Gestural impairment and gestural ability in aphasia: A review

Studies of gestural ability in aphasic subjects have found impairment of gestural expression and comprehension, with a close relationship between severity of aphasia and degree of gestural impairment. A few investigators have correlated gestural ability with specific language functions or subcategories of aphasia. Reading appears to correlate better with gestural recognition than does auditory comprehension. Despite the general findings of gestural impairment in aphasia, successes have been reported with gestural training including artificial language techniques, pantomime, Amerind, and American Sign Language. Future studies of gestural therapy in aphasia should examine specific language deficits in order to identify those aphasic individuals who can benefit from gestural training.     

Beyond Deep Incarnation: Rethinking Christology in Radical Lutheran Terms

This article takes the demise of Christendom and what Diana Butler Bass calls the end of religion as its point of departure for a “radical” rethinking of God in fully kenotic terms. It rejects any vestige of otherworldly transcendence as a temptation to escapism, inviting us instead to seek God's complete presence among us here in the world. Going beyond Niels Gregersen's understanding of the deep incarnation of the Logos and starting instead with a complete commitment to the infra‐Lutheranum, the author presents a radical Lutheran theology that embraces a total kenosis of God whose liberating and life‐giving reappearance we must find implicit among us in unexpected places, not least of which might include the embers of a dying church or the crumbling of our religious institutions.     

Errors and Understanding: The Effects of Error-Management Training on Creative Problem-Solving

People make errors in their creative problem-solving efforts. The intent of this article was to assess whether error-management training would improve performance on creative problem-solving tasks. Undergraduates were asked to solve an educational leadership problem known to call for creative thought where problem solutions were scored for quality, originality, and elegance. Prior to beginning work on their problem solutions, participants were provided with training in 0 to 4 error-management strategies. It was found that error-management training was beneficial for talented people (as indicated by scores on the pretraining exercise) resulting in solutions of greater originality. The implications of these findings for improving performance on creative problem-solving tasks are discussed.     

Assessment for the U.S. Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program: the Global Assessment Tool

Psychology and the U.S. military have a long history of collaboration. The U.S. Army Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) program aims to measure the psychosocial strengths and assets of soldiers as well as their problems, to identify those in need of basic training in a given domain as well as those who would benefit from advanced training, and then to provide that training. The goals of the CSF program include the promotion of well-being as well as the prevention of problems. Assessment is the linchpin of the CSF program, and the Global Assessment Tool (GAT) is a self-report survey that measures psychosocial fitness in emotional, social, family, and spiritual domains. We review the history of psychological assessment in the military and the lessons taught by this history. Then we describe the process by which the GAT was developed and evaluated. We conclude with a discussion of pending next steps in the development and use of the GAT.     

Display-wide influences on figure–ground perception: The case of symmetry

Past research has demonstrated that convex regions are increasingly likely to be perceived as figures as the number of alternating convex and concave regions in test displays increases. This region-number effect depends on both a small preexisting preference for convex over concave objects and the presence of scene characteristics (i.e., uniform fill) that allow the integration of the concave regions into a background object/surface. These factors work together to enable the percept of convex objects in front of a background. We investigated whether region-number effects generalize to another property, symmetry, whose effectiveness as a figure property has been debated. Observers reported which regions they perceived as figures in black-and-white displays with alternating symmetric/asymmetric regions. In Experiments 1 and 2, the displays had articulated outer borders that preserved the symmetry/asymmetry of the outermost regions. Region-number effects were not observed, although symmetric regions were perceived as figures more often than chance. We hypothesized that the articulated outer borders prevented fitting a background interpretation to the asymmetric regions. In Experiment 3, we used straight-edge framelike outer borders and observed region-number effects for symmetry equivalent to those observed for convexity. These results (1) show that display-wide information affects figure assignment at a border, (2) extend the evidence indicating that the ability to fit background as well as foreground interpretations is critical in figure assignment, (3) reveal that symmetry and convexity are equally effective figure cues and, (4) demonstrate that symmetry serves as a figural property only when it is close to fixation.     

Mea culpa: predicting stock prices from organizational attributions

People's causal attributions for events in their lives have been shown to relate to individual and interpersonal outcomes. Groups and organizations also make causal attributions, and this article examines whether their publicly communicated attributions predict organizational-level outcomes. By content analyzing attributions contained in corporate annual reports from 14 companies during a 21-year period, the authors found that organizations that made "self disserving" attributions- internal and controllable attributions for negative events-had higher stock prices 1 year later. The authors argue that claiming personal responsibility for negative events made the organizations appear more in control, leading to more positive impressions.     

Do Split Brains Listen to Prozac?

Abstract. Cognitive science challenges our understandings of self and freedom. In this article, adapted from a chapter in Minding God: Theology and the Cognitive Sciences (Peterson 2003), I review some of the scientific literature with regard to issues of self and freedom. I argue that our sense of self is a construct and heavily dependent on the kind of brain that we have. Furthermore, understanding the issue of freedom requires an understanding of the findings of cognitive science. Human beings are constrained to be free; our biology in no small way determines the kinds of freedom that we are able to have.     

Difficulty of refusal to assist the outgroup nonmonotonically affects the intensity of prejudiced affect

Building on emotional intensity theory (Brehm in Pers Soc Psychol Rev 3:2–22, 1999), we propose that difficulty of engaging in prejudiced behavior should nonmonotonically influence prejudiced affect. In two experiments, we informed anti-gay participants about a gay and lesbian student organization’s need for assistance. We operationalized refusal to help the organization as a behavioral tendency motivated by the experienced prejudiced affect. To manipulate difficulty of refusing to help, in Study 1, participants were offered an opportunity to help by volunteering either 6 h (easy to refuse to help), 2 h (moderately difficult to refuse), or ½ h (very difficult to refuse) per week. In Study 2, we used the same manipulation except that the participants in the very difficult to refuse condition were asked to volunteer ½ h every other week. In both experiments, participants in the control condition were asked to help but no amount of time was specified. As predicted, prejudiced affect was a cubic function of difficulty of refusal to help: affect decreased from the control to the easy condition, increased from the easy to the moderately difficult condition, and, in Study 2, decreased from the moderate to the very difficult condition. Implications of the findings and future directions for research are discussed.     

Reviews: Books, Art

FINDING SPACE: WINNICOTT, GOD, AND PSYCHIC REALITY. By Ann Belford Ulanov. 232 pp. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. $24.95. ON RELIGION. By John D. Caputo. New York: Routledge Press, 2001. $12.95. ORDINARY MIND: EXPLORING THE COMMON GROUND OF ZEN AND PSYCHOTHERAPY. By Barry Magid. 190 pp. Boston: Wisdom Pub, 2001. $22.95. SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: SEXUAL SCIENCE AND CLINICAL PRACTICE. By Richard C. Friedman and Jennifer I. Downey. 352 pp. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. $35.00. EROTIC INNOCENCE: THE CULTURE OF CHILD MOLESTING. By James R. Kincaid. 352 pp. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. $24.95. PRACTICING PRESENCE: THE SPIRITUALITY OF CARING IN EVERYDAY LIFE. By Kerry Walters. 122 pp. Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, Inc., 2001. $14.95. TERRIFYING TRANSFERENCES: AFTERSHOCKS OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA. By Lawrence E. Hedges. 497 pp. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 2000. $65.00. THE ORIFICE AS SACRIFICIAL SITE: CULTURE, ORGANIZATION, AND THE BODY. By James Aho. 153 pp. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2002. $45.95. The Paintings of Joan Mitchell