"The Great Transformation" and suicide: local and long-lasting effects of 1930 bank suspensions

Depression-era bank suspensions and failures are conceptualized as products of the first part of what Polanyi (1994) called "The Great Transformation," which involved an imbalanced institutional arrangement in which the economy dominated other institutions. Relying on Durkheim (1897/1951) and Merton (1938, 1968), it is argued that these banking problems accentuated the type of chronic anomie that Durkheim theorized would create normative deregulation and elevated suicide rates over the long-term. Results from county-level analyses are supportive as the 1930 bank suspension rate is positively related to the 2000 suicide rate, controlling for contemporary and historical factors. The mediating roles of integration and chronic anomie are considered, with the latter measured using data from the geocoded General Social Survey.     

We're all career researchers now: breaking open career education and DOTS

This paper reviews career education in the UK's statutory, further and higher education sectors, and finds that, despite considerable changes in theory, provision remains based on the traditional DOTS model of decision learning, opportunity awareness, transition learning and self-awareness. It is argued that the persistent and hegemonic status of this model has delayed the adoption of innovative theory and the development of creative new frameworks. In order to provide policy and practice with new perspectives, a critical reassessment of the DOTS model is conducted, focusing on three areas: theoretical roots; individual-environment interpenetration; and self-opportunity matching. The role of students as career researchers, illustrated by examples drawn from current career education practice, is proposed to indicate new directions for both subject specialists and careers workers.     

Bringing Up Nones: Intergenerational Influences and Cohort Trends

Recent polls show that an increasing number of young adults profess no religious affiliation. Prior research has suggested several explanations for this, among them older ages at marriage, higher education rates, reaction against the priest/pedophile scandal, and political backlash against the religious right, as well as the traditional explanation of youthful rebellion against religious parents. In this article, we propose another theory: intergenerational transmission, an increase in the number of parents and grandparents who have been explicitly socializing their children to a nonreligious worldview. We use a mixed methods approach with data from the 34‐year Longitudinal Study of Generations to examine parents’ and grandparents’ influence on youth over several decades. The rate of nonreligious young persons in our sample tripled between 1971 and 2005. Though this undoubtedly reflects broader cohort trends, we can trace a significant portion of this growth to family intergenerational continuity brought about by explicitly nonreligious socialization by parents as well as grandparents. Qualitative data provide insight into processes of nonreligious influence over generations, seen in three types: multigenerational socialization of humanism, of atheism, and of the unintended socialization of “religious rebels” from highly religious parents.     

Relationship between contingency awareness and human performance on random ratio and random interval schedules

In three experiments, human participants pressed the space bar on a computer keyboard to earn points on random-ratio (RR) and random-interval (RI) schedules of reinforcement. Verbalized contingency awareness (CA) for each schedule was measured after the entire task (Experiments 1 and 2), or after each RR–RI trial (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, an ability to accurately verbalize the appropriate contingency for each schedule was associated with typical schedule responding. In addition, lagged correlational analysis of verbalized contingency awareness and schedule performance was undertaken in Experiment 3. Results of these correlations initially suggested that CA scores were better predictors of typical schedule performance on the following trial than typical schedule performance was of CA scores on the following trial; however, further analysis revealed no significant differences between the alternate lagged correlation types in each pair. Findings, therefore, suggest that operant performance on RR and RI schedules is associated with participant-derived rule governed behavior, and results are discussed in terms of the introduction of a new paradigm for measuring this association, and the potential for further research to manipulate these parameters further in order to investigate causality in this respect.     

The role of kinematics in cortical regions for continuous human motion perception

It has been proposed that we make sense of the movements of others by observing fluctuations in the kinematic properties of their actions. At the neural level, activity in the human motion complex (hMT+) and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) has been implicated in this relationship. However, previous neuroimaging studies have largely utilized brief, diminished stimuli, and the role of relevant kinematic parameters for the processing of human action remains unclear. We addressed this issue by showing extended-duration natural displays of an actor engaged in two common activities, to 12 participants in an fMRI study under passive viewing conditions. Our region-of-interest analysis focused on three neural areas (hMT+, pSTS, and fusiform face area) and was accompanied by a whole-brain analysis. The kinematic properties of the actor, particularly the speed of body part motion and the distance between body parts, were related to activity in hMT+ and pSTS. Whole-brain exploratory analyses revealed additional areas in posterior cortex, frontal cortex, and the cerebellum whose activity was related to these features. These results indicate that the kinematic properties of peoples’ movements are continually monitored during everyday activity as a step to determining actions and intent.     

Presentism,truthmakers and distributional properties

Presentists face a challenge from truthmaker theory: if you hold that the only existing objects are presently existing objects and, moreover, you agree that truth supervenes on being, then you will be hard pressed to identify some existent on which a given true but traceless claim about the past supervenes. Cameron (Philos Books 49:292–301, 2008, Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, In: D Zimmerman (ed), 2011) aims to meet this challenge by appeal to distributional properties. So, to give a simple example, the truth that you were once a child supervenes on you presently instantiating the property of being initially a child and then an adult, a property distributed over time. I argue that a presentist ought to deny that distributional properties can serve as truthmakers.     

Some Thoughts on Supervision

Quite often we have the experience that adolescents do not accept an offer of treatment, in spite of the fact that they feel miserable. Or, that they do start in treatment and then change their minds and break off contact. The author reflects about factors and conditions contributing to these analytic failures. He discusses elements of analytic method, setting, neutral position, analytic relationship, and how the frames are put under pressure in work with adolescents. He thereafter presents some vignettes and examples of analytic work, where intuitive interventions and interpretations appear against a background of ordinary psychoanalytic method. For the analyst, these interventions can feel unexpected, incidental, like ideas out of the blue. On second thoughts, we may sometimes be able to trace and understand how these intuitions are based on non-conscious processes, like counter-transference feelings, an understanding of the patient still unclear and unarticulated for the analyst or perhaps a last desperate attempt to reach the patient and get in contact at a decisive or critical moment. Finally, the author reflects on the double face of psychoanalysis: both a contemplated, carefully described and systematic method and a craft with elements of intuition, creativity and, sometimes, inspiration.