They saw a movie: long-term memory for an extended audiovisual narrative

We measured long-term memory for a narrative film. During the study session, participants watched a 27-min movie episode, without instructions to remember it. During the test session, administered at a delay ranging from 3 h to 9 mo after the study session, long-term memory for the movie was probed using a computerized questionnaire that assessed cued recall, recognition, and metamemory of movie events sampled ~20 sec apart. The performance of each group of participants was measured at a single time point only. The participants remembered many events in the movie even months after watching it. Analysis of performance, using multiple measures, indicates differences between recent (weeks) and remote (months) memory. While high-confidence recognition performance was a reliable index of memory throughout the measured time span, cued recall accuracy was higher for relatively recent information. Analysis of different content elements in the movie revealed differential memory performance profiles according to time since encoding. We also used the data to propose lower limits on the capacity of long-term memory. This experimental paradigm is useful not only for the analysis of behavioral performance that results from encoding episodes in a continuous real-life-like situation, but is also suitable for studying brain substrates and processes of real-life memory using functional brain imaging.     

The Lost E-Mail Technique: Use of an Implicit Measure to Assess Discriminatory Attitudes Toward Two Minority Groups in Israel

The effectiveness of the "lost e-mail technique" (LET) as an unobtrusive attitude measure was successfully demonstrated in 2 studies. In Study 1, we found that Israeli students were more likely to reply to a similar other than to a minority group member (an Israeli-Arab or an immigrant from the former Soviet Union). In Study 2, LET was administered to professors and administrators, and its effectiveness was compared to a more traditional self-report measure. Although professors showed less discrimination on the self-report measure than did administrators, they were nevertheless discriminative in their responses to lost e-mails. These results suggest that professors are not necessarily less prejudiced, but probably are better able to detect attitude probes and more motivated to appear unbiased.     

Religious Queer People Beyond Identity Conflict: Lessons from Orthodox LGBT Jews in Israel

A key thread of research on how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons of faith navigate and make sense of gender and sexual identities and desires that defy their religious traditions’ teachings focuses on identity conflict, management, negotiation, and reconciliation. Drawing on interviews with 64 Orthodox Jewish same-sex attracted persons in Israel, supplemented by physical and digital ethnographic data, I argue that the conflict frame is empirically imprecise and conceptually flawed. I demonstrate fluidity and ambivalence vis-à-vis religiosity and sexual identity and argue that ambivalence is generative: In the process of making sense of their sexual and religious selves, my respondents challenge what it means to be Orthodox and what it means to be same-sex attracted, thereby challenging the conflict frame's categorical schema. I then make the case for a more contextualized and dynamic framework for theorizing LGBT negotiations of religious and sexual identities. I also observe that the limitations of the conflict lens are symptomatic of broader tendencies in the sociology of religion to rely on U.S. and Christian cases and a pattern of limited engagement with work in other disciplines and subdisciplines.     

Large Group Intervention to Encourage Dialogue Between Directors and Workers in the Context of Organizational Ambiguity

In the postmodern era the entire sphere of employment is undergoing changes that create feelings of ambiguity. These changes are reflected in the use of defense mechanisms such as splits between management and employees, and alienation and dissociation. Occupational social workers are also experiencing insecurity. Although their function is to assist individuals and the organization during crises, they are not able to detach themselves from their experiences. It is more difficult for them resort to bridging and dialogue in order to ameliorate feelings of anxiety. This article will describe how a large group intervention can provide practical experience that raises self-awareness and facilitates coping with organizational ambiguity.     

OBSERVATIONAL EFFECTS ON THE PREFERENCES OF CHILDREN WITH AUTISM

Children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may play with limited objects or toys, making it difficult for teachers to identify reinforcers to use in teaching new skills. The goal of this study was to alter children's preferences from highly preferred toys to toys that were originally less preferred using an observational pairing procedure. Child participants observed a preferred adult playing with toys that were initially less preferred by the child. This intervention resulted in a shift in preference toward the item manipulated by the adult. Maintenance of the changed preference was idiosyncratic across participants. Results suggest a procedure for expanding the range of items that students with ASD will select.     

