Sources

The Modern Encyclopedia of Religions in Russia and the Soviet Union edited by Paul D. Steeves. Vol. I (Aaron‐Annunciation). Academic International Press, 1988. 255 pp.

Glasnost, Christen und Genossen (Glasnost’, Christians and Comrades) edited by Norbert Sommer. Berlin: Wichern‐Verlag, 1988. Paperback, 188 pp.

Soviet Charismatics: the Pentecostals in the USSR by William C. Fletcher. New York: Peter Lang, 1985. 200 pp.

The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union by Amy W. Knight. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. 348 pp.

Every Person is First of all a History by Fr Mykhaylo Havryliv. Rome: Ukrainian Press Service, 1987. 158 pp.

The Razing of Romania's Past by Diav C. Giurescu. New York: United States Committee/International Council on Monuments and Sites, 1989. 68 pp. plus photographs     

Hierarchy and the Meaning of Working

Abstract

This study investigated the meaning of working for subjects from three levels of an organizational hierarchy. Staff members of a high technology manufacturing organization were surveyed using an abridged version of the Meaning of Working Questionnaire. Five central aspects of the ‘meaning of working’ concept were explored using this instrument, namely Work Centrality, Work Role Identification, Valued Working Outcomes, Societal Norms about Working, and Work Goals. Results show a high level of shared perceptions by members of the three hierarchical levels on ‘meaning of working’ variables, a finding which is at odds with past research, which for the most part indicates clear hierarchal effects. Such findings are discussed within the context of the internal processes of the organization as well as in a specific industry-wide framework.     

Effects of Item Difficulty on the Retrieval of Solutions during Cognitive Skill Acquisition: Age Differences

ABSTRACT

In cognitive skill learning, shifts to better strategies for obtaining solutions often occur while associations between problems and solutions are being strengthened. In two skill learning experiments, we examined the effects of item difficulty on the retrieval of solutions and the learning of problem–solution associations in younger and older adults. The results of both experiments demonstrated an ‘easy effect’ in both younger and older adults, such that the retrieval of solutions as well recognition memory for problems was best for the easier items. In addition, a ‘hard effect’ was found in younger adults, but not in older adults, whereby the retrieval of solutions as well as recognition memory for problems was better for harder items than for medium-difficulty items. The finding that increased computational demands at the item level delayed item memorization and the retrieval of solutions in older adults but not younger adults is consistent with a general-resources account of age-related differences in skill learning.     

The neural correlates of visual self-recognition

This paper presents a review of studies that were aimed at determining which brain regions are recruited during visual self-recognition, with a particular focus on self-face recognition. A complex bilateral network, involving frontal, parietal and occipital areas, appears to be associated with self-face recognition, with a particularly high implication of the right hemisphere. Results indicate that it remains difficult to determine which specific cognitive operation is reflected by each recruited brain area, in part due to the variability of used control stimuli and experimental tasks. A synthesis of the interpretations provided by previous studies is presented. The relevance of using self-recognition as an indicator of self-awareness is discussed. We argue that a major aim of future research in the field should be to identify more clearly the cognitive operations induced by the perception of the self-face, and search for dissociations between neural correlates and cognitive components.     

The memory of two great mental calculators: Charcot and Binet's neglected 1893 experiments

French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893) and French psychologist Alfred Binet (1857-1911) are almost unknown as investigators who conducted original and fascinating studies in the area of memory. In a series of 1893 experiments, they compared the performance of two expert mental calculators, Jacques Inaudi and Périclès Diamandi, in tasks that consisted of recalling digits. Inspired by Ribot's psychological work (1881), they believed in the existence of not one type of memory but several partial, special, and local memories, each devoted to a particular domain. In all arithmetical prodigies, memory for digits is abnormally developed compared with other memories. Inaudi was considered to be an auditory memory-based mental calculator; when memorizing digits, he did not rely onthe appearance of the items or create visual imagery of any kind. Rather, he remembered digits principally by their sounds. Inaudi's methods of calculation and memorization were original and different from those used by Diamandi, who was a typical visual memory-based mental calculator. The experiments presented in the 1893 article were among the first scientific demonstrations of the importance to psychology of studying different types of memory. The present work gives a translation of this pioneering experimental article on expert calculators by Charcot and Binet, instructive for the comprehension of normal memory.     

