Eye movements and serial memory for visual-spatial information: does time spent fixating contribute to recall?

This research investigated the nature of encoding and its contribution to serial recall for visual-spatial information. In order to do so, we examined the relationship between fixation duration and recall performance. Using the dot task--a series of seven dots spatially distributed on a monitor screen is presented sequentially for immediate recall--performance and eye-tracking data were recorded during the presentation of the to-be-remembered items. When participants were free to move their eyes at their will, both fixation durations and probability of correct recall decreased as a function of serial position. Furthermore, imposing constant durations of fixation across all serial positions had a beneficial impact (though relatively small) on item but not order recall. Great care was taken to isolate the effect of fixation duration from that of presentation duration. Although eye movement at encoding contributes to immediate memory, it is not decisive in shaping serial recall performance. Our results also provide further evidence that the distinction between item and order information, well-established in the verbal domain, extends to visual-spatial information.     

Parallel process in supervision

This paper addresses the concept of parallel process and its application in clinical supervision. Parallels between therapy and supervision are examined as well as some of the key issues surrounding the use of parallel process as a supervisory intervention. Although there is a need for more investigation to explain and support this concept further, the authors would argue that parallel process interventions in supervision can enhance the supervisory process and the task of teaching and learning for both the supervisee and supervisor. A case example is provided to demonstrate the parallel process in supervision and its potential as a facilitative intervention.     

The Social Value of Internal Explanations and the Norm of Internality

Since the 1970s, it has been agreed that ‘internal’ people, who explain what happens to them by internal explanations (their behaviors, their aptitudes, their efforts, their personality, etc.) were more likely to succeed than ‘external’ people, who explain the same outcomes by external explanations such as chance, situational difficulties, the power of others, or fate. The social superiority of internal people is explained in terms of their personality (locus of control). Looking further into the intuitions of American researchers, a French school of thought attempted to show that internal explanations are socially valued. It was suggested that there exists a social judgment norm that could be called the norm of internality and that, perhaps, the success of ‘internal’ people was more specifically due to the fact that social appraisers, whether in school, in organizations, in the courts of justice, prefer this type of person because such people adhere more easily to current social ways of functioning.     

Generation Me,the Origins of Birth Cohort Differences in Personality Traits,and Cross‐temporal Meta‐analysis

Birth cohort, or generation, differences in personality include views of the self (increases in self‐esteem, narcissism, assertiveness, and agentic traits, leading to the label ‘Generation Me’) and mental health (externality in locus of control, increases in depressive symptoms). The origins of these trends lie in culture, including changes in women's roles, parenting, media, and social connections. Birth cohort should be considered as an environmental influence on individual personality traits. Challenges to cross‐temporal meta‐analysis are discussed, including response bias, changes in college populations, data from the University of California campuses with major confounds, sampling issues, and the misperception that the ecological fallacy is committed.     

Visual similarity in short-term recall for where and when

Two experiments examined the effects of visual similarity on short-term recall for where and when in the visual spatial domain. A series of squares of similar or dissimilar colours were serially presented at various locations on the screen. At recall, all coloured squares were simultaneously presented in a random order at the bottom of the screen, and the locations used for presentation were indicated by white squares. Participants were asked to place the colours at their appropriate location in their presentation order. Performance for location (where) and order (when) was assessed separately. Results revealed that similarity severely hinders both memory for what was where and memory for what was when, under quiet and articulatory suppression conditions. These results provide further evidence that similarity has a major impact on processing relational information in memory.     

Reduced fixation on the upper area of personally familiar faces following acquired prosopagnosia

Selective impairment of face recognition following brain damage, as in acquired prosopagnosia, may cause a dramatic loss of diagnosticity of the eye area of the face and an increased reliance on the mouth for identification ( Caldara et al., 2005 ). To clarify the nature of this phenomenon, we measured eye fixation patterns in a case of pure prosopagnosia (PS, Rossion et al., 2003 ) during her identification of photographs of personally familiar faces (27 children of her kindergarten). Her age‐matched colleague served as a control. Consistent with previous evidence, the normal control identified the faces within two fixations located just below the eyes (central upper nose). This pattern (location and duration) of fixations remained unchanged even by increasing difficulty by presenting anti‐caricatures of the faces. In contrast, the great majority of the patient's fixations, irrespective of her accuracy, were located on the mouth. Overall, these observations confirm the abnormally reduced processing of the upper area of the face in acquired prosopagnosia. Most importantly, the prosopagnosic patient also fixated the area of the eyes spontaneously in between the first and last fixation, ruling out alternative accounts of her behaviour such as, for example, avoidance or failure to orient attention to the eyes, as observed in autistic or bilateral amygdala patients. Rather, they reinforce our proposal of a high‐level perceptual account ( Caldara et al., 2005 ), according to which acquired prosopagnosic patients have lost the ability to represent multiple elements of an individual face as a perceptual unit (holistic face perception). To identify a given face, they focus very precisely on local features rather than seeing the whole of a face from its diagnostic centre (i.e. just below the eyes). The upper area of the face is particularly less attended to and less relevant for the prosopagnosic patient because it contains multiple features that require normal holistic perception in order to be the most diagnostic region. Consequently, prosopagnosic patients develop a more robust representation of the mouth, a relatively isolated feature in the face that may contain more information than any single element of the upper face area, and is thus sampled repeatedly for resolving ambiguity in the process of identification.     

Symbolism in Weakness: Jesus Christ for the Postmodern Age

The postmodern emphasis on human finitude encourages the reconsideration of religious traditions, and more particularly of Christianity. The doctrine of a vulnerable God dying on a cross speaks to postmodern civilization. Jesus Christ infuses transcendence into the realm of immanence by assuming the human predicament to its bitter end. The present essay critiques the recent attempts of deconstructionist philosopher John D. Caputo and systematic theologian Roger Haight to provide postmodern expositions for the Christian doctrine on the person of Jesus Christ. With the help of the fundamental notion of agapeic love, we demonstrate that in Jesus Christ, Caputo's philosophy of the event and Haight's theology of the symbol can be meaningfully integrated and human finitude responsibly overcome.