‘There’s the record,closed and final’: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Rough for Theatre II</Emphasis> as Psychiatric Encounter

A co-authored collaboration between a theatre practitioner and a clinical psychiatrist, this paper will examine Rough for Theatre II (RFTII) and Beckett’s demonstration of the way records are used to understand the human subject. Using Beckett’s play to explore interdisciplinary issues of embodiment and diagnosis, the authors will present a dialogue that makes use of the ‘best sources’ in precisely the same manner as the play’s protagonists. One of those sources will be Beckett himself, as Heron will locate the play in its theatrical context through reflections upon his own practice (with Fail Better Productions, UK) as well as recent studies such as Beckett, Technology and the Body (Maude 2009) and Performing Embodiment in Samuel Beckett’s Drama (McMullan 2010); another source will be the philosopher Wilhelm Windleband, whose 1901 History of Philosophy was read and noted upon by Beckett in the 1930s, as Broome will introduce a philosophical and psychiatric context to the exchange. Windelband is now a neglected figure in philosophy; but as one of the key figures of Neo-Kantianism in the late 19^th century, his work was an important impetus to that of Rickert, Weber and Heidegger. Specifically, Windelband gives us the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic understanding of individuals, an approach that is of relevance to the psychiatric encounter. This academic dialogue will consider tensions between subjectivity and objectivity in clinical and performance practice, while examining Beckett’s analysis of the use of case notes and relating them back to Windelband’s ideas on the understanding of others. The dialogue took place in 2011 at the University of Warwick, and has since been edited by the authors.     

Forgetting is effortful: Evidence from reaction time probes in an item-method directed forgetting task

Reaction time (RT) was measured in response to visual detection probes embedded within an item-method directed forgetting paradigm. In Experiment 1, study words were presented individually followed by an instruction to remember (R) or forget (F). Probes were presented at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 1,400, 1,800, or 2,600 msec in relation to the study word or memory instruction. After the study trials, a yes-no recognition task measured retention of R and F words. Experiment 2 added a no-word control condition and no-probe catch trials. In both experiments, post-F probe RTs were longer than post-R probe RTs at early SOAs. Confirming that participants attended to the memory instructions, there was a significant directed forgetting effect, with greater recognition of R than of F words. These findings contradict the view that directed forgetting in the item-method paradigm is due to the passive decay of nonrehearsed F items; instead, they are consistent with the view that intentional forgetting in an item-method paradigm occurs via the operation of an active, potentially inhibitory, cognitive process.     

When rejection by one fosters aggression against many: Multiple-victim aggression as a consequence of social rejection and perceived groupness

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that social rejection and perceived groupness function together to produce multiple-victim incidents of aggression. When a rejecter’s group membership is salient during an act of rejection, the rejectee ostensibly associates the rejecter’s group with rejection and retaliates against the group. Both experiments manipulated whether an aggregate of three persons appeared as separate individuals or members of an entity-like group and whether one of those persons rejected the participant. Consistent with the hypothesis, participants who experienced both rejection and perceived groupness behaved more aggressively against the aggregate (Experiment 1) and evidenced less favorable affective associations toward the aggregate (Experiment 2) than did participants who did not experience both rejection and perceived groupness.     

Psychophysics of perceiving eye-gaze and head direction with peripheral vision: implications for the dynamics of eye-gaze behavior

Two psychophysical experiments are reported, one dealing with the visual perception of the head orientation of another person (the 'looker') and the other dealing with the perception of the looker's direction of eye gaze. The participant viewed the looker with different retinal eccentricities, ranging from foveal to far-peripheral viewing. On average, judgments of head orientation were reliable even out to the extremes of peripheral vision (90 degrees eccentricity), with better performance at the extremes when the participant was able to view the looker changing head orientation from one trial to the next. In sharp contrast, judgments of eye-gaze direction were reliable only out to 4 degrees eccentricity, signifying that the eye-gaze social signal is available to people only when they fixate near the looker's eyes. While not unexpected, this vast difference in availability of information about head direction and eye direction, both of which can serve as indicators of the looker's focus of attention, is important for understanding the dynamics of eye-gaze behavior.     

IMPLICIT MEMORY IN AMNESIC PATIENTS:

Abstract— Previous observations of spared priming in amnesic patients have been based almost entirely on data from visual implicit memory tests Our research examined perceptual priming.in amnesic patients and control subjects on an auditory identification task in which previously spoken words and new words were presented in white noise We manipulated type of encoding task (semantic vs nonsemantic) and speaker's voice at study and test (same vs different) Priming was little affected.by either manipulation, and amnesic patients exhibited normal priming in all experimental conditions On an explicit test of recognition memory, by contrast, amnesic patients exhibited.severely impaired performance following the semantic study task, all subjects showed poor explicit memory following the nonsemantic study task Results are consistent with the idea that auditory priming depends largely on a presemantic auditory perceptual representation system     

Psychological determinants of decision attitude

Decision attitude — an analog of risk attitude — is the propensity to make (or avoid making) a decision: in decision aversion, a person finds it more desirable to receive through fiat the better of two options than to have a choice between them; in decision seeking, the choice is more desirable, even though it can lead to nothing better than the best option. Both decision aversion and decision seeking were found in hypothetical scenarios. Experimental manipulations and subjects' justifications point to anticipated regret, fear of blame for poor outcomes, and desire for equitable distributions as sources of decision aversion. One source of decision seeking (for self) and decision aversion (when deciding for others) appears to be the desire for the self-determination of the affected parties. We consider the implications of our results for personal choice and public policy decisions.