Weighing the past and the future in decision making

Prior irreversible investments of money, time, or effort referred to as sunk costs frequently lead to decisions to continue a chosen course of action despite that this is irrational. With the aim of demonstrating that such escalation of commitment is a special case of a more general phenomenon, two experiments were carried out employing undergraduates as participants. Experiment 1 showed for fictitious personal and business investment scenarios that both prior losses and gains (sunk outcomes) affected choices to continue or discontinue the investment. In Experiment 2 the effect of sunk outcomes was reduced although not eliminated by a monetary bonus that in one condition depended on the future outcomes of the second gamble in two-stage gambles, in another condition on the future returns in personal investment scenarios. In support of a more inclusive theory subsuming escalation of commitment, the decisions were affected by both past and future outcomes and both gains and losses.     

The perception of limb orientation depends on the center of mass

Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that the perception of limb orientation depends on inertial eigenvectors against the alternative that it depends on the center of mass. In all experiments, each participant pointed at visible targets with his or her occluded right arm while center-of-mass and inertial eigenvectors were manipulated independently. In Experiments 1 and 2, the arm was constrained to rotate exclusively about the shoulder, whereas in Experiment 3, the arm was allowed to rotate freely about both the shoulder and the elbow. The mechanical manipulations were applied either in the horizontal (Experiments 1 and 3) or vertical (Experiment 2) plane. Across experiments, pointing direction was affected by the center of mass and not by the inertial eigenvectors, albeit that simultaneous manipulation of both resulted in a more pronounced pointing bias than the isolated center-of-mass manipulation. These findings challenge the inertial eigenvector hypothesis and suggest that the center of mass plays a generic role in the perception of limb orientation.     

Object-based attentional selection can modulate the Stroop effect

The Stroop (1935) effect is the inability to ignore a color word when the task is to report the ink color of that word (i.e., to say "green" to the word RED in green ink). The present study investigated whether object-based processing contributes to the Stroop effect. According to this view, observers are unable to ignore irrelevant features of an attended object (Kahneman & Henik, 1981). In three experiments, participants had to name the color of one of two superimposed rectangles and to ignore words that appeared in the relevant object, in the irrelevant object, or in the background. The words were congruent, neutral, or incongruent with respect to the correct color response. Words in the irrelevant object and in the background produced significant Stroop effects, consistent with earlier findings. Importantly, however, words in the relevant object produced larger Stroop effects than did the other conditions, suggesting amplified processing of all the features of an attended object. Thus, object-based processing can modulate the Stroop effect.     

Prospective association of parental and child internalizing symptoms: Mediation of parenting practices and irritability

Maternal internalizing symptoms have been linked with child internalizing symptoms, but paternal internalizing difficulties have received little attention. Our aims were to prospectively analyse the simultaneous effect of maternal and paternal internalizing symptoms on child internalizing difficulties, examining gender differences, and to verify the mediating effect of parenting practices and child irritability. The sample included 470 families assessed at child ages 3, 6, 8, and 11. Multi-group structural equation modelling was performed with Mplus8.2. Complete equivalence was found between boys and girls for all paths. Maternal internalizing symptoms at age 3 had an indirect effect on child internalizing symptoms at age 11, via irritability at age 8. Paternal internalizing symptoms at age 3 were not associated with any of the variables under study. Maternal internalizing symptoms and child irritability are targets for intervention in order to prevent child internalizing difficulties.     

The day the clock stopped. Primitive states of unintegration,multidimensional working through and the birth of the analytical subject

This paper is based on one idea and built around one clinical experience that helped me to broaden my comprehension of it. The idea, underlying the work of several authors, is that when the analytic field is saturated with primitive and unintegrated mental contents, the analyst’s somatic countertransference is a precious indicator of a deep, dissociated form of communication. The clinical experience concerns the difficult elaboration of a complex, multifaceted countertransference that took place during the early stages of the analysis of a sensitive patient who used to communicate in a very dissociated way and that I found hard to contain. This experience, closely described in the article, led me to formulate the clinical idea that the transference field may be made of distinct layers (psychoid, affective, verbal), and that each one of them may potentially convey dissociated, even contrasting bits of information. The corollary of this is that the analyst should be ready to accept contrasting sensations, feelings and thoughts at the same time, as they might be the basic ingredients of a complex reverie. The analyst could find himself/herself in front of his/her own internal unelaborated multiplicity before a symbolic image may emerge to link the scattered pieces of the experience. Nevertheless, the heart of this paper is not about suggesting an idea, but in the sharing of a complex working through, which fostered the birth of a new, more human relational perspective: the capacity of being together in time, in a transitional space where there is neither total separation nor fusion.