A cross-continental conversation about sin and shame with Marcia Blasi and Marit Trelstad

This is a cross-continental conversation about contextual understandings of sin and shame in the context of women in Latin America and Africa, and students in the United States. Marcia Blasi brings the experience of working with women throughout the world in her role in the Lutheran World Federation, and both authors work in Lutheran and feminist theologies. In particular, this interview highlights how individualized understandings of sin, often focused on morality and behavior, serve to shame women and reinforce notions of inferiority in patriarchal systems. In these systems, women are never doing enough for others and pride in one's self is not allowed. At the same time, social understandings of sin as systematic injustice serve to fight against these ideas of sin and the concomitant production of shame because they contextualize a person's actions within a broader culture and its expectations. The authors here seek to understand what real grace means and feels like for female-identifying people and how confession of sin would be altered if seen through the lens of women globally.     

The capacity for rapid shifts in level of mental concentration

This investigation continues the exploration of a largely neglected topic in the field of attention, levels of mental concentration, by ascertaining under optimal conditions the capacity for shifting quickly from one level to another. Previous research in our laboratory had applied a set of five post-hypnotically cued levels of concentration or “cognitive arousal”, covering a very wide range, to a variety of perceptual and cognitive tasks. In the present study two highly trained undergraduate hypnotic subjects, one male and one female, were given progressively shorter time durations in which to respond to the post-hypnotic cues before viewing tachisto-scopically flashed consonants under cue influence. The results indicate a striking capacity to shift degrees of cognitive arousal very rapidly to one extreme or the other, on the order of 100 ms or less.     

THE SIMILARITY OF BRAIN ACTIVITY ASSOCIATED WITH TRUE AND FALSE RECOGNITION MEMORY DEPENDS ON TEST FORMAT

Abstract— Event-related potentials (ERPs) were compared for correct recognitions of previously presented words and false recognitions of associatively related, nonpresented words (lures). When the test items were presented blocked by test type (old, new, lure), waveforms for old and lure items were different, especially at frontal and left parietal electrode sites, consistent with previous positron emission tomography (PET) data (Schacter, Reiman, et. al., 1996). When the test format randomly intermixed the types of items, waveforms for old and lure items were more similar. We suggest that test format affects the type of processing subjects engage in, consistent with expectations from the source-monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). These results also indicate that brain activity as assessed by neuroimaging designs requiring blocked presentation of trials (e g, PET) do not necessarily reflect the brain activity that occurs in cognitive-behavioral paradigms, in which types of test trials are typically intermixed.     

The Role of Asymmetrical Coding of Duration Samples in Producing the Choose-Short Effect in Pigeons

Pigeons were trained on two independent matching-to-duration-samples tasks; one involved 2- and 10-s durations and color choice stimuli, and the other involved 4.5- and 22.5-s durations and line choice stimuli. Accuracy was above chance on mixed-choice probes in which either of the short-duration samples was followed by the two short-associated stimuli. Following explicit training on mixed-choice trials involving choice between the two short- and the two long-associated stimuli, a choose-short effect was demonstrated with both sets of duration samples. These findings are inconsistent with the possibility that the choose-short effect reflects processes of asymmetrical-sample coding and default responding.     

Anticipatory grief: The search for destiny

This paper explores the dynamics between a woman dying of cancer, the man she lived with for 37 years, and the clinician who worked with them during the final months of the woman's life. Psychoanalytic perspectives on transformational and transitional object-seeking as natural processes which aid the internalization of attachment to the one who is approaching death, the creation of a primary maternal preoccupation in the caretaker, the hospice as a holding environment, and the search for destiny as a metaphor for the work of anticipatory grief are integrated with the case-material.Presented at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting,Person, Culture and Religion Pre-session, November, 1991.     

Will both spouses have careers?: Predictors of preferred traditional or egalitarian marriages among university students

This study examined the significance of work preference variables, family preference variables, socialization influences, and needs for achievement and affiliation in predicting preferred traditional versus egalitarian marriages among university students. Results showed that, overall, male university students preferred traditional marriages while female university students preferred egalitarian marriages. Sex also interacted significantly with the following variables: desired family task involvement, desired job task involvement, and mother's family involvement. The data suggest that a perspective encompassing a wide variety of variables (including work, family, and socialization considerations) may be useful for conceptualizing individuals' preferences for traditional or egalitarian marriages. Implications of the results for management and career counseling are discussed.     

The effects of control on perceived fairness of procedures and outcomes

On the basis of Thibaut and Walker's theory of procedural justice, it was predicted that subjects who experienced control through choosing a trial decision rule would be more satisfied with the outcome of a dispute and the conflict resolution procedure than would yoked subjects who were not given control. Two additional conditions were added to the design in order to investigate the extent to which control had an influence on trial evaluations independent of being allowed to discuss the rules and obtaining a preferred rule in the absence of actual choice. Regardless of role in the dispute (accuser, accused, or no knowledge) and the nature of the rule adopted, those subjects who exercised control through rule choice evaluated all aspects of the trial experience more positively than subjects who did not exercise control through rule choice. The results also revealed that discussion of the rules and obtaining the preferred rule without choice contributed positively to evaluations of the trial procedure and verdict.     

An electronic cine camera system for the automatic collection and analysis of high-speed movement of unrestrained animals

A system is decribed that collects visual data using a solid-state photodiode image sensor at rates of up to 600 frames/sec in a binary format suitable for image-analysis techniques. Of particular interest is the system’s ability to analyze high-speed movement of animals without prior modification of the subject (e.g., attachment of lamps or reflectors to the subject).