Interaction Between Visually and Kinesthetically Triggered Voluntary Responses

A voluntary motor response that is prepared in advance of a stimulus may be triggered by any sensory input. This study investigated the combination of visual and kinesthetic inputs in triggering voluntary torque responses. When a visual stimulus was presented alone, subjects produced a fast and accurate increase in elbow flexion torque. When a kinesthetic stimulus was presented instead of the visual stimulus, subjects produced a similar response with a reduced response latency. When a visual stimulus was presented in combination with a kinesthetic stimulus, subjects initiated their responses after either a visual or a kinesthetic response latency, depending on the relative timing of the two stimuli. An analysis of response amplitude suggested that when visual and kinesthetic stimuli were combined, both stimuli triggered a response. The results are more consistent with a simple behavioral model of addition of visual and kinesthetic responses (which predicts that the response to combined stimuli should be the sum of individual responses) than with a model of exclusion of one response (which predicts that the response to combined stimuli should be identical to either the visual or the kinesthetic response). Because addition of visually and kinesthetically triggered responses produced a response with an erroneously large amplitude, it is suggested that visual and kinesthetic inputs are not always efficiently integrated.     

Vocabulary Ability in Later Life

A group of young adults (17 to 20 years) was compared to a group of older adults (62 to 83 years) with respect to their vocabulary test responses scored qualitatively, after having been matched on the basis of their vocabulary test responses scored in the traditional “quantitative” way. The qualitative score analysis was based upon categories of response which differentiated among levels of good performances, levels of poor performances, and types of errors.

The results of this study cast doubt as to the validity of the generalization that vocabulary function is maintained throughout adult life. The best possible response—i.e., superior synonym—was seen to decline with age.

This decline, however, was compensated for by very satisfactory, although less good, performance. This made the overall level of correct response appear similar for the two age groups, which may account for the usual report of stability of function in the course of adult aging. The compensation also made for very high correlations between qualitative and quantitative scores. It may be reasonable to speculate that, if performances on other verbal tasks were analyzed for qualitative differences in response precision, the often reported aging pattern (verbal skills maintained but not perceptual integrative ones) would not be observed.     

Esther bick (1901 – 1983)

Abstract

Pearl King and Richardo Steiner, Eds. The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941-45. London, Routledge, 1991. λ100 (Hardback).

Alessandra Piontelli. From Fetus to Child. An Observational and Pyschoanalytic Study. New Library of Psychoanalysis 15. 1992. λ14.99 paperback.

Antonino Ferro. La tecnica in psicoanalisi infantile. II bambino e l'analista: dalla relatione al campo emotivo.? Milan: Cortina, 1992, 221 pages

Rolene Szur and Sheila Miller, Editors. Extending Horizons. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with Children, Adolescents and Families. Published by Karnac Books, 1991. Paperback λ24.95.     

Distancing and Solidarity as Resistance to Sexual Objectification in a Nude Dancing Bar

ABSTRACT

Drawing on observation and interviews in a mid-Atlantic nude dancing bar, I examine front-stage customer-dancer relations as well as dancers' discourse among themselves backstage. I use James Scott's theoretical framework regarding subordinate group resistance strategies to analyze dancers' attempts to resist customers' harassment. On the micro-level dancers exercise agency, reconstructing their identities within the larger context of macro-level oppression. Dancers' front stage tactics include spatial distancing, verbal one-liners, physical aggression, calling on customers, and united action with other dancers. Backstage, dancers reframe the public text, articulating their own identity construction by creating a social site for solidarity and desexualizing the body.     

Evaluating the Effects of Creative Journal Arts Therapy for Survivors of Domestic Violence

The authors implemented a small series (N = 3) single-case research design to assess the effectiveness of a 9-session creative arts therapy treatment program for adult survivors of domestic violence. Analysis of participants’ scores on the Outcome Questionnaire (OQ-45.2) and Brief Resilience Scale using the percentage of nonoverlapping data procedure yielded treatment effects indicating that a creative arts therapy treatment program may be effective for reducing mental health symptoms and improving resiliency. It is recommended that this body of research continue for other educational, work, and health settings.     

On the temporal dynamics of language-mediated vision and vision-mediated language

Recent converging evidence suggests that language and vision interact immediately in non-trivial ways, although the exact nature of this interaction is still unclear. Not only does linguistic information influence visual perception in real-time, but visual information also influences language comprehension in real-time. For example, in visual search tasks, incremental spoken delivery of the target features (e.g., “Is there a red vertical?”) can increase the efficiency of conjunction search because only one feature is heard at a time. Moreover, in spoken word recognition tasks, the visual presence of an object whose name is similar to the word being spoken (e.g., a candle present when instructed to “pick up the candy”) can alter the process of comprehension. Dense sampling methods, such as eye-tracking and reach-tracking, richly illustrate the nature of this interaction, providing a semi-continuous measure of the temporal dynamics of individual behavioral responses. We review a variety of studies that demonstrate how these methods are particularly promising in further elucidating the dynamic competition that takes place between underlying linguistic and visual representations in multimodal contexts, and we conclude with a discussion of the consequences that these findings have for theories of embodied cognition.