Playing and working through: a neglected analogy

The author proposes an analogy between certain features of playing and aspects of working through. Conceptualizing psychoanalysis as the process whereby unconscious fantasy is uncovered and then subjected to rigorous scrutiny, and building on Freud's (1908) insight that play is the same as fantasy--with the essential difference that fantasy links itself to real objects in play, such as toys and playthings--the author proposes that play can be thought of as not merely symbolic, as a fantasy bearer, so to speak, but as a fantasy tester as well. In the process of working through, some analysands attach their unconscious fantasies not only to a transference object, a primary libidinal object, or a significant loved one, but also to actual props within the analytic setting (a Kleenex box, for example), making the analogy with play even more obvious and palpable.     

Social support,self-esteem,and positive health practices of early adolescents

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of social support and self-esteem to positive health practices in early adolescents. A sample of 148 early adolescents (70 boys and 78 girls), aged 12 to 14 years, attending an urban middle school, responded to The Revised Personal Lifestyle Questionnaire, the Personal Resource Questionnaire 85-Part II, and the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale in classrooms. A correlation of .59 (p<.05) was found between scores on social support and scores for positive health practices, and a correlation of .44 (p<.05) between scores on the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale and scores for positive health practices.     

Future time perspective and positive health practices among young adolescents: a further extension

A sample of 139 young adolescents attending a middle school responded to the Future Time Perspective Inventory and the Personal Lifestyle Questionnaire in classrooms. A statistically significant correlation of .46 was found between their scores on future time perspective and ratings for the practice of positive health behaviors. This correlation was larger than those previously reported for middle and late adolescents but smaller than that found for young adults.     

Some aspects of separation and loss in therapy with disturbed children

I have suggested that the impact of loss and separation on disturbed children can best be assessed from a developmental point of view that takes into account not only the reality of the object loss but the subjective experiences of the loss or separation, which will be determined by a host of subtle psychological variables. I have attempted to illustrate these existential variables with clinical examples.     

Evolutionary Constraints on Human Object Perception

Language and culture endow humans with access to conceptual information that far exceeds any which could be accessed by a non‐human animal. Yet, it is possible that, even without language or specific experiences, non‐human animals represent and infer some aspects of similarity relations between objects in the same way as humans. Here, we show that monkeys’ discrimination sensitivity when identifying images of animals is predicted by established measures of semantic similarity derived from human conceptual judgments. We used metrics from computer vision and computational neuroscience to show that monkeys’ and humans’ performance cannot be explained by low‐level visual similarity alone. The results demonstrate that at least some of the underlying structure of object representations in humans is shared with non‐human primates, at an abstract level that extends beyond low‐level visual similarity. Because the monkeys had no experience with the objects we tested, the results suggest that monkeys and humans share a primitive representation of object similarity that is independent of formal knowledge and cultural experience, and likely derived from common evolutionary constraints on object representation.     

Lexical selection is not by competition: a reinterpretation of semantic interference and facilitation effects in the picture-word interference paradigm

The dominant view in the field of lexical access in speech production maintains that selection of a word becomes more difficult as the levels of activation of nontarget words increase--selection by competition. The authors tested this prediction in two sets of experiments. First, the authors show that participants are faster to name pictures of objects (e.g., "bed") in the context of semantically related verb distractors (e.g., sleep) compared with unrelated verb distractors (e.g., shoot). In the second set of experiments, the authors show that target naming latencies (e.g., "horse") are, if anything, faster for within--category semantically close distractor words (e.g., zebra) than for within--category semantically far distractor words (e.g., whale). In the context of previous research, these data ground a new empirical generalization: As distractor words become semantically closer to the target concepts--all else being equal--target naming is facilitated. This fact means that lexical selection does not involve competition, and consequently, that the semantic interference effect does not reflect a lexical level process. This conclusion has important implications for models of lexical access and interpretations of Stroop-like interference effects.     

HRTEM study of the {252}γ austenite–martensite interface in an Fe—8Cr–1C alloy

Abstract

High-resolution transmission electron microscopy has been used to image the atomic structure of the (2S2)_γ austenite-martensite interface. By imaging along [101]_γ ∥[111]_α, the interface was viewed edge-on and seen to consist of facets on the close-packed (111)_γ, planes. From the correspondence of atoms in the close-packed planes across the austenite-martensite interface, the magnitude of the shear can be analysed as (a/24)<112> on every close-packed plane in the plane of projection. Comparison with theory indicates that this is an (a/12)<112> Burgers vector out of the plane of projection. Hence, each atomic facet can be viewed as a structural ledge containing an (a/12)<112> transformation dislocation.