Stacking of blocks by chimpanzees: developmental processes and physical understanding

The stacking-block task has been used to assess cognitive development in both humans and chimpanzees. The present study reports three aspects of stacking behavior in chimpanzees: spontaneous development, acquisition process following training, and physical understanding assessed through a cylindrical-block task. Over 3 years of longitudinal observation of block manipulation, one of three infant chimpanzees spontaneously started to stack up cubic blocks at the age of 2 years and 7 months. The other two infants began stacking up blocks at 3 years and 1 month, although only after the introduction of training by a human tester who rewarded stacking behavior. Cylindrical blocks were then introduced to assess physical understanding in object-object combinations in three infant (aged 3-4) and three adult chimpanzees. The flat surfaces of cylinders are suitable for stacking, while the rounded surface is not. Block manipulation was described using sequential codes and analyzed focusing on failure, cause, and solution in the task. Three of the six subjects (one infant and two adults) stacked up cylindrical blocks efficiently: frequently changing the cylinders' orientation without contacting the round side to other blocks. Rich experience in stacking cubes may facilitate subjects' stacking of novel, cylindrical shapes from the beginning. The other three subjects were less efficient in stacking cylinders and used variable strategies to achieve the goal. Nevertheless, they began to learn the effective way of stacking over the course of testing, after about 15 sessions (75 trials).     

审美概念理解对审美感性水平影响的实验探索

通常认为审美理性对审美感性有消极影响。这至少对认知心理学和人工智能的研究与发展形成了一种障碍。本研究以审美概念理解作为审美理性活动的典型式,对二者的实际关系进行探索。实验对象分为A类普通被试和B类艺术专业被试。结果表明：无论是否通过专门的审美概念学习训练,实验组和对照组的审美概念理解与审美感性水平的发展都呈共同上升趋势：通过学习训练,审美概念理解程度有显著提高,且显著有助于AB两类被试审美感受总水平提高;审美概念理解的“合理性”（正确性与精确性）是对审美感性各因素影响的显著因子,而其“事实例举”对于审美感性中的审美感知、审美联想、审美情感等是显著因子。A类小学5年级被试的审美感知和审美情感、B类大学美术专业2年级被试的审美感知,实验前后无显著差异,这表明审美理性对审美感性所具有的积极影响,在一定条件下是有限的。     

幼儿对生气和伤心情绪倾向同伴的接受性比较

本研究通过生气-伤心两可情景,考察了116名4~6岁幼儿对生气和伤心倾向同伴的认知偏好,并通过二选一的封闭式访谈考察幼儿对生气和伤心情绪结果的理解,以反映幼儿的偏好原因。结果表明:①从认知上看,相比生气倾向的同伴,幼儿更偏好伤心倾向的同伴。②5岁、6岁组幼儿比4岁组幼儿更偏好伤心倾向的同伴。③在情绪结果理解上,幼儿认为生气引发他人更多的远离,伤心引发他人更多的目标恢复、道歉和趋近。可见,生气倾向的幼儿比伤心倾向的幼儿更不被同伴接受。     

儿童心理理论能力中特质理解的研究

特质是可以概括、预测和解释行为的稳定的内部特征,包含了人的理智、情绪和社会方面的特征。特质理解是心理理论研究中的一个重要研究领域,它对于社会能力的促进和发展具有重要意义。文章概述了国内外该研究领域的主要研究成果及研究动态,包括儿童自由描述中特质词的使用、特质稳定性的理解、特质心理因果性的理解及与特质理解相关的其他方面的理解的研究。     

Projective identification: A theoretical investigation of the concept starting from ’Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’1

This paper submits passages from four papers‐‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’ (Klein); ‘On identification’ (Klein); ‘Analysis of a schizophrenic state with depersonalization’ (Rosenfeld); and ‘Remarks on the relation of male homosexuality to paranoia, paranoid anxiety and narcissism’ (Rosenfeld)‐to a critical reading, enabling the theoretical premises which have produced the current, differing views on projective identification to be traced. These views revolve both around the role assigned to identification in the process and around the meaning of the expression‘to identify oneself with’ which in ‘On identification’ goes from ‘to feel similar to, or identical to the other’ to ‘to take another person as a model’. This legitimizes the inclusion of very different phenomena into the concept of projective identification. The author describes some uses of the term ‘projective identification’ and proposes the hypothesis that the process constitutes a way for managing otherness and the separateness of the object (be it external or internal, real or imaginary) that can compromise its reality to a greater or lesser degree. Covering a large set of phenomena, the author poses the question of whether it is useful to retain the term ‘projective identification’. She proposes an answer in the last part of the paper.     

