The role of competition and knowledge in the Ellsberg task

Ambiguity avoidance denotes people's preference for gambling situations with known over unknown, or ambiguous, probability distributions. In four experiments we provide evidence for the interaction between competitiveness and knowledge in Ellsberg's task, in which people have a choice between a risky box (distribution of balls known) and an ambiguous box (distribution of balls not known). If the situation is perceived as competitive (the experimenter or an opponent is responsible for composing the boxes) people avoid ambiguity by betting on the box with the known probability distribution. If the task is perceived as cooperative (a partner or friend is composing the boxes) people are indifferent toward ambiguity or even ambiguity seeking. In addition, we find that people expect their winning odds to be less than even in the ambiguous box. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Die Effekte psychoanalytisch orientierter und verhaltenstherapeutischer Langzeittherapien

This prospective study compares 31 patients in behavior long-term-therapy (with an average of 63 sessions) with 31 patients in psychoanalytically-oriented long-term-therapy (with an average of 185 sessions) in a naturalistic design. All patients passed a diagnostic interview (SKID) by an external interviewer. Only patients with depression and anxiety problems (Axis I of DSM III – R) were included in the study. Symptoms (SCL-90-R), interpersonal problems (IIP-D) and goals (GAS) were examined at the beginning, after 1 year, after 2.5 and 3.5 years. We found that the characteristics of patients, who choose – or were referred to – psychoanalytically oriented or behaviour long term therapy were different, even when their diagnosis were comparable, in a number of characteristics, such as education, access to psychotherapy (recommended by professionals versus patients introduce themselves), the taking of psychotropic medication, and the strain of symptoms. The results demonstrate how research comparing therapies using parallelized samples do not meet reality in every case: Even if psychoanalists and behavior therapists do treat equal disorders, – and they each do that very successfully, as we could prove – the patients differ in many ways. Effect sizes and clinically significant results about changes of the symptomatic and of interpersonal problems are presented that prove the efficacy of the treatments.     

Is Homeopathy a Science?—Continuity and Clash of Concepts of Science within Holistic Medicine

The question of whether homeopathy is a science is currently discussed almost exclusively against the background of the modern concept of natural science. This approach, however, fails to notice that homeopathy—in terms of history of science—rests on different roots that can essentially be traced back to two most influential traditions of science: on the one hand, principles and notions of Aristotelism which determined 2,000 years of Western history of science and, on the other hand, the modern concept of natural science that has been dominating the history of medicine for less than 200 years. While Aristotle’s “science of the living” still included ontologic and teleologic dimensions for the sake of comprehending nature in a uniform way, the interest of modern natural science was reduced to functional and causal explanations of all phenomena for the purpose of commanding nature. In order to prevent further ecological catastrophes as well as to regain lost dimensions of our lives, the one-sidedness and theory-loadedness of our modern natural–scientific view of life should henceforth be counterbalanced by lifeworld–practical Aristotelic categories. In this way, the ground would be ready to conceive the scientific character of homeopathy—in a broader, Aristotelian sense.     

Grasping the diagonal: controlling attention to illusory stimuli for action and perception

Since the pioneering work of [Aglioti, S., DeSouza, J. F., & Goodale, M. A. (1995). Size-contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand. Current Biology, 5(6), 679-685] visual illusions have been used to provide evidence for the functional division of labour within the visual system-one system for conscious perception and the other system for unconscious guidance of action. However, these studies were criticised for attentional mismatch between action and perception conditions and for the fact that grip size is not determined by the size of an object but also by surrounding obstacles. Stoettinger and Perner [Stoettinger, E., & Perner, J., (2006). Dissociating size representations for action and for conscious judgment: Grasping visual illusions without apparent obstacles. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 269-284] used the diagonal illusion controlling for the influence of surrounding features on grip size and bimanual grasping to rule out attentional mismatch. Unfortunately, the latter objective was not fully achieved. In the present study, attentional mismatch was avoided by using only the dominant hand for action and for indicating perceived size. Results support the division of labour: Grip aperture follows actual size independent of illusory effects, while finger-thumb span indications of perceived length are clearly influenced by the illusion.     

