On psychic elements in a case of autistoid perversion

The paper explores the formation of psychic elements from an epistemological point of view, drawing on the work of Bion to examine a clinical case of autistoid perversion. Distinguishing the qualification of psychic elements from the realization of pre‐conceptions, the paper argues that psychical elements are constituted through a mutually shared experience of presence, and so they should be understood in a paradoxical way – through being‐O and transformations into K. These ideas are explored via a clinical case concerning a patient with an autistoid–perverse organization. The patient had been denied any bodily contact with her parents during her first year of life due to an infection; in later life she exhibited an autistoid coprophilic perversion. During the course of her treatment, as it became possible to break down the autistoid organization, the nameless contents surfaced in a mutually shared experience of presence. The analyst was able to hold on to their meaning, which was unavailable to the patient. The absent analyst, however, turned into the mother who ‘put the child down’ and was experienced by the patient as a suicidal threat. In being‐O, the analyst was able to endure the paradox of being the one who ‘put her down’ in order not to put her down; the paradox of being‐O functioned as a container for the destructive objectal dimension of the state of ‘being put down’.     

Chromatic information processing

The investigation of visual processing mediated solely by chromatic information requires conditions preventing a subject's use of the luminance differences normally accompanying a chromatic change. In Experiment 1, which involved a discriminative reaction time (RT) task, chromatic and white stimuli of the same luminance were presented on a dimmer achromatic background. Subjects were instructed to respond only to the chromatic stimuli. RT was slowest at 570 nm and somewhat faster to short wavelengths than to long wavelengths. In Experiment 2, which compared two discriminative RT tasks, RT was faster when subjects responded to color than when they responded to white. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that a brighter white surround decreased the perceived brightness of chromatic stimuli as well as their perceptual similarity to white, but did not affect RT. The results are discussed in terms of the response strength of the chromatic processing channel.     

Implicit learning of new verbal associations

Implicit learning of a series of new verbal associations was studied in four experiments. The first two experiments demonstrated that learning of a repeating sequence of verbal stimuli may occur without awareness, but only when the stimulus-response mapping requires an attention-demanding activity: Subjects who were unaware of the sequence learned when instructed to categorize the stimuli, but not when instructed simply to read them. However, in both situations, unaware subjects performed no better than untrained control subjects in expressing their knowledge of the sequence explicitly. In Experiments 3 and 4, subjects showed implicit learning when the task involved either motor responses to verbal stimuli or verbal responses to spatially arranged stimuli. These findings are discussed in terms of the conditions under which implicit learning can be obtained. First, they demonstrate implicit learning of a set of new associations in the verbal domain. Second, the data suggest that attention is important in implicit learning. Finally, the degree of interitem organization that is familiar preexperimentally seems to partially determine the amount of implicit learning.     

EFFECT OF RIBONUCLEIC ACID (RNA) EXTRACTED FROM THE BRAIN OF TRAINED ANIMALS ON LEARNING IN RATS

Rats receiving an intracisternal injection of RNA prepared from the brains of rats trained in two different training situations showed different performances in identical test situations.     

EFFECT OF RIBONUCLEIC ACID (RNA) EXTRACTED FROM THE BRAIN OF TRAINED ANIMALS ON LEARNING IN RATS

Rats receiving an intracisternal injection of RNA prepared from the brain of trained rats had a better performance during seven days in the same training set-up, than rats receiving RNA from untrained animals and rats receiving no injection.     

Positional Sequences in Two-Choice Discrimination Problems with Non-Positional Cues

Individuals seem to differ in their ability to maintain consistent performance. This is obviously an important attribute of behavior that has been largely neglected by researchers. There is, however, some evidence to suggest that, in certain types of situations, the behaviors of the mental retardate are characterized by a relatively high degree of variability. Two studies are reported here that deal with some of the developmental implications of intraindividual variability. In one study, involving retardates, reliability and generality of response consistency were examined in reaction time, time estimation, and digit span tasks. It was shown that individual differences in consistency are reliable and that these generalize across tasks. A second experiment was concerned with the developmental aspects of variability. First-, third-, and fifth-grade pupils and college students were given many trials on a reaction-time task. A variety of measures, reflecting typical performance, limit of performance, and variability, were computed for each subject. The ability to react quickly shows a developmental trend not only with respect to overall performance, but also in the efficiency with whichthe individual maintains his optimal level of responding.     

Thinking About What Might Have Happened: Counterfactual Thinking and Post‐traumatic Stress in Individuals Directly and Indirectly Exposed to the 2011 Oslo Bombing

Counterfactual thinking (CFT), that is thinking about what might have happened, is linked to post‐traumatic stress. We studied the relationship between type and frequency of CFT and post‐traumatic stress in a sample of directly (n = 50) and indirectly exposed (n = 50) ministerial employees 4 years after the 2011 Oslo bombing. The results showed that frequency of CFT was associated with levels of post‐traumatic stress, among both directly and indirectly exposed participants. In the directly exposed group, self‐reported frequencies of downward counterfactuals were associated with post‐traumatic stress. A similar trend was found for upward counterfactuals. In the indirectly exposed group, self‐reported frequencies of both upward and downward counterfactuals were associated with higher levels of post‐traumatic stress. These results point to the intriguing possibility that people may not only develop post‐traumatic stress disorder as a result of actual experiences, but also via mental simulations of traumatic events that could have happened. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.