Temporal texture of associative encoding modulates recall processes

Binding aspects of an experience that are distributed over time is an important element of episodic memory. In the current study, we examined how the temporal complexity of an experience may govern the processes required for its retrieval. We recorded event-related potentials during episodic cued recall following pair associate learning of concurrently and sequentially presented object-picture pairs. Cued recall success effects over anterior and posterior areas were apparent in several time windows. In anterior locations, these recall success effects were similar for concurrently and sequentially encoded pairs. However, in posterior sites clustered over parietal scalp the effect was larger for the retrieval of sequentially encoded pairs. We suggest that anterior aspects of the mid-latency recall success effects may reflect working-with-memory operations or direct access recall processes, while more posterior aspects reflect recollective processes which are required for retrieval of episodes of greater temporal complexity.     

Slouching Toward Policy: Lazy Bioethics and the Perils of Science Fiction

Too much contemporary bioethical discourse is weak on science, lazily citing and adopting science fiction scenarios rather than science facts in the framing of analyses and policies. We challenge bioethicists to take more seriously the role of providing informed insight into and oversight over contemporary science and its implications and applications. Bioethicists must work harder to understand the fast-changing truths and limits of basic science, and they must incorporate only appropriate and authentic science into their discourse, just as they did in the past when addressing the quandaries of clinical medicine. The field of bioethics is not so old and entrenched that its future is assured. Bioethicists must make themselves useful to society in order to deserve and retain the public's trust. They can best do this by ensuring that decision making and public policy are grounded in facts, not fictions and fantasies.     

The naked truth: Positive,arousing distractors impair rapid target perception

Emotional stimuli tend to capture and hold attention more than non-emotional stimuli do. Aversive pictures have been found to impair perception of visual targets even after the emotional information has disappeared. The benefits of such interlinked emotion and attention systems have sometimes been discussed within an evolutionary framework, with a survival advantage attributed to early detection of threatening stimuli. However, consistent with recent suggestions that attention is drawn to arousing stimuli regardless of whether they are positive or negative, the current investigation found that erotic distractors—generally rated as both pleasing and arousing—consistently elicited a transient “emotion-induced blindness” similar to that caused by aversive distractors (Experiment 1). This effect persisted despite performance-based monetary incentives to ignore the distractors (Experiment 2), and following attentional manipulations that reduced interference from aversive images (Experiment 3). The findings indicate that positively arousing stimuli can spontaneously cause emotion-induced deficits in visual processing, just as aversive stimuli can.     

The Group Psychotherapy Literature 1967

Abstract

This paper describes therapeutic foci for group intervention with traumatized adolescents. These include targeting the symptoms of trauma, helping members to weave a coherent, temporally ordered narrative of the event, providing psycho–education, and addressing bereavement issues and secondary adversities, all ultimately aimed at helping the adolescents proceed with development. The particular benefits of group are highlighted and clinical vignettes, drawn from the aftermath of September 11, are presented to illustrate these concepts.     

Intentional action first

The paper motivates a novel research programme in the philosophy of action parallel to the ‘Knowledge First’ programme in epistemology. It is argued that much of the grounds for abandoning the quest for a reductive analysis of knowledge in favour of the Knowledge First alternative is mirrored in the case of intentional action, inviting the hypothesis that intentional action is also, like knowledge, metaphysically basic. The paper goes on to demonstrate the sort of explanatory contribution that intentional action can make once it is no longer taken to be a target for reductive analysis, in explaining other, non-intentional kinds of action and voluntariness.     

Trauma and deprivation: The relationship between early object relations and the constitution of a sense of self

Abstract

The paper analyzes the relationship between deprivation and trauma, based on a clinical vignette of a male child, born to a psychotic mother and adopted by a foreign couple when he was seven years old. Based on the importance of maternal care and of a holding environment for the constitution of a sense of self during infancy and childhood, this paper will discuss the factors that facilitated this child's capability to form emotional ties and to constitute a psychical reality even when faced with a very precarious life situation and maternal loss.     

Employee Lateness Behavior: The Role of Lateness Climate and Individual Lateness Attitude

The authors investigated the joint influence of contextual factors and individual attitudes on employee lateness in a field setting. Hierarchical regression analyses based on objective lateness data revealed that perceived lateness climate moderated the relationship between individual lateness attitudes and lateness behaviors. Specifically, as hypothesized, individual attitudes toward lateness were stronger predictors of actual lateness frequency in lenient climates. This moderating effect was observed when controlling for key attitudes such as job satisfaction, job involvement, and affective commitment. Thus, climate displayed a unique effect on employee lateness, constraining the influence of individual attitudes in strict climates and allowing more influence in lenient climates. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Early Memories: Theoretical Aspects and Application

Early memories from an out-patient psychiatric population are analyzed according to a specifically devised scoring system. The units of analysis are referred to as modes and are defined as the individual's approach to emotional areas such as “givingness,” “mastery,” and “mutuality”. An inter-judge agreement of about 74% resulted from scoring the early memories by three judges. On the basis of the various combinations of modes, three types of early memories are constructed and compared with certain aspects of psychological reports. The types seem to distinguish between relatively adequate and inadequate level of ego integration.     

Issues in the Personality Assessment of Lower-Class Patients

The recent national concerns about the poor and uneducated members of our society brings to the forefront the psychological treatment of the lower class. For many years, in state hospitals and mental hygiene clinics and now in community mental health centers, psychologists have been called upon for personality assessment of lower-class patients. The results of various studies indicate rather conclusively that lower-class people, for a variety of reasons, are much more likely to be assessed less favorably than members of the middle class. This paper is an attempt to review some factors in assessing the lower class patient so that the clinician can face these issues more clearly in his psychological assessment.