Group affective learning in training for psychotherapy and psychoanalysis

This paper describes The Group Affective Model, a method for teaching psychoanalytic concepts and their clinical application, using multi‐channel teaching, process and review in group settings, and learning from experience in an open systems learning community for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. This innovation arose in response to criticism of existing methods in psychoanalytic education that have subordinated the primary educational task to that of the training analysis. Noticing this split between education and training analysis, between cognition and affect, and between concepts of individual and group unconscious processes, we developed the Group Affective Model for teaching and learning psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in an open psychological space in which students and faculty experience individual and group processes of digestion, assimilation, and review, which demonstrate the concepts in action and make them available for internalization selectively. We discuss our philosophy and our educational stance. We describe our institution and our participants. We give examples of teaching situations that we have studied to provide some insight about assimilation and internalization of the concepts and clinical approaches being taught. We discuss the transferability of the Group Affective Model to other teaching settings and psychoanalytic training institutions and propose it as the fourth pillar of psychoanalytic training, next to analytic treatment, clinical supervision, and didactic seminars.     

Costs and benefits of representational change: effects of context on age and sex differences in symbolic magnitude estimation

Studies have reported high correlations in accuracy across estimation contexts, robust transfer of estimation training to novel numerical contexts, and adults drawing mistaken analogies between numerical and fractional values. We hypothesized that these disparate findings may reflect the benefits and costs of learning linear representations of numerical magnitude. Specifically, children learn that their default logarithmic representations are inappropriate for many numerical tasks, leading them to adopt more appropriate linear representations despite linear representations being inappropriate for estimating fractional magnitude. In Experiment 1, this hypothesis accurately predicted a developmental shift from logarithmic to linear estimates of numerical magnitude and a negative correlation between accuracy of numerical and fractional magnitude estimates (r = −.80). In Experiment 2, training that improved numerical estimates also led to poorer fractional magnitude estimates. Finally, both before and after training that eliminated age differences in estimation accuracy, complementary sex differences were observed across the two estimation contexts.     

Apprentissage de concepts perceptuels, associationnels et relationnels chez le pigeon

The study of concepts in cognitive psychology has generally been anthropocentric with respect to both content and theory. A broader comparative perspective on the various forms of concept learning would provide a more inclusive view of conceptual behavior. It would also provide a more objective perspective from which to identify underlying processes. Several of the major varieties of conceptual classes claimed for humans alone also appear to be represented in nonhuman animals and young children: perceptual classes involving classification according to the shared attributes of objects, associative classes or functional equivalences in which stimuli form a class based on common associations and relational classes, in which the conceptual relationship between stimuli defines the class.     

Exemplars in the mist: the cognitive substrate of the representativeness heuristic

The idea that people often make probability judgments by a heuristic short-cut, the representativeness heuristic, has been widely influential, but also criticized for being vague. The empirical trademark of the heuristic is characteristic deviations between normative probabilities and judgments (e.g., the conjunction fallacy, base-rate neglect). In this article the authors contrast two hypotheses concerning the cognitive substrate of the representativeness heuristic, the prototype hypothesis (Kahneman & Frederick, 2002) and the exemplar hypothesis (Juslin & Persson, 2002), in a task especially designed to elicit representativeness effects. Computational modelling and an experiment reveal that representativeness effects are evident early in training and persist longer in a more complex task environment and that the data are best accounted for by a model implementing the exemplar hypothesis.     

信息的充分性和情绪性对推理的影响：时间压力的调节作用

主要探讨推理中信息相关因素对分析系统与启发式系统的影响。通过两个实验考察信息的充分性和情绪性对突发事件情境下推理的影响。实验1任务无时间压力,结果发现：信息充分性对推理的影响显著,表现为信息越充分,被试推理的逻辑指数越高,更多使用了分析系统;且信息充分时,接受积极信息的被试的信念指数显著增高。实验2任务有时间压力,结果发现：信息的情绪性对推理的影响显著,表现为接受积极信息的被试推理的逻辑指数显著大于接受消极信息组,更多使用了分析系统。两个实验结果表明,信息的充分性主要通过分析系统对推理产生影响,而信息的情绪性可通过双系统影响推理过程,即积极信息在推理时间充裕时促进启发式系统,但在有时间压力下促进分析系统。     

