Bi‐ocularity,the functioning mind of the psychoanalyst

With the use of clinical material the author discusses the importance of a ‘bi‐ocular’ mode of attentiveness, one pole of which rests on the psychic process of reverie and the other on ‘analysing’. This is necessary to foster the development of a psychic space in which experiences which were ‘in the shadow’ or unrepresented, can come to the fore and be given shape first pictorially and later ideationally. This requires staying with and fostering the ambiguity of the different times and spaces without collapsing them into the clear, logical and explanatory. It requires the psychoanalyst to make space for that which is ‘other’, other than just apparently here and now, and other than just ‘you and me’, while maintaining the analytic ‘fire’ in a situation in which there is ‘no model in real life’, a place maximally geared to that which is not apparent.     

Identifying when children with visual impairment share attention: A novel protocol and the impact of visual acuity

BackgroundIn Coordinated Joint Engagement (CJE), children acknowledge that they and their social partners are paying attention to the same object. The achievement of CJE, critical for healthy development, is at risk in infants with visual impairment (VI). Research on CJE in these children is limited because investigators use a child’s gaze switch between social partner and object to index CJE. Research is needed that identifies CJE in children with VI using behaviors that do not require normal vision and that explores the relationship between CJE and visual function. This study aimed to (a) develop a protocol for identifying CJE in children with VI, and (b) explore the relationship between CJE and infants’ visual acuity (VA) and contrast sensitivity (CS), measured with Preferential Looking (PL) techniques and Visual Evoked Potential (VEP).MethodsA protocol that included 9 indices of CJE that did not require normal vision was developed to code videos of 20 infants with VI (mean age =1 year, 6 months, 27 days) and their caregivers. The percentage of CJE episodes in which each index was observed was calculated. Inter-coder reliability was measured using Cohen’s Kappa. Linear regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between the infants’ visual function and CJE.ResultsInter-rater reliability between a first coder and each of two second coders were 0.98 and 0.90 for determining whether the child participated in CJE. The following indices were observed the most (in 43–62 % of CJE): child’s body orientation to caregiver, gaze switch between caregiver and object, and vocalization to caregiver. The only significant model included VA (measured with PL) as a single predictor and explained 26.8 % of the variance in CJE.ConclusionsThe novel protocol can be used to identify CJE in children with VI with good inter-coder reliability. The data suggest that children with lower VA exhibited less CJE.     

Bio-inspired computational object classification model for object recognition

Human beings can effortlessly perceive stimuli through their sensory systems to learn, understand, recognize and act on our environment or context. Over the years, efforts have been made to enable cybernetic entities to be close to performing human perception tasks; and in general, to bring artificial intelligence closer to human intelligence.Neuroscience and other cognitive sciences provide evidence and explanations of the functioning of certain aspects of visual perception in the human brain. Visual perception is a complex process, and its has been divided into several parts. Object classification is one of those parts; it is necessary for carrying out the declarative interpretation of the environment. This article deals with the object classification problem.In this article, we propose a computational model of visual classification of objects based on neuroscience, it consists of two modular systems: a visual processing system, in charge of the extraction of characteristics; and a perception sub-system, which performs the classification of objects based on the features extracted by the visual processing system.With the results obtained, a set of aspects are analyzed using similarity and dissimilarity matrices. Also based on the neuroscientific evidence and the results obtained from this research, some aspects are suggested for consideration to improve the work in the future and bring us closer to performing the task of visual classification as humans do.     

Development and psychometric evaluation of the Male Body Attitudes Scale (MBAS)

A measure of men's attitudes toward their body (MBAS) was developed and evaluated via three independent samples of college men. In Studies 1 and 2, factor analyses determined and cross-validated the MBAS's underlying structure. Three factors emerged from the items: muscularity, low body fat, and height. Studies 1 and 2 provided construct (i.e., convergent, concurrent, and discriminant) validity evidence for the MBAS total scale and subscales; they were related or not related as expected to drive for muscularity, body esteem, internalization of the muscular ideal, pressures for muscularity, pressures for thinness, self-esteem, body comparison, eating disorder symptomatology, and impression management. Study 3 revealed that the MBAS total score and subscale scores were stable over a 2-week period. The internal consistency reliabilities for the total score and subscale scores were high across all three studies. The MBAS should prove useful for researchers and clinicians interested in men's body image assessment.     

