Values of fathers for themselves and their newborns

The paternal role has been neglected in parenting research. The present study focused on the values of fathers of newborns. Values of fathers of newborns drawn from the inner-city lower-class were compared with values of fathers of newborns drawn from the middle class. Highest goals of fathers from both groups for themselves were economic ('family security'); values for their children were morally focused ('honest'). Inner-city fathers placed a higher value on a clean and obedient child, whereas middle-class fathers placed a higher value on a loving and imaginative child. When values of these fathers were compared with values of a similar sample of mothers of newborns, socioeconomic status remained an important predictor of values. Sex of parent was significant in the inner-city sample as these fathers placed a higher valuation on goals associated with autonomy than did inner-city mothers.     

The role of target salience in crowding

We studied 'crowding' in the parafovea using orientation identification of a Gabor target as the task, and flanking Gabors on an isoeccentric circle as distractors. Orientation-discrimination thresholds were raised by nearby flanking distractors. This crowding effect was increased by the number of distractors and decreased by the spatial separation between target and distractors. Crowding was greatest when the target was in the centre of the distractor array and smallest when the target was on the edge of the array. A cue indicating the position of the target improved performance when the position was otherwise unknown and the spatial separation between target and distractors was large, but the cue had no significant effect when separation was small. Increasing the contrast of the target relative to the distractors reduced crowding, but targets of smaller contrast than that of the distractors are even harder to identify than those of the same contrast. Putting the target and distractors in different depth planes decreased crowding for some observers, but there were qualitative individual differences. A large (say, 45 degrees) difference in orientation between target and distractors caused the target to 'pop out' in a presence/absence task, despite the evidence from other studies that crowding is still found in these conditions. We conclude that salience has, at best, modest effects on crowding.     

Asian Families “Back Home”: An Unexplored Resource

Communities from which Asian migrants to the West originate are often seen by western professionals as a drain upon these new migrants’ resources, and are not included in formulations about problems or their solutions. In this article, a number of case examples are used to illustrate how the authors made use of the relationships of Bangladeshi migrants living in the east end of London to their families back home as a crucial resource in overcoming difficulties encountered in their new country. It is further argued that seeing such families as having transnational loyalties is a more helpful “frame” than seeing them as caught up in cultural conflict.     

Perceptual simulation in property verification

If people represent concepts with perceptual simulations, two predictions follow in the property verification task (e.g., Isface a property of GORILLA?). First, perceptual variables such as property size should predict the performance of neutral subjects, because these variables determine the ease of processing properties in perceptual simulations (i.e., perceptual effort). Second, uninstructed neutral subjects should spontaneously construct simulations to verify properties and therefore perform similarly to imagery subjects asked explicitly to use images (i.e., instructional equivalence). As predicted, neutral subjects exhibited both perceptual effort and instructional equivalence, consistent with the assumption that they construct perceptual simulations spontaneously to verify properties. Notably, however, this pattern occurred only when highly associated false properties prevented the use of a word association strategy. In other conditions that used unassociated false properties, the associative strength between concept and property words became a diagnostic cue for true versus false responses, so that associative strength became a better predictor of verification than simulation. This pattern indicates that conceptual tasks engender mixtures of simulation and word association, and that researchers must deter word association strategies when the goal is to assess conceptual knowledge.     

Self creation and the limitless void of dissociation: the 'as if' personality

The concept of the 'as if' personality has been used variously in analytic literature without having formed part of a clinically based theoretical development over time. The author discusses the bases of her notion of the 'as if' personality, as observed across a number of patients and supervised patients in intensive, long term analytic treatment. In this composite clinical picture, a grouping of elements that form a particular kind of defence of the self is identified in certain patients with an exceptional capacity for creative engagement in the world, surpassing expectations given their background. The picture includes the presence of physical breakdown and illness, as psychic suffering arising from early narcissistic wounding and from a physical, emotional and/or sexual abusive familial environment, was held for too long in bodily memory but not in mind. A distinction is made between the 'as if' personality, the persona and the false self. The 'as if' personality concerns the action of defensive dissociation deriving from very early experiences of internalizing the presence of an absent object, creating the sense of an internal void at the core of the self. At the same time, the self is capable of acts of self creation through a succession of identifications and internalizations with other sources of environmental nourishment, which substitute for, and are constructed around, the original sense of internal emptiness. Thus are restored, but only up to a point, the resources of the originally diminished self. Until these resources have been used up, the self is often able to excel in activities to an exceptional degree. The countertransference is shown to be the means of both useful but often perilously obtained clinical experience and information, supporting the work along the hazardous analytic journey.     

Origins of the ethical attitude

This paper seeks to explore the genesis of the capacity for an ethical attitude, personally and professionally. As analysts working in intimate clinical settings, ethics is at the foundation of our professional lives, as it is at the foundation of our humanity and what it is we struggle towards in our own personal development. The ethical attitude presupposes special responsibilities that we choose to adopt in relation to another. Thus, a parallel situation pertains between caregiver and child and between analyst and patient: they are not equal partners, but nevertheless are in a situation of mutuality, shared subjectivity, and reciprocal influence. The basic premise of this paper is that the analytic attitude is an ethical attitude, and that the ethical attitude is a developmental achievement, and as such it may reach beyond the depressive position.     

I am not an animal: mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness

The present research investigated the need to distinguish humans from animals and tested the hypothesis derived from terror management theory that this need stems in part from existential mortality concerns. Specifically, the authors suggest that being an animal is threatening because it reminds people of their vulnerability to death; therefore, reminding people of their mortality was hypothesized to increase the need to distance from animals. In support, Study 1 revealed that reminders of death led to an increased emotional reaction of disgust to body products and animals. Study 2 showed that compared to a control condition, mortality salience led to greater preference for an essay describing people as distinct from animals; and within the mortality salient condition but not the control condition, the essay emphasizing differences from other animals was preferred to the essay emphasizing similarities. The implications of these results for understanding why humans are so invested in beautifying their bodies and denying creaturely aspects of themselves are discussed.     

Social transmission and memory of food preferences in pine voles (Microtus pinetorum)

The social transmission of food preferences is affected by factors including the length of time a preference is maintained. The authors investigated the social transmission of food preferences in pine voles (Microtus pinetorum) and whether food items had to be present for memory to persist. A demonstrator vole was fed cocoa-flavored food, a nonpreferred food. After interacting with a demonstrator vole, observer voles preferred cocoa-flavored food as compared with either naive voles that had not interacted with demonstrators or voles that had been exposed to odors. Observers retained this preference for 72 hr after interacting with an observer whether or not flavored foods were present. The ability to learn which food items are palatable and safe may benefit a generalist herbivore that has faced selection to avoid toxic baits.     

Quantification of brain lesions using interactive automated software

We developed an interactive program, Analysis of Brain Lesions (ABLe) so that researchers studying the effects of brain lesions on cognition could have a user-friendly tool that could quantitatively characterize such lesions. The program was prepared in Tcl/Tk and will run on any UNIX or PC LINUX platform with the MEDx medical imaging software package. The ABLe is almost completely automated and determines the brain lesion size as well as which cytoarchitectonic brain regions (Brodmann areas) are contained within the boundaries of the lesion. Lesion data from multiple subjects can be grouped together and the degree of lesion overlap displayed. All images are analyzed and displayed within standard Talairach coordinate space, and the precision of the match between the ABLe Brodmann area graphics and the subject/patient brain is easily confirmed. The program is the first easy-to-use software that contains these specific features and is available for interested researchers with a background in lesion analysis.