Situated language understanding as filtering perceived affordances

We introduce a computational theory of situated language understanding in which the meaning of words and utterances depends on the physical environment and the goals and plans of communication partners. According to the theory, concepts that ground linguistic meaning are neither internal nor external to language users, but instead span the objective-subjective boundary. To model the possible interactions between subject and object, the theory relies on the notion of perceived affordances: structured units of interaction that can be used for prediction at multiple levels of abstraction. Language understanding is treated as a process of filtering perceived affordances. The theory accounts for many aspects of the situated nature of human language use and provides a unified solution to a number of demands on any theory of language understanding including conceptual combination, prototypicality effects, and the generative nature of lexical items. To support the theory, we describe an implemented system that understands verbal commands situated in a virtual gaming environment. The implementation uses probabilistic hierarchical plan recognition to generate perceived affordances. The system has been evaluated on its ability to correctly interpret free-form spontaneous verbal commands recorded from unrehearsed game play between human players. The system is able to "step into the shoes" of human players and correctly respond to a broad range of verbal commands in which linguistic meaning depends on social and physical context. We quantitatively compare the system's predictions in response to direct player commands with the actions taken by human players and show generalization to unseen data across a range of situations and verbal constructions.     

A mismatch of meaning and intentionality between analyst and analysand

In this paper, I will consider a type of misunderstanding in the analytical dialogue and the possible unconscious motivations underlying this. I will also make reference to the patient's use of the analyst's words for the purpose of narcissistic enactment and will explore the extent of the analyst's involvement in this. The subjects of misunderstanding and narcissistic enactment will be dealt with in relation to a patient's way of processing certain interpretations at the beginning of analysis and the concealment of her way of processing the analyst's words. By contributing dreams and other significant material in the sessions, the patient gradually revealed her phantasies which enabled the analyst to uncover the possible factors which determined her particular attribution of meaning to the analyst's words and her retention of information about how she had initially construed his interpretations.     

Effects of Adlerian Play Therapy on Reducing Students' Disruptive Behaviors

This randomized controlled study examined the effectiveness of Adlerian play therapy (AdPT) with 58 elementary school students (48% Latino, 33% European American, 19% African American) exhibiting disruptive classroom behaviors. Teachers and raters blinded to treatment group assignment reported that children in the experimental group demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in behavior problems and that AdPT demonstrated moderate to large treatment effects. Teachers also reported a statistically significant reduction in stress in their relationships with students receiving AdPT.     

GM Crops in Hungary: Comparing Mass Media Framing and Public Understanding of Technoscientific Controversy

In Hungary, there has been limited public debate about genetically modified crops, unlike in some Western countries. The mass media has published little to inform Hungarian lay people about genetically modified (GM) crops or their relevance to the country. Nevertheless, the media did convey some general impressions, mainly from within an Anti-GM Threat framing of the issue. This mass media frame was evident in lay focus group discussions—e.g. GM crops branded a food risk, general focus on risks, health risk identified as important risk, foreign companies regarded as source of the problem and as being ‘just out for profit’, image of corn, rhetoric of deterioration, etc. This overlap supports theories which suggest that media framings provide a resource which can be appropriated for public understanding. At the same time, however, dominant media framings were also mentioned only vaguely or in a somewhat modified way. Other issues raised in the media framing, not resonating with wider cultural themes, were absent from focus group discussions (e.g. environmental concerns). And participants were also able to rely on other conversational resources (analogous reasoning and cultural themes) to formulate some additional issues beyond the media reportage.     

Action representations activated by task‐irrelevant information: Is it really irrelevant?

Accessing action knowledge is believed to rely on the activation of action representations through the retrieval of functional, manipulative, and spatial information associated with objects. However, it remains unclear whether action representations can be activated in this way when the object information is irrelevant to the current judgment. The present study investigated this question by independently manipulating the correctness of three types of action‐related information: the functional relation between the two objects, the grip applied to the objects, and the orientation of the objects. In each of three tasks in Experiment 1, participants evaluated the correctness of only one of the three information types (function, grip or orientation). Similar results were achieved with all three tasks: “correct” judgments were facilitated when the other dimensions were correct; however, “incorrect” judgments were facilitated when the other two dimensions were both correct and also when they were both incorrect. In Experiment 2, when participants attended to an action‐irrelevant feature (object color), there was no interaction between function, grip, and orientation. These results clearly indicate that action representations can be activated by retrieval of functional, manipulative, and spatial knowledge about objects, even though this is task‐irrelevant information.