The relationship between susceptibility to false memories, dissociativity, and paranormal belief and experience

One hundred participants completed a News Coverage Questionnaire concerning personal memories of where they were, what they were doing and who they were with when footage of dramatic news events was first shown on television, as well as asking them to recall details of the footage itself. These news items included four events that are known to have been captured on film and one item concerning non-existent footage of the bombing of a nightclub in Bali. Overall, 36% of respondents reported false memories of the alleged footage of the Bali bombing. Participants reporting false memories were found to score significantly higher than those who did not report such memories on the Australian Sheep–Goat Scale, on various subscales of the Anomalous Experiences Inventory (Belief, Experience and Ability) and on the Dissociative Experiences Scale, supporting the hypothesis that believers in the paranormal may be more susceptible to false memories than non-believers.     

NEAR‐DEATH EXPERIENCES AND SPIRITUALITY

Abstract. Some individuals when they come close to death report having experiences that they interpret as spiritual or religious. These so‐called near‐death experiences (NDEs) often include a sense of separation from the physical body and encounters with religious figures and a mystical or divine presence. They share with mystical experiences a sense of cosmic unity or oneness, transcendence of time and space, deeply felt positive mood, sense of sacredness, noetic quality or intuitive illumination, paradoxicality, ineffability, transiency, and persistent positive aftereffects. Although there is no relationship between NDEs and religious belief prior to the experience, there are strong associations between depth of NDE and religious change after the experience. NDEs often change experiencers' values, decreasing their fear of death and giving their lives new meaning. NDEs lead to a shift from ego‐centered to other‐centered consciousness, disposition to love unconditionally, heightened empathy, decreased interest in status symbols and material possessions, reduced fear of death, and deepened spiritual consciousness. Many experiencers become more empathic and spiritually oriented and express the beliefs that death is not fearsome, that life continues beyond, that love is more important than material possessions, and that everything happens for a reason. These changes meet the definition of spiritual transformation as “a dramatic change in religious belief, attitude, and behavior that occurs over a relatively short period of time.” NDEs do not necessarily promote any one particular religious or spiritual tradition over others, but they do foster general spiritual growth both in the experiencers themselves and in human society at large.     

A metaphilosophical dialogue

Three philosophical attitudes in dialogue are suggested in answering the question posed by the Journal. An inviting, First Inner Voice undeerstands philosophy as a shareable theoretical task that can be explained and understood even across distant philosophical paradigms. A Second Inner Voice, sometimes termed in the dialogue as sceptic, distrusts any metaphilosophical definition of what philosophy is and what it should do, but would, nevertheless, aspire to retain a certain universalistic understanding of its own work, though it cannot be strongly and conceptualy rendered. A Third Inner Voice, regarded in the text as somewhat Hegelian, insists in the unavoidability of strong philosophical definitions both in historical and in conceptual terms. No proposal or conclusion is forwarded regarding what should be done in contemporary philosophy, though an analysis of harm experiences is taken as an example of philosophical work     

The effect of foregone payoffs on underweighting small probability events

Foregone payoffs add information about the outcomes for alternatives that are not chosen. The present paper examines the effect of foregone payoffs on underweighting rare but possible events in repeated choice tasks. Previous studies have not demonstrated any long‐lasting effects of foregone payoffs (following repeated presentation of a task) when foregone payoffs do not add much information. The present paper highlights the conditions and the contributing factors for the occurrence of such long‐lasting effects. An experimental study compares the effect of foregone payoffs under different degrees of rarity of the negative payoff. It is demonstrated that foregone payoffs increase the selection from risky alternatives with extremely rare and highly negative outcomes, and that this effect does not diminish with repeated presentation of the task. These findings can be summarized using a surprisingly simple reinforcement‐learning model. The findings are discussed in the context of the potential long‐term effect of social learning. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Audiotactile multisensory interactions in human information processing

Abstract:  The last few years has seen a very rapid growth of interest in how signals from different sensory modalities are integrated in the brain to form the unified percepts that fill our daily lives. Research on multisensory interactions between vision, touch, and proprioception has revealed the existence of multisensory spatial representations that code the location of external events relative to our own bodies. In this review, we highlight recent converging evidence from both human and animal studies that has revealed that spatially-modulated multisensory interactions also occur between hearing and touch, especially in the space immediately surrounding the head. These spatial audiotactile interactions for stimuli presented close to the head can affect not only the spatial aspects of perception, but also various other non-spatial aspects of audiotactile information processing. Finally, we highlight some of the most important questions for future research in this area.     

经验、材料性质及加工水平对虚假记忆的影响

本实验采用DRM研究范式,考察经验、材料性质和加工水平三个方面对虚假记忆的影响。实验首次采用句子的方式呈现,给被试提供符合经验和不符合经验的句子进行学习和再认。实验结果显示,三个因素对虚假记忆的影响都是显著的,其中,经验是导致虚假记忆产生的主导因素,加工深度同经验之间以及材料性质同经验之间的交互作用均存在显著的交互作用。     

Masks and Faces in the Setting at the Time of Coronavirus

The “health emergency” forced analysts to seek new ways of continuing with analysis. The article focuses, in particular, on the changes brought about in the setting by the presence of the sanitary mask, following a line that begins with the theme of the “mask” in the collective uses of human cultures, and develops through the Jungian concept of persona, as opposed to the “face” that may convey an authentic image of oneself. A clinical vignette illustrates the issues that the mask raises in the setting by obstructing the communication of emotions. When there is no transformative processing of concrete data, “unmasking” can also lead to an uncanny encounter and to moments of darkness and confusion in analysis, when the analyst experiences the kind of “unconscious identity” between therapist and patient that Jung defined as nigredo. The article is intended as a contribution to the analytic community's current reflections on the new and unforeseen challenges encountered in analysis at the time of the Coronavirus. It is possible to learn from these experiences with a view to integrating new elements and thus modify one's own internal setting, the compass with which each analyst orientates himself.     

Burnout risk among first-year teacher students: The roles of personality and motivation

The present study identified individual variables by which first-year teacher students' risk for burnout can be detected at an early stage. We analyzed a sample of teacher students (n = 559) and a control group of psychology students (n = 150) by using multinomial logistic regression analyses. We estimated the impact of personality (Five-Factor model) and motivation for choosing teacher education on work-related coping behavior and experiences (WCEP types: healthy-ambitious, unambitious, excessively-ambitious, and risk for burnout). Neuroticism and the extrinsic motivation of choosing teacher education (the assumed low difficulty of studies) were risk factors for unhealthy, stress-related coping behavior and experiences. In contrast, high levels of extraversion and conscientiousness as well as intrinsic motivation for choosing teacher education (subject-specific interest) were related to healthy-ambitious behavior. Relations of personality and stress-related WCEP types were partially moderated according to field of study (teaching versus psychology). Our results are of particular importance for improving counseling programs that advise prospective teacher students regarding their individual fit to the requirements and challenges of the teaching profession and for correcting false expectations about study demands.