The effects of cue reliability on infants' manual search.

Nine-month-old babies were presented a manual search problem in which toys were hidden in one of two containers, and then the containers were transposed. Over a series of training trials either two, one, or no cues were perfectly correlated with the location of the toy. The infants' first searches became more accurate over training trials in conditions with consistent container and/or position cues. In the final training trial block search performance was best with two cues, intermediate with one cue, and least accurate in the no-cue condition. In a subsequent reversal procedure, in which the toy was placed in the previously unused hiding place, the number of correct first searches also differed according to the nature of cues available across hidings. The implications for learning the concept of object permanence are discussed.     

Recipient mood states and helping behavior

Three studies investigated the effects of perceived recipient mood on helping behavior. Based upon Schwartz' (in Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 10, N.Y.: Academic Press, 1977) discussion of need-based helping, it was predicted that donors would perceive greater psychological need and would help more when the recipient's mood was negative than when it was neutral. These predictions were confirmed for females but not for males. The results also confirmed the hypothesis, derived from Schwartz (1977), that a negative recipient mood would elicit greater helping than a neutral recipient mood when this mood is perceived as changeable but not when it is perceived as unchangeable.     

Bringing “The Dead” to Life: Reading James Joyce

The author offers a personal reading of James Joyce's The Dead. She focuses on how the sounds of the language are used to portray the main character's deadness and his beginning to come to life once the barriers to inner self and self-knowledge are broken.     

The Course of Representation in Memory During the Comprehension of Paragraphs

The course of the representation built in memory from a text during comprehension of paragraphs was studied by a probe technique (immediate item recognition). Three experiments showed that response times, the main variable, gradually increase as a function of the lag between the probe (a word or an atomic proposition) and its target in the text. In Experiment 3 the same result was also found with a priming technique. The absence of any kick-up over the course of time was confirmed by several additional analyses of individual data. The results were only weakly consistent with models assuming two distinct memory stores, in particular a specific “short-term memory store,” but highly consistent with models involving semantic activation and subsequent gradual deactivation.     

Ethical attentiveness

Kantian virtue can be construed as a condition of an agent which secures adherence to the requirements of morality in the face of the ever-present possibility of inner conflict with counter-ethical considerations. This paper claims that this conception of virtue does not fit in well with one essential characteristic of the virtuous agent; that he or she is attentive to the well-being of others. After some preliminary remarks about virtue-related evaluations, the paper criticises the Kantian conception of virtue in the light of certain characteristics of ethical attentiveness. The paper concludes by developing a notion of ethical habituation which includes the training of attention.     

Rereading sophistical arguments: A political intervention

This essay argues that Aristotle's categories of oratory are not as useful in judging the methods of Sophistical rhetoric as his presentation of time. The Sophistical argumentative method of making the weaker the stronger case is re-evaluated as a political practice. After showing this argument's relation to power and ideology, Aristotle's philosophy, which privileges a procedure of argument consistent with the politics of a polis-ideal rhetoric, is offered as reason for objecting to Sophistical rhetoric. The essay concludes that Sophistical rhetoric prefers the concept of possibility over Aristotelian actuality, and offers a need for an ideological space of radical, generative possibility in rhetorical theory.     

"Us" and "Them":

Abstract: In the Aristotelian tradition, politics is a matter of public deliberation over questions of justice and injustice. The Bush administration's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has been uniformly hostile to this notion, and it has instead promoted a jingoistic politics of self‐assertion by an America largely identified with the executive branch of its government. This is doubly disturbing, as the executive branch has sought to free itself from international law, multinational commitments, and domestic judicial regulation, even as it has sought to validate itself by demonizing its enemies. This essay draws out the disturbing echoes here of Carl Schmitt's work of the 1920s, in particular of Schmitt's conception of the sovereign as the ungrounded ground of the law and the political as the site of mortal conflict between friend and enemy. The essay argues that Schmitt's position in the twenties, for all of its evident problems, is superior to that of Bush, Wolfowitz, and Ashcroft in at least two senses: Schmitt condemns the idea of waging war for profit and recognizes that such wars will often be disguised as moral crusades waged against the “inhuman”; and he acknowledges that claiming to fight a war for humanity denies one's enemies their humanity, leaving them open to torture and even extermination.     

The Impact of Couple Therapy on Service Utilization among Military Veterans: The Moderating Roles of Pretreatment Service Utilization and Premature Termination

Couple therapy reduces relational and individual distress and may affect utilization of other health services, particularly among higher service utilizers. Although average decreases in service utilization are predicted among recipients of couple therapy, low utilizers of services may appropriately increase use. The relationship between couple therapy and service utilization was examined among a sample of 179 U.S. military veterans who received treatment in Veterans Affairs (VA) specialty couple therapy clinics. Consistent with hypotheses, overall mental and physical health visits decreased from the 12 months preceding couple therapy to the 12 months following treatment. Moderator analyses showed that decreases were greatest among individuals who were rated by their therapist as having completed a full course of couple therapy, suggesting that change was attributable to intervention. Pretreatment service utilization also moderated observed change—higher utilizers’ use of services decreased substantially, whereas lower utilizers’ slightly increased. Cost analyses revealed that the estimated per person mean cost in our sample decreased by $930.33 in the year following compared to the year prior to couple therapy, as per 2008 VA cost data. As service utilization data were only available for one partner and only for 1 year posttherapy, the true magnitude of this effect may be underestimated. Our findings are relevant to policy makers as they demonstrate that couple therapy reduces average service utilization and associated costs and addresses calls for analyses of cost effectiveness of systemic interventions.     

Caregiver Expressed Emotion and Psychiatric Symptoms in African‐Americans with Schizophrenia: An Attempt to Understand the Paradoxical Relationship

Expressed emotion (EE) is a family environmental construct that assesses how much criticism, hostility, and/or emotional over‐involvement a family member expresses about a patient (Hooley, Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 2007, 3, 329). Having high levels of EE within the family environment has generally been associated with poorer patient outcomes for schizophrenia and a range of other disorders. Paradoxically, for African‐American patients, high‐EE may be associated with a better symptom course (Rosenfarb, Bellack, & Aziz, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 2006, 115, 112). However, this finding is in need of additional support and, if confirmed, clarification. In line with previous research, using a sample of 30 patients with schizophrenia and their primary caregivers, we hypothesized that having a caregiver classified as low‐EE would be associated with greater patient symptom severity. We also aimed to better understand why this pattern may exist by examining the content of interviews taken from the Five‐Minute Speech Sample. Results supported study hypotheses. In line with Rosenfarb et al. (2006), having a low‐EE caregiver was associated with greater symptom severity in African‐American patients. A content analysis uncovered some interesting patterns that may help elucidate this finding. Results of this study suggest that attempts to lower high‐EE in African Americans may, in fact, be counterproductive.