The Efficacy of Acupuncture in the Treatment of Major Depression in Women

The effectiveness of acupuncture as a treatment for major depression was examined in 38 women, randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups. Specific treatment involved acupuncture treatments for symptoms of depression; nonspecific treatment involved acupuncture for symptoms that were not clearly part of depression; a wait-list condition involved waiting without treatment for 8 weeks. The nonspecific and wait-list conditions were followed by specific treatment. Five women terminated treatment prematurely, 4 prior to the completion of the first 8 weeks. Following treatments specifically designed to address depression, 64% of the women (n = 33) experienced full remission. A comparison of the acute effect of the three 8-week treatment conditions (n = 34) showed that patients receiving specific acupuncture treatments improved significantly more than those receiving the placebo-like nonspecific acupuncture treatments, and marginally more than those in the wait-list condition. Results from this small sample suggest that acupuncture can provide significant symptom relief in depression, at rates comparable to those of psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy. Acupuncture may hold sufficient promise to warrant a larger scale clinical trial.     

Mueller-Lyer illusion and size estimation performance in schizophrenics compared to normal controls

A size estimation (SE) paradigm and the Mueller-Lyer (ML) illusion were used to examine perceptual disturbances in schizophrenics. 35 reliably diagnosed (DSM III-R) schizophrenics were compared to 20 subjects with no history of psychiatric illness. Perceptual distortions found in previous studies of schizophrenics were only to a certain extent confirmed in the present results. More overestimators were found among the schizophrenics than among the normals on the SE task. The schizophrenics, first of all the chronic patients, also proved to be more prone to the Mueller-Lyer illusion. A reason why the very clear differences between schizophrenics and normals found in previous examinations were not confirmed in the present study, might be that a reliable diagnostic instrument was for the first time used in this kind of study.     

Noradrenaline loss and the disruption of between-CS stimulus generalisation effects in aversion learning

In stimulus blocking the previous conditioning to one stimulus, A, followed by conditioning to the compound stimulus, AB, results in less conditioning to the other stimulus, B. Three experiments were performed to study the effect of the prior pairing of a stimulus A (noisy bottle) with lithium chloride followed by stimulus AB (saccharin plus noisy bottle) and lithium chloride pairings upon the strength of the aversion to the target stimuls B (saccharin) in NA-depleted and control rats. The results obtained were not in keeping with a "blocking" explanation since enhancement, rather than blocking, of the saccharin aversion was obtained, and confirm several recent demonstrations of the "anti-blocking" effect from investigations using the conditioned suppression procedure. DSP4 treatment attenuated the aversion-enhancement ("anti-blocking") effects in all three experiments. The possibility that DSP4-induced noradrenaline depletions may cause some disruption of between-CS associations leading to a lesser higher order conditioning or stimulus generalisation is discussed and the present findings do add further evidence to the conclusion that noradrenaline is intimately involved in attentional processes.     

Visual speech processing: Word-decoding and word-discrimination related to sentence-based speechreading and hearing-impairment

Two aspects of visual speech processing in speechreading (word decoding and word discrimination) were tested in a group of 24 normal hearing and a group of 20 hearing-impaired subjects. Word decoding and word discrimination performance were independent of factors related to the impairment, both in a quantitative and a qualitative sense. Decoding skill, but not discrimination skill, was associated with sentence-based speechreading. The results were interpreted such that, in order to represent a critical component process in sentence-based speechreading, the visual speech perception task must entail lexically induced processing as a task-demand. The theoretical status of the word decoding task as one operationalization of a speech decoding module was discussed (Fodor, 1983). An error analysis of performance in the word decoding/discrimination tasks suggested that the perception of heard stimuli, as well as the perception of lipped stimuli, were critically dependent on the same features; that is, the temporally initial phonetic segment of the word (cf. Marslen-Wilson, 1987). Implications for a theory of visual speech perception were discussed.     

