Unity of perception

Perceptual scientists have recently enjoyed success in constructing mathematical theories for specific perceptual capacities, capacities such as stereovision, auditory localization, and color perception. Analysis of these theories suggests that they all share a common mathematical structure. If this is true, the elucidation of this structure, the study of its properties, the derivation of its consequences, and the empirical testing of its predictions are promising directions for perceptual research. We consider a candidate for the common structure, a candidate called an "observer". Observers, in essence, perform inferences; each observer has a characteristic class of perceptual premises, a characteristic class of perceptual conclusions, and its own functional relationship between these premises and conclusions. If observers indeed capture the structure common to perceptual capacities, then each capacity, regardless of its modality or manner of instantiation, can be described as some observer. In this paper we develop the definition of an observer. We first consider two examples of perceptual capacities: the measurement of visual motion, and the perception of depth from visual motion. In each case, we review a formal theory of the capacity and abstract its structural essence. From this essence we construct the definition of observer. We then exercise the definition in discussions of transduction, perceptual illusions, perceptual uncertainty, regularization theory, the cognitive penetrability of perception, and the theory neutrality of observation.     

Interrelationships of personality and coping in a challenging extreme situation

The relationship between personality characteristics, daily stressors, and means of coping were studied in a 12-person Soviet-American expedition ateamconsisting of Caucasian and Eskimo men and women. The members scored relatively high on scales measuring well-being, achievement orientation, and traditionalism and scored relatively low on stress reactivity. The use of social support as a coping mechanism was positively related to high stress reactivity, control, and negative emotionality and negatively related to well-being. Negative emotionality was related to ratings of daily intrapersonal stressor. Discussion centered on the function of social support in an extreme, task-focused situation and the relationship of social support coping in this particular type of situation to maladaptive personality characteristics.     

Individual differences in harm-related moral values are associated with functional integration of large-scale brain networks of emotional regulation

Emotions affects moral judgements, and controlled cognitive processes regulate those emotional responses during moral decision making. However, the neurobiological basis of this interaction is unclear. We used a graph theory measurement called participation coefficient (‘PC’) to quantify the resting-state functional connectivity within and between four meta-analytic groupings (MAGs) associated with emotion generation and regulation, to test whether that measurement predicts individual differences in moral foundations-based values. We found that the PC of one of the MAGs (MAG2) was positively correlated with one of the five recognized moral foundations–the one based on harm avoidance. We also found that increased inter-module connectivity between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and middle temporal gyrus with other nodes in the four MAGs was likewise associated with higher endorsement of the Harm foundation. These results suggest that individuals' sensitivity to harm is associated with functional integration of large-scale brain networks of emotional regulation. These findings add to our knowledge of how individual variations in our moral values could be reflected by intrinsic brain network organization and deepen our understanding of the relationship between emotion and cognition during evaluations of moral values.     

Innocent bystanders: Young children in war

Basic theoretical paradigms and constructs are identified within the extant literature that may usefully contribute to comprehending the effect of war upon young children as well as the nature of personal, situational, and familial moderating factors. These concerns are illustrated with empirical data regarding infants and toddlers and their response to the recent Gulf War. Potential applications of these heuristic models are explicated for the study of war as well as for the design of preventive and remedial programming.     

War,revolution, and psychoanalysis: Freudian thought begins to grapple with social reality

Psychoanalytic theory and practice have been affected by external events as well as by internal development. Specifically, the period of the Great War and its aftermath was a turning point in the history of psychoanalysis. These experiences emphasized the inadequacy of the libido theory alone, accelerated Freud's impetus toward metapsychology, and encouraged the articulation of theories of innate destructive urges, of ego instincts, of the superego, and of social interaction. Discussionsof war neuroses, of aggression and the death instinct, of the reality principle, and of the mechanisms of social psychology undermined Freud's original biologism in favor of a social-scientific approach. Psychoanalytic theory began to take more account of social experience and was profoundly changed in the process.     

