Sex-typed motor behaviors of “feminine” boys,conventionally masculine boys,and conventionally feminine girls

The purpose of this study was to determine whether, in four commonly observed childhood behaviors, the gross impression conveyed by “feminine” boys is distinctive from that of conventional boys, and in the direction of conventional girls. Three samples of children age 4–10 years were included in the study: boys with atypical sexual identity (N=12); age-matched conventionally sex-typed boys (N=8); and age-matched girls (N=7). The children were identically costumed to conceal gender and were videotaped while throwing a ball, walking, running, and telling a story. Videotaped segments of behaviors were randomly presented to four raters who judged the sex of the child on a five point scale which ranged from very likely male to very likely female. The analyses indicate that the sample to which the child belonged was the most important factor in explaining the rating the child received. The “feminine” boys occupied an intermediate position, one that was neither distinctly “feminine” nor distinctly “masculine.”     

Emergence,Adaptation, and Relational Improvisation: Commentary on Terry Marks-Tarlow’s “From Emergency to Emergence: The Deep Structure of Play in Psychotherapy”

Dr. Marks-Tarlow’s paper provides a valuable examination of play processes in psychotherapy, using the novel synthesis of psychoevolutionary and nonlinear dynamical perspectives. The author’s sophisticated blend of psychobiological and intersubjective accounts is of great clinical value, illustrating the need for a rapprochement between affective neuroscience, intersubjectivity, and complexity paradigms. Comparisons are made to the Dynamical Systems Therapy 10 (DST) model (Shapiro, this issue), which similarly aims to integrate psychobiological and intersubjective accounts of psychopathology with internal representations.     

On the notion of effectiveness

This paper focuses on two notions of effectiveness which are not treated in detail elsewhere. Unlike the standard computability notion, which is a property of functions themselves, both notions of effectiveness are properties of interpreted linguistic presentations of functions. It is shown that effectiveness is epistemically at least as basic as computability in the sense that decisions about computability normally involve judgments concerning effectiveness. There are many occurrences of the present notions in the writings of logicians; moreover, consideration of these notions can contribute to the clarification and, perhaps, solution of various philosophical problems, confusions and disputes.