Blocking and unblocking of conditioned analgesia

Two experiments with rat subjects assessed the blocking phenomenon using inhibition of responding to painful thermal stimulation as an index of conditioned analgesia established through conditioned stimulus (CS)-shock pairings. In Experiment 1, a group of rats receiving the standard blocking procedure ($\text{A+}\text{AB+}$) showed shorter response latencies during a hot plate test of pain sensitivity in the presence of the added CS than groups of rats receiving various blocking control procedures. Experiment 2 replicated the blocking outcome of Experiment 1 and also demonstrated that the addition of a second shock unconditioned stimulus (US) during the compound conditioning phase attenuated the blocking effect; i.e., unblocking was observed. However, the deletion of a second shock US during compound conditioning in a group that had received two shocks on each trial in the first phase of the experiment failed to result in unblocking. These data extend the associative account of conditioned analgesia to situations involving stimulus selection and the implications for the analysis of aversive learning are discussed.     

Jeri altneu sechzer (1926-2011)

Presents an obituary for Jeri Altneu Sechzer. Jeri studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where her mentor was the renowned physiological psychologist Elliot Stellar. She received her doctorate in 1962 with a specialty in physiological psychology. That same year she was elected to Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, and received the Creative Talent Award from the American Institute of Research for her doctoral dissertation. She completed a U.S. Public Health Service Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, after which she accepted a position at Baylor University College, followed by a position at the New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center. She completed her career as a visiting professor in the Psychology Department at Pace University. Jeri's husband of 56 years, Philip, died in 2004. As a result of her experience looking after him during the long illness that preceded his death, she became interested in the psychological impact of the stresses that caregivers face. She was planning to organize a conference on this subject when she suffered her final illness, leading to her death on October 29, 2011, just before her 85th birthday. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

On the common stimulus condition and explanation of the Müller‐Lyer,Poggendorff and Zöllner illusions: The basis for a class of geometrical illusions

Although the Müller‐Lyer, Poggendorff and Zöllner figures and the illusions with which they are associated– those of length, misalignment and non‐parallelism, respectively – are quite different, all three are attributable to the same basic effect, that of the difference in the apparent length of equal lines forming acute and obtuse angles. The role of this basic affect, reported originally by Müller‐Lyer but overlooked by him and others as a possible cause of the three illusions, is identified and discussed. It is suggested that the demonstration of a basic stimulus condition (acute and obtuse angles) and its associated illusion (difference in apparent length) generating a class of “higher order” geometric illusions has implications not only for a closer understanding of the three illusions under consideration but for other classes of illusory phenomena that might also share a common basis.     

The Irreducibility of Personal Obligation

It is argued that claims about personal obligation (of the form “s ought to ϕ”) cannot be reduced to claims about impersonal obligation (of the form “it ought to be the case that p”). The most common attempts at such a reduction are shown to have unacceptable implications in cases involving a plurality of agents. It is then argued that similar problems will face any attempt to reduce personal obligation to impersonal obligation.     

Historical undecidability: The Kantian background to Derrida’s politics1

This paper deals with Derrida’s analysis of Kant’s Critique of Judgment in his essay ‘Economimesis’. I argue that Derrida’s analysis of Kant’s aesthetics can be used to describe the aporia within Kantian politics between rebellion and progressive revolutionary acts. The focus of my argument falls on examining how the recent debate over Derrida’s ethics can be usefully considered from the background of this treatment of Kant. In particular, the analysis Derrida gives of Kant’s aesthetics commits him to a series of conceptual constraints that can be detected in his recent commentaries on ‘forgiveness’ and ‘hospitality’. I suggest that these recent commentaries on political topics also depart from his earlier practice of ethics in ‘Economimesis’ as a ‘witnessing’ of the particular. This departure can be clearly seen once the Kantian background to Derrida’s recent writing is set out.     

The impact of psychological therapies on violent behaviour in clinical and forensic settings: A systematic review

Violent behaviour is a serious problem in terms of the impact on victims, quality of life for perpetrators, and the financial burden on the prison service, the health sector, and society generally. However, to date there is not a general consensus as to how this can be managed other than removing the perpetrators from communities. Incarceration can be on an indeterminate basis or for a short period of time before reintegration into society, depending on the gravity of the offence. This systematic review critically examines the existing research literature on psychotherapeutic interventions for violent behaviour in forensic and clinical populations. Five databases were searched, selected journals were hand searched, and authors of identified papers were contacted in efforts to obtain relevant unpublished work. The first author and a colleague independently evaluated the eligibility of all studies identified, abstracted data, and assessed study quality. The overall findings provide tentative support for the utility of psychotherapeutic interventions in reducing aggressive behaviour in forensic and psychiatric patients with a history of violent behaviour.     

Examining workgroup diversity effects: does playing by the (group-retention) rules help or hinder?

Group diversity researchers are often faced with the problem of calculating diversity indices for groups that are incomplete due to participant nonresponse. Because participant nonresponse may attenuate the correlations that are observed between group diversity scores and outcome variables, some researchers use group-retention rules based on within-group response rates. With this approach, only those groups that have a within-group response rate at, or higher than, the rate prescribed by the group-retention rule are retained for subsequent analyses. We conducted two sets of experiments using computer simulations to determine the usefulness of group-retention rules. We found that group-retention rules are not a substitute for a high response rate and may decrease the accuracy of observed relations, and consequently, we advise against their use in diversity research.     

Twenty-one reasons to care about the psychological basis of ownership

The psychological basis of ownership is a neglected area of research; the authors consider twenty-one disparate reasons why it is worth investigating.     

Interaction and representational integration: evidence from speech errors

We examine the mechanisms that support interaction between lexical, phonological and phonetic processes during language production. Studies of the phonetics of speech errors have provided evidence that partially activated lexical and phonological representations influence phonetic processing. We examine how these interactive effects are modulated by lexical frequency. Previous research has demonstrated that during lexical access, the processing of high frequency words is facilitated; in contrast, during phonetic encoding, the properties of low frequency words are enhanced. These contrasting effects provide the opportunity to distinguish two theoretical perspectives on how interaction between processing levels can be increased. A theory in which cascading activation is used to increase interaction predicts that the facilitation of high frequency words will enhance their influence on the phonetic properties of speech errors. Alternatively, if interaction is increased by integrating levels of representation, the phonetics of speech errors will reflect the retrieval of enhanced phonetic properties for low frequency words. Utilizing a novel statistical analysis method, we show that in experimentally induced speech errors low lexical frequency targets and outcomes exhibit enhanced phonetic processing. We sketch an interactive model of lexical, phonological and phonetic processing that accounts for the conflicting effects of lexical frequency on lexical access and phonetic processing.     

Special People? An Exploratory Study into Re-entering Missionaries’ Identity and Resilience

Home country re-entry from cross-cultural missionary work abroad may be associated with psychological distress. Re-entrants experience multiple losses including loss of identity which may be associated with personal/relational identity gaps and depersonalization/dehumanization. However, research suggests that some re-entrants are resilient with good mental health, while others are fragile with poor mental health. The aims of this paper are to explore the nature and frequency of re-entering missionaries’ identity gaps and their depersonalization/dehumanization in resilient and fragile re-entrants. Fifteen re-entering adult Australian cross-cultural missionary workers from four interdenominational Australian mission organizations completed semi-structured interviews. Results were analysed using modified Consensual Qualitative Research methods. Links were established between personal/relational identity gaps, depersonalization/dehumanization and resilience on re-entry. Implications for re-entrants’ care are discussed with suggestions for further research.