Applications,Implications, Complications: Reply to Reviews by Elkind,Gerson, and Levine

The author appreciates the careful reading and thoughtful reviews by Sue Elkind, Sam Gerson, and Howard Levine. Elkind's review particularly captures and articulates many of the key ideas in the book Building Bridges: The Negotiation of Paradox in Psychoanalysis and creatively applies concepts of negotiation, paradox, an inherently multiple “distributed self,” and metaphor in her own work consulting on treatment impasses. Gerson incisively focuses on the core idea of recognizing, accepting, and bridging differences and contradictions in personal, and national, perspectives; he also articulates an understanding of the attempt of relational analytic writers to bridge the intrapsychic and the interpersonal with due recognition of each. The author replies extensively to Levine's comparison of Pizer's work with that of Semrad and other “classical” analysts and challenges Levine's premise that a relational perspective, grounded as it is in a two-person contextual psychology, ignores or devalues interpretation, insight, free association, and autonomous mental functioning. Quoting from clinical material in his book, Pizer presents the outcome of a “relational” analysis in terms of the patient's increased access to internal “potential space,” unconscious experience, curiosity, and reflectiveness about the mental life of self and other, and an increased ability to value personal experience in relationship and in solitude.     

Learning how to help others: Two-year-olds’ social learning of a prosocial act

Engaging in prosocial behaviors (acts that benefit others) is associated with many positive outcomes in children, including the development of positive peer relationships, academic achievement, and good psychological functioning. This study examined the social learning mechanisms toddlers use to acquire prosocial behaviors. This brief report presents a new experimental procedure in which 2-year-olds (28–32 months, N = 30) saw a video of an adult performing a novel prosocial behavior in response to another person’s distress. Children then had the opportunity to imitate and implement the behavior in response to their own parent’s physical distress. Children who saw the video were more likely to perform the novel action and to display non-demonstrated prosocial behaviors relative to (a) children who did not view the video but saw a parent in distress and (b) children who saw the video but witnessed their mother engage in a neutral activity. These results suggest that toddlers imitate and emulate prosocial behaviors for social interaction and that children can apply such behaviors in appropriate situations.     

Do young children spell words syllabically? Evidence from learners of Brazilian Portuguese

The theory that learners of alphabetic writing systems go through a period during which they treat writing as representing syllables is highly influential, especially as applied to learners of Romance languages. The results of Study 1, a 2-year longitudinal study of 76 Portuguese speakers in Brazil from 4 to 6 years of age, did not support this theory. Although most children produced some spellings of words in which the number of letters matched the number of syllables, few children produced significantly more such spellings than expected on the basis of chance. When such spellings did occur, they appeared to reflect partially successful attempts to represent phonemes rather than attempts to represent syllables. Study 2, with 68 Brazilian 4- and 5-year-olds, found similar results even when children spelled words that contained three or four syllables in which all vowels are letter names—conditions that have been thought to favor syllabic spelling. The influential theory that learners of Romance languages go through a period during which they use writing to represent the level of syllables appears to lack a solid empirical foundation.     

Tests of a Cognitive-Resource-Allocation Account of the Bizarreness Effect

The authors examined the role of cognitive-resource allocation in obtaining the often reported memory advantage for bizarre relative to common information by using the secondary-task method in 4 experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, they investigated the relationship between differences in cognitive resource allocation during comprehension and in recall for common and bizarre information. In Experiments 3 and 4, they investigated the same relationship but measured cognitive-resource allocation during imaging rather than during comprehension. Although bizarre items required more time to comprehend and to image than did common items, the differences were not reliable predictors of the recall differences between item types. Furthermore, analyses of response latencies to a secondary task provided no compelling evidence in support of a cognitive-resource-allocation explanation of bizarreness effects. Implications for the development of a comprehensive model of the influence of bizarreness on memory are discussed.     

Is Memory for Head Orientation Based on a Left-Looking Schema?

Research has shown that people misremember right-looking heads on coins as facing to the left, suggesting a general memory schema that favors left-lookers. This hypothesis was investigated in a study of 241 subjects in three experiments who were shown photographs of faces looking to the left, to the right, or at the observer and were later asked to identify whether each one had subsequently been left-right reversed. Also, in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively, initial judgments of liking and of orientation were obtained. Unexpectedly, orientation memory accuracy was lower after a 5-s exposure than after a 1-s exposure, and after initial judgments of lateral orientation than after judgments of liking. Although the difference between left- and right-lookers was significant in only 2 of 14 comparisons, aggregated data showed that identification accuracy was generally higher for left-lookers, with a mean effect size of 0.16. Although small, this difference is consistent with the hypothesis of a left-looking schema for heads.     

Interplay of Biomechanical Constraints and Kinematic Strategies in Selecting Arm Postures

In this study, the authors examined the interplay between biomechanics and control strategies in the resolution of excess degrees of freedom at the joint level. Seven participants made aimed arm movements from 30 starting points and several starting postures to targets. Final arm postures for movements to a target exhibited substantial joint angle variation. Through regression modeling and by comparing observed final arm postures with biomechanically plausible postures, the authors identified 3 kinematic strategies: (a) Maintain deviations from the average angle at the starting point to the joint's final posture; (b) make torso rotations that are a fixed proportion of shoulder rotations; and (c) adopt a characteristic combination of 4 wrist-positioning approaches. The results demonstrated that kinematic strategies can account for substantial variance in final arm postures, if one takes into account 2 types of individual differences—those that arise inevitably from biomechanical constraints and those that reflect choices in movement strategy.     

Motor Programming Is Not the Only Process Which Can Influence RT

The current status of research on the memory drum theory is evaluated with emphasis on the issues raised by Marteniuk and MacKenzie (1981). A general theme emerging from this review is that response programming is not the only process which can influence RT and that distinguishing programming from non-programming effects clarifies rather than “clouds? the issues.     

Mass and Shading Effects on Masculine-Feminine Judgments on the Rorschach

College students were used to test the hypotheses that judgment of an achromatic Rorschach Inkblot as ‘masculine’ is a function of largeness of mass, and darkness of shading, and judgment of one as ‘feminine’ is a function of smallness of mass and lightness of shading. It was also predicted that the sex of the judge does not influence these judgments.

The standard inkblots and mass and shading control blots were used with the semantic differential and a masculine-feminine sort technique.

The results generally supported the hypotheses tested with the ‘shading hypotheses’ receiving the strongest support. The results were related, with reservation, to the “father” and “mother” hypotheses of cards IV and VII.     

Gender Differences in Drinking Motivations and Outcomes

To investigate gender differences in the dynaijiics of alcohol use, we gathered self-report data from male and female college students. Results of our experiment showed that dominance power motivations were correlated with negative drinking outcomes for both men and women; assertiveness power motivations were associated with negative outcomes only for women. For both sexes, a higher proportion of positive social motivations was associated with fewer negative drinking outcomes. We expect that, in addition to the more traditionally defined needs for dominance power shown to be important for drinking among men, women may use alcohol in relation to needs for assertiveness and self-expression.     

Maintaining Order and Following the Rules: Gender Differences in Punishing Inmate Misconduct

For this article, we examine gender differences in how staff members address inmate misconduct. Using in-depth interviews with forty-three correctional employees, we focus on how their various disciplinary styles create interpersonal conflict between staff members. We find that over half of interviewees are identified as “formal responders” who consistently punish inmate misconduct with formal sanctions, even if doing so creates conflict within the organization. However, female formal responders also claim that they work closely with male inmates to explain the importance of following the rules. They state that this puts them at odds with their male co-workers who misinterpret this behavior as instigating sexual relationships.