依恋视角下自传体记忆提取的差异

自传体记忆是关于个人生活的记忆, 依恋理论为自传体记忆的理解提供重要的理论框架。本文以个体依恋风格的差异为视角, 根据Conway和Pleydell-Pearce’s的自我记忆系统(Self-Memory System)总结出在自传体记忆提取的过程中, 依恋系统具有目标导向、防御排斥和情绪调节的作用。安全型相较于非安全型依恋的个体在自传体记忆提取的数量、具体性、准确性、通达性和情绪强度、情绪唤醒度上具有优势。未来研究可以从依恋系统的激活, 焦虑型、回避型依恋在记忆提取中具体成分的差异, 依恋与不随意自传体记忆提取的关系上来探讨。     

Social Exclusion and Disengagement of Covert Attention from Social Signs: The Moderating Role of Fear of Negative Evaluation

Previous research has demonstrated that social exclusion motivates individuals with low fear of negative evaluation (FNE) to pay attention to signs of social acceptance, but it does not motivate individuals with high FNE to do so. However, it remains unclear whether this finding reflects overt or covert attentional bias because the researchers employed a dot‐probe task. In order to resolve this ambiguity, the present study solely assessed disengagement of covert attention from social signs after exclusion manipulation in an experiment with university students (N = 60). As a result, exclusion delayed disengagement of covert attention from facial stimuli regardless of their types of expression for participants with low FNE, but such delay was not observed for participants with high FNE. The result indicated that social exclusion enhances attention to social information in individuals with low FNE, whereas it does not in individuals with high FNE. We discuss the possibility that a decline in inclusionary status affects overt and covert attentional processes differently.     

金钱激励在社会排斥影响不确定性决策中的调节作用

研究从金钱补偿的视角考察社会排斥对不确定性决策的影响以及金钱激励的调节作用。实验发现,有金钱激励时,被排斥者在爱荷华赌博任务(Iowa gambling task,IGT)中的行为分数(组块2和3的选牌净分数和总的盈利分数)显著高于社会接纳者,表现为风险规避; 在无金钱激励时,被排斥者在IGT任务中的行为分数(组块4和5的选牌净分数和总的盈利分数)显著低于被接纳者,表现为风险寻求。实验结果表明社会排斥对不确定性决策的影响受到金钱激励的调制。     

Class in psychodynamic theory,research and practice

Class is a generally neglected topic within the psychotherapeutic and counselling worlds, and has not benefitted from the psychoanalytic and psychodynamic thought arising from contemporary critiques concerning gender, sexuality, and race. The article presents an overview of my researches over many years in an attempt to formulate the different ways in which considerations of class may impinge on practices and theories in the therapeutic professions. I use a clinical vignette to identify class related issues that may arise within the consulting room, and relate these to wider aspects of the intersections of class with therapy and counselling.     

Biomedical research and mining of the poor: The need for their exclusion

Almost all ethical guidelines and legislative policies concerning biomedical research involving human subjects contain provisions about relevance of research for the participating populations, informed consent, adequate care for research induced injuries and several other safeguards but the poor continue to suffer. Globalization has further aggravated poor people’s vulnerability by exposing them to international markets. Since the developing countries are abode of higher population of the poor they have become the unholy mines of this human ore for researchers. In this paper I examine various dimensions of poverty and analyze the international ethical responses in the area of biomedical research involving human subjects in order to determine their adequacy to protect the poor against exploitation and misuse and conclude that in view of the poor’s inherent and extreme vulnerability and the failure of ethical pronouncements to protect them from misuse and exploitation, they should be excluded from being enrolled as research subjects This paper was presented at the 6th International Bioethics Conference on the subject of ‘The Responsible Conduct of Basic and Clinical Research’, held in Warsaw, Poland, 3–4 June 2005.     

Is Colour incompatibility analytic?

It is widely believed that some a priori necessary truths are not analytic in the sense of transformable by substitution of synonyms into logical truths. One much-cited example comes from the supposed incompatibility between colour predicates. The idea is that sentences like “Nothing is both blue all over (or uniformly or at a point) and also red” are not transformable into a logical truth in the same way as “Nothing is both a bachelor and married” because the requisite conceptual link between “bachelor” and “not married” is absent between “blue” and “not red”. This paper examines whether colour exclusion may be more like the bachelor case than it initially appears. It transpires that the most promising line of thought is not, however, as has been argued at length in the literature, that “blue” in some more or less convoluted way manages to mean “not red”. Instead it is suggested that the requisite conceptual link may reside in the oft-ignored qualifications (“all over”, “uniformly”, etc.), without which there is no incompatibility in the first place.     

