Acting-out: its functions within analytic group psychotherapy and its transformation into dreams

In group processes, acting-out has diverse functions, all of them equally important. It has an intrapsychic, interpersonal, and group dynamic function. Not only may it be understood as a form of resistance, but also in its communicative and reparative potential. The authors investigate the thesis that acting-out also contains the seed for change, thus helping patients divest themselves of pathological behavior. Using a group process as an example, this article shows how boundaries can be drawn between past and present experiences while using the communicative and reparative functions of acting-out. Unconscious psychodynamics can then be transformed from acting-out into dreams.     

Experiences of longing in Norwegian and Swedish 4- and 5-year-old children

Longing can be defined as a blend of the primary emotions of happiness and sadness. These primary emotions are experienced very early by children, and the meanings of the words happiness and sadness are also known by children early in their verbal development. To find out at what age children are able to understand and use the more developed concept of longing, the authors interviewed 74 preschoolers (4- and 5-year-olds) in Norway and Sweden about their experiences of longing. Chi-square analyses showed age and sex differences in knowledge of the concept, and some differences between categories of longing were also significant. Results showed that young children's ability to understand and use the concept of longing appears to be limited and that girls seem to mature earlier in this respect than boys do.     

Memory for multidimensional source information

Source memory may comprise recollection of multiple features of the encoding episode. To analyze the simultaneous representation and retrieval of those multiple features, a multinomial memory model is presented that measures memory for crossed dimensions of source information. The first experiment investigated the validity of the new model. The model showed an excellent statistical fit to empirical data, and the parameters of multidimensional source memory were sensitive to manipulations of source similarity on distinct dimensions. The second experiment used the model to test the hypothesis that source memory for individual context attributes is stochastically related in the case of conscious recollection but independent in the case of familiarity-based recognition judgments. The prediction was supported by the introduction of a "remember"-"know" distinction in a multidimensional source memory test.     

Place learning in scopolamine-treated rats: the roles of distal cues and catecholaminergic mediation

Experiments 1 and 2 tested the hypothesis that cholinergic receptor antagonists impair place learning in a water maze by interfering with the processing of distal, visual cues. Extramaze cues were offered to rats in the form of geometrical patterns arranged on the inner circumference of a curtain surrounding the water maze. In Experiment 1 the animals were offered both the distal cues and proximal cues in the form of pingpong balls in fixed positions on the surface of the water while only distal cues were present in Experiment 2. Animals were injected with either scopolamine (0.5 mg/kg body wt) or saline 20 min prior to the daily place learning sessions. Upon reaching criterion level performance the animals were tested on "rotation" sessions on which the distal cues were displaced. The outcome of such "rotations" demonstrated that-regardless of the presence or absence of proximal cues-scopolamine-treated rats relied at least as much as normal animals on the distal cues. The acquisition phase of both Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated an almost complete lack of scopolamine-associated impairment in acquisition and performance of the place learning task. In Experiment 3 (when scopolamine was no longer administered) the subjects of Experiment 2 were exposed to a series of pharmacological "challenges" of their place learning performance and eventually to surgical ablation of the anteromedial prefrontal cortex. The outcome of the pharmacological challenges and the postoperative test of task performance demonstrated that the place learning performance of animals which had acquired the task under scopolamine was mediated by a neural substrate dissimilar to the substrate of task performance in normal animals. Rats acquiring the task while deprived of the cholinergic system demonstrated above-normal contributions to task mediation from catecholaminergic-probably dopaminergic-mechanisms and tentative results pointed to a "shift" toward prefrontal task mediation.     

The effects of approach and avoidance motor actions on the elements of creative insight

The authors propose that the nonaffective bodily feedback produced by arm flexion and extension informs individuals about the processing requirements of the situation, leading to the adoption of differential processing styles and thereby influencing creativity. Specifically, the authors predicted that arm flexion would elicit a heuristic processing strategy and bolster insight processes, whereas arm extension would elicit a systematic processing strategy and impair insight processes. To test these predictions, the authors assessed the effects of these motor actions on 3 central elements of creative insight: contextual set-breaking, restructuring, and mental search. As predicted, in 6 experiments, arm flexion, relative to arm extension, facilitated insight-related processes. In a 7th experiment, arm extension, relative to arm flexion, facilitated analytical reasoning, supporting a cognitive tuning interpretation of the findings.     

Attribution of aggression to acts: a four-factor model

Factors determining why acts are regarded as aggressive were investigated in a sample of 303 subjects (140 males, 163 females, M age = 17.7 yr., SD = 1.4). A model was tested, according to which people base their attribution of aggression to acts on four factors: (1) intention (yes/no), (2) reason (attack/defense), (3) injury (death/injury/no injury), and (4) mode (weapon/bare hands/nonphysical means). All four factors contributed to the explanation of attribution of aggression, and the order of importance was the one mentioned above, intention being most important. The interaction between intention and reason was the second most important, contributing more than reason alone. The findings are consistent with the severity of punishment in sentences for different crimes of violence.     

Money Doesn't Talk, It Swears: How Economic Stress and Resistance Resources Impact Inner-City Women's Depressive Mood

We examined the differential impact of chronic versus acute economic stress on depressive mood among a sample of 1241 low-income, single, European and African American women. Based on Hobfoll's (1988, 1989) conservation of resources (COR) theory, we predicted that acute resource loss would be more distressing than chronic economic lack. That is, although chronically impoverished conditions are stressful, the attendant resource losses created will be more distressing. We further predicted that mastery and social support would be more beneficial in offsetting the negative consequences of acute resource loss than the negative consequences of chronic economic lack, because acute loss creates identifiable demands that resources may address. Hence, we hypothesized that mastery and social support would show stress buffering effects only for material loss, not chronic lack. The findings generally supported the hypotheses, but mastery buffered only European American women's resource loss and social support buffered only African American women's resource loss. The findings are discussed in light of implications for prevention within theoretical and cultural contexts.