Opening the closed heart: affect-focused clinical work with the victims of early trauma

This paper begins with the understanding that early trauma leads to powerful dissociative defenses which injure the capacity to feel. It further explores ways to restore this capacity through body-centred attention to affect-in-the-moment in the psychoanalytic situation. Using the author’s personal experience while in analysis as well as a case of severe early trauma, he demonstrates the consciousness-killing effect of primitive defenses and shows how body-sensitive techniques hold the promise of restoring the patient’s sense of aliveness and hence, opening the unconscious to those affect-images that are the building blocks of the human imagination. A final section focuses on the neglect of feeling in Jungian psychology and suggests that the “creation of consciousness” which Jung described as his personal myth, is quintessentially a process of emotional transformation – of bringing unconscious suffering into consciousness – as feelings.     

Information repetition in evaluative judgments: Easy to monitor,hard to control

The sampling approach [Fiedler, K. (2000a). Beware of samples! A cognitive-ecological sampling approach to judgment biases. Psychological Review, 107(4), 659–676.] attributes judgment biases to the information given in a sample. Because people usually do not monitor the constraints of samples and do not control their judgments accordingly, systematic judgment biases occur. Three experiments demonstrate this for an obvious sampling constraint, the emptiness of merely repeated information. When evaluating stock market shares, participants did not correct for the repetition of positive or negative information about a share. Although original and repeated information was reliably distinguished in estimates of occurrence (successful monitoring), preferences were misled by mere repetition of success and failure reports (unsuccessful control). This effect could even override a share’s actual success rate. Explicit instructions to ignore repetitions provided no remedy; however, a cognitive load manipulation reduced repetition’s undue influence. Possible reasons for and benefits of this lack of direct metacognitive control are discussed.     

汉—英并列双语者图片命名的重复启动效应

使用图片命名的重复启动范式来考察同一语种内和不同语种间条件下图片的重复呈现对词汇生成的启动效应。结果表明,语种内重复启动显著大于语种间重复启动,汉、英语种内重复启动效应无显著差异;语种间条件下两种语言间的重复启动存在不对称性,汉语—英语的启动大于英语—汉语的启动。实验结果支持词汇/概念分布模型。     

重复线索化和靶子注意定向对返回抑制的影响

在返回抑制范式下 ,利用线索—靶子模式进行了两个实验 ,以大学生为被试 ,以重复线索化次数来操纵线索化阶段的注意 ,以靶子的注意定向来操纵靶子加工阶段的注意 ,探讨注意对返回抑制的影响。实验一采用连续线索化方式 ,发现当靶子为自主性注意定向时 ,线索化次数对返回抑制有显著影响 ,线索化 3次时返回抑制值大于线索化 1次和 2次 ;当靶子为反射性注意定向时 ,线索化次数对返回抑制无影响。实验二采用交叉线索化方式 ,发现线索化次数对返回抑制的影响正好与实验一相反。两个实验一致表明 ,无论是线索化阶段的注意 ,还是靶子加工阶段的注意 ,均对返回抑制有显著影响 ;并且 ,在对返回抑制的影响上 ,二者存在显著交互作用。从而支持注意影响返回抑制的观点。该结果对返回抑制的机制研究有一定意义。     

笔画复杂性和重复性对笔画和汉字认知的影响

采用笔画识别和词汇决定的方法 ,对汉字笔画认知和笔画在汉字认知中的作用作了考察。实验一探讨了汉字笔画自身的复杂性对笔画认知的影响。结果表明 ,笔画自身的复杂性对笔画认知无显著影响 ,识别简单笔画和识别复杂笔画的反应时与错误率无显著差异。实验二考察了笔画的重复性对汉字认知的影响。结果表明 ,汉字认知中存在笔画重复性效应。笔画重复较多的汉字比笔画较少重复的汉字识别时间短 ,错误率亦低。整个实验结果支持笔画是汉字加工的基本单元的假设     

Response-repetition effects depend on motor set: Evidence for anatomical coding in response selection

Successful motor performance requires a process of response selection that chooses the correct response out of a set of possible ones. Most theories of response selection assume that this selection process operates on spatial codes, which define the location of stimuli and responses in environmental coordinates, with little or no role for the anatomical codes of the effectors involved. In this study, we tested this assumption by investigating response-repetition effects in a response-cuing paradigm using two motor sets (fingers on one hand vs. fingers on two hands). Reaction time results demonstrated a robust response-repetition benefit that was greater for the one-hand set than for the two-hands set. Furthermore, with the one-hand set the repetition benefit was independent of cue type and cue-stimulus interval on the previous trial, whereas with the two-hands set it was strongly modulated by these two factors. These differential response-repetition effects for one- and two-hands motor sets demonstrate the important role of the neuro-anatomical hand distinction in response selection, thereby supporting multiple coding notions.     

