CONVERSATIONAL MEMORY

While there has recently been a notable increase in attempts by memory researchers to focus on more naturalistic stimuli little attention has been paid to conversations. Conversations represent stimuli that are distinctly different in a number of ways from most other stimuli that people are required to remember. Conversations are jointly created, constantly updated, and necessarily are readily accessible by participants. The present study, exploring people's memory for natural conversations in which they participate, finds that even after only five minutes people are able to recollect only about 10% of what was said in a social exchange. Further, the mode of recall (written versus oral) and the presence and type of memory goals affected what and how much of the interaction was recalled. Subjects also remembered more of their partner's comments in the interaction than their own. Finally, oral communication anxiety affected both the production of discourse in the conversations and recall of the interactions, while writing apprehension impacted subjects' written recalls of their conversations.     

DO DESCARTES AND ST. THOMAS AGREE ON THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF?

Abstract: Contrary to received opinion, Descartes’ view on the merits of the ontological proof may actually agree with that of Thomas Aquinas, whose rejection of the a priori existence proof has stocked the armories of anti‐Anselmians ever since. In a rarely noted passage of the First Replies, Descartes claims not to differ in any respect from Thomas on the proof, a claim that gains sense in light of recent work on the Fifth Meditation. That work in turn reveals a well‐founded, if surprising, understanding of the Cartesian proof and of Cartesianism's true relation to Thomism.     

Why 'Health' is not a Central Category for Public Health Policy

We normally think that public health policy is an important political activity. In turn, we normally understand the value of public health policy in terms of the promotion of health or some health-related good (such as opportunity for health), on the basis of the assumption that health is an important constituent or determinant of wellbeing. In this paper, I argue that the assumption that the value of public health policy should be understood in terms of health leads us to overlook important benefits generated by such policy. To capture these benefits we need to understand the ends of public health policy in terms of the promotion of 'physical safety'. I then go on to argue that the idea that 'health' is an important category for evaluating or estimating individuals' wellbeing in the normative context of social policy is confused. I then clarify the relationship between my arguments and QALY-based accounts of health assessment. In the final section of the paper, I defend this surprising conclusion against various attacks.     

ANALYZING UTTERANCES AS THE OBSERVATIONAL UNIT

If utterances are the observational unit of analysis and there are no sequential patterns to the interaction, two alternative statistical models may be applied. A hierarchical design in which utterances are nested within subjects and subjects are nested within treatment condition is considered. One method of analysis pools utterances within treatment condition; the other method collapses across utterances to obtain subject means. Inappropriate application of the pooling model instead of the subject means model can lead to Type I errors, decreased generalizability, and inflated variance estimates that attenuate univariate and multivariate correlations. The effect of utterance reliability on the apparent unidimensionality and parallelism of multiple indicators is also discussed.     

The Nature and Correlates of Conversational Sensitivity

People differ in their sensitivity to what happens during conversations: Some individuals enjoy listening to social exchanges, pick up hidden meanings in conversations, can generate optimal ways of saying things in interactions, and are generally “savvy” about the different sorts of power and affinity relationships exhibited in conversations. In this article we explore the nature and correlates of conversational sensitivity. People high in sensitivity make more high-level inferences when listening to social exchanges, unitize conversation in smaller chunks, emphasize conversation characteristics in their memories of interactions, and make more self-referents about conversations than less sensitive individuals. In addition, conversational sensitivity is positively related to self-monitoring, private self-consciousness, perceptiveness, self-esteem, assertiveness, empathy, and social skills. It is inversely related to communication apprehension, receiver apprehension, and social anxiety. In a final study, conversational sensitivity is construed not as an individual difference but as situational response: In some settings under some conditions, people become more sensitive to what happens in conversation.     

BION'S THINKING ABOUT GROUPS: A STUDY OF INFLUENCE AND ORIGINALITY

One of Bion's least‐acknowledged contributions to psychoanalytic theory is his study of the relationship between the mind of the individual (the ability to think), the mentalities of groups of which the individual is a member, and the individual's bodily states. Bion's early work on group therapy evolved into a study of the interplay between mind and bodily instincts associated with being a member of a group, and became the impetus for his theory of thinking. On the foundation of Bion's ideas concerning this interaction among the thinking of the individual, group mentality, and the psyche‐soma, the author presents his thoughts on the ways in which group mentality is recognizable in the analysis of individuals.