Personality Dimensions in Recalled Dream Content

Tests with fifth-grade pupils of Zulliger's hypothesis that children giving texture responses on the Rorschach profit more from education than those who do not suggest that, at least in the present sample, the reverse is true.     

Temporal Aspects of Team Cognition: A Case Study on Concerns Sharing Within Basketball

This case study investigated team cognition in basketball. The focus was on how concerns in a real match situation were shared among teammates and how the sharedness evolved. The activity of five basketball players (M age = 17.60, SD = 0.89) was studied. The data were collected and processed according to a procedure defined for course-of-action analysis (Theureau, 2003). The results indicated that the instances when all the teammates shared the same typical concern were relatively rare, but temporal analysis revealed two kinds of convergence phenomena (simultaneous and progressive). In conclusion, shared understanding emerged within this team as essentially “local sharing of understanding.”     

SPIRITUALITY FOR NATURALISTS

Abstract The views of eleven writers who develop a naturalized spirituality, from Baruch Spinoza and George Santayana to Sam Harris, André Comte‐Sponville, Ursula Goodenough, and Sharon Welch and others are presented. Then the writer's own theory is developed. This is a pluralistic notion of sacredness, an adjective referring to unmanipulable events of overriding importance. The difficulties in using traditional religious words, such as God and spiritual are addressed.     

Changing within-trial array location and target object position enhances rats’ (Rattus norvegicus) missing object recognition accuracy

Six rats were trained to find a previously missing target or 'jackpot' object in a square array of four identical or different objects (the test segment of a trial) after first visiting and collecting sunflower seeds from under the other three objects (the study segment of a trial). During training, objects' local positions within the array and their global positions within the larger foraging array were varied over trials but were not changed between segments within a trial. Following this training, rats were tested on their accuracy for finding the target object when a trial's test array was sometimes moved to a different location in the foraging arena or when the position of the target object within the test array had been changed. Either of these manipulations initially slightly reduced rats' accuracy for finding the missing object but then enhanced it. Relocating test arrays of identical objects enhanced rats' performance only after 10-min inter-segment intervals (ISIs). Relocating test arrays of different objects enhanced rats' performance only after 2-min ISIs. Rats also improved their performance when they encountered the target object in a new position in test arrays of different objects. This enhancement effect occurred after either 2- or 30-min ISIs. These findings suggest that rats separately retrieved a missing (target) object's spatial and non-spatial information when they were relevant but not when they were irrelevant in a trial. The enhancement effects provide evidence for rats' limited retrieval capacity in their visuo-spatial working memory.     

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue part 3: issues of utility and alternative approaches in psychiatric diagnosis

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) the role of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM ?C whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part 1 of this article took up the first two questions. Part 2 took up the second two questions. Part 3 now deals with Questions 5 & 6. Question 5 confronts the issue of utility, whether the manual design of DSM-III and IV favors clinicians or researchers, and what that means for DSM-5. Our final question, Question 6, takes up a concluding issue, whether the acknowledged problems with the earlier DSMs warrants a significant overhaul of DSM-5 and future manuals. As in Parts 1 & 2 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances.     

The six most essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis: a pluralogue. Part 4: general conclusion

In the conclusion to this multi-part article I first review the discussions carried out around the six essential questions in psychiatric diagnosis – the position taken by Allen Frances on each question, the commentaries on the respective question along with Frances’ responses to the commentaries, and my own view of the multiple discussions. In this review I emphasize that the core question is the first – what is the nature of psychiatric illness – and that in some manner all further questions follow from the first. Following this review I attempt to move the discussion forward, addressing the first question from the perspectives of natural kind analysis and complexity analysis. This reflection leads toward a view of psychiatric disorders – and future nosologies – as far more complex and uncertain than we have imagined.     

Exploratory behavior as a function of environmental novelty and complexity in male and female rats

Laboratory rats show a positive response to low- and nonstressful novel events. The novel event may involve a number of aspects of the stimulus field. It is usually associated with a change in amount of environmental complexity. Most studies concerning novelty-related behavior involve the introduction of novel objects or the rearrangement of familiar objects. The present purpose was to measure exploratory behavior in response to environments of increased and decreased complexity. Both directions of environmental change are conditions of novelty. A two-way manipulation of increasing and decreasing the complexity of the environment was used. Rats of both sexes showed increased exploration to exposure to novelty, no matter which manipulation was applied; however, female and male rats behaved differently to the two types of novelty. Males responded more to novelty from the introduction of an unfamiliar object. The results indicate novel stimulation, whether of increasing or decreasing complexity, has reward properties. Perhaps the male-specific behavior directed toward unfamiliar objects may serve an adaptive function.