“It's Only Other People Who Make Me Feel Black”: Acculturation,Identity, and Agency in a Multicultural Community

This article explores identity work and acculturation work in the lives of British mixed‐heritage children and adults. Children, teenagers, and parents with mixed heritage participated in a community arts project that invited them to deliberate, construct, and reconstruct their cultural identities and cultural relations. We found that acculturation, cultural and raced identities, are constructed through a series of oppositional themes: cultural maintenance versus cultural contact; identity as inclusion versus identity as exclusion; institutionalized ideologies versus agency. The findings point towards an understanding of acculturation as a dynamic, situated, and multifaceted process: acculturation in movement. To investigate this, we argue that acculturation research needs to develop a more dynamic and situated approach to the study of identity, representation, and culture. The article concludes with a discussion on the need for political psychologists to develop methods attuned to the tensions and politics of acculturation that are capable of highlighting the possibilities for resistance and social change.     

在创造的零点

文章主要探讨了西方艺术创造观的当代转型问题。首先回顾和批判了现代时期盛行的将艺术视为上帝创世的再现与复写的绝对创造观点。随后,从宇宙进化的立场出发,提出了新型的艺术创造理念。其核心意义在于：艺术家的职责,不是以造物主的身份提出所谓的绝对创造宣言,而应以谦卑的态度,将作品视为内在于进化过程本身的东西,由此在艺术与进化特征之间建立特殊的关联。通过上述思考,文章揭示了东西方艺术观念在当代背景下的融合趋势。     

Learning and development of embodied numerosity

Recent empirical evidence indicates that seemingly abstract numerical cognitions are rooted in sensory and bodily experiences. In particular in finger counting finger-based representations reflect a specific case of embodied cognition, we termed embodied numerosity. Furthermore, we suggest that finger-based representations should be considered a distinct representation of number (magnitude) and argue that this representation is activated automatically whenever we encounter a number. We discuss in what way such a theoretical framework can account for the associations of fingers and numbers observed so far. In the final part, we evaluate whether the concept of embodied numerosity should be generalized beyond finger-based representations with particular focus on whether bodily-sensory experiences (such as moving the whole body along the mental number line) may corroborate numerical capabilities. In a series of intervention studies, we consistently observed more pronounced training effects for our embodied numerosity trainings for different age groups, different digital media, different number ranges, and different control conditions. Taken together, we conclude that embodied representations of number (magnitude) exist, are not limited to finger-based representations, and influence number processing in a systematic and functional way that can be used to foster the efficiency of numerical trainings.     

Reversing 30?years of discussion: why causal decision theorists should one-box

The paper will show how one may rationalize one-boxing in Newcomb??s problem and drinking the toxin in the Toxin puzzle within the confines of causal decision theory by ascending to so-called reflexive decision models which reflect how actions are caused by decision situations (beliefs, desires, and intentions) represented by ordinary unreflexive decision models.     

Die ökologische Dimension der Psychoanalyse und das Konzept der inneren Nachhaltigkeit

Zusammenfassung. Der Autor begründet in seiner Arbeit eine „?kologisch-psychoanalytische” Theorieperspektive, in der er die innere Verwandtschaft zwischen dem modernen ?kologiekritischen Denken und den Menschenbildannahmen der freudianischen Psychoanalyse aufzeigt. Die „kritische ?kologie” befasst sich mit der Frage nach einer sinnvollen, „nachhaltigen” Gestaltung der Kultur-Natur-Beziehung, die Psychoanalyse erforscht und behandelt die innere Selbstbeziehung des Menschen zwischen dem kulturgepr?gt-kulturproduktiven „Ich” und den eigengesetzlichen, natural fundierten motivationalen Seiten der Psyche, die bei Freud als „Es” gefasst werden. Auch die modernen objektbeziehungstheoretischen und selbstpsychologischen Weiterentwicklungen der Psychoanalyse k?nnen vor einem ?kologisch-psychoanalytischen Hintergrund so aufgefasst werden, dass Freuds Fragestellung nach der ge- oder misslingenden Balance bzw. Integration zwischen den motivationalen (Interaktions-) Strebungen der „inneren Natur” einerseits und den Anforderungen der „kulturellen Selbsterzeugung” des Menschen andererseits rahmengebendes Grundthema bleibt. Der Autor macht in seinem Artikel deutlich, dass Psychoanalyse und „kritische ?kologie” gegenseitig voneinander profitieren k?nnen.

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The ecological dimension of psychoanalysis and the concept of inner sustainability

Summary. The author develops an ”ecological-psychoanalytical” perspective of theory that shows the inner relationship between the modern eco-critical thinking and the anthropology of Freudian psychoanalysis. ”Critical ecology” engages in the search for a ”sustainable” organisation of the culture-nature-relationship. Psychoanalysis explores and treats the inner self-relation of man among the culture-imprinted/culture-producing ”Ego” and the nature-founded motivational aspects of psychic, that Freud called the ”Id.” The modern developments of object-relation theory and self psychology can be interpreted as reaffirming Freuds thesis of a well balanced or neurotising integration of motivational (interaction-) drives of ”inner nature” at one hand, and the demands of the ”cultural autogenesis” of man on the other. The author suggests that psychoanalysis and human ecology theory can each profit from the other.

     

The Effectiveness of Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD With Refugees in a Community Setting

Opinions vary on the generalizability of empirically supported treatments to diverse populations in naturalistic settings and on the relative merits of delivering treatments through interpreters. The authors present statistical analyses of outcome data from a community mental health program that served foreign-born refugees resettled in the U.S. The program used a manualized, empirically supported treatment, Cognitive Processing Therapy, to address symptoms of PTSD in this population. Participants received psychological treatment in native languages either with a therapist who spoke their language or with a therapist who used an interpreter. Results demonstrated that treatment of PTSD was highly effective whether delivered directly or through an interpreter.     

Inactivation of the ventral tegmental area abolished the general excitatory influence of Pavlovian cues on instrumental performance

Pavlovian stimuli can markedly elevate instrumental responding, an effect known as Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT). As the role of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in PIT is yet unknown, we examined the effects of transient VTA inactivation by direct microinjections of a mixture of the GABA(A) and GABA(B) receptor agonists, muscimol and baclofen. Results reveal that PIT, i.e., the increase in instrumental responding during presentation of a Pavlovian stimulus, was abolished by intra-VTA microinjections of muscimol/baclofen. These data provide the first evidence that the VTA mediates Pavlovian influences on instrumental behavior.     

Does the use of natural stimuli facilitate amodal completion in pigeons?

Three experiments were carried out to investigate whether amodal completion in pigeons can be facilitated by the use of colour photographs instead of highly artificial stimuli such as geometrical shapes. Ten pigeons were trained in a go/no-go procedure to discriminate between photographs of complete and of incomplete pigeon figures. In the subsequent test, the birds classified pictures of partly occluded pigeons as though they were complete (experiment 1). However, we found evidence that classification was based on spurious stimulus features that paralleled the intended class rule of figural completeness versus incompleteness. In particular, classification was shown to be guided by white background gaps that separated the parts of the fragmented pigeon figures (experiment 2), as well as by cues related to overall Gestalt (experiment 3). In summary, the present results indicate that the use of more natural stimuli such as photographs instead of geometrical shapes is insufficient for providing amodal completion in pigeons. It is suggested that a combination of various cues, including, eg, 3-D information and common motion in addition to surface and contour properties, may be required to induce a perceptual bias favouring visual completion of occluded portions.     

Wissenschaftstheorie der grazer schule: Meinong und Frankl

Ohne Zusammenfassung