Disseminating evidence-based treatments for PTSD in organizational settings: A high priority focus area

Dissemination of evidence-based treatments for PTSD has become an important focus of activity in the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks (e.g., London underground and U.S. 9/11 attacks), natural disasters (e.g., Indian Ocean tsunami and Hurricane Katrina), and wars (e.g., in Iraq and Afghanistan). This has become a high priority need for all mental health training and service delivery organizations. Researchers and educators have begun to examine clinician and client perceptions and preferences regarding PTSD treatment processes, and health care systems are organizing more comprehensive efforts at training and system change. As this evolution of services moves forward, effective dissemination should be a major focus of health policy research for the next decade or more.This review critically evaluates the PTSD-related research and emerging theory related to four major sets of variables that affect dissemination: (1) Practitioner factors, (2) Training methods, (3) The practice innovation(s) being disseminated; and (4) Organization or system factors. We evaluate findings from recent studies in light of emerging models of dissemination, and in the final section of the paper, we consider five broad topics with particular implications for dissemination of PTSD-specific treatments. They are: (1) The content of dissemination (i.e., which treatment protocols or intervention methods should be prioritized); (2) Strict adherence versus flexibility in the use of treatment manuals and the role of fidelity assessment; (3) The need for collaboration with user audiences; (4) The potential role of web-based technologies in increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of dissemination; and (5) Development of dissemination infrastructures within organizations.     

Children''s understanding of belief and disconfirming visual evidence

Data from 3- to 5-year-old children show that even the youngest have an understanding that a story character cannot think an object is in a box when the character looks into the empty box. This understanding is, however, limited to the case where children share the same visual perspective with the character. When visual perspectives are different the relevant knowledge develops shortly after 4 years at about the time that children master the false belief task. These results are interpreted as young children using an implicit constraint that “think” cannot be applied in view of disconfirming visual evidence. This implicit knowledge becomes explicit and, thus, perspective independent with some delay.     

Mental representation of length and weight series and transitive inferences in young children

Forty-eight second graders (8 years of age) were trained on length or weight relationships between adjacent members of a five-term series of colored objects. Feedback was visual and of either minimal or strong salience. Differences in weight were assessed by either a balance scale or a spring scale. Results showed that more salient visual feedback reduced the learning effort for length but not for weight comparisons. After training children were tested on all possible object pairs. Children's comparisons of items by length were very accurate in contrast to their comparisons by weight. An explanation for these findings is suggested by the data from a group of 6-year-olds who were trained on two independent pairs of a four-term series. Test results showed that subjects spontaneously encoded absolute lengths but tended to ignore information about the absolute weight of objects. It is suggested that high test accuracy depends on stimulus material for which the absolute values of the relevant dimension are encoded. The implications for taking test performance as an indicator of “transitive reasoning” ability are discussed.     

Differences in the dissipation of the effect of adaptation to two kinds of field displacement during head movements

When Ss were simultaneously adapted to horizontal and to vertical target displacements of equal rate during head turning about a vertical axis, the adaptation effects measured by one-trial tests immediately after the adaptation period were about equal. But retests after a time lapse of 10 and 20 min, during which S sat immobile and with eyes closed, showed a greatly different rate of dissipation of the two adaptation effects. After a lapse of 20 min, the effect of adaptation to horizontal target displacements had been reduced to 37%, whereas the effect of adaptation to vertical displacements at this final test still stood at 80% of the initial measurement. The decline over 20 min in the latter case was so smail that it could readily be ascribed to an effect of the two tests that preceded the final test. These two tests represented an effective exposure to natural viewing conditions and hence caused an unlearning of the adaptation, an effect whose existence we had demonstrated in previous work with the one-trial test.