Right hemisphere sensitivity to word- and sentence-level context: evidence from event-related brain potentials

Researchers using lateralized stimuli have suggested that the left hemisphere is sensitive to sentence-level context, whereas the right hemisphere (RH) primarily processes word-level meaning. The authors investigated this message-blind RH model by measuring associative priming with event-related brain potentials (ERPs). For word pairs in isolation, associated words elicited more positive ERPs than unassociated words with similar magnitudes and onset latencies in both visual fields. Embedded in sentences, these same pairs showed large sentential context effects in both fields. Small effects of association were observed, confined to incongruous sentences after right visual hemifield presentation but present for both congruous and incongruous sentences after left visual hemifield presentation. Results do not support the message-blind RH model but do suggest hemispheric asymmetries in the use of word and sentence context during real-time processing.     

Electrophysiological evidence reveals affective evaluation deficits early in stimulus processing in patients with panic disorder

Cognitive and neurobiological accounts of clinical anxiety and depression were examined via event-related brain potentials (ERPs) recorded from patients with panic disorder and healthy controls as they performed an old/new recognition memory task with emotionally negative and neutral words. The emotive connotation of words systematically influenced control subjects' - but not patients' - ERP effects at prefrontal sites in a latency range (to approximately 300-500 ms) generally assumed to reflect greater contribution of automatic than controlled memory processes. This provides evidence for dysfunctional inhibitory modulation of affective information processing in panic disorder. The ERP effects after 700 ms, however, suggest that some patients may adopt conscious strategies to minimize the impact of these early processing abnormalities on overt behaviors.     

"If you and I,if we,in this later day,lose that sacred fire . . .": perspective in political interviews

It is argued in the following that the dialogical complexity of speaker perspective requires a broad empirical analysis. To date, such analyses, particularly of political discourse, have been couched in terms of narrower concepts, such as self-presentation and political positioning or involvement/distancing, and have been typically carried out by means of qualitative methods applied to pronominal usage. The present research applies complementarily both quantitative and qualitative analyses to BBC television interviews of Shimon Peres (January 29, 2001) and of Edward Said (October 18, 2000) by Tim Sebastian in a program entitled HARDtalk. In addition to pronouns, these analyses include a number of other hypothetical indicators of a broad concept of perspective on the part of both interviewer and interviewees: turn-initial words, hesitations, questions, use of yes and no, personal reference utterances (e.g., I think), interjections, number of syllables spoken, and interruptions and overlaps. Quantitative comparisons of interviewer with interviewee revealed important differences on all these measures. Qualitative analyses also confirmed subtle local dynamics of perspective. Accordingly, the findings are interpreted within a general theoretical concept of perspective, derived from Bakhtin's (1981) dialogicity.     

A physically handicapped teenager is helped to own her body

In this paper I am presenting my work with a 15-year-old girl, Nina, who was born premature with congenital feet deformities. Her twin had died at birth, and Nina spent eight weeks in a Special Care Baby unit. She had also suffered from bronchial asthma, which was under control during the months she was in therapy with me.

An attempt to overdose, and a letter she had written to a teacher, brought Nina to our services and to individual psychotherapy. The weekly sessions gave Nina the opportunity to elaborate her mourning for the dead twin and to face her physical problems more realistically. She had coped with these by idealising a beautiful body and giving it, in her phantasy, to her dead sister for whose death she felt responsible. Her identification with characters from horror stories, of which she was an avid reader, was a key to understanding how she felt trapped in her deformed body, to which she would refer in the phrase ‘It doesn't bother me.’ The working through of her feelings of guilt, anger, and envy enabled her to lessen the split and to own her body.     

Mirror image arm used in monocular, binocular, and blindfolded pointing

Observers were instructed to point with their right arm to a mirror image of their left shoulder. Instead of pointing to the target with their real arm, they occluded the target with their mirror-imaged finger, and their real finger pointed off to the left side of the target, facts that came as a surprise to them in debriefing. The occlusion by a mirror image finger was not done to avoid double images, since it occurred in monocular conditions. That it is due to planning before pointing can be inferred from the fact that it occurred in blindfolded conditions.     

Identity Construction as a Mother: A Comparative Study Between Adopted and Nonadopted Women

From a constructivist perspective we studied the experience of motherhood in a comparative study with 15 adopted women and 15 nonadopted women, all of them also biological mothers. We used the social self grid, and it was analyzed by means of the program RECORD 5.0 and also through content analysis. Results show similarities and differences between the two groups in the construction of identity as a mother. Although in both samples the self as a mother is constructed similarly to the self in their couple relationship, this is more evident in the case of adoptive daughters, and the difference is statistically significant. The meanings attributed to their own motherhood are similar in both samples and have to do with enjoying motherhood. Nonetheless, in the adoptive sample there are more constructs related to control and doing things right, and in the biological sample there are more constructs referring to naturalness and devotion. Moreover, in the adoptive sample there appears a higher presence of cognitive conflicts and lower self-esteem, and both results tend to significance.     

Laypeople do use sample variance: The effect of embedding data in a variance-implying story

When using sample data to decide whether two populations differ, laypeople attend to the difference between group means, but largely overlook within-group variability (Obrecht, Chapman, & Gelman, 2007 Obrecht, N. A., Chapman, G. B. and Gelman, R. 2007. Intuitive t-tests: Lay use of statistical information. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14: 1147–1152.  [Google Scholar]). We show, first, that laypeople know about and use story-implied variability when making pairwise comparisons. Then we demonstrate that participants’ sensitivity to variance in a dataset is boosted when presented in a context that implies consistent variance information. Statistical data were couched in stories about electrical conductivity measurements obtained from element samples (low-variability category) or body weight measurements from samples of peoples (high-variability category). We manipulated, between participants, whether the data variance matched or mismatched the story-implied variability. Participants who received data in a matching context showed high sensitivity to variance, while those in the mismatching condition did not. Laypeople use statistical data to make reasonable inferences when those data are provided in a context that makes sense.