The return trip effect: Why the return trip often seems to take less time

Three studies confirm the existence of the return trip effect: The return trip often seems shorter than the initial trip, even though the distance traveled and the actual time spent traveling are identical. A pretest shows that people indeed experience a return trip effect regularly, and the effect was found on a bus trip (Study 1), a bicycle trip (Study 2), and when participants watched a video of someone else traveling (Study 3). The return trip effect also existed when another, equidistant route was taken on the return trip, showing that it is not familiarity with the route that causes this effect. Rather, it seems that a violation of expectations causes this effect.     

Dynamic Embodied Cognition

In this article, we investigate the merits of an enactive view of cognition for the contemporary debate about social cognition. If enactivism is to be a genuine alternative to classic cognitivism, it should be able to bridge the ??cognitive gap??, i.e. provide us with a convincing account of those higher forms of cognition that have traditionally been the focus of its cognitivist opponents. We show that, when it comes to social cognition, current articulations of enactivism are??despite their celebrated successes in explaining some cases of social interaction??not yet up to the task. This is because they (1) do not pay sufficient attention to the role of offline processing or ??decoupling??, and (2) obscure the cognitive gap by overemphasizing the role of phenomenology. We argue that the main challenge for the enactive view will be to acknowledge the importance of both coupled (online) and decoupled (offline) processes for basic and advanced forms of (social) cognition. To meet this challenge, we articulate a dynamic embodied view of cognition. We illustrate the fruitfulness of this approach by recourse to recent findings on false belief understanding.     

The Self as a Moral Agent: Preschoolers Behave Morally but Believe in the Freedom to Do Otherwise

Recent work suggests a strong connection between intuitions regarding our own free will and our moral behavior. We investigate the origins of this link by asking whether preschool-aged children construe their own moral actions as freely chosen. We gave children the option to make three moral/social choices (avoiding harm to another, following a rule, and following peer behavior) and then asked them to retrospect as to whether they were free to have done otherwise. When given the choice to act (either morally or immorally), children avoided harm and abided by rules, but they endorsed their freedom to have done otherwise. When choice was restricted by adult instruction, children did not endorse their free choice and indicated feeling constrained by moral obligation in their explanatory responses. These results suggest that children believe that their moral actions afford free will, but this belief is dependent on their experience of choice.     

How agency can solve interventionism’s problem of circularity

Woodward’s interventionist theory of causation is beset by a problem of circularity: the analysis of causes is in terms of interventions, and the analysis of interventions is in terms of causes. This is not in itself an argument against the correctness of the analysis. But by requiring us to have causal knowledge prior to making any judgements about causation, Woodward’s theory does make it mysterious how we can ever start acquiring causal knowledge. We present a solution to this problem by showing how the interventionist notion of causation can be rationally generated from a more primitive agency notion of causation. The agency notion is easily and non-circularly applicable, but fails when we attempt to capture causal relations between non-actions. We show that the interventionist notion of causation serves as an appropriate generalisation of the agency notion. Furthermore, the causal judgements based on the latter generally remain true when rephrased in terms of the former, which allows one to use the causal knowledge gained by applying the agency notion as a basis for applying Woodward’s interventionist theory. We then present an overview of relevant empirical evidence from developmental psychology which shows that our proposed rational reconstruction lines up neatly with the actual development of causal reasoning in children. This gives additional plausibility to our proposal. The article thus provides a solution to one of the main problems of interventionism while keeping Woodward’s analysis intact.     

A Psychoanalytically Oriented Approach as Primary and Secondary Prevention: Discussion of Joy Osofsky's “Psychoanalytically Based Treatment for Traumatized Children and Families”

Violence prevention programs can help children cope with trauma if effective strategies are developed to address youth victimization and children's exposure to domestic violence and trauma. Psychoanalysts are in a unique position to develop such primary and secondary prevention programs for children for whom violence is part of everyday life. An intense long-term relationship is an essential treatment ingredient for these profoundly troubled youngsters. In such a relationship, the therapist/analyst cannot react automatically to the inevitable hostile, destructive aggression that emerges in the treatment of severely traumatized children. A particularly key contribution by Osofsky is her discussion of the ubiquity of “countertransference every day in people who work with traumatized children.” Here I provide a clinical example of a failure that resulted from my own countertransference.     

When Daughter Becomes Mother: Inferences from Multiple Dyadic Parent–Child Groups

In this paper, I describe how new mothers can be preoccupied with their mothers and can replay their relationship with them transferentially with professionals and nannies, who become surrogates for their mothers. New mothers need affirmation from their mothers and from mother surrogates because, in their new role, they experience a sense of helplessness and anxiety and have difficulty tolerating aggression, ambivalence, and conflict. Stern's “motherhood constellation” and “good grandmother transference” are useful constructs for understanding how to best approach and help new mothers and their babies. From observations in multiple dyadic parent–child groups at the Pacella Parent Child Center, I have distilled two factors that help new mothers address their anxieties—the bonds these mothers make with one another and their transferential bond with the group leader and other professionals at the center. I critically discuss and compare theoretical inferences derived from individual psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic work (as exemplified by Balsam's work) with the inferences derived from Stern's dyadic model and with inferences derived from psychoanalytically informed group situations. I consider the implications of the ubiquity of ambivalence conflicts, especially around aggression.     

What good is moral imagination?

Johnson, Mark. (1993). Moral Imagination: Implications of Cognitive Science for Ethics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (287 pp.). ISBN 0–226–40168–5.     

Forms of Transformation in the Reflective Space: Clarifying “Mentalization” Theory Through a Clinical Application: Commentary on Paper by Stephen Seligman

In responding to discussions of my paper “Jonah: A Fantasy of Flight” by Fishman, Salberg, and Shulman, I focus on some of my critical assumptions in reading this or any other biblical text. Prominent among these is the need to relinquish the stance of “already knowing” the meaning of the text. This irreducibly enigmatic book demands close, informed, and literary reading. Within the context of a sustained reflection on the methodology and spirit of my enterprise, I discuss the main points of difference or disagreement that arise in the papers of my discussants, as well as celebrating the places of accord and enrichment.     

Simulated Visual Field Loss Does Not Alter Turning Coordination in Healthy Young Adults

Turning, while walking, is an important component of adaptive locomotion. Current hypotheses regarding the motor control of body segment coordination during turning suggest heavy influence of visual information. The authors aimed to examine whether visual field impairment (central loss or peripheral loss) affects body segment coordination during walking turns in healthy young adults. No significant differences in the onset time of segments or intersegment coordination were observed because of visual field occlusion. These results suggest that healthy young adults can use visual information obtained from central and peripheral visual fields interchangeably, pointing to flexibility of visuomotor control in healthy young adults. Further study in populations with chronic visual impairment and those with turning difficulties are warranted.