Memory in pregnancy and post‐partum: Item specific and relational encoding processes in recall and recognition

It has been recently proposed that pregnant women would perform memory tasks by focusing more on item‐specific processes and less on relational processing, compared to post‐partum women (Mickes, Wixted, Shapiro & Scarff, 2009 ). The present cross‐sectional study tested this hypothesis by directly manipulating the type of encoding employed in the study phase. Pregnant, post‐partum and control women either rated the pleasantness of word meaning (which induced item‐specific elaboration) or named the semantic category to which they belonged (which induced relational elaboration). Memory for the encoded words was later tested in free recall (which emphasizes relational processing) and in recognition (which emphasizes item‐specific processing). In line with Mickes et al.'s ( 2009 ) conclusions, pregnant women in the item‐specific condition performed worse than post‐partum women in the relational condition in free recall, but not in recognition. However, compared to the other two groups, pregnant women also exhibited lower recognition accuracy in the item‐specific condition. Overall, these results confirm that pregnant women rely on relational encoding less than post‐partum women, but additionally suggest that the former group might use item‐specific processes less efficiently than post‐partum and control women.     

Semantic components in the literal and metaphorical use of movement verbs

The study analyzes acceptability judgments relating to sentences that have the same syntactic structure (subject-verb-locative) and varying possibilities of semantic anomaly. Twelve movement verbs were used—that is, 12 verbs indicating a change in position or location; a componential analysis of these verbs was carried out beforehand by the authors. In all, 288 sentences were constructed by combining these 12 verbs with 24 subject-locative pairs. The subjects (university students) were asked to judge the acceptability of the sentences on a 5-step scale. The data were subjected to two methods of factor analysis; in this way three factors were revealed. By examining the verbs loaded on the three factors in the light of the abovementioned componential analysis, it was found that certain components, if present, reduced the probability that a sentence would be judged acceptable in a metaphorical sense; this was especially true of the components use of instruments and typically human character of the action, which, in the sentences with nonhuman subject, are contradictory with the meaning of the subject, and of medium-specific, often contradictory with the meaning of the locative. The results are discussed in relation to some theoretical and methodological problems in current research on the comprehension of metaphor.     

The Milan Approach,History, and Evolution

The two authors intend to underline the continuities and discontinuities that organize the Milan Approach, after the splitting from Selvini Palazzoli and Prata; they intend to tell the teachings of Luigi Boscolo and Gianfranco Cecchin from the beginning of training in 1978 till nowadays. After having spoken of some important stages in the work till the death of the two masters, the article underlines two major new aspects. 1. We speak about the corporeal turn: embodied experience as preconceptual know‐how from which concepts are structured. We speak about the connections between bodies and social issues that enact forms of knowledge and understanding. 2. In this period of war, violence, and tyranny, we speak about epistemology and ontology as complementary stances: the need to let others disclose themselves, by allowing them to speak their own terms of engagement. The therapeutic effort is one of deactivating the dangers of one’s own presuppositions and prejudices that limit one’s capacity to describe and make hypothesis. There are social ontologies, communities with strong moral intensity, historical and social realities that need therapists to take position, since they need to take side and be aware of the categories they utilize. Historical and social ontology deals with the continuous change of symptoms in connection to the continuous change of the social panorama in the context we live in. We live by the bodies we are.     

Bounded stability of the quiet standing posture: an intermittent control model

The paper presents a control model of body sway in quiet standing, which aims at achieving bounded stability by means of an intermittent control mechanism. Control bursts are generated when the current state vector exits an area of uncertainty around the reference point in the phase plane. This area is determined by the limited resolution of proprioceptive signals and the burst generation mechanism is predictive in the sense that it incorporates a rough, but working knowledge (internal model) of the biomechanics of the human inverted pendulum. We show that such a model, in spite of its simplicity and of the fact that it relies on very noisy measurements, is robust and can explain in a detailed way the measured sway patterns.     

Depth stratification in illusory-contour figures on heterogeneous backgrounds is independent of contour clarity and brightness enhancement

Depth stratification in illusory-contour figures was studied by superimposing Kanizsa figures on heterogeneous backgrounds. Gaussian-noise textures were employed in two rating-scale experiments to explore observers' judgments of (i) illusory-contour clarity, (ii) brightness enhancement, and (iii) depth stratification. In experiment 1, depth stratification was found to be stronger in heterogeneous conditions. In experiment 2, texture coarseness was manipulated to determine how depth stratification is affected by linear elements of different sizes in the background, and to relate the variation to contour clarity and brightness enhancement. Results suggest that depth stratification is independent of contour clarity and brightness enhancement. Preliminary novel observations on illusory-contour formation are reported.     

The logic of turmoil: some epistemological and clinical considerations on emotional experience and the infinite

The idea of the infinite has its origins in the very beginnings of western philosophy and was developed significantly by modern philosophers such as Galileo and Leibniz. Freud discovered the Unconscious which does not respect the laws of classical logic, flouting its fundamental principle of non-contradiction. This opened the way to a new epistemology in which classical logic coexists with an aberrant logic of infinite affects. Matte Blanco reorganized this Freudian revolution in logic and introduced the concept of bi-logic, which is an intermingling of symmetric and Aristotelic logics. The authors explore some epistemological and clinical aspects of the functioning of the deep unconscious where the emergence of infinity threatens to overwhelm the containing function of thought, connecting this topic to some of Bion's propositions. They then suggest that bodily experiences can be considered a prime source of the logic of turmoil, and link a psychoanalytic consideration of the infinite to the mind-body relation. Emotional catastrophe is seen both as a defect-a breakdown of the unfolding function which translates unconscious material into conscious experience-and as the consequence of affective bodily pressures. These pressures function in turn as symmetrizing or infinitizing operators. Two clinical vignettes are presented to exemplify the hypotheses.     

Prosocial behaviour mediates the relation between empathy and aggression in primary school children

ABSTRACT

The negative association between empathy and aggression has been widely investigated in the literature. However, the role of potential mediators and the extent to which their effects are gender-specific have been given considerably less attention. The present cross-sectional study was therefore aimed at examining the direct and indirect relations between empathy (differentiated into perspective taking and empathic concern), prosocial behaviour and aggression in a sample of 240 primary school children between 8 and 12 years of age. The results showed that perspective taking and empathic concern had indirect (rather than direct) negative effects on aggression by enhancing prosocial behaviour. These indirect paths applied equally well to boys and girls, although significant gender differences were observed in empathic concern, prosocial behaviour and aggression. Possible explanations and differences with previous studies are discussed.     

Epistemic Operators in Dependence Logic

The properties of the ${\forall^{1}}$ quantifier defined by Kontinen and Väänänen in [13] are studied, and its definition is generalized to that of a family of quantifiers ${\forall^{n}}$ . Furthermore, some epistemic operators δ ⁿ for Dependence Logic are also introduced, and the relationship between these ${\forall^{n}}$ quantifiers and the δ ⁿ operators are investigated. The Game Theoretic Semantics for Dependence Logic and the corresponding Ehrenfeucht- Fraissé game are then adapted to these new connectives. Finally, it is proved that the ${\forall^{1}}$ quantifier is not uniformly definable in Dependence Logic, thus answering a question posed by Kontinen and Väänänen in the above mentioned paper.