Gender and narrative in the Mahabharata

The public recognition of collectivities has been a difficult concept to embed in Western liberal states. Recognition is a complex and contested process, with minority rights proving particularly problematic. A commitment to recognising diversity within society that goes beyond the tokenistic ‘food and dance’ events must somehow be incorporated into the identity of a multicultural state. Yet, should this automatically mean the conferment of minority rights? If so, which rights? which groups? who decides and where does it end? Drawing on examples from Europe and Canada, this paper shall consider the issue of minority rights and integration, seeking to highlight some of the more important debates surrounding this issue including the importance of minority rights and recognition, their contested nature and the ability of such right to promote integration, or otherwise.     

From “It's Not Me” to “It Was Me,After All”: A Case Presentation of a Patient Diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder

In cases of extreme childhood trauma associated with abuse and neglect, one's sense of self is seriously compromised. Attachment patterns, symptoms, defensive operations, and character formation will differ depending upon the level of interference and impingement. When repeated trauma occurs in early childhood, the dissociative response may become the first line of defense for the person to rely upon. In its most severe form, patients are diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). This paper addresses the case of a woman diagnosed with DID. It describes the restoration of a cohesive sense of self from the eight parts of a dissociated and fragmented self in the course of therapy. The clinical case material presented is that of the child part of her, known as Lucy. Her treatment resulted in the integration of the “it's not me!” self to the patient's knowledge that “it was me, after all.”     

Working Experientially and Somatically with Couples

SUMMARY

Working experientially and somatically with couples is a powerful method of accessing, exploring, and transforming both intra-psychic issues and interactional patterns. In this article, a number of methods of working experientially will be described, along with their underlying rationale. Basic assumptions about the nature of couple's difficulties and the role of the therapist also will be explored along with an integrated approach to assessment that provides a solid basis for these dramatic interventions.     

青少年负性情绪信息注意偏向的情绪弹性和性别效应

探讨情绪弹性和性别变量对青少年加工负性情绪信息时注意偏向的影响,采用情绪stroop实验范式,以46名青少年为被试,以负性情绪图片为实验材料,考察不同情绪弹性和性别的青少年在负性情绪图片颜色识别时的反应时间差异。结果发现,情绪弹性对负性情绪图片颜色识别的主效应显著,统计效力非常明显;性别对负性情绪图片颜色识别的主效应显著,统计效力明显;情绪弹性与性别在颜色识别上的交互作用不显著。这说明青少年负性情绪信息加工过程中产生的注意偏向效应受情绪弹性和性别因素的影响。     

Voluntary and involuntary attention have different consequences: The effect of perceptual difficulty

We propose that voluntary and involuntary attention affect different mechanisms and have different consequences for performance measured in reaction time. Voluntary attention enhances the perceptual representation whereas involuntary attention affects the tendency to respond to stimuli in one location or another. In a spatial-cueing paradigm, we manipulated perceptual difficulty and compared voluntary and involuntary attention. For the voluntary-attention condition, the spatial cue was predictive of the target location, whereas in the involuntary-attention condition it was not. Increasing perceptual difficulty increased the attention effect with voluntary attention, but decreased it with involuntary attention. Thus voluntary and involuntary attention have different consequences when perceptual difficulty is manipulated and hence are probably caused by different mechanisms.     

Segmentation by lexical subtraction in Hungarian speakers of second-language English

Using cross-modal form priming, we compared the use of stress and lexicality in the segmentation of spoken English by native English speakers (L1) and by native Hungarian speakers of second-language English (L2). For both language groups, lexicality was found to be an effective segmentation cue. That is, spoken disyllabic word fragments were stronger primes in a subsequent visual word recognition task when preceded by meaningful words than when preceded by nonwords: For example, the first two syllables of corridor were a more effective prime for visually presented corridor when heard in the phrase anythingcorri than in imoshingcorri. The stress pattern of the prime (strong–weak vs. weak–strong) did not affect the degree of priming. For L1 speakers, this supports previous findings about the preferential use of high-level segmentation strategies in clear speech. For L2 speakers, the lexical strategy was employed regardless of L2 proficiency level and instead of exploiting the consistent stress pattern of their native language. This is clear evidence for the primacy and robustness of segmentation by lexical subtraction even in individuals whose lexical knowledge is limited.     

Generation difficulty and memory for source

The role of the word predictability from sentence context for reality monitoring and external source monitoring was examined in two experiments. In a reality-monitoring task, discrimination of an internal source was better in the hard than in the easy condition. It is probable that extra cognitive operations engaged during word generation in the hard condition were effective cues for reality-monitoring judgements. In contrast, in an external source-monitoring task (recognition memory of item's colour), the hard condition resulted in worse source memory for generated words than did the easy condition. This result is consistent both with an item–context trade-off hypothesis and a processing hypothesis. Greater effort involved at the time of generation might limit resources available for encoding of an external source. It is also possible that for generated words, the hard condition promoted conceptual processing instead of perceptual processing; therefore the item's colour was not effectively encoded.     

Visual memory for feature bindings: The disruptive effect of responding to new perceptual input

In the current study, we examined how short-term memory for location–identity feature bindings is influenced by subsequent cognitive and perceptual processing demands. Previous work has shown that memory performance for feature bindings can be disrupted by the presentation of subsequent visual information, particularly when this information is similar to that held in memory. The present study demonstrates that memory performance for feature bindings can be profoundly disrupted by also requiring a response to visual information presented subsequent to the visual memory array. Across five experiments, memory for a location–identity binding was substantially impaired following a localization response to a following item that matched the location but mismatched the identity of the memory target. The results point to an important role for action in the episodic integration processes that control short-term visual memory performance.     

Interaction,information and meaning

The possibility of a “unified theory of information” which avoids reifying information or attributing agency to it is explored using the patterned processes characteristic of self‐organization. Interactions are shown to create information from the level of quantum physics to human societies. The difference between meaningless and meaningful information is explained through the contextualizing role of systems.     

Function support as an information systems development paradigm

The function support paradigm of information systems development seeks to exploit the potential synergy that can be obtained by making the information processing system an integral part of organizational function. This requires for the information processing system to be embedded into the structure and dynamics underlying the function it supports. This is shown to be the case in natural systems, where the synergy is obtained through the compatibility of information processing with the structure and dynamics of the overall system.

Current approaches to the development of information systems do not consider, in a sufficiently explicit manner, the structure and dynamics of organizations as a determinant of their information processing requirements. As a consequence, the resulting information systems usually do not provide the required level of support. We argue that, to be effective, man‐made information systems must also be compatible with the organizational functions they support. The contribution of the information system to the adaptability of the organization as a whole is proposed as a broad but robust and effective measure of its effectiveness.