A Brief History of Dissonance Theory

Prior to the construction of the theory of cognitive dissonance, the dominant view in American experimental psychology held that behavior, including verbal attitude statements, was learned and shaped by rewards and/or punishments. Dissonance theory took a surprisingly different view by stating that behaviors and reasons for engaging in them could be strengthened by minimizing the very rewards or threatened punishments that produced the behaviors. Many hundreds of experimental studies later, the main argument of dissonance theory is well supported, although researchers disagree about the necessary and sufficient conditions. The present paper traces the major lines of research, including contributions from around the world, and the major controversies among some of the researchers.     

Resilient, undercontrolled, and overcontrolled personality prototypes among persons with spinal cord injury

A sample of 199 persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) were assessed on Big Five personality dimensions using the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI; Costa & McCrae, 1992) at admission to an inpatient medical rehabilitation program. A cluster analysis of the baseline NEO-FFI yielded 3 cluster prototypes that resemble resilient, undercontrolled, and overcontrolled prototypes identified in many previous studies of children and adult community samples. Compared with normative samples, this sample had significantly fewer resilient prototypes and significantly more overcontrolled and undercontrolled prototypes. Undercontrolled individuals were the modal prototype. The resilient and undercontrolled types were better adjusted than the overcontrolled types, showing lower levels of depression at admission and higher acceptance of disability at discharge. The resilient type at admission predicted the most effective reports of social problem-solving abilities at discharge and the overcontrolled type the least. We discuss the implications of these results for assessment and interventions in rehabilitation settings.     

The self-narrative and acute psychosis

The aim of this study was to apply the narrative approach in analyzing family therapy meetings in cases of acute psychosis. The self-narrative is essential in acute psychosis since it is either collapsed or not coherent enough. The results indicate that it is important to create concrete practices that produce stories concerning the patient in relation to others. The self-narrative must be re-authored by the patient even though it is socially constructed. This is achieved by creating multiple perspectives of self-narratives in so-called therapy meetings with the patient, family members, and staff members representing different professionals.     

On Alan Turing's anticipation of connectionism

It is not widely realised that Turing was probably the first person to consider building computing machines out of simple, neuron-like elements connected together into networks in a largely random manner. Turing called his networks unorganised machines. By the application of what he described as appropriate interference, mimicking education an unorganised machine can be trained to perform any task that a Turing machine can carry out, provided the number of neurons is sufficient. Turing proposed simulating both the behaviour of the network and the training process by means of a computer program. We outline Turing's connectionist project of 1948.In Memory of Robin Gandy     

Forest lights: Notes on the conceptualization of the unconscious

Using the metaphor of lights appearing unexplained in the night, the author argues for a conceptualization of the unconscious based on a posture of trust and acceptance rather than one of fear and explanation.His last book,Idea and Experience, dealt with Husserl's project of phenomenology inIdeas I. He has recently completed another book,The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature.     

Temporal integration of speech prosody is shaped by language experience: an fMRI study

Differences in hemispheric functions underlying speech perception may be related to the size of temporal integration windows over which prosodic features (e.g., pitch) span in the speech signal. Chinese tone and intonation, both signaled by variations in pitch contours, span over shorter (local) and longer (global) temporal domains, respectively. This cross-linguistic (Chinese and English) study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that pitch contours associated with tones are processed in the left hemisphere by Chinese listeners only, whereas pitch contours associated with intonation are processed predominantly in the right hemisphere. These findings argue against the view that all aspects of speech prosody are lateralized to the right hemisphere, and promote the idea that varying-sized temporal integration windows reflect a neurobiological adaptation to meet the 'prosodic needs' of a particular language.     

Balancing the ledger: An application of Nagy's theories to the study of continuity and change among generations

This study uses an interpretive interview method to examine the micro-processes of generational continuity and change among a group of social activists. Boszormenyi-Nagy's theory of responsibility between generations, alternative models outside the family, and choice are used to explain the instances of change. Implications for research and practice are addressed.     

WHAT IS THE SCIENCE OF THE SOUL? A CASE STUDY IN THE EVOLUTION OF LATE MEDIEVAL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

This paper aims at a partial rehabilitation of E. A. Moody's characterization of the 14th century as an age of rising empiricism, specifically by contrasting the conception of the natural science of psychology found in the writings of a prominent 13th-century philosopher (Thomas Aquinas) with those of two 14th-century philosophers (John Buridan and Nicole Oresme). What emerges is that if the meaning of empiricism can be disengaged from modern and contemporary paradigms, and understood more broadly in terms of a cluster of epistemic doctrines concerned with the methodology of knowing, it characterizes very appropriately some of the differences between the ways in which late-medieval thinkers both understood and practised the science of psychology. In particular, whereas Aquinas thinks psychology is about reasoning demonstratively to the real nature of the soul from its evident operations (thereby assimilating psychology to metaphysics), Buridan and Oresme, both of whom doubt whether real animate natures can be known empirically, focus on giving detailed accounts of those operations themselves (thereby assimilating psychology to physics).     

Polygraph Testimony and Juror Judgments: A Comparison of the Guilty Knowledge Test and the Control Question Test1

The present experiment investigated the impact of the Control Question Test (CQT) and the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT) on the verdicts of mock jurors. Although studies have indicated that polygraph evidence has little influence on jurors' verdicts (Cavoukian & Heselgrave, 1980; Spanos, Myers, Dubreuil, & Pawlak, 1992–1993), no research has previously distinguished between the different types of polygraph tests and their impact on juror verdicts. In the present study, jurors were shown a videotape of a simulated rape-murder trial that contained either CQT polygraph evidence, GKT polygraph evidence, or no polygraph evidence. No differences were found among the 3 conditions for either jury verdicts or individual juror verdicts, and jurors tended to rate both forms of polygraph testimony below other forms of equally suspect evidence, such as eyewitness testimony, in its influence on their decision-making process.