Object recognition with severe spatial deficits in Williams syndrome: sparing and breakdown

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder that results in severe visual-spatial cognitive deficits coupled with relative sparing in language, face recognition, and certain aspects of motion processing. Here, we look for evidence for sparing or impairment in another cognitive system-object recognition. Children with WS, normal mental-age (MA) and chronological age-matched (CA) children, and normal adults viewed pictures of a large range of objects briefly presented under various conditions of degradation, including canonical and unusual orientations, and clear or blurred contours. Objects were shown as either full-color views (Experiment 1) or line drawings (Experiment 2). Across both experiments, WS and MA children performed similarly in all conditions while CA children performed better than both WS group and MA groups with unusual views. This advantage, however, was eliminated when images were also blurred. The error types and relative difficulty of different objects were similar across all participant groups. The results indicate selective sparing of basic mechanisms of object recognition in WS, together with developmental delay or arrest in recognition of objects from unusual viewpoints. These findings are consistent with the growing literature on brain abnormalities in WS which points to selective impairment in the parietal areas of the brain. As a whole, the results lend further support to the growing literature on the functional separability of object recognition mechanisms from other spatial functions, and raise intriguing questions about the link between genetic deficits and cognition.     

Analgesic effects of posthypnotic suggestions and virtual reality distraction on thermal pain

The individual and combined effects of posthypnotic suggestion (PHS) and virtual reality distraction (VRD) on experimentally induced thermal pain were examined using a 2 x 2, between-groups design. After receiving baseline thermal pain, each participant received hypnosis or no hypnosis, followed by VRD or no VRD during another pain stimulus. Consistent with the hypothesis that hypnosis and VRD work via different mechanisms, results show that posthypnotic analgesia was moderated by hypnotizability but VRD analgesia was not. The impact of PHSs for analgesia was specific to high hypnotizables, whereas VRD was effective independent of hypnotizability. Results also show a nonsignificant but predicted pattern for high hypnotizables: Audio hypnosis combined with VRD reduced worst pain 22% more and pain unpleasantness 25% more than did VRD alone. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

Forging difference out of similarity: the multiplicity of corrective experience

In the context of work with an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse, the interplay of multiple forms of engagement contributing to therapeutic action is explored. The compulsion to repeat old patterns is seen to be gradually overcome by new corrective experience in which the whole of the patient's sense of the analyst as a person is greater than the sum of its parts. Interpretation of enactments--often involving patterns of dominance and submission--is complemented by a range of "helpful" actions that must be detoxified. That process entails the progressive differentiation of coercion and influence, on the one hand, and of compliance and responsiveness, on the other In the end, autonomy and creative responsiveness emerge as integral to each other rather than as mutually exclusive. This development requires that the patient gradually relinquish an "essentialist" view of self and other in favor of a "constructivist" view, in which the ambiguity of experience offers opportunities for new forms of relational engagement and understanding.     

When do ego threats lead to self-regulation failure? Negative consequences of defensive high self-esteem

High self-esteem (HSE) is increasingly recognized as heterogeneous. By measuring subtypes of HSE, the present research reevaluates the finding that HSE individuals show poor self-regulation following ego threat (Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1993). In Experiment 1, participants with HSE showed poor self-regulation after ego threat only if they also were defensive (high in self-presentation bias). In Experiment 2, two measures--self-presentation bias and implicit self-esteem--were used to subtype HSE individuals as defensive. Both operationalizations of defensive HSE predicted poor self-regulation after ego threat. The results indicate that (a) only defensive HSE individuals are prone to self-regulation failure following ego threat and (b) measures of self-presentation bias and implicit self-esteem can both be used to detect defensiveness.     

The Influence of Accessibility of Source Likability on Persuasion

Earlier research found that increasing the accessibility of a source's likability from memory results in greater agreement with a message attributed to that source. Three explanations were proposed for that earlier finding. Accessible liking toward the source of a message may result in increased likelihood of (a) biased central processing, (b) using a likability heuristic, or (c) motivated central processing. This experiment demonstrated that when the message is counterattitudinal and included weak arguments, participants were more likely to critically scrutinize the message as the accessibility of the source's likability increased from memory. As a consequence, attributing the message to a likable source reduced the persuasiveness of the message.