Recurring auditory experience in the 28- to 34-week-old fetus

This study describes the influence of recurring auditory experience on the fetus during a transitional time period in neurobehavioral development (28-34 weeks gestation). Findings demonstrate that fetal responding can be influenced by earlier experiences and that this effect is potentially influenced by maturity of the autonomic nervous system.     

Neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the experience of flow

Recent theoretical and empirical work in cognitive science and neuroscience is brought into contact with the concept of the flow experience. After a brief exposition of brain function, the explicit-implicit distinction is applied to the effortless information processing that is so characteristic of the flow state. The explicit system is associated with the higher cognitive functions of the frontal lobe and medial temporal lobe structures and has evolved to increase cognitive flexibility. In contrast, the implicit system is associated with the skill-based knowledge supported primarily by the basal ganglia and has the advantage of being more efficient. From the analysis of this flexibility/efficiency trade-off emerges a thesis that identifies the flow state as a period during which a highly practiced skill that is represented in the implicit system's knowledge base is implemented without interference from the explicit system. It is proposed that a necessary prerequisite to the experience of flow is a state of transient hypofrontality that enables the temporary suppression of the analytical and meta-conscious capacities of the explicit system. Examining sensory-motor integration skills that seem to typify flow such as athletic performance, writing, and free-jazz improvisation, the new framework clarifies how this concept relates to creativity and opens new avenues of research.     

Guest Editorial: The Resistance to Belief

William James's essay The Will to Believe proposed that we are sometimes justified, even obligated, to believe from our strong emotional or passional nature that something is true, even though there may not be total logical, evidential proof—which he also wrote is not to be found in this world. This essay explores situations, using a recent dear-death experience (NDE) example, in which there are reasonable evidence and logic, and yet belief seems to be withheld. I postulate and discuss nonrational influences producing resistance to belief, including the fear of being in error, the fear of rejection from the scientific community, irrational requirements of logicality, avoidance of consequences, and paradigm fixation. I also discuss issues in philosophy of science and epistemology in regard to proof.     

Subjective Well-Being and Kahneman’s ‘Objective Happiness’

This paper is an attempt to clarify the relation between, on the one hand, the construct of ‘objective happiness’ recently proposed by Daniel Kahneman and, on the other hand, the principal focus of happiness studies, namely subjective well-being (SWB). I have two aims. The first, a critical one, is to give a theoretical explanation for why ‘objective happiness’ cannot be a general measure of SWB. Kahneman’s methodology precludes incorporation of relevant pieces of information that can become available to the subject only retrospectively. The second aim, a constructive one, is to clarify the exact connection between ‘objective happiness’ and the wider notion of SWB. Unlike Kahneman, who treats the notion as a useful first approximation, I propose that its applicability should be thought of as context-dependent: under some conditions it could be the right measure of SWB but what these conditions are involves both psychological and ethical considerations.     

Asian Families “Back Home”: An Unexplored Resource

Communities from which Asian migrants to the West originate are often seen by western professionals as a drain upon these new migrants’ resources, and are not included in formulations about problems or their solutions. In this article, a number of case examples are used to illustrate how the authors made use of the relationships of Bangladeshi migrants living in the east end of London to their families back home as a crucial resource in overcoming difficulties encountered in their new country. It is further argued that seeing such families as having transnational loyalties is a more helpful “frame” than seeing them as caught up in cultural conflict.     

The Corporeal Order of Things: The <Emphasis Type="Italic">Spiel</Emphasis> of Usability

Things make sense to us. The identity of a thing is a meaningful style that expresses the usability of the thing. The usability is a dynamic order of the praxis in which the thing is embedded and in which we are ourselves de-centered. According to Merleau-Ponty, this sociocultural and psychosocial order is a formation of practical understanding and interpretation that rests upon and resumes the elementary, perceptual-expressive structuring of being. The Spiel is one of the three dimensions of corporeal intentionality, in which this entire organization of meaning and experience unfolds. So, the Spiel of usability is a corporeal and practical intentionality that reaches from an aesthetic-ontological structuring of meaning to the order of the things in modern everyday praxes.     

Reveling in Complexity: Dittes' Male Metaphors and Their Bearing on the Crisis of Clergy Sexual Abuse

In Driven By Hope: Men and Meaning (1996b), James E. Dittes explores the distinctively religious character of men's experience in postindustrial modern western culture. In this article, I first explicate Dittes' developing perspective on men's experience—his middle way—by focusing on his exploration of classical and biblical metaphors of men's life experience, including Oedipus and Adam, the magi and the monarch, the pilgrim and the conquistador, and the son and father. Then, I extend Dittes' models of normative male development to reflect upon the current crisis around clergy sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.     

Holding on to childhood language memory

While early language experience seems crucial for mastering phonology, it remains unclear whether there are lasting benefits of speaking a language regularly during childhood if the quantity and quality of speaking drop dramatically after childhood. This study explored the accessibility of early childhood language memory. Specifically, it compared perception and production of Korean speech sounds by childhood speakers who had spoken Korean regularly for a few years during childhood to those of two other groups: (1) childhood hearers who had heard Korean regularly during childhood but had spoken Korean minimally, if at all; and (2) novice learners. All three groups were enrolled in first-year college Korean language classes. Childhood speakers were also compared to native speakers of Korean to see how native-like they were. The results revealed measurable long-term benefits of childhood speaking experience, underscoring the importance of early language experience, even if such experience diminishes dramatically beyond childhood.     

Mirror,mirror on the wall,who is the fairest dancer of them all? A naturalistic lens model study on the judgment of dance performance

Success as a dancer is closely associated with positive dance judgments by perceivers. Although dancers’ physical appearance (attractiveness, style) might affect dance judgments beyond dance-specific attributes (technique, expression), they have largely been unconsidered in previous studies. To contribute to a comprehensive explanation of real-life dance judgments, we applied the lens model, an approach explicitly developed to explain the emergence of social judgments by multiple attributes. Therefore, video-records of 70 solo performances were (1) rated regarding dancers’ physical appearance, technique, and expression and (2) judged by 33 perceivers. Results of cross-classified mixed-effects models revealed that attributes of all domains were significantly related to dance judgements. Considered simultaneously, however, only dance-specific attributes contributed to the prediction of dance judgments. Additional moderation analyses underscored the importance of perceivers’ expertise in judging dance. We discuss the lens model as suitable framework for a naturalistic approach to the study of aesthetic experiences and sports performances.