New considerations for the cognitive locus of impairment in the irrelevant-sound effect

The finding that serial recall performance for visually presented items is impaired by concurrently presented task-irrelevant speech or sounds is referred to as the irrelevant-speech/-sound effect (ISE). Substantial evidence has indicated that the impairment of serial rehearsal can result in an ISE, and this may be explained by several models. The present series of experiments has demonstrated an ISE in surprise nonserial recognition tasks in which participants were unaware of the need to maintain a large number of visual items for a later memory test, suggesting that neither the rehearsal nor maintenance of order information is necessary for observing the ISE. This effect was observed for both steady-state and changing-state irrelevant sounds, suggesting that the present results do not derive from a confusion of order information, but instead provide evidence that identity representations can also be impaired by irrelevant sound.     

Generational Differences as a Determinant of Women's Perspectives on Commitment

Differences between 116 graduate and undergraduate women, representing 4 generations (i.e., Baby Boomers, Transitionals, Generation Xers, and Millennials), were studied to categorize earliest awareness and definitions of commitment in relationships. More than 63% of participants in each generation viewed relationship commitment in terms of constraints rather than attractions.     

Parent‐infant‐psychotherapy and psychoanalytic treatment: contradiction or mutual inspiration?

Psychoanalysis and parent‐infant‐psychotherapy are compared. Although parent‐infant‐psychotherapy developed from psychoanalysis, it appears at first glance not to be “analytic” with its aim of dealing quickly with the symptoms presented and also with its different setting. The author shows that an analytic approach in understanding the multi‐facetted net of relationships between family members and the infant in its “phantasmic interaction” and a consideration of the implication for analysis of the empirical research carried out in conjunction with parent‐infant‐therapy can lead to a fruitful exchange of ideas. One example of this is research into the correlation between attachment patterns and the processing of conflicts. Furthermore a dialogue between these two disciplines can remind psychoanalysts that a critical discussion of the external circumstances of their methods does not immediately call into question their fundamental approach to therapy: the work in transference on relationship fantasies.     

Paradox and health

Abstract

Mounting research suggests that the way we deal with psychophysiological paradoxes or opposites (such as separation vs. attachment, firmness vs. supportiveness, formality vs. informality, masculinity vs. femininity, assertiveness vs. submissive‐ness, or in short, constriction and “drawing back” vs. expansion and “bursting forth") has key implications for our health. Although convincing theoretical treatises have addressed this topic, there has yet to be a concerted review of the pertinent literature. This article is intended to provide such a review.     

Discrimination of familiar human faces in dogs (Canis familiaris)

Faces are an important visual category for many taxa, and the human face is no exception to this. Because faces differ in subtle ways and possess many idiosyncratic features, they provide a rich source of perceptual cues. A fair amount of those cues are learned through social interactions and are used for future identification of individual humans. These effects of individual experience can be studied particularly well in hetero-specific face perception. Domestic dogs represent a perfect model in this respect, due to their proved ability to extract important information from the human face in socio-communicative interactions. There is also suggestive evidence that dogs can identify their owner or other familiar human individuals by using visual information from the face. However, most studies have used only dogs’ looking behavior to examine their visual processing of human faces and it has been demonstrated only that dogs can differentiate between familiar and unknown human faces. Here, we examined the dog's ability to discriminate the faces of two familiar persons by active choice (approach and touch). Furthermore, in successive stages of the experiment we investigated how well dogs discriminate humans in different representations by systematically reducing the informational richness and the quality of the stimuli. We found a huge inter-individual and inter-stage variance in performance, indicating differences across dogs in their learning ability as well as their selection of discriminative cues. On a group level, the performance of dogs significantly decreased when they were presented with pictures of human heads after having learned to discriminate the real heads, and when – after relearning – confronted with the same pictures showing only the inner parts of the heads. However, as two dogs quickly mastered all stages, we conclude that dogs are in principle able to discriminate people on the basis of visual information from their faces and by making active choices.     

The Promise of Neuroplasticity for Pastoral Care and Counseling

This article continues the author’s exploration of the significance of recent neuroscientific research for pastoral care and counseling Bingaman (Pastoral Psychology 60:477–489, 2011), (Pastoral Psychology, 61:411-422, 2012) by focusing on the plasticity and malleability of the human brain. It makes the case for mindfulness meditation (e.g., Centering Prayer) as a means to lower activity in the amygdala and thereby calm the stress region of the brain. In light of evidence that such mindfulness practices are more effective in reducing anxiety than is a focus on right belief or correct doctrine the case is made for a paradigmatic turn (see Bingaman 2007, pp. 102–110; Bingaman (Pastoral Psychology, 61:411–422, 2012) toward neurotheology, which seeks to understand the relationship between the brain and theology. The article concludes that the revolutionary discoveries concerning neuroplasticity challenge the field of pastoral care and counseling to recognize the ability of contemplative-meditational practices to reduce anxiety and to produce long-term, possibly permanent changes in the neural pathways of the human brain.     

Theistic Multiverse and Slippery Slopes: A Response to Klaas Kraay

Abstract

Most recently, Klaas Kraay has argued that God could have created a subset of all logically possible universes, the member universes of which are chosen by God due to their axiological status. In the present paper, we first argue that Kraay fails in developing an axiological basis for his theistic multiverse. In particular, we demonstrate that science provides no evidence for a multiverse constituted only by universes above a certain axiological threshold. In the second part of this paper, we argue that the idea of the theistic multiverse might be made fruitful in the context of Open Theism.     

Dogs demonstrate perspective taking based on geometrical gaze following in a Guesser–Knower task

Currently, there is still no consensus about whether animals can ascribe mental states (Theory of Mind) to themselves and others. Showing animals can respond to cues that indicate whether another has visual access to a target or not, and that they are able to use this information as a basis for whom to rely on as an informant, is an important step forward in this direction. Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) with human informants are an ideal model, because they show high sensitivity towards human eye contact, they have proven able to assess the attentional state of humans in food-stealing or food-begging contexts, and they follow human gaze behind a barrier when searching for food. With 16 dogs, we not only replicated the main results of Maginnity and Grace (Anim Cogn 17(6):1375–1392, 2014) who recently found that dogs preferred to follow the pointing of a human who witnessed a food hiding event over a human who did not (the Guesser–Knower task), but also extended this finding with a further, critical control for behaviour-reading: two informants showed identical looking behaviour, but due to their different position in the room, only one had the opportunity to see where the food was hidden by a third person. Preference for the Knower in this critical test provides solid evidence for geometrical gaze following and perspective taking in dogs.