Exposure to an urban environment alters the local bias of a remote culture

There is substantial evidence that populations in the Western world exhibit a local bias compared to East Asian populations that is widely ascribed to a difference between individualistic and collectivist societies. However, we report that traditional Himba - a remote interdependent society - exhibit a strong local bias compared to both Japanese and British participants in the Ebbinghaus illusion and in a similarity-matching task with hierarchical figures. Critically, we measured the effect of exposure to an urban environment on local bias in the Himba. Even a brief exposure to an urban environment caused a shift in processing style: the local bias was reduced in traditional Himba who had visited a local town and even more reduced in urbanised Himba who had moved to that town on a permanent basis. We therefore propose that exposure to an urban environment contributes to the global bias found in Western and Japanese populations.     

The impact of processing time on the bizarreness and orthographic distinctiveness effects

The bizarreness effect and the orthographic distinctiveness effect (OD effect) are typical cases of secondary-distinctiveness-based effects. This study tested the simple attentional account or processing time hypothesis as a possible explanation of the bizarreness effect and the OD effect. In the bizarreness effect literature, this hypothesis gained support by some studies but was also discredited by other research. In light of these conflicting results, Experiment 1 was devised to test the processing time hypothesis in the bizarreness effect by using black-and-white concrete images and manipulating the time allotted for processing the stimuli (500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Concerning the OD effect, no research has directly investigated the impact of processing time by examining the effect under varying amounts of study time. Experiment 2 was thus devised to investigate this same hypothesis in the OD effect and time allotted for processing the stimuli was manipulated (250 ms, 500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Results did not support the processing time hypothesis since the magnitude of the bizarreness effect and of the OD effect was not modulated by the amount of time allotted for processing the stimuli. We refer to alternative explanations to account for these two secondary-distinctiveness-based effects.     

The sleeping brain and the neural basis of emotions

In addition to active wake, emotions are generated and experienced in a variety of functionally different states such as those of sleep, during which external stimulation and cognitive control are lacking. The neural basis of emotions can be specified by regarding the multitude of emotion-related brain states, as well as the distinct neuro- and psychodynamic stages (generation and regulation) of emotional experience.     

Notes towards a description of Social Representations

The theory of social representations occupies a place apart in social psychology both by the problems it raises and the scale of the phenomena with which it deals. This provokes many a criticism and misunderstanding. Such a theory may not correspond with the model of social psychology as it is defined at present. One attempts however to show that it answers important social and scientific questions, in what it differs from the classical conception of collective representations and, from the very beginning, adopts a constructivist perspective which has spread in social psychology since. Several trends of research have confirmed its vision of the relations between social and cognitive phenomena, communication and thought. More detailed remarks aim at outlining the nature of social representations, their capacity to create information, their function which is to familiarize us with the strange, according to the categories of our culture. Going farther, one insists on the diversity of methodological approaches. If the experimental method is useful to understand how people should think, higher mental and social processes must be approached by different methods, including linguistic analysis and observation of how people think. No doubt, social representations have a relation with the more recent field of social cognition. But inasmuch as the former depend on content and context, i.e. subjectivity and sociability of people, they approach the phenomena differently from the latter. Referring to child psychology and anthropology, one can contend, despite appearances, that it is also a more scientific approach. There is however much to be learned from criticisms and there is still a long way to go before we arrive at a satisfactory theory of social thinking and communication.     

Studies in social influence: II. Instrumental and symbolic influence

In this article we have dealt with a critical analysis pertaining to the notion of the informational influence. We hereby show that in every inter-actionary situation, the judgments emitted by the source (influence agent) appear to contain informations on the judged objects from their elementary content and, at the same time, from their organisation, like indications on the source itself, on its purpose. In this manner, we have come to distinguish the instrumental influence from the symbolical influence. An experiment where the subjects have to judge the number of points appearing on the slides shows that this distinction reveals what happens in the process of influence.