Repetition increases false recollection in older people

Aging is accompanied by an increase in false alarms on recognition tasks, and these false alarms increase with repetition in older people (but not in young people). Traditionally, this increase was thought to be due to a greater use of familiarity in older people, but it was recently pointed out that false alarms also have a clear recollection component in these people. The main objective of our study is to analyze whether the expected increase in the rate of false alarms in older people due to stimulus repetition is produced by an inadequate use of familiarity, recollection, or both processes. To do so, we carried out an associative recognition experiment using pairs of words and pairs of images (faces associated with everyday contexts), in which we analyzed whether the repetition of some of the pairs increases the rate of false alarms in older people (compared to what was found in a sample of young people), and whether this increase is due to familiarity or recollection (using a remember‐know paradigm). Our results show that the increase in false alarms in older people due to repetition is produced by false recollection, calling into question both dual and single‐process models of recognition. Also, older people falsely recollect details of never studied stimuli, a clear case of perceptual illusions. These results are better explained in terms of source‐monitoring errors, mediated by people's retrieval expectations.     

A phonetic approach to consonant repetition in early words

The goal of this study was to evaluate movement-based principles for understanding early speech output patterns. Consonant repetition patterns within children's actual productions of word forms were analyzed using spontaneous speech data from 10 typically developing American-English learning children between 12 and 36 months of age. Place of articulation, word level patterns, and developmental trends in CVC and CVCV repeated word forms were evaluated. Labial and coronal place repetitions dominated. Regressive repetition (e.g., [gag] for “dog”) occurred frequently in CVC but not in CVCV word forms. Consonant repetition decreased over time. However, the children produced sound types available reported as being within young children's production system capabilities in consonant repetitions in all time periods. Findings suggest that a movement-based approach can provide a framework for comprehensively characterizing consonant place repetition patterns in early speech development.     

Plural Logic and Sensitivity to Order

Sentences that exhibit sensitivity to order (e.g. John and Mary arrived at school in that order and Mary and John arrived at school in that order) present a challenge for the standard formulation of plural logic. In response, some authors have advocated new versions of plural logic based on fine-grained notions of plural reference, such as serial reference [Hewitt 2012] and articulated reference [Ben-Yami 2013]. The aim of this article is to show that sensitivity to order should be accounted for without altering the standard formulation of plural logic. In particular, sensitivity to order does not call for a fine-grained notion of plural reference. We point out that the phenomenon in question is quite broad and that current proposals are not equipped to deal with the full range of cases in which order plays a role. Then we develop an alternative and unified account, which locates the phenomenon not in the way in which plural terms can refer, but in the meaning of special expressions such as in that order and respectively.     

Virtual reality and the psyche. Some psychoanalytic approaches to media addiction

This paper explores the ramifications of excessive use of media on personality development, the development of symbolic and thinking functions and on psychic reality. In doing so, the questions of whether there are specific media objects possessing an intrinsic symbolic quality, and which attachments in the inner world of a child/adolescent can be mobilized or destroyed are discussed. By selecting specific material, computer gamers use their game to activate the field of a personal psychic reality. Hereby, they attempt some kind of self‐healing. However, after leaving the game, conflicts and traumata re‐enacted but unresolved in the game disappear from their temporary representation without generating any resonance in the gamer's psychic experience. Consequently, although states of mind and affects are activated in the computer game, their processing and integration fail; the game results in a compulsive repetition. The construction and consolidation of retrievable maturation and structural development, the representation of the unrepresentable, succeed in the context of the triangulating analytic relationship, initially through a jointly performed symbolic and narrative re‐experience or the recreation of the game. Theoretical considerations are illustrated by means of clinical vignettes.