Prenatal discrimination of a male and a female voice uttering the same sentence

Using a habituation/dishabituation procedure, near-term foetuses (36-39 weeks gestational age) were tested in a low variability HR state, to examine whether they could discriminate between a male and a female voice repeatedly uttering the same short sentence. Prosody and loudness of the two voices were controlled. Once the foetal heart rate (HR) habituated to the first voice, the effect of a second voice was investigated in two experimental conditions: male/female voice and female/male voice. HR variations after the onset of the second voice were compared to those occurring in two control conditions in which the same voice was presented twice (male/female voice and female/female voice). Highly conservative statistical criteria taking each subject's pre-stimulus HR variability into account showed that most foetuses exposed to the voice change displayed decelerative cardiac changes, with no significant difference between the two conditions. These HR decelerations were found in the first seconds following the onset of the new voice, and reached their peak amplitude within 10 s in most subjects. These responses lasted more than 10 s for two-thirds of the experimental subjects. Mostly transient HR accelerations and only a few decelerative changes were recorded in the control subjects. Furthermore, mean amplitudes of these changes were significantly lower than the HR decelerations induced by the new voice in the experimental conditions, suggesting that the latter were not spontaneous HR modifications but rather cardiac responses to the voice change. It is argued that near-term foetuses may perceive a difference between voice characteristics of two speakers when they are highly contrasted for fundamental frequency and timbre.     

THE NATURE OF PHYSICAL REALITY

Abstract. This account of the dynamical theory of chaos leads to a metaphysical picture of a world with an open future, in which the laws of physics are emergent-downward approximations to a more subtle and supple reality and in which there is downward causation through information input as well as upward causation through energy input. Such a metaphysical picture can accommodate both human and divine agency.     

Behavior analysis/modification for everyone

This paper presents a very brief overview of people's attempt to understand and change behavior and shows how behavior analysis is different from these views. The importance of everyone knowing and using behavioral principles in their everyday life is stressed and the opposition to a behavioral approach is discussed. The aims of the organization called Behavior Analysis/Modification in the Regular Classroom is presented and some steps that this organization is following in an attempt to help to disseminate the knowledge and use of behavioral principles in the schools is presented.     

The crying boss: Activating “human resources” through sensitivity training in 1970s Sweden

This article examines the introduction of “sensitivity training” to 1970s Swedish work life. Drawing upon a range of empirical materials, I explore the politics that were involved in the process of translating and adapting this group dynamic method to the Swedish context and consider how its proponents argued for its value. By approaching sensitivity training as an attempt to govern, shape, and regulate both human beings and the work organizations of which they were a part, I argue that sensitivity training presents an unexpectedly early example of a governing rationality that has elsewhere been described and theorized as “neoliberal.” The fact that sensitivity training was established in Swedish work life already in the early 1970s thus challenges the historiography of neoliberal modes of government, which have elsewhere been associated with a neoliberal shift in state policies occurring in the 1980s and 1990s. The article demonstrates how emotionally liