Sabina Spielrein: a bibliography

The work on this bibliography was carried out mostly in 2002. Though it aims at being exhaustive, the research in different languages and translations may not have yielded every document and some may still be unknown to me. It is also likely that more material have been translated since. Besides, the Spanish and Brazilian-Portuguese literature has not been researched. This is why this bibliography must be considered as a 'work in progress' which any addition can only enrich. Victor Ovcharenko has made a list of the writings of Sabina Spielrein starting with 1911, the year of her medical thesis in Zürich, and covering the years to 1931. He points out, however, that between the date of the last paper that she is known to have written and her death in 1942, there are eleven years and that it would be truly astonishing if she had neither written nor published anything during that period. Up to this date no document by her during that time has been found (Journal of Analytical Psychology, 44, 3, 1999).     

Electrophysiological evidence of automatic early semantic processing

This study investigates the automatic-controlled nature of early semantic processing by means of the Recognition Potential (RP), an event-related potential response that reflects lexical selection processes. For this purpose tasks differing in their processing requirements were used. Half of the participants performed a physical task involving a lower-upper case discrimination judgement (shallow processing requirements), whereas the other half carried out a semantic task, consisting in detecting animal names (deep processing requirements). Stimuli were identical in the two tasks. Reaction time measures revealed that the physical task was easier to perform than the semantic task. However, RP effects elicited by the physical and semantic tasks did not differ in either latency, amplitude, or topographic distribution. Thus, the results from the present study suggest that early semantic processing is automatically triggered whenever a linguistic stimulus enters the language processor.     

On the way to assess emotions in animals: do lambs (Ovis aries) evaluate an event through its suddenness, novelty, or unpredictability?

Appraisal theories provide a framework that gives insight into emotions and could allow comparisons across species. According to these theories, events are first evaluated on their suddenness, novelty, and unpredictability. The authors examined the ability of lambs (Ovis aries) to evaluate an event according to these 3 criteria through 3 tests. The lambs responded to suddenness with a startle response coupled with an increase in heart rate and to novelty with an orientation response coupled with an increase of vagal activity. There was no clear evidence that lambs can detect the predictability of an event. Those results support the usefulness of appraisal theories to assess emotion in animals.     

The misunderstanding (le malentendu)

The idea that misunderstanding is simply a problem in both the psychoanalytic situation, between analyst and patient, and in translation between one language and another, is turned on its head in this paper. Originally written in French, this paper addresses both Francophone and Anglophone psychoanalytic communities in the realization that misunderstanding is the ground from which we start in analysis. The author portrays two patients who illustrate that, even when analyst and patient speak the same language, the patient may speak in a style that the analyst must first learn to hear as a kind of dialect, to hear his own misunderstanding, in order for meaning to appear.     

Reading strategies and prior knowledge in learning from hypertext

In two experiments, we identified two main strategies followed by hypertext readers in selecting their reading orders. The first consisted in selecting the text semantically related to the previously read section (coherence strategy), and the second in choosing the most interesting text, delaying reading of less interesting sections (interest strategy). Comprehension data revealed that these strategies affected learning differently as a function of the reader's prior knowledge. For low-knowledge readers, the coherence strategy supported better learning of the content. This effect seems to rely on the improvement of reading order coherence induced by this strategy. By contrast, for intermediate-knowledge readers the coherence and the interest strategies benefited comprehension equally. In both cases, learning was supported through the active processing induced by these strategies. Discussion focuses on resolving inconsistencies in the literature concerning whether or not hypertext supports better comprehension than does traditional linear texts.     