Spatial and linguistic aspects of visual imagery in sentence comprehension

There is mounting evidence that language comprehension involves the activation of mental imagery of the content of utterances ( Barsalou, 1999 ; Bergen, Chang, & Narayan, 2004 ; Bergen, Narayan, & Feldman, 2003 ; Narayan, Bergen, & Weinberg, 2004 ; Richardson, Spivey, McRae, & Barsalou, 2003 ; Stanfield & Zwaan, 2001 ; Zwaan, Stanfield, & Yaxley, 2002 ). This imagery can have motor or perceptual content. Three main questions about the process remain under‐explored, however. First, are lexical associations with perception or motion sufficient to yield mental simulation, or is the integration of lexical semantics into larger structures, like sentences, necessary? Second, what linguistic elements (e.g., verbs, nouns, etc.) trigger mental simulations? Third, how detailed are the visual simulations that are performed? A series of behavioral experiments address these questions, using a visual object categorization task to investigate whether up‐ or down‐related language selectively interferes with visual processing in the same part of the visual field (following Richardson et al., 2003 ). The results demonstrate that either subject nouns or main verbs can trigger visual imagery, but only when used in literal sentences about real space—metaphorical language does not yield significant effects—which implies that it is the comprehension of the sentence as a whole and not simply lexical associations that yields imagery effects. These studies also show that the evoked imagery contains detail as to the part of the visual field where the described scene would take place.     

有限理性的“占优启发式”和“齐当别”决策模型的作为 ——当Allais悖论杠杆撬动了期望效用理论

人们在做决策时常常要受到时间或知识的限制,有时还要受到其双重限制。关于人们是如何进行风险决策,早期有期望效用理论对其加以解释,但Allais悖论对其标准化地位提出了挑战。Simon的“有限理性”观点提出后,一些研究者开始致力于开发决策的“有限理性”模型。文章讨论并比较了无限理性的期望效用理论被Allais悖论杠杆撬动之后,有限理性的“占优启发式”和“齐当别”决策模型所能做的和所不能做的。两种模型的决策标准、计算策略以及未来研究的展望也一并作了讨论     

不同问题情景对小学生运用乘法运算策略的影响

通过设置不同问题情景引导被试利用乘法运算定律解决数学问题,探讨不同问题情景对小学四、六年级学生运用乘法运算策略的影响。结果表明:(1)被试掌握交换律的情况均好于分配律;即使没有正式学过交换律,四年级被试使用交换律的成绩与六年级被试没有显著差异。(2)六年级被试在同形问题情景中利用分配律线索的成绩好于其它的问题情景,两个年级后进生同形问题的成绩均好于其它问题情景。总体而言,相对于面积问题情景和笛卡尔积问题情景,同形问题表征方式更有利于小学生利用乘法运算策略。     

The significance of psycho‐peristalsis and tears within the therapeutic relationship

This paper represents a heuristic study of the significance of involuntary, intuitive gut responses (psycho‐peristalsis) and tears within the therapeutic relationship. Autobiographical material and qualitative data were gathered from case‐notes and semi‐structured interviews with four client/co‐participants. Data on occurrences of psycho‐peristalsis and tears were collected from 92 clients seen within a six‐year period. Eleven elements of a ‘general constitutional structure of experience’ were identified. A central finding of the study concerns the gut's apparent ability to ‘pick up’, at an unconscious level, significant material that might otherwise have been overlooked. The research suggests some possible clues to the process of unconscious communication and healing, and adds an interesting psychological dimension to recent findings in the fields of neuroscience and cell biology which amount to the discovery of a ‘second brain’ in the walls of the small intestine. These phenomena are examined in the light of theoretical debates in counselling and psychotherapy.     

On the Question, “What is Law?”

Res Publica - Re-framing discussion of the question, “What is law?“ in terms of the contexts in which the whole question makes sense allows us to see that jurisprudence is about...