Consolidation and translation regulation

mRNA translation, or protein synthesis, is a major component of the transformation of the genetic code into any cellular activity. This complicated, multistep process is divided into three phases: initiation, elongation, and termination. Initiation is the step at which the ribosome is recruited to the mRNA, and is regarded as the major rate-limiting step in translation, while elongation consists of the elongation of the polypeptide chain; both steps are frequent targets for regulation, which is defined as a change in the rate of translation of an mRNA per unit time. In the normal brain, control of translation is a key mechanism for regulation of memory and synaptic plasticity consolidation, i.e., the off-line processing of acquired information. These regulation processes may differ between different brain structures or neuronal populations. Moreover, dysregulation of translation leads to pathological brain function such as memory impairment. Both normal and abnormal function of the translation machinery is believed to lead to translational up-regulation or down-regulation of a subset of mRNAs. However, the identification of these newly synthesized proteins and determination of the rates of protein synthesis or degradation taking place in different neuronal types and compartments at different time points in the brain demand new proteomic methods and system biology approaches. Here, we discuss in detail the relationship between translation regulation and memory or synaptic plasticity consolidation while focusing on a model of cortical-dependent taste learning task and hippocampal-dependent plasticity. In addition, we describe a novel systems biology perspective to better describe consolidation.     

Inaction inertia

Inaction inertia occurs when bypassing an initial action opportunity has the effect of decreasing the likelihood that subsequent similar action opportunities will be taken. This overview of the inaction inertia literature demonstrates the impact of inaction inertia on decision making. Based on research on the causes of inaction inertia, we show that it is a multi-determined phenomenon, explained by both valuation and regret considerations. Moreover, we demonstrate how a sour grapes explanation of inaction inertia might integrate these two accounts. Furthermore, we explain when inaction inertia is most likely to occur and how it can be prevented. We conclude that the inaction inertia literature does not only add to our understanding of this intriguing phenomenon, but also contributes to related social psychological phenomena, such as the sunk cost effect, sequential decision making, decision avoidance (e.g., choice deferral, status quo bias, decisional conflict), and procrastination.     

Attentional attraction of receptive fields can explain spatial and temporal effects of attention

A multitude of attentional effects were found at both the neural and behavioural levels of perception; however, the nature of the attentional mechanism is an unsettled issue. It is typically assumed that the fundamental impact of attention is enhancement of neuronal responses, but some attentional effects are difficult to explain by such gain modulations. Here we offer a different view: We suggest that the most fundamental impact of attention is the attraction (shift) of receptive fields towards the attended location. We further show, both conceptually and by model simulations, that this attraction of receptive fields can explain a diverse range of attentional effects, spatial as well as temporal, linking physiological measurements at the unit level with psychophysical observations (e.g., enhanced contrast sensitivity, enhanced spatial resolution, the Mexican-hat profile of attention, prolonged perceived duration, prior entry, degraded temporal resolution).     

Group Therapy in Israel

This paper is an analysis of the group therapy and the group work phenomena in Israel as a microcosm of the Israeli society and culture. We discuss the structure of Israeli society and its features, identify the key norms and myths that express the social unconscious, and pinpoint events that mark critical points of change. Drawing on these, the paper then describes some examples of the influence of Israeli identity on participants' and group therapists' behavior, and on current training programs.     

Coping with disappointing outcomes: Retroactive pessimism and motivated inhibition of counterfactuals

Having failed to achieve a desired goal, people may use retroactive pessimism as a defense mechanism, concluding that chances of success were not too good to begin with. To make this judgment, one must block counterfactual alternatives suggesting that success was, in fact, quite likely. Facing a bitter disappointment, the perceiver is highly motivated to inhibit upward counterfactuals, thus increasing the perceived inevitability of failure and finding solace in the acceptance of inescapable fate. Two experiments explored the hypothesized link between counterfactuals inhibition and retroactive pessimism. In the first experiment, it was found that participants experiencing grave disappointment, following a near miss, judged their chances of achieving their goal less favorably, compared to participants who had missed their goal by far. An analysis on participants’ counterfactual judgments suggested that this effect was mediated by participants’ perceptions of counterfactual events. The second experiment demonstrated that retroactive pessimism and counterfactual inhibition seem to be unique to situations in which the negative outcome resulted from uncontrollable rather than controllable events, thus corroborating the functional characterization of counterfactual thinking as well as the link between retroactive pessimism and disappointment.