Isn't there a catch in it somewhere?

The relationship between skill, vision, and proprioception in simple one-handed catching has recently been researched by Fischman and Schneider (1985). The parts of their work addressed to the necessity of being able to see the hand for optimal performance are critically evaluated in the light of earlier published studies, and other methodological and interpretative problems are signalled.     

What is the Normativity of Meaning?

There has been much debate over whether to accept the claim that meaning is normative. One obstacle to making progress in that debate is that it is not always clear what the claim amounts to. In this paper, I try to resolve a dispute between those who advance the claim concerning how it should be understood. More specifically, I critically examine two competing conceptions of the normativity of meaning, rejecting one and defending the other. Though the paper aims to settle a dispute among proponents of the claim that meaning is normative, it should be of interest to those who challenge it. After all, before one takes aim, one’s target needs to be in clear view.     

The representational status of pretence: Evidence from typical development and autism

The question of whether understanding pretend play requires meta‐representational skill was examined among typically developing children and individuals with autism. Participants were presented with closely equated true and false pretence trials in which they had to judge a protagonist's pretend reading of a situation, which either matched or differed from their own. Results showed that individuals' theory of mind abilities determined their performance on false, but not true, pretence trials. These findings imply that meta‐representation is involved when an individual has to make sense of a pretend state of mind that differs from their own, but, crucially, they also show that pretend play can often be understood without meta‐representational competence.     

Modern views on motor skill learning are not ‘representative’!

Approaches to the explanation of (motor) behaviour deriving from basic Cybernetic principles are contrasted with that based on Skinner's principle of operant conditioning. The reliance of the former on systems of representation (comparators, transducers, schemas etc.), not open to observation, is shown to give rise to a number of theoretical and applied problems. While Skinner's approach is shown to avoid such assumptions it is, in turn, limited in the explanations it provides for behavioural change by its undue emphasis on why things are done at the expense of how they are done. It is argued that recent developments in Ecological Psychology, particularly dynamical systems approaches, provide novel solutions to the question of how things are done but, in so doing, lose track of the why. In spite of the limitations of either perspective on its own, there does seem to be sufficient (fundamental) communality and complementarity to provide the basis for a rapprochement that can lead to a better understanding of behaviour in general and motor behaviour in particular.     

The acquisition of catching under monocular and binocular conditions

The effects of binocular and monocular viewing on spatial and temporal errors in one-handed catching were investigated in two experiments. The first experiment-using expert catchers-recorded more spatial errors under the monocular than under the binocular condition. No significant differences in the number of temporal errors were apparent. In a second experiment, which paradigm, relatively poor catchers were trained under both vision conditions. Its objective was to investigate whether the superior results obtained under the binocular condition in the first experiment, for the number of catches and number of spatial errors, could be attributed simply to the fact that subjects had more experience with binocular than monocular viewing. The following results occurred after a period of training (a) a significant reduction in the number of spatial errors under the monocular condition, reaching a level similar to that under the binocular condition; (b) no significant reduction in the number of spatial errors when subjects transferred from monocular to binocular viewing, and significantly more spatial errors when subjects transferred from binocular to monocular viewing; and (c) a training-sequence effect. The latter effect indicates that subjects had more benefit from training in the sequence monocular-binocular than vice versa. These findings are discussed in the context of the strategies of specificity of learning and use of multisources.     

Intensive (Daily) Behavior Therapy for School Refusal: A Multiple Baseline Case Series

The following multiple baseline case series examines school refusal behavior in 4 male adolescents. School refusal symptom presentation was ascertained utilizing a functional analysis from the School Refusal Assessment Scale (Kearney, 2002). For the majority of cases, treatment was conducted within a 15-session intensive format over a 3-week period. Treatment elements included cognitive-behavioral therapy with the adolescent, parent training sessions, or a combination of these strategies. Treatment was effective for 3 of 4 cases in the short term. At 3-year follow-up, all 3 of the acute treatment responders had switched to alternative educational programs, although parents rated them as significantly improved and less impaired compared to pretreatment. Obstacles to treatment, and recommendations for program improvement, are discussed.     

Distress and Divorce: Establishing Cutoff Scores for the Marital Status Inventory

This study was designed to identify Marital Status Inventory (MSI) scores that could be used as cutoff points for degrees of marital distress. Cutoff scores are useful in clinical work as a way to estimate degrees of marital distress, differentiate couples for treatments, and to provide uniformity across studies. Subjects consisted of 474 couples requesting marital therapy at a university-based clinic. Based on their individual Marital Adjustment Test (MAT) scores, participants were placed in severely distressed, moderately distressed, and non-distressed groups. Using a discriminant analysis, MSI scores of 4 for husbands and 5 for wives were found to be useful cutoff points for severe distress.     

The explicit learning of new names for known objects is improved by dexamphetamine

A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, between subjects study design (N=37) was used to investigate the effects of dexamphetamine on explicit new name learning. Participants ingested 10mg of dexamphetamine or placebo daily over 5 consecutive mornings before learning new names for 50 familiar objects plus fillers. The dexamphetamine group recognised and recalled the new names more accurately than the placebo group over the 5 days and 1 month later. Word learning success was not associated with baseline neuropsychological performance, mood, cardiovascular arousal, or sustained attention. These results may have implications for the pharmacological treatment of acquired naming difficulties.