Opposition to immigration: How people who identify with far-right discourses legitimize the social exclusion of immigrants

This study sought to develop our understanding of how people legitimize opposition to immigration. Thirty-eight interviews were conducted with people who self-identified with far-right anti-immigration discourses, in Italy (N = 23) and Portugal (N = 15). Using reflexive thematic analysis, we developed four related themes. In the first theme, ‘They're guests’: Legitimizing exclusion by differentiating (non-) immigrants, we discuss how despite differentiating between types of immigrants, participants support their social exclusion and always perceive them as guests. In the second theme, ‘White people exist’: Multiple and intersected identity threats, we identify how anti-immigration is legitimized by recurring multiple group threats including ownership, economic, security, cultural, and existential threats. In the third theme, ‘It's like your home’: Justifying exclusionary solidarity based on ownership rights, we illustrate how collective ownership is used to justify practices of exclusionary solidarity. In the fourth theme ‘This is me’: Being born and becoming anti-immigration, we discuss how opposition to immigration was constructed and influenced by contextual conditions as well as international sources of information. The implications of these findings are discussed while considering how participants' experiences and social contexts shape how they perceive immigration and legitimize the social exclusion of immigrants.     

Is the heart preadapted to hypoxia? Evidence from fractal dynamics of heartbeat interval fluctuations at high altitude (5,050 m)

The dynamics of heartbeat interval time series over large time scales were studied by a modifed random walk analysis introduced recently asDetrended Fluctuation Analysis. In this analysis, the intrinsic fractal long-range power-law correlation properties of beat-to-beat fluctuations generated by the dynamical system (i.e., cardiac rhythm generator), after decomposition from extrinsic uncorrelated sources, can be quantified by the scaling exponent (α) which, in healthy subjects, for time scales of ∼10⁴ beats is ∼1.0. The effects of chronic hypoxia were determined from serial heartbeat interval time series of digitized twenty-four-hour ambulatory ECGs recorded in nine healthy subjects (mean age thirty-four years old) at sea level and during a sojourn at 5,050 m for thirty-four days (Ev-K2-CNR Pyramid Laboratory, Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal). The group averaged α exponent (±SD) was 0.99±0.04 (range 0.93–1.04). Longitudinal assessment of α in individual subjects did not reveal any effect of exposure to chronic high altitude hypoxia. The finding of α∼1 indicating scale-invariant long-range power-law correlations (1/f noise) of heartbeat fluctuations would reflect a genuinely self-similar fractal process that typically generates fluctuations on a wide range of time scales. Lack of a characteristic time scale along with the absence of any effect from exposure to chronic hypoxia on scaling properties suggests that the neuroautonomic cardiac control system is preadapted to hypoxia which helps prevent excessive mode-locking (error tolerance) that would restrict its functional responsiveness (plasticity) to hypoxic or other physiological stimuli. Editorial Note: A philosopher is, by definition, a lover of wisdom. In the following article, Dr. Dimitrov, as a philosopher, examines the principles that underlie being and thinking as performed by the structures of the brain. He reports his thoughts in a “virtual context.” Virtual, a word enjoying great popularity today, is derived from the Latin word for man; it describes manliness and implies apparent, but not actual, power. In his analysis of how information is dealt with by the human being, the author uses theoretical physics and mathematics that may seem arcane to some readers. A major aspect of his thesis declares that the effective performance of information systems relies not on the structures involved, but on the way they interact.     

Sibling rivalry,separation, and change in Austen's Sense and Sensibility

The paper explores a process of growth represented in the interplay of Jane Austen's characterizations of Marianne and Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, approaching the text through the lens of psychoanalytic theories on oedipal sibling rivalry, separation, and processes of change. A close reading of Sense and Sensibility tracks Marianne Dashwood's repudiation of any ‘second attachment’ as the surface of an unconscious fantasy, denying a rival for the mother's love. A psychoanalytic view contrasts Marianne's lack of separation from her mother, her use of denial and projection, and her near death after losing the man she loves, with her older sister Elinor Dashwood's capacities for depression, reflection, and greater acceptance of loss and separation. The narrative portrays Mrs. Dashwood's identification with and idealization of her daughter Marianne, which contribute to her oedipal sibling ‘victory’. In the language and structure of the novel, the projections, identifications, aggressions, and separations (conscious and unconscious) of the sisters in the vicissitudes of their adolescent loves and rivalries constitute a process of growth. Austen's novel brings to life, with the vividness and coherence of great literature, forces and fantasies in oedipal sibling rivalries, inspiring renewed attention to their subtle presence in the transference and countertransference of the psychoanalytic process.