Sorrow,shame, and self-esteem: Perception of self and others in groups for women survivors of child sexual abuse

Despite evidence that exists about the severity of impact of child sexual abuse (CSA), less has been published about treatment options. Much CSA is enshrouded in secrecy in the context of dysfunctional family dynamics, therefore group work is often recommended as a method of treatment. Although long- and short-term groups are seen as being equally effective, there are few published studies of long-term analytic groups for survivors of CSA. This study was designed to analyse the process of one long-term group. A case is made for using Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT), a method designed to analyse individual therapy, with reference to group theory. Shifts in self-perception and in relation to others are analysed from the beginning to the end of therapy.     

How the bimodal format of presentation affects working memory: an overview

The best format in which information that has to be recalled is presented has been investigated in several studies, which focused on the impact of bimodal stimulation on working memory performance. An enhancement of participant’s performance in terms of correct recall has been repeatedly found, when bimodal formats of presentation (i.e., audiovisual) were compared to unimodal formats (i.e, either visual or auditory), in providing implications for multimedial learning. Several theoretical frameworks have been suggested in order to account for the bimodal advantage, ranging from those emphasizing early stages of processing (such as automatic alerting effects or multisensory integration processes) to those centred on late stages of processing (as postulated by the dual coding theory). The aim of this paper is to review previous contributions to this topic, providing a comprehensive theoretical framework, which is updated by the latest empirical studies.     

Fibred Security Language

We study access control policies based on the says operator by introducing a logical framework called Fibred Security Language (FSL) which is able to deal with features like joint responsibility between sets of principals and to identify them by means of first-order formulas. FSL is based on a multimodal logic methodology. We first discuss the main contributions from the expressiveness point of view, we give semantics for the language both for classical and intuitionistic fragment), we then prove that in order to express well-known properties like ‘speaks-for’ or ‘hand-off’, defined in terms of says, we do not need second-order logic (unlike previous approaches) but a decidable fragment of first-order logic suffices. We propose a model-driven study of the says axiomatization by constraining the Kripke models in order to respect desirable security properties, we study how existing access control logics can be translated into FSL and we give completeness for the logic.     

A Meta-model of Access Control in a Fibred Security Language

The issue of representing access control requirements continues to demand significant attention. The focus of researchers has traditionally been on developing particular access control models and policy specification languages for particular applications. However, this approach has resulted in an unnecessary surfeit of models and languages. In contrast, we describe a general access control model and a logic-based specification language from which both existing and novel access control models may be derived as particular cases and from which several approaches can be developed for domain-specific applications. We will argue that our general framework has a number of specific attractions and an implication of our work is to encourage a methodological shift from a study of the particulars of access control to its generalities.     

Assessing the automaticity of intramodal and crossmodal spatial attentional orienting

Clark and Chalmers (1998) have argued that mental states can be extended outside an organism's skin. In response to some worries about the availability, reliability and portability of such extended resources, Clark (2005) offers a set of rough criteria that non-biological objects must fulfil to legitimately ground mental states. One such criterion is that the information retrieved from these non-biological sources be (more or less) automatically endorsed. But Sterelny (2003, 2005) has persuasively argued that the extended sphere is epistemologically opaque: a domain of contested truth and deliberate deception. As such, retrieving information from this domain requires the deployment of social guards for the information to remain reliable. But deploying such guards would seem to endanger endorsability by increasing cognitive load. Here I demonstrate that deploying social guards does not increase cognitive load if the guards are implemented in a highly distributed connectionist economy or off-loaded to the external environment.     

New perspectives on theories linking cognition,emotion, and context: A proposal from the Theory of Analysis of Demand

Both scholars and practitioners acknowledge that the major factors explaining behavior are cognition, emotion, and context. However, existing theories tend to only focus on a combination of two. Furthermore, not all models are rooted in a specific theory of mind. Finally, there is no consistent definition of ‘mind.’ To address these issues, we review the major models explaining behavior. We then describe the Theory of Analysis of Demand (TAD), an interactionist (individual-context) model of functioning of mind that thoroughly addresses the conjoint interplay of cognition, emotion, and context. A key concept of the TAD is emotional symbolization, the process of relating one’s experiences of the external context with an inevitable emotional reaction. By considering an intersection among cognition, emotion, and context, TAD fills the gap in the existing literature and expands our understanding of behavior. Moreover, we describe the TAD intervention methodology, Individual-Setting of intervention-Organization technique, which explores an individual’s demand for intervention and the underlying emotion-, cognition-, and context-related categories (i.e., emotional symbolization) that prompt the request. Last, we discuss the potential benefits and boundary conditions of the TAD to integrate existing approaches.     

Suicide in the literary work of Cesare Pavese.

On the basis of an existential analysis (Daseinanalyse), the authors consider the suicide, at age 42, of Cesare Pavese, one of the most important Italian poets and writers of the post-World War II period. It is found that in his poems, his novels, and particularly his letters and diary the idea of suicide was present in his consciousness since adolescence; year by year it is possible to follow the development of his ideas and fantasies about suicide. Incapable of establishing authentic communication with others, Pavese narrowed his existential horizon to the point of being less and less capable of living in the world and projecting himself into the future. From these considerations it is concluded that Pavese's acute feeling of incapacity caused him to have lasting experiences of failure that brought him to view suicide as the only way to free himself from his own torment.