On presence in the psychoanalytic relation

This paper discusses presence in the psychoanalytic relation, the analysand’s and the analyst’s. Clinical situations with different qualities of presence will be considered focusing on what kind of interplay between analysand and analyst they may lead to. As examples, I have chosen three different clinical situations: In the first there is an interplay between the analysand’s free associations and the analyst’s ‘evenly suspended attention’. In connection with this I will discuss Bion’s concepts of ‘reverie’ and of ‘O’. In the second there is where the interaction is characterised by what Meltzer calls ‘geographical confusion’. In the third there is a ‘transference delusion’ in the psychoanalysis of breakdown as Winnicott describes it.     

视觉搜索中风味引发对关联颜色的注意偏向

人们常将特定的颜色与风味联系起来形成色味联结, 而且颜色线索会影响风味感知, 这体现了视觉信息对味觉信息加工的跨通道影响。本研究通过两个行为实验, 考察了味觉信息是否也会影响视觉搜索。实验任务要求被试品尝饮品后对形状靶子进行视觉搜索, 并且操纵了味觉刺激的提示性以及靶子颜色与风味之间的关联性。实验1的结果表明, 当风味线索提示的靶子颜色是与风味关联的颜色时可以加快视觉搜索。但如果与该风味关联的颜色出现在干扰项上, 风味线索则无法促进视觉搜索。其后, 我们在实验2中排除了语义启动的混淆, 也发现了与实验1一致的结果。本研究的结果表明, 风味线索会引发对关联颜色的注意偏向, 证实了味觉刺激对视觉注意的跨通道影响, 为色味交互提供了新的实验证据, 揭示了跨通道影响可能的发生机制。     

Relations between nonverbal intelligence and personality reports in late childhood

We investigated relations between children’s personality and their nonverbal intelligence.Simple correlations showed that children’s intelligence was positively associated with self-reported benevolence levels and with parental reports on their conscientiousness and imagination levels. Regression analyses revealed a more complex association pattern, with intelligence/personality correlations being moderated by the variables of child and parent gender. Results also yielded a lower personality domain overlap for children with higher IQ, in agreement with the differentiation hypothesis.     

Interesting times: practice, science, and professional associations in behavior analysis

Neither practitioners nor scientists appear to be fully satisfied with the world's largest behavior-analytic membership organization. Each community appears to believe that initiatives that serve the other will undermine the association's capacity to serve their own needs. Historical examples suggest that such discord is predicted when practitioners and scientists cohabit the same association. This is true because all professional associations exist to address guild interests, and practice and science are different professions with different guild interests. No association, therefore, can succeed in being all things to all people. The solution is to assure that practice and science communities are well served by separate professional associations. I comment briefly on how this outcome might be promoted.     

From left to right: Processing acronyms referring to names of political parties activates spatial associations

In line with previous studies, showing that abstract concepts like “power” or “god” implicitly activate spatial associations, in the present study we hypothesized that spatial associations are coactivated during the processing of acronyms referring to names of political parties as well. In four studies, it was found that the reading of these acronyms was accompanied by the implicit activation of spatial left–right associations. That is, participants responded faster to left-wing parties by means of a left-hand button press and vice versa for right-wing parties (Experiments 1 to 3), and participants responded faster when a political acronym was presented at the side of the screen corresponding to the political orientation of the acronym (Experiment 4). Interestingly, a correlation was observed between the effect size for left-wing parties and participants' political preferences, suggesting that the reaction time effects reflect the perceived distance of a party to one's own political orientation. Together these findings indicate that spatial representations activated in response to political acronyms do not simply reflect lexical–semantic associations or spatial metaphors, but representations of parties' political orientation relative to one's own sociopolitical position.     

Stimulus–classification and stimulus–action associations: Effects of repetition learning and durability

It has been shown that acquired stimulus–response bindings result from at least two types of associations from the stimulus to the task (stimulus–task or stimulus–classification; S–C) and from the stimulus to the motor response (stimulus–response or stimulus–action; S–A). These types of associations have been shown to independently affect behaviour. This finding suggests that they are processed in different pathways or different parts of a pathway at the neural level. Here we test a hypothesis that such associations may be differentially affected by repetition learning and that such effects may be detected by measuring their durability against overwriting. We show that both S–C and S–A associations are in fact strengthened when learning is boosted by increasing repetitions of the primes. However, the results further suggest that associations between stimuli and actions have less durable effects on behaviour and that the durability of S–C and S–A associations is independent of repetition learning. This is an important finding for the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of associative learning and particularly raises the question of which processes may affect flexibility of learning.     

Developing number–space associations: SNARC effects using a color discrimination task in 5-year-olds

Human adults’ numerical representation is spatially oriented; consequently, participants are faster to respond to small/large numerals with their left/right hand, respectively, when doing a binary classification judgment on numbers, known as the SNARC (spatial–numerical association of response codes) effect. Studies on the emergence and development of the SNARC effect remain scarce. The current study introduces an innovative new paradigm based on a simple color judgment of Arabic digits. Using this task, we found a SNARC effect in children as young as 5.5 years. In contrast, when preschool children needed to perform a magnitude judgment task necessitating exact number knowledge, the SNARC effect started to emerge only at 5.8 years. Moreover, the emergence of a magnitude SNARC but not a color SNARC was linked to proficiency with Arabic digits. Our results suggest that access to a spatially oriented approximate magnitude representation from symbolic digits emerges early in ontogenetic development. Exact magnitude judgments, on the other hand, rely on experience with Arabic digits and, thus, necessitate formal or informal schooling to give access to a spatially oriented numerical representation.     

What Is the Role of Quaker Education in a Time of Terror?

Abstract

This article presents not only the distinctive pedagogical philosophy of Quaker education, but discusses the special relevance of Friends values and educational methods in a time when America is at war. The article also includes a listing of print resources on Quaker values and education.