Doing gesture promotes learning a mental transformation task better than seeing gesture

Performing action has been found to have a greater impact on learning than observing action. Here we ask whether a particular type of action – the gestures that accompany talk – affect learning in a comparable way. We gave 158 6‐year‐old children instruction in a mental transformation task. Half the children were asked to produce a Move gesture relevant to the task; half were asked to produce a Point gesture. The children also observed the experimenter producing either a Move or Point gesture. Children who produced a Move gesture improved more than children who observed the Move gesture. Neither producing nor observing the Point gesture facilitated learning. Doing gesture promotes learning better than seeing gesture, as long as the gesture conveys information that could help solve the task.     

EFFECTS OF A SIGNALED DELAY TO REINFORCEMENT IN THE PREVIOUS AND UPCOMING RATIOS ON BETWEEN-RATIO PAUSING IN FIXED-RATIO SCHEDULES

Domestic hens responded under multiple fixed‐ratio fixed‐ratio schedules with equal fixed ratios. One component provided immediate reinforcement and the other provided reinforcement after a delay, signaled by the offset of the key light. The components were presented quasirandomly so that all four possible transitions occurred in each session. The delay was varied over 0, 4, 8, 16, and 32 s with fixed‐ratio 5 schedules, and over 0, 8 and 32 s with fixed‐ratio 1, 15 and 40 schedules. Main effects of fixed‐ratio value and delay duration were detected on between‐ratio pauses. Pauses were longer when the multiple‐schedule stimulus correlated with a delayed‐reinforcer component was presented, with the longest pauses occurring at the transition from a component with an immediate reinforcer to one with a delayed reinforcer. Pause durations were shortest during immediate components. Overall, both the presence or absence of a delay in the upcoming component, and the presence or absence of a delay in the preceding component affected pause length, but the upcoming delay had the larger effect. Thus changes in delay had similar effects to past reports of the effects of changes in response force, response requirement, and reinforcer magnitude in multiple fixed‐ratio fixed‐ratio schedules.     

Student ethics in an era of personal entitlement

397 students arriving to take an exam in a junior level Principles of Management course were clearly warned on several occasions to keep cell phones outside the testing area or receive a failing test grade if the policy was violated. Just before the examination was administered, with all students sitting in their assigned seats, the professor made a final announcement that anyone still in possession of a cell phone would have one last opportunity to come forward and place it in a box at the front of the testing room. After eight students accepted this final "opportunity," the professor produced a hand-held metal detector, demonstrated how it could detect cell phones placed inside clothing, and informed the class that random screening of students would be conducted as they handed in their examinations. He then added that, as a special favor, he would allow a two-minute amnesty period during which any student could bring a cell phone to the front of the room for storage during the test. 38 students responded by turning in cell phones they had retained in direct violation of course policy. Implications of this cell phone dishonesty for creating viable business ethics and the role of perceived entitlement in shaping the behavior of these future business leaders were discussed.     

Psychoanalysis and Trauma

This article articulates some of the problems that surround the use of the term trauma in psychoanalytic theory and suggests that the key element for a theory of pathogenesis and mental functioning is not the either/or of external versus internal causation or trauma versus drive. Rather, it is an understanding of whether, or to what extent, the raw data of existential experience is or is not transformed into psychological experience. From this perspective, trauma is whatever outstrips and disrupts the psyche’s capacity for representation or mentalization. Absent the potential for mental representation, these events and phenomena are historical only from an external, third-person perspective. Until they are mentalized, they remain locked within an ahistorical, repetitive process as potentials for action, somatization, and projection.     

Norms and Habits: Brandom on the Sociality of Action

In this paper I argue against Brandom's two‐ply theory of action. For Brandom, action is the result of an agent acknowledging a practical commitment and then causally responding to that commitment by acting. Action is social because the content of the commitment upon which one acts is socially conferred in the game of giving and asking for reasons. On my proposal, instead of seeing action as the coupling of a rational capacity to acknowledge commitments and a non‐rational capacity to reliably respond to these commitments, we should see action as the coupling, or potential coupling, of a capacity to reason practically and a capacity to act on habits and bodily skills. In putting forward this alternative model of action, I aim to replace Brandom's rationalist brand of Pragmatism with a more classical kind, one that will let us see action as social not only at the level of reasons but also at the level of bodily habits and skills.     

Impasse and Resonance Across Multiple Relational Realms: Reply to Commentaries

In my response to the commentaries by Anthony Bass, Irwin Hirsch, and Margaret Crastnopol, I focus on conscious and unconscious factors that open or close potential space across relational realms, including that of analyst and patient, parent and child. I then extend these notions to the supervisory relationship. I describe how these issues affected the writing process for me, and explore the impact that writing has had on the ongoing treatment with my patient. I consider too the ways in which shame travels intersubjectively, shutting down transitional space and interfering with aliveness, authenticity, and creativity.