Alice in Systems Wonderland: A Children's Systems Learning Guidebook Accompanying Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The author proposes the development of systems learning guidebooks to accompany famous children's classic books. Children's classic books can make excellent bases for children's learning guidebooks on systems thinking and global ecology, because they are fun to read and well known worldwide. If such learning guidebooks are properly designed with humor and entertaining aspects, they could stimulate children to learn more about systems thinking. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is chosen as a pilot case for developing such a children's guidebook. The systems learning guidebook that accompanies Alice's Wonderland shall be entitled Alice in Systems Wonderland and will help its readers look at the Alice's Wonderland story with a systems perspective.     

The Coming Epoch of New Coalitions: Possible Scenarios of the Near Future

This article analyzes some important aspects of socioeconomic and political development of the world in the near future. The future always stems from the present. The first part of the article is devoted to the study of some crucial events of the present, which could be regarded as precursors of forthcoming fundamental changes. In particular, it is shown that the turbulent events of late 2010 and 2011 in the Arab World may well be regarded as a start of the global reconfiguration. The article also offers an analysis of some aspects of the global financial system that, according to the authors, notwithstanding all its negative points, performs certain important positive functions including the “insurance” of social guaranties at the global scale. The second part of the article considers some global scenarios of the World System's new future and describes a few characteristics of the forthcoming “Epoch of New Coalitions.” The article attempts to answer such questions as the following: What are the implications of the economic weakening of the United States as the World System center? Will the future World System have a leader? Will it experience a global governance deficit? Will the world fragmentation increase?     

Women and Their Physicians

No abstract available for this article.     

The Map of Relational-Cultural Theory

SUMMARY

Psychological theory-building has long been dominated by White, European-male perspectives, perspectives that fail to account for the multifaceted experiences of diverse and marginalized populations. Feminist theory seeks to explore, encompass, and understand the wide range of human experience, a territory that is viewed as broad and complex and dynamic. Relational-Cultural Theory as it addresses the critical importance of relational exchange related to development and health provides an elaboration of some of the most basic feminist principles. Perhaps not surprisingly, this evolving theoretical model has emerged out of the relational work of five women and continues now within an ever-expanding and diverse network of women. This paper will present several elements of this work, its relevance to the larger work of feminist theory, and some of the major contributions of the founding “Monday Night Group.”     

Why Ferenczi today? The contribution of Sándor Ferenczi to the understanding and healing of psychic suffering

A society undergoing rapid change, which doubts its own possibilities of survival, calls into question the worth of psychoanalytical theory and practice. The author emphasizes that the Ferenczian clinical evolution could be a source of inspiration for reinvigorating our trust in the prodromes of the Freudian paradigm, and thus for relaunching the authoritativeness of our thought and our psychotherapeutic method. In this light the author examines the affective and cognitive qualities that render Ferenczi a mentor of our possible future development, taking into consideration the following aspects: the communicative and intersubjective perspective that denotes Ferenczi's thought since his first writings; the receptive, reflective, and self‐reflective capacities which have progressively accompanied his own commitment and clinical attitude; and his elective work on trauma and “the traumatic”, including the algogenic messages transmitted during the healing process by analysts in fear (and perhaps terror) of their own regression and countertransferential catastrophe. In particular, these last events (central in the Ferenczian vision) are today specifically stimulated by new forms of pathology which search for, with our help, a resolution of the apathetic pain and the tearing apart of the identity that characterize the suffering of patients.     

Five weeks of immersive reminiscence therapy improves autobiographical memory in Alzheimer’s disease

ABSTRACT

We examined the effects of a new Immersive Reminiscence Therapy (IRT) programme on cognitive function, including autobiographical memory, in a sample Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. A total of 43 AD patients with mild to moderate disease severity were randomly assigned to either an intervention group (n?=?22, MMMSE?=?20.77), or a control group (n?=?21, MMMSE?=?19.24). The intervention group received one weekly group-based session of IRT for five weeks in an authentic 1950s style museum environment, matching the time of the participants’ youth. IRT included semi-structured conversations about the past. The control group received standard care. We assessed performance on cognitive function and autobiographical memory at baseline and post-intervention. Five weeks of IRT enhanced subsequent autobiographical memory performance, when participants were cued by concrete objects dated to their youth. Object-cued memories reported post intervention included a significantly higher degree of episodic details and higher word counts. The intervention showed no effect on the Autobiographical Memory Interview or word-cued recall. Global cognitive function and semantic autobiographical memory performance increased across time for both groups. Our findings demonstrate that immersion into a setting, rich on concrete cues dated to the participants’ youth can improve autobiographical remembering.     