Understanding Extreme Violent Behavior in Ultra Firms: Exploring Identity Fusion from a Dialogical Perspective

This paper explores a dialogical operationalization of identity fusion in the context of football firms. An in-depth life story interview with a longstanding member of a football firm involved in several violent episodes was qualitatively analyzed. The variety of positions of the self (I-positions) as well as the dialogical relations established by such positions were examined under themes associated with identity fusion, in an attempt to understand pro-group radical violent behavior. Results suggest that a core coalition of internal I-positions and external We-positions favoring extreme ultra violence appeared to dominate the participant’s self-system. This coalition seemed to have soft boundaries among the positions compounding it and, at the same time, rigid boundaries with other positions of the self-system, operating as an I-prison, preventing alternative counter-violence voices to be heard and promoter or meta-positions to emerge. Considering that functionally equivalent forms of identity fusion have been identified in radical football violence and terrorism, this knowledge can contribute to tackle the pathways for engaging in extreme violence in favor of a group/organization. Moreover, it can be used to develop more effective programs to promote individuals’ de-fusion from different groups, whenever group adherence proves dysfunctional and risky for themselves and/or others.     

Individual differences in approach and avoidance movements: how the avoidance motive influences response force

The present research is based on the assumption that people differ in their responsiveness to incentives and threats. In two experiments we examined whether the trait corresponding to the responsiveness to threats (avoidance motive) and the trait corresponding to the responsiveness to incentives (approach motive) influence voluntary motor behavior toward or away from stimuli. In Experiment 1, stimuli consisted of positive and negative words within a lexical decision task. Participants moved their arms backward in order to withdraw from the stimuli or forward in order to approach them. In Experiment 2, participants responded with forward or backward arm movements to neutral sounds coming from behind or in front of them. The main dependent variable was the strength of the approach and avoidance movements. In both experiments this variable was related to participants' avoidance-motive disposition but not to their approach-motive disposition. Avoidance-motivated individuals generally showed more forceful avoidance movements than approach movements. There was no effect of stimulus valence on the strength of the movements in Experiment 1. Furthermore, the results of Experiment 2 suggest that it is not the physical direction (forward or backward) but rather the movement's effect of distance reduction (approach) or distance increase (avoidance) in regard to the stimulus that defines a movement as an approach or an avoidance movement.     

Rudimental numerical competence in 5-day-old domestic chicks (Gallus gallus): identification of ordinal position

Numerical competencies were investigated for the 1st time in very young nonhuman animals. Chicks (Gallus gallus) learned to identify the 3rd, 4th, or 6th positions in a series of 10 identical positions (Experiment 1). Use of spatial information (i.e., distances) was ruled out in Experiment 2 (chicks generalized the reinforced response to an array of stimuli rotated by 90 degrees as compared with training) and Experiment 3 (chicks generalized their response to a series in which distances between the single positions had been manipulated). Chicks found the correct position even when both identity and distance of each position changed from trial to trial (Experiment 4). Overall, young chicks seemed to use ordinality when required to identify a target by its numerical serial position.     

NARROW HEDONISM

Narrow hedonism is defined and defended, as a view according to which pleasurable states are individuated as concrete and total experiential situations of a sentient being at a time. Typical of such situations is that, when we are in them, we are at a certain hedonic level. They feel in a certain way for the creature in them. On this understanding of narrow hedonism, which is the only one making good sense of the theory and which was probably also intended by classical hedonists such as Bentham and Edgeworth, standard objections to hedonism, based on the claim that different pleasures have nothing in common, can be set to one side as misplaced and irrelevant. It is also hard to see how this kind of hedonism can be refined, or revised, in the direction indicated by J.S. Mill, when he wants to distinguish “higher” pleasures from “lower” ones. On this understanding of hedonism, we must claim that, those who want to follow Mill will have to rely on non-hedonistic intuitions and thus desert the hedonist camp altogether.     

Educating for Autonomy: Liberalism and Autonomy in the Capabilities Approach

Martha Nussbaum grounds her version of the capabilities approach in political liberalism. In this paper, we argue that the capabilities approach, insofar as it genuinely values the things that persons can actually do and be, must be grounded in a hybrid account of liberalism: in order to show respect for adults, its justification must be political; in order to show respect for children, however, its implementation must include a commitment to comprehensive autonomy, one that ensures that children develop the skills necessary to make meaningful choices about whether or not to exercise their basic capabilities. Importantly, in order to show respect for parents who do not necessarily recognize autonomy as a value, we argue that the liberal state, via its system of public education, should take on the role of ensuring that all children within the state develop a sufficient degree of comprehensive autonomy.