The Impact of the Built Environment on Children’s School Conduct Grades: The Role of Diversity of Use in a Hispanic Neighborhood

A population-based study examined the relationship between diversity of use of the built environment and teacher reports of children’s grades. Diversity of use of the built environment (i.e., proportion of a block that is residential, institutional, commercial and vacant) was assessed for all 403 city blocks in East Little Havana, Miami—a Hispanic neighborhood. Cluster analysis identified three block-types, based on diversity of use: Residential, Mixed-Use, and Commercial. Cross-classified hierarchical linear modeling was used to examine the impact of diversity of use, school, gender, and year-in-school on academic and conduct grades for 2857 public school children who lived in these blocks. Contrary to popular belief, mixed-use blocks were associated with optimal outcomes. Specifically, follow-up analyses found that a youth living on a residential block had a 74% greater odds of being in the lowest 10% of conduct grades (conduct GPA <2.17) than a youth living on a mixed-use block. In fact, an analysis of the population attributable fraction suggests that if the risk associated with residential blocks could be reduced to the level of risk associated with mixed-use blocks, a 38% reduction in Conduct GPAs <2.17 could be achieved in the total population. These findings suggest that public policy targeting the built environment may be a mechanism for community-based interventions to enhance children’s classroom conduct, and potentially related sequelae.     

An ingroup advantage for confidence in emotion recognition judgments: the moderating effect of familiarity with the expressions of outgroup members

The confidence we have in our assessment of an interaction partner's emotional state can have important consequences for the quality of the interaction. Two studies assessed the hypothesis that immigrants are more confident in their judgment of others' emotional facial expressions if the expresser is a member of their cultural ingroup rather than a member of the host community or another cultural group. In addition, the effects of the perceived familiarity with the type of expression, the length of residence in the host country, the quality of cross-cultural contact, the level of acculturation, and the intensity of the facial expressions were assessed. Overall, the results revealed an ingroup advantage effect for confidence ratings as well as support for the notion that individuals are more confident when judging expressions that they consider as more frequently displayed in everyday life. Furthermore, individuals were more confident when judging happiness expressions as well as more intense expressions in general.     

Task demand effects on postural control in older adults

The literature shows conflicting results regarding older adults' (OA) postural control performance. Differing task demands amongst scientific studies may contribute to such ambiguous results. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the performance of postural control in older adults and the relationship between visual information and body sway as a function of task demands. Old and young adults (YA) maintained an upright stance on different bases of support (normal, tandem and reduced), both with and without vision, and both with and without room movement. In the more demanding tasks, the older adults displayed greater body sway than the younger adults and older adults were more influenced by the manipulation of the visual information due to the room movement. However, in the normal support condition, the influence of the moving room was similar for the two groups. These results suggest that task demand is an important aspect to consider when examining postural control in older adults.     

Evaluation of consequences of test use in validity theory

There is little doubt about the importance of validity during the compilation and evaluation of tests. Nevertheless, intense debate has arisen with regard to incorporating the consequences of test use as a further source of evidence in the most recent edition of the AERA, APA, NCME Standards . After reviewing the historical antecedents of the issue and the main lines of approach of both defenders and critics, this paper sets out the arguments which may be used in answer to the question: 'At what point should the analysis of the consequences of test use become part of validation?' The response of the AERA, APA, NCME Standards has clear similarities with the perspective adopted towards the consideration of bias in tests as a problem of validity. Finally, the paper describes how consequence validation may be subject to tension arising from the evolution of notions of justice in test use.     

Self regulation processes measurement through self-report methodology

Nowadays the evaluation of self-regulated learning processes is having a critical time due to the problems concerning the assessment instruments. This paper presents the outcomes of a research study having a main goal: evaluate to what extent student's consciousness of his/her own self-regulated learning and study processes (and the involved strategies and activities) has a significant impact on the quality of his/her answers on self-report type instruments. In order to prove this hypothesis an experimental study was designed and built including a pre and a post-test, having no control group, using a sample of 90 college students from different degree courses. The intervention program lasted 45 hours, divided into 8 work sessions of 5 hours each. The developed work included both theoretical and practical tasks dealing with strategies and activities involved in the self-regulated learning and study processes. The results show that the collected data using a self-report instrument is much more significant and accurate after the intervention program has taken place and that the intervention greatly improves the obtained information using these kind of instruments.