Importance of chamber gas pressure on processing of Al-based metallic glasses during melt spinning

The effect of chamber gas pressure on the amorphicity of Al₈₅Ni₅Y₁₀ alloy was studied for the melt-spinning process. The amorphicity of as-quenched ribbons was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The chamber atmosphere pressure is crucial to the cooling rate of melt spinning. At high vacuum, at pressure less than 0.001?atm, fully crystalline fragments are obtained. Monolithic amorphous ribbons were only obtained at a gas pressure of 0.1?atm, 0.2?atm or higher. The extended contact length between ribbons and the copper wheel contributes to the high cooling rate of melt spinning in Al-based glass forming alloys; that is supported by images recorded by a high-speed camera. Higher chamber pressure increases contact length between ribbons and the wheel, which is qualitatively elucidated by Bernoulli's equation.     

Directed forgetting of autobiographical memory in mild Alzheimer's disease

Using the autobiographical directed forgetting method (Barnier et al., 2007), the present paper addressed the intentional inhibitory processes of episodic and semantic autobiographical memory in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Mild AD patients and healthy elderly people were instructed to either forget or to continue remembering previously generated autobiographical events. In a later recall test they were asked to reconstruct the early-generated memories regardless of the forget/remember instruction. Autobiographical reconstruction was further distributed into episodic and semantic memories. Results showed no forget instruction effect on episodic or semantic autobiographical recall with AD patients, whereas healthy elderly people were able to inhibit only episodic autobiographical memories. The findings suggest an impairment of the intentional inhibitory processes in autobiographical memory with AD and a relative preservation of these mechanisms with normal ageing. They also demonstrate an earlier decline in the intentional inhibitory processes compared to the autobiographical deterioration in AD.     

Children's eyewitness memory: Repeating post-event misinformation reduces the distinctiveness of a witnessed event

Children may incorporate misinformation into reports of witnessed events, particularly if the misinformation is repeated. One explanation is that the misinformation trace is strengthened by repetition. Alternatively, repeating misinformation may reduce the discriminability between event and misinformation sources, increasing interference between them. We tested trace strength and distinctiveness accounts by showing 5- and 6-year-olds an event and then presenting either the “same” or “varying” items of post-event misinformation across three iterations. Performance was compared to a baseline in which misinformation was presented once. Repeating the same misinformation increased suggestibility when misinformation was erroneously attributed to both event and misinformation sources, supporting a trace strength interpretation. However, suggestibility measured by attributing misinformation solely to the event, was lower when misinformation was presented repeatedly rather than once. In contrast, identification of the correct source of the event was less likely if the misinformation was repeated, whether the same or different across iterations. Thus a reduction in the distinctiveness of sources disrupted memory for the event source. Moreover, there was strong association between memory for the event and a measure of distinctiveness of sources, which takes into account both the number of confusable source and their apparent temporal spacing from the point of retrieval.     

The use of a wearable camera improves autobiographical memory in patients with Alzheimer's disease

Despite the marked impairment of recent episodic memories in Alzheimer's disease, there have been few attempts to rehabilitate these deficits. We used a novel external memory aid to promote recall of episodic memories in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. SenseCam, a small wearable camera, recorded significant events in the lives of six Alzheimer's disease patients. Every two days for two weeks each patient's memory for an event was assessed, followed by a structured review of the SenseCam images. Longer-term recall was tested one and three months later. A written diary control condition followed the same procedure. Across 40 events the SenseCam review method resulted in significantly more details of an event being recalled over two weeks than the written diary method in five out of the six patients. At three months post event, four out of five patients (one had dropped out) recalled significantly more details of events in the SenseCam condition while the other patient showed no significant difference. Viewing SenseCam images of personally experienced events may significantly improve autobiographical memory in patients with even moderate Alzheimer's disease.