THE METAPHOR OF THE ARCHITECT IN DARWIN: CHANCE AND FREE WILL

In The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, published in 1868, Darwin used the metaphor of the architect to argue in favor of natural autonomy and to clarify the role of chance in his theory of adaptive change by variation and natural selection. In this article, I trace the history of this important heuristic instrument in Darwin's writings and letters and suggest that this metaphor was important to Darwin because it helps him to explain the role of chance, and gives an argument in favor of the free will.     

Self regulation processes measurement through self-report methodology

Nowadays the evaluation of self-regulated learning processes is having a critical time due to the problems concerning the assessment instruments. This paper presents the outcomes of a research study having a main goal: evaluate to what extent student's consciousness of his/her own self-regulated learning and study processes (and the involved strategies and activities) has a significant impact on the quality of his/her answers on self-report type instruments. In order to prove this hypothesis an experimental study was designed and built including a pre and a post-test, having no control group, using a sample of 90 college students from different degree courses. The intervention program lasted 45 hours, divided into 8 work sessions of 5 hours each. The developed work included both theoretical and practical tasks dealing with strategies and activities involved in the self-regulated learning and study processes. The results show that the collected data using a self-report instrument is much more significant and accurate after the intervention program has taken place and that the intervention greatly improves the obtained information using these kind of instruments.     

Reviews: Books Photography

RELATIONAL PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE EMERGENCE OF A TRADITION. Edited by Stephen A. Mitchell and Lewis Aron. 514 pp. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press, 1999. $39.95. D.H. LAWRENCE AND THE PARADOXES OF PSYCHIC LIFE. By Barbara Ann Schapiro. 155 pp. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. $17.95. TECHNOLOGY AS MAGIC: THE TRIUMPH OF THE IRRATIONAL. By Richard Stivers. 240 pp. New York: Continuum Press. 1999. $24. REFLECTIONS ON A RAVAGED CENTURY. By Robert Conquest. 317 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, $27.95. THE MYSTERIES WITHIN A SURGEON REFLECTS ON MEDICAL MYTHS. By Sherwin B. Nuland. 274 pp. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000, $24.00. DISEASE, PAIN, AND SUICIDAL BEHAVIOR. By Elisabeth Stenager and Egon Stenager. 127 pp. New York: The Haworth Medical Press, 1998. $17.95. TRAUMA ASSESSMENTS: A CLINICIAN'S GUIDE. By E. B. Carlson. 307 pp. New York: The Guilford Press, 1997. $30. ON INFANCY AND TODDLERHOOD: AN ELEMENTARY TEXTBOOK. By David A. Freedman, M.D. 247 pp. Madison: International Universities Press, Inc., 1999. $27.95. TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE. By Mitch Albom. 192 pp. New York: Doubleday, 1997. $21. THE SORROWS OF THE QUAKER JESUS; JAMES NAYLER AND THE PURITAN CRACKDOWN ON THE FREE SPIRIT. By Leo Damrosch. 322 pp. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996, $39.95. THE PASTORAL CARE OF DEPRESSION: A GUIDEBOOK. By Binford W. Gilbert. 127 pp. New York: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 1998. $19.95. LEARNING DISABILITIES AND PSYCHIC CONFLICT: A PSYCHOANALYTIC CASEBOOK. By Arden Aibel Rothstein, Ph.D., and Jules Glenn, M.D. 504 pp. Madison: International Universities Press, Inc., 1999. $78. HAUNTED CHILDREN: RETHINKING MEDICATION OF COMMON PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS. By Arthur F. Roemmelt, MD. 196 pp. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998. $17.95. NAVIGATING THE DEEP RIVER: SPIRITUALITY IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN FAMILIES. By Archie Smith, Jr. 181 pp. Cleveland, Ohio: United Church Press, 1997. $15.95. AL-JUNUN: MENTAL ILLNESS IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD. Edited by Ihsan Al-Issa. 382 pp. Madison: International Universities Press, 2000. $48. Witnessing the Lack of Sanctuary     

An Emotionally Inexpressive (Type C) Coping Style Influences HIV Disease Progression at Six and Twelve Month Follow-ups

This study examined the effects of specific psychosocial factors on the progression of HIV infection in 200 HIV-1 seropositive but asymptomatic men and women. At baseline, participants' disease status was determined, and they were administered self-report assessments of coping style, social support and loneliness. Participants were classified at 6 and 12 month follow-ups as progressed or unchanged, compared to their baseline status. In logistic regression analyses, higher baseline Type C coping scores (indicating emotional inexpressiveness and decreased recognition of needs and feelings) significantly predicted progression at 6 months ( p <0.01) and 12 months ( p <0.02), but only among participants classified at baseline as CDC-A2 (between 200-499 CD4 cells/mm 3 ). In participants originally classified as CDC-A1 (CD4 cell counts > 500/mm 3 ), no psychosocial variable showed any significant relationship. Results emphasize the need to consider the disease context, as well as the interaction between biological and psychological factors in contributing to disease progression.     

Responses and pauses: discrimination and a choice catastrophe.

Pigeons produced a stimulus change either by responding or by not responding for a specified time period (by pausing). They then had to choose between two responses to obtain food. One choice was correct if the first component had been completed by a response; the other was correct if the component had been completed by a pause. The pigeons usually chose correctly, thereby indicating that they used their own prior behavior as a discriminative stimulus. Fixed pause requirements did not produce equal first component completions by a response and by a pause. To obtain equality, the pause requirement was titrated as a function of current performance. Titration resulted in equal completions and also produced accurate discrimination. In addition to showing that pigeons discriminated whether they had responded or paused, the data displayed and discontinuous functions predicted by catastrophe theory. Another procedure used forced choice rather than titration to produce equal completions by pausing and responding and also showed accurate discrimination of behavior.     

Evaluating the efficacy of a program to enhance college students' self-regulation learning processes and learning strategies

The present study examines the efficacy of a program designed to enhance college students'learning processes and study strategies. The program was organised around a number of letters written by a freshman, Gervásio (Rosário, Nú?ez, & González-Pienda, 2006), telling about his new experiences, troubles, and successes in the university. This intervention program is intended to promote a series of strategies (cognitive, meta-cognitive, and supportive) which allow students to manage their learning processes in a more proficient, successful, and autonomous way. The collected data suggest that students who had the opportunity to follow the program significantly improved their declarative knowledge about learning strategies, reduced their use of surface approaches to study, and extended the newly acquired skills to new and different tasks and assignments.     

Eating disorders in the course of life: A qualitative approach to vital change

Eating disorders (EDs) have become one of the biggest mental-health problems in the last decades, especially among youth and women. The present study aims to analyse the suitability of Prochaska and DiClemente’s Transtheoretical Model of Change when applied to the living experiences of people diagnosed with ED and their carers. For this purpose, we applied a narrative biographic approach to the ways in which people face their problems and vital development in the ED domain. Through the narrative analysis of these autobiographies, we aimed to study the patients’ own notions of ‘change’, ‘problem’ and ‘vital trajectory’. We focused on five autobiographic interviews of persons diagnosed as ED (four women and a man). The analysis yields three discourses which organize and give sense to our participants’ vital transitions: a discourse of functional adaptation to events and experiences; one that pays attention to random events and people entering your life; and one that has the personal initiative and agency of an individual agent at its core. It also illuminates particular ways of understanding determination, contemplation and pre-contemplation. These ways of understanding change are shown to extend the possible ways of thinking about people’s lives and ED patients’ perspectives.