Habituación a largo plazo y claves ambientales en humanos

Resumen

Con objeto de comprobar si, como el modelo de Wagner (1976, 1978) postula, durante la habituación a largo plazo se establece una asociación entre el estímulo habituador y las claves ambientales, se llevaron a cabo dos experimentos en humanos. En el experimento I el cambio de contexto ambiental produjo una rehabituación más rápida y una tendencia a una menor recuperación de la respuesta en la segunda situación (empleando un tono de 105 dbs., comienzo súbito y veinticuatro horas de intervalo entre sesiones). En el experimento II (empleando un tono de 80 dbs., comienzo gradual y cuarenta y ocho horas de intervalo entre sesiones), el cambio de contexto ambiental produjo una menor recuperatión de la respuesta y una tendencia a una mayor tasa de habituación. Las instrucciones «informativas» no produjeron habituación diferente de las «normales». Se consideran estos resultados como acordes con una interpretación atencional tradicional de la habituación más que con el modelo de Wagner.     

Talking with Feeling: Integrating Affective and Linguistic Expression in Early Language Development

Abstract

The purpose of the longitudinal study reported here was to determine the developmental relation between the two systems of expression available to the young child in the period of early language learning: affect and speech. Two achievements in language were identified for a group of 12 infants: First Words, at the beginning of the single-word period (mean age about 13 months), and a Vocabulary Spurt, which occurred toward the end of the period (mean age about 19 months). Affect expression was coded continuously in the stream of the infants' activity as they and their mothers played with groups of toys and ate a snack. The occurrence of words was examined in relation to the expression of affect and the results of this study concern developments in the integration of these two forms expression. The children's words occurred closely in time with their expression of emotionally toned affect. We concluded, then, that they were learning words to express what their feelings were about even though none of the actual words they said were emotion terms. However, the cognitive requirements for emotional expression and expression through speech resulted in several constraints on their integration. Words were said with neutral affect expression most often, with a peak in emotional expression in the moments immediately after words but a decrease in emotional expression before words. The peak in emotional expression with words was significantly greater, and the pre-word dip in emotional expression was significantly less, at the Vocabulary Spurt than at First Words. Thus, the two systems of expression converged in the period of single-word development as the children came to be able to say words with emotional affect. However, the words that were said together with emotional expression were said with positive rather than negative valence, with low rather than heightened intensity, and were among the most frequent and earliest learned words. These results are discussed in terms of the acquisition of language for expression and the different cognitive requirements for expression through affect and speech.     

The Use of the MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale in Detecting Substance Abuse and Antisocial Personality

We evaluated the hypothesis that characterological factors, particularly antisocial personality, influence scores on the MacAndrew Alcoholism Scale (MAC). Using the Washington University research criteria to establish diagnoses, the following subgroups were defined: subjects who received no psychiatric diagnoses; subjects who received diagnoses other than alcoholism, drug dependence, or antisocial personality; and subjects who received a diagnosis of alcoholism, drug dependence, and/or antisocial personality, alone or in combination with other psychiatric diagnoses. The highest MAC scores were obtained by subjects diagnosed as having antisocial personality without alcoholism or drug dependence and subjects diagnosed with antisocial personality, drug dependence, and alcoholism. Alcoholics without antisocial personality or drug dependence, and subjects with other psychiatric diagnoses scored lowest. Although higher MAC scores were obtained by males, MAC scores greater than 24 correctly classified the greatest number of males and females as alcoholic, drug dependent and/or antisocial. These findings are interpreted as consistent with MacAndrew's reinterpretation of the scale as assessing a dimension of personality, rather than solely a tendency to addiction.     

emotionally layered accounts: homeschoolers' justifications for maternal deviance

Drawing on six years of field research with homeschooling mothers, I show four ways they were accused of maternal deviance for keeping their children out of conventional schools, and I uncover the four justifications they used in response. On the surface, critics objected to the behavior of homeschooling; however, their specific accusations—and the accounts they engendered—revealed that it was mothers' (alleged) emotions that were at issue. I conclude by discussing how attention to emotions enhances our theoretical understanding of accounts, as well as how these data begin to map out the emotional complexities in the social construction of good mothering.     

Fokusbezogene psychodynamische Psychotherapie

The OPD-based diagnostics allows to formulate the psychodynamically significant aspects of the unconscious conflict, of the structural limitations and of the dysfunctional relational dispositions. Considering the relative weight of the conflict- and the structural dynamics we are able to differentiate three types of disturbances: the conflict type, the structural type and the miscellaneous type. For these three types of disturbances the therapeutic consequences for setting and therapeutic attitude, for the hierarchy of the foci, and the working through of dysfunctional relational dispositions and at last for the conflict- vs. structure-related interventions are discussed. The Heidelberger Umstrukturierungsskala enables us to the focus-related documentation and evaluation of the progress and the result of the therapy.     

Teaching and Learning Forgiveness: A Multidimensional Approach

Abstract. This essay seeks to illumine the teaching and learning of the practice of forgiveness by relating a range of theoretical perspectives (theological, psychological, and socio‐cultural) to the process of cultivating the practical wisdom needed for forgiveness. We discuss how a Trinitarian “epistemology of the cross” might lead one to a new way of perceiving life’s constraints and possibilities and relate this theological epistemology to three psychological approaches for understanding forgiveness – a narrative approach, object‐relations theory, and consciousness development theory. Our discussion of these theoretical perspectives is explicitly related to the practice of teaching and learning forgiveness, outlining learning activities we have used in a course we taught (which ranged from case studies and film to lectures and discussions based on close readings of biblical and theological texts) and reporting highlights in our students’ work.     

Belief in a Just World and Attitudes Toward Immigrants and Foreign Workers: A Cultural Comparison Between Hawaii and Germany

University students in Hawaii ( N = 171) and in Germany ( N = 61) completed the 6-item Belief in a Just World Scale (BJWS; Dalbert, Montada, & Schmitt, 1987), an instrument developed in Germany to measure general just world belief. Results indicated that the BJWS is equally well suited to measure just world belief in an American sample. Subjects also completed a short instrument to assess justice judgments about the situation of a disadvantaged group (in Hawaii: Pacific Island immigrants; in Germany: foreign workers). For both samples, the disadvantaged group's situation was judged as more just by subjects with a greater belief in a just world and by those who were more socially similar to the disadvantaged group. Compared to students in Germany, those from Hawaii held stronger beliefs in a just world. Results were discussed in terms of generality and cultural specifity of the just world belief.     

Discrimination of second-formant-like frequency transitions

Discrimination of two types of simulated single-second-formant: frequency transitions was studied, transitions where members of a stimulus set shared the same onset frequency and transitions where stimuli of a set shared the same offset frequency. Experiment 1 employed an adaptive procedure to measure just-noticeable differences for transitions that increased in frequency. Experiment 2 obtained complete psychometric functions, based on a three-interval,forced choice procedure,for transitions that either increased or decreased in frequency. In both experiments, better discrimination occurred for longer stimuli, measured in hertz/millisecond, and for transitions that shared the same onset frequency. There were no differences, in Experiment 2, between discrimination of rising and falling transitions. Results are considered from several theoretical perspectives.