“The Dead”

Gabriel Conroy, central to James Joyce's novella, The Dead, keys the reader's experience of the evening portrayed. A third-person narration allows for distance, but Gabriel's closely depicted thought processes and actions, and his insistent self-consciousness, shape the story. As such they invite psychoanalytic interpretation and reward it. Gabriel's shocking discovery and reaction to it can be seen to be informed by rendered psychodynamics and a credible internalized past. Joyce and Freud, actual contemporaries, can be seen as contemporaneous in imagination as well.     

The Factor Structure of the Beavers Interactional Scales

Confirmatory factor analysis and regression analyses of the Beavers Interactional Scales did not appear to support the model offered by its developers, namely, several specified family attributes contributing respectively to two global factors of Family Competence and Family Style. Moreover, regression analysis indicated that only three of 12 items predicted raters' assessments of Global Family Health, and one of seven items predicted Global Family Style. Individuals interested in the family dynamic centripetal/centrifugal might best think of that as a unitary entity and rate it accordingly.     

Der “dritte Weg” der “neo-eurasischen” Zeitschrift “Elementy” -- zurück ins Dritte Reich?

Studies in East European Thought - Articulated in the twenties, the doctrines of the exiled Russian ‘Evrazijstvo’ movement are undergoing a renaissance in Russia today. As the...     

Infants' understanding of object-directed action

When and in what ways do infants recognize humans as intentional actors? An important aspect of this larger question concerns when infants recognize specific human actions (e.g. a reach) as object-directed (i.e. as acting toward goal-objects). In two studies using a visual habituation technique, 12-month-old infants were tested to assess their recognition that an adult's reach is directed toward its target object. Infants in the experimental condition were habituated to a display in which an actor reached over a wall-like barrier with an arcing arm movement, to pick up a ball. After habituation infants saw two test displays, for which the barrier was removed. In the direct test event the actor reached directly for the ball, the arm tracing a visually new path, but the action consistent with attempting to reach for the object as directly as possible. In the indirect test event the actor traced the old path, reaching over in an arc, even though the wall was no longer present. This arm movement was identical to that in habituation but no longer displayed a reach going directly to its object. In a control condition infants saw the same movements but in a situation with no goal-object. In the experimental conditions, with a goal object present, infants looked longer at the indirect test event in comparison to the direct test event. In the control conditions infants looked equally at both indirect and direct test events. We conclude that sensitivity to human object-directed action is established by 12-month-olds and compare these results to recent findings by [Gergely, G., Nadasdy, Z., Csibra, G., & Biro S. (1995). Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age. Cognition, 56, 165-193] and [Woodward, A. (1998). Infants selectively encode the goal object of an actor's reach. Cognition, 69, 1-34].     

Adjusting To a New Racial Climate: Maintenance of Personal Integrity

This paper will focus on the writer’s experience as a native New Yorker relocating to Montgomery, Alabama. The writer will share how he adjusted and coped with overt discrimination and racism in the context of the high school in which he attended there-a majority white high school on the “other” side of town. The writer will share how he employed the following coping mechanisms as methods of adjusting to his new environment: translating emotional experiences into words (relaxation and talk therapy), involvement with other black positive peers, careful assessment before acting, withdrawal and avoidance, and consuming African-American literature.     

Neural correlates of a default response in a delayed go/no-go task

Working memory, the ability to temporarily retain task-relevant information across a delay, is frequently investigated using delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) or delayed Go/No-Go tasks (DGNG). In DMTS tasks, sample cues instruct the animal which type of response has to be executed at the end of a delay. Typically, performance decreases with increasing delay duration, indicating that working memory fades across a delay. However, no such performance decrease has been found when the sample cues exist of present vs. absent stimuli, suggesting that pigeons do not rely on working memory, but seem to respond by default in those trials. We trained 3 pigeons in a DGNG task and found a similar default response pattern: The diverging slopes of the retention functions on correct Go and No-Go trials suggested that pigeons by default omitted their response following No-Go stimuli, but actively retained task-relevant information across the delay for successful responses on Go trials. We conducted single-cell recordings in the avian nidopallium caudolaterale, a structure comparable to the mammalian prefrontal cortex. On Go trials, many neurons displayed sustained elevated activity during the delay preceding the response, replicating previous findings and suggesting that task-relevant information was neurally represented and maintained across the delay. However, the same units did not show enhanced delay activity preceding correct response suppressions in No-Go trials. This activation-inactivation pattern presumably constitutes a neural correlate of the default response strategy observed in the DGNG task.     

Reflections on <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Passion of the Christ</Emphasis>

The purpose of this article is to offer pastoral reflections on the movie by Mel Gibson entitled The Passion of the Christ.     

Memory for action events: findings in neurological patients

Encoding action phrases by enacting leads normally to better memory performance than verbal encoding. In order to gain additional insight into the representational basis of the enactment effect, neurological patients are contrasted with healthy participants. Persons suffering from Parkinson's disease, which primarily impairs the motor system, and patients suffering from Frontal Lobe Syndrome, which primarily affects action-related planning processes, were involved. We investigated whether the enactment effect would be differentially affected by these disorders. In addition, the characteristics of information processing after encoding by enacting was analyzed by varying memory material (unrelated versus clusterable actions) and by adding an encoding condition that included obligatory action planning (director condition). The findings indicate that the impact of motor information for the enactment effect is not dominant compared to the role of action-related cognitive and motivational processes, in particular planning processes. The findings of the two experiments are explained within traditional conceptual memory theories.     

Gender Role Stereotyping of Parents in Children’s Picture Books: The Invisible Father

Previous studies reveal the reinforcement of gender stereotypes by picture books children read during the formative years. In these books, boys tend to be portrayed as active leaders, and girls as passive followers. Women and girls are under-represented. Men often exhibit career skills, and women perform traditional tasks in the home. Even when careers are nontraditional, personality characteristics and other qualities and behaviors are often stereotypical. Previous researchers emphasized the narrowly defined roles of women and children in picture books. In this study, we focused on the representation of mothers and fathers, and examined whether men are stereotyped as relatively absent or inept parents. A content analysis of the gender roles exhibited in 200 prominent childrens picture books demonstrated that fathers are largely under-represented, and, when they do appear, they are withdrawn and ineffectual parents. Further research could establish whether seriously deficient models of fatherhood in childrens literature affect the incidence of present, caring fathers in society.     

Affektive Interaktion zwischen Patienten und Therapeuten

Zusammenfassung Eine positive therapeutische Beziehung wird therapieschulenübergreifend als wichtige Voraussetzung für den Therapieerfolg angesehen. Meist wird jedoch in Studien lediglich die schriftliche Patienteneinschätzung erfasst. Nonverbale Aspekte der Interaktion zwischen Patienten und Therapeuten werden kaum untersucht. Aus einer Studie zur Vorhersage des Erfolgs stationärer Fokaltherapie werden affektive Interaktionsprozesse im Erstinterview exemplarisch zwischen einer erfolgreichen und einer nicht erfolgreichen Behandlung mit mikroanalytischen Verfahren (facial action coding system, FACS) verglichen. In der nicht erfolgreichen Therapie waren die mimischen Affektäußerungen reziprok; Therapeutin und Patientin zeigten ähnliche vorherrschende (sog. Leit-)Affekte. Erfolgreicher waren die Behandlungen, wenn die Therapeuten komplementäre Affektmuster zeigten. Implikationen für Behandlungstechnik, Supervision und Weiterbildung werden diskutiert.