客体运动速度的视觉工作记忆容量

自Luck等人的研究以来,诸多研究者对客体信息在视觉工作记忆中的表征与存储问题进行了探讨。现有研究主要采用呈现于静态场景的客体作为刺激材料,而不涉及对客体运动特征信息的短时存储。本研究结合多客体追踪范式和视觉工作记忆的变化觉察范式,通过比较检测项全部呈现方式与单检测项呈现方式条件下,客体运动速度的视觉工作记忆绩效,探讨了多个客体的运动速度信息在工作记忆中的存储方式和容量问题。结果表明,在工作记忆中能够存储约3仑独立客体的运动速度信息。     

对解释伪忽视机制的两种理论的初步检验

以视野因素对伪忽视的影响为切人点来考察注意的右半球优势理论与表征的空间变形理论对伪忽视机制的解释。使用灰度标尺任务和三视野速示迫选的实验方法研究视野和操作用手因素对伪忽视的影响。结果显示,只有将两种理论结合起来才能对伪忽视机制作出更好的解释。     

移动窗口条件下不同工作记忆者阅读差异的眼动研究

采用EyelinkⅡ眼动仪为工具,考察在移动窗口条件下不同工作记忆容量读者的阅读差异。实验为5（窗口大小：1个字、3个字、5个字、7个字、4×25个字）×2（工作记忆容量：高、低）混合设计。结果表明：随着窗口大小的增加,阅读时间、注视次数、眼跳次数显著减少,阅读速度显著加快,眼跳幅度显著增加。与低工作记忆容量被试相比,高工作记忆容量被试能够更好地整合文章信息,进行更有效的阅读。     

多线索语篇阅读中影响背景信息通达的因素

先前的研究发现,在语篇阅读中,背景信息的通达会受到情景的限制,本研究采用实时窗口阅读技术,通过双人物线索材料,进一步探讨影响这种限制作用的因素。在实验所用材料中,配角只是被提及而未在故事情景中出现,其特征描述与目标句中主角的行为形成冲突关系,以配角特征为探测句,要求被试进行意义判断。结果发现,目标句中主角的行为激活了配角的特征描述,使目标句后探测句的反应时显著短于目标句前的反应时,说明起限制作用的所谓"情景"并非故事所发生的"真实情景",而是读者根据故事所建立的"心理情景"。     

The week the couch arrived

Changes in the therapeutic environment can elicit intense and unpredictable responses from patients, who then react to the new elements with their own unique thoughts, fantasies, emotions and behaviours. When the change is very specific, and when it entails implications for the treatment itself, these patient responses can coalesce around more profound experiences of the transference as well as of the countertransference. The author, as a candidate or analyst-in-training, purchased an analytic couch for his office and observed the unfolding of what this new couch meant for existing treatments. Using clinical examples, he describes the three most common patient responses that occurred: rejecting, ambivalent, and embracing. The richly variant ideas and fantasies related to the analytic couch are described, and the couch's history within Freudian and Jungian contexts is reviewed. Personal determinants that could lead to the decision of whether to use a couch as part of analysis are considered from the standpoint of the analyst's preferences and own experience with the couch. The couch is discussed as a signifier of the analytic process with cultural meanings alluding not only to familiar stereotypes, but also to psychological healing and self-development.     

The roots of empathy and aggression in analysis

Empathy and interpretation have complementary roles in analysis. Empathy diminishes psychological arousal, ego-defences, and promotes the therapeutic relationship. Interpretation, when adopted in the service of character analysis and the uncovering of unconscious conflict, represents one element of a larger set of interventions termed analytic aggression, whose primary goal is to promote insight. Psychoanalysis has been increasingly influenced by derivative theories that promote the therapeutic relationship. Clinical observations suggest that the application of analytic aggression has diminished and that many modern treatments may have become overly skewed towards empathic approaches. This paper explores ethical humanism, Jamesian typology, and feminine psychology, as factors that have contributed to the diminished emphasis on analytic aggression in practice. Eastern myth and Buddhist psychology are used to explicate the core features of narcissistic mental structuring and to support the continued importance of analytic aggression in its treatment. Case material is examined to elucidate the benefits and limits of analytic aggression.     

Relational-oriented character analysis

Referring to the diversity of psychoanalysis of today, a position called relational-oriented character analysis is discussed. It is stated that relation and character as concepts refer to different and partly contradictory points of view in psychoanalysis, the first one emphasising mobile, dynamic aspects of personality, the second underlining stable, structural aspects. The principle aim of the article is to argue how the two perspectives can be theoretically combined in an overriding object-relational (two-person) conception and to discuss some implications for analytic technique. Finally, convergences and differences with other positions or schools in contemporary psychoanalysis are suggested.     

The time windows of the sense of agency

The sense of agency depends on some internal cues that derive from action control, as well as external cues like contextual information and prior information (degree of contingency between an action and is effect). We assessed whether external agency cues are combined with internal agency cues to affect the sense of agency. In two experiments participants performed a movement (button press) that elicited, after a varying delay, an effect (ball appearing on a screen), and reported their sense of agency over the effect (full, partial or no-agency) while internal cues (premotor information) and external cues (contextual and prior information) were manipulated. We assessed the effect of agency cues on the delays at which the sense of agency varied. The delays were increased with premotor signals but were decreased with contextual information. These findings favour a model of integration of internal and external agency cues over time.     

Spitting,kicking and stripping: technical difficulties encountered in the treatment of deprived children

The technical difficulties posed for the child psychotherapist working with children who have themselves experienced violence and abuse are addressed. A distinction is drawn between violence in the service of communicating about such experiences and violence that arises from more perverse aspects of the patient. The therapist's need to pay close attention to his counter-transference is emphasized. From an example of a single session we see the therapist's struggle to receive the communicative aspects of extreme acting-out behaviour at the same time as creating a safe setting in which thinking can take place.     

Light and movement: making contact with a traumatised and embattled latency girl

This paper shows a child psychotherapist learning and developing her technique as she attempts to make contact with a child who is extremely hard to reach. It is based on the first two years of three-times-weekly intensive psychotherapy of a latency girl who had little faith in a helpful therapeutic relationship. Her defences against such a relationship were entrenched and hard to shift. In this clinical work, the psychotherapist relies on close observation and her countertransference to develop a relationship with the child, in order to begin to make sense of her non-verbal emotional experience and communication.