The analytic surface and the theory of technique

This paper examines the concept of the analytic surface as a starting point for the interpretive process in relation to the theory of psychoanalytic technique. The history of the concept of the analytic surface within psychoanalysis is reviewed. Four different conceptualizations of analytic surfaces are described (M.M. Gill, P. Gray, A. Kris, E.A. Schwaber). The advantages of a "surface" approach are explored in relation to clinical work, the teaching of psychoanalytic technique, and opportunities for research. Some criticisms of the concept are explored.     

Sex differences in categorization of tactile stimuli

This experiment investigated the effect of sex differences in categorization of tactile stimuli. 9 men and 9 women rated the perceived similarity between pairs of stimuli varying in texture and shape. The magnitudes of sex-related differences, using omega 2 and d, were relatively large and indicated that men had better categorical abilities in processing haptic information.     

Homophobia and attitudes about AIDS

A random sample of 407 French Canadian adults responded to a questionnaire about perception of AIDS. Negative attitudes about AIDS are better predicted by homophobia than other measures as are attitudes about extramarital relations and attitudes abut adolescent heterosexuality.     

Changing self-reported physical activity using different types of affectively and cognitively framed health messages,in a student population

The present research focused upon the power of different messages to increase self-reported physical activity (PA). Five hundered and ninety six participants were randomised to one of five conditions that varied in the content of message: short-term affective, short-term cognitive, long-term affective, long-term cognitive and a no message control. PA was measured at baseline and follow-up (seven days later) was done using the Godin Leisure Time Exercise Questionnaire over the subsequent seven day period. The affective short-term message (ASM) was shown to be equally effective at increasing self-reported PA as a cognitive long-term message. Furthermore, when controlling for baseline activity levels, the ASM emerged as being the message that produced the highest levels of self-reported PA at follow-up. The findings point to the value of distinguishing between health messages in terms of the focus on affective and cognitive outcomes and the temporal nature of the outcomes (short-term or long-term).     

A Computational Model of Linguistic Humor in Puns

Humor plays an essential role in human interactions. Precisely what makes something funny, however, remains elusive. While research on natural language understanding has made significant advancements in recent years, there has been little direct integration of humor research with computational models of language understanding. In this paper, we propose two information‐theoretic measures—ambiguity and distinctiveness—derived from a simple model of sentence processing. We test these measures on a set of puns and regular sentences and show that they correlate significantly with human judgments of funniness. Moreover, within a set of puns, the distinctiveness measure distinguishes exceptionally funny puns from mediocre ones. Our work is the first, to our knowledge, to integrate a computational model of general language understanding and humor theory to quantitatively predict humor at a fine‐grained level. We present it as an example of a framework for applying models of language processing to understand higher level linguistic and cognitive phenomena.