an account of character, but that aspect of theory moves in a direction opposite to Brenner's practical mission. For the same practical reason Brenner refused to acknowledge gradations of mental operation, such as differences in maturity, or style or level of thinking, so the theory cannot say how change can take place, analytic or otherwise. These lacunae in theory were unblinkingly (if implicitly) accepted in pursuit of Brenner's goal, which was not to polish up theory but to cleanse the analyst's mind of concepts that subtly interfere with the essential nondirectiveness of treatment. His theoretical minimalism and exclusive concern with practical consequences can be recognized as a peculiarly North American attitude to psychoanalysis.     

Directional variability of the isometric force vector produced by the human hand in multijoint planar tasks

Numerous studies have examined control of force magnitude, but relatively little research has considered force direction control. The subjects applied isometric forces to a handle and the authors compared within-trial variability when force is produced in different directions. The standard deviation of the force parallel to the prescribed direction of force production increased linearly with the targeted force level, as did the standard deviation of the force perpendicular to the instructed direction. In contrast, the standard deviation of the angle of force production decreased with increased force level. In the 4 (of 8) instructed force directions where the endpoint force was generated due to a joint torque in only 1 joint (either the shoulder or elbow) the principal component axes in force space were well aligned with the prescribed direction of force production. In the other directions, the variance was approximately equal along the 2 force axes. The variance explained by the first principal component was significantly larger in torque space compared to the force space, and mostly corresponded to positive correlation between the joint torques. Such coordinated changes suggest that the torque variability was mainly due to the variability of the common drive to the muscles serving 2 joints, although this statement needs to be supported by direct studies of muscle activation in the future.