Whole-body posture planning in anticipation of a manual prehension task: Prospective and retrospective effects

This study examined the extent to which the anticipation of a manual action task influences whole-body postural planning and orientation. Our participants walked up to a drawer, opened the drawer, then grasped and moved an object in the drawer to another location in the same drawer. The starting placement of the object within the drawer and the final placement of the object in the drawer were varied across trials in either a blocked design (i.e., in trials where the same start and end location were repeated consecutively) or in a mixed fashion. Of primary interest was the posture adopted at the moment of grasping the drawer handle before pulling it out prior to the object manipulation task. Of secondary interest was whether there were sequential effects such that postures adopted in preceding trials influenced postures in subsequent trials. The results indicated that the spatial properties of the forthcoming object manipulation influenced both the postures adopted by the participants and the degree to which the drawer was opened, suggesting a prospective effect. In addition, the adopted postures were more consistent in blocked trials than in mixed trials, suggesting an additional retrospective effect. Overall, our findings suggest that motor planning occurs at the level of the whole body, and reflects both prospective and retrospective influences.     

Against the Compositional View of Facts

It is commonly assumed that facts would be complex entities made out of particulars and universals. This thesis, which I call Compositionalism, holds that parthood may be construed broadly enough so that the relation that holds between a fact and the entities it ‘ties’ together counts as a kind of parthood. I argue, first, that Compositionalism is incompatible with the possibility of certain kinds of fact and universal, and, second, that such facts and universals are possible. I conclude that Compositionalism is false. What all these kinds of fact and universal have in common is a violation of supplementation principles governing any relation that may be intelligibly regarded as a kind of parthood. Although my arguments apply to Compositionalism generally, I focus on recent work by David Armstrong, who is a prominent and explicit Compositionalist.     

MEASURING SATISFACTION IN JEWISH “UTOPIA”

As a framework for social analysis, utopia is usually the province of classicists and political theorists. Yet practitioners of Jewish social studies — particularly specialists on the subject of the kibbutz — have much to offer non‐regional specialists of intentional communities and micropolities. Indeed, by applying standard social scientific techniques of survey and analysis, the kibbutz framework re‐emerges as a viable construct within contemporary comparative politics and sociology. Here, two similarly planned communities in the Negev desert, with founding memberships including a core (approximately one‐third) of “progressive” (i.e.Reform) Jewish emigrants from the USA, are analysed and compared statistically along several indices of satisfaction. Significant differences arise in the areas of personal relations, economic security, contentment with children’s education, and standard of living. Contrasting degrees of ideological and theological flexibility — attributable, in these two communities, to middle ageing and child rearing — may also account for different success outcomes. Measurement of satisfaction levels in Israel can help other neo‐utopian movements refine their proposed programmes and quantify their claims to superior socio‐political planning.     

Failure to Mentalize: Defect or Defense?

ABSTRACT

The author reviews current thinking on the phenomena of failure to mentalize and provides an alternative to the structural defect point of view. Also included are some clinical implications of this alternative viewpoint.