The psychoanalytic process: the developmental and the integrative

Psychoanalysis is a treatment that focuses on intrapsychic events and activates integrative tendencies to promote-insights. Almost from the time it originated, however, it was also promoted as a therapy informed by the interpersonal, inducing change through experiences generated within the psychoanalytic situation. In recent years the interpersonal or object relations approach has come to be categorized as "developmental," a term that fosters no end of ambiguities. The resulting confusion compromises the study of the actual developmental process on the one hand and the structure-enhancing features of transactions on the other. This encumbers research on the psychoanalytic process. The author distinguishes the intrapsychic from the interpersonal, the integrative from the developmental, and the two very different realms of psychological activities currently advanced as "developmental."     

Relationships among defensive styles, cognitive styles, processing styles, and attentional styles of normal adolescents

Cognitive and psychodynamic theorists agree that an individual's personality and behavior are determined by both cognitive and dynamic processes. This study examined the relationship among three cognitive approaches--cognitive style, attentional style, and processing style--and examined their relations to defensive style. Adolescents from Grades 11 and 12 (146 boys, 164 girls) were examined in groups for cognitive style (Group Embedded Figures Test), attentional style (Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style), processing style (a sequential/simultaneous processing test battery), and defensive style (Defense Mechanism Inventory). Least squares completely randomized two-way analyses of variance (or analyses of covariance where applicable) were employed to assess the relations among the three cognitive measures and/or between the cognitive measures and defensive style. While most comparisons were nonsignificant, a significant relationship was observed between sequential processing and field-dependence and between simultaneous processing and field-independence. Also, a trend was noted between field-independence and ideational defenses and between field-dependence and repression-based defenses.     

Structure of learning environment variables under two instructional conditions

The present study investigated the congruence between the factor structures of the learning environment and cognitive variables for mathematics and English courses in Grade 10. Three common factors were obtained in each course. Procedural characteristics and cognitive factors in mathematics were highly similar to the corresponding factors in English. However, the formative characteristics factor identified in mathematics was not congruent to the corresponding factor in English. Learning environment variables produced two factors. These factors resembled the congruent factor properties for the two courses when the learning environment and cognitive variables were factor analyzed together. Implications for learning and instructional research are mentioned.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

A feature model of immediate memory

A feature model of immediate memory is presented, and simulations are described. List items are characterized as multiattribute vectors that can be selectively overwritten by subsequent external events and by the ongoing stream of internal activity. Degraded primary memory vectors are compared with intact secondary memory vectors, and retrieval likelihood is computed as the ratio of similarities. The model is shown to account for the major modality-based phenomena of the immediate serial recall literature, including modality-based temporal grouping effects and the negative effects of phonological similarity.     

Harming future people

Hanser examines Derek Parfit's contention in his treatise on rationalism, Reasons and Persons (Oxford University Press; 1984) that acts that are not reproductive in nature can nonetheless predictably affect the identities of future people, and that this fact has unexpected and important consequences for ethical theory. Hanser argues tht this fact is not as significant as Parfit believes it to be. The arguments of both scholars concern the morality of choices that, while causing future persons to be badly off, do not make them worse off than they would have been if the choices had not been made. Hanser concludes his essay with a discussion of responsibility for acts that will affect the health of future offspring.     

Narrative comprehension in adults with right and left hemisphere brain-damage: theme organization.

The effects of delayed presentation of a central theme on the comprehension and interpretation of narratives were investigated in adults with right and left hemisphere brain-damage and normal individuals. The performance of subgroups of the subjects with right and left hemisphere brain-damage also was examined. Right hemisphere brain-damaged groups with anterior and posterior lesions were significantly less accurate and identified significantly fewer central themes when central theme presentation was delayed until the end of a narrative than when the theme was presented at the beginning. Subjects with anterior right hemisphere brain-damage produced significantly more embellishments and confabulations than subjects with posterior damage and non-brain-damaged controls, regardless of theme condition. The performance of non-brain-damaged subjects and subjects with fluent and nonfluent aphasia was unaffected by the organization of the central theme in the narratives.