The Church in the World: Shifting Notions of Ecclesial Identity among North American Mennonites

Abstract : At mid‐century, Harold S. Bender's “The Anabaptist Vision” provided a definition of sixteenth‐century Anabaptist tradition that clarified the self‐understanding of its contemporary Mennonite heirs and by which their faithfulness to the tradition might be judged. Critics of the vision, such as J. Lawrence Burkholder, sought reformulations of the vision's central tension between separation from and integration into “the world,” calling for greater social responsibility and for a recognition that the ambiguities of human existence extend to the church, of necessity qualifying its lived expressions of radical discipleship.     

Social and medical influences on attributions and evaluations of chronic pain

Abstract

Previous research suggests that judgments of pain are subject to social influences, including characteristics of the person in pain, the judge, and the social context in which the judgment occurs. In this experiment, eight vignettes describing a person with chronic low back pain were varied as a function of patient ethnicity (Caucasian vs African-American), litigation status (litigant vs non-litigant), and medical evidence (strong vs weak). Participants (N= 116) read vignettes, made attributions of causality for the person's pain and disability, and evaluated the severity of the pain syndrome. Pain and disability were perceived as more legitimate when the person in pain was a non-litigant and when medical evidence was strong. Evaluations of syndrome severity were more extreme when evidence was strong. A three-way interaction indicated that judgments may have been influenced by ethnic stereotypes. These findings substantiate the influence of social variables in judgments of persons with pain.     

Effects of visual information regarding allocentric processing in haptic parallelity matching

Research has revealed that haptic perception of parallelity deviates from physical reality. Large and systematic deviations have been found in haptic parallelity matching most likely due to the influence of the hand-centered egocentric reference frame. Providing information that increases the influence of allocentric processing has been shown to improve performance on haptic matching. In this study allocentric processing was stimulated by providing informative vision in haptic matching tasks that were performed using hand- and arm-centered reference frames.     

Prevalence-based decisions undermine visual search

In visual search, observers make decisions about the presence or absence of a target based on their perception of a target during search. The present study investigated whether decisions can be based on observers’ expectation rather than perception of a target. In Experiment 1, participants were allowed to make target-present responses by clicking on the target or, if the target was not perceived, a target-present button. Participants used the target-present button option more frequently in difficult search trials and when target prevalence was high. Experiment 2 and 3 employed a difficult search task that encouraged the use of prevalence-based decisions. Target presence was reported faster when target prevalence was high, indicating that decisions were, in part, cognitive, and not strictly perceptual. A similar pattern of responses were made even when no targets appeared in the search (Experiment 3). The implication of these prevalence-based decisions for visual search models is discussed.     

Dual-target search for high and low prevalence X-ray threat targets

Recent studies have shown that the prevalence of target presentation in visual search has an impact on target detection rates, and also that searching for two targets leads to a decrement in performance (the “dual-target cost”). In the present experiments, we added to previous work that has examined the interaction between the prevalence effect and dual-target cost, and also to previous work that has examined a full range of prevalence levels. We found no interaction between the dual-target cost and prevalence effect, though the response criterion in dual-target search did interact with target prevalence in an unexpected manner. Furthermore, we detected anasymmetry in the prevalence effect: It was more marked for high than low prevalence. Implications for real-world tasks are discussed.     

Effects of peripheral eccentricity and head orientation on gaze discrimination

Visual search tasks support a special role for direct gaze in human cognition, while classic gaze judgement tasks suggest the congruency between head orientation and gaze direction plays a central role in gaze perception. Moreover, whether gaze direction can be accurately discriminated in the periphery using covert attention is unknown. In the present study, individual faces in frontal and in deviated head orientations with a direct or an averted gaze were flashed for 150 ms across the visual field; participants focused on a centred fixation while judging the gaze direction. Gaze discrimination speed and accuracy varied with head orientation and eccentricity. The limit of accurate gaze discrimination was less than ±6° eccentricity. Response times suggested a processing facilitation for direct gaze in fovea, irrespective of head orientation, however, by ±3° eccentricity, head orientation started biasing gaze judgements, and this bias increased with eccentricity. Results also suggested a special processing of frontal heads with direct gaze in central vision, rather than a general congruency effect between eye and head cues. Thus, while both head and eye cues contribute to gaze discrimination, their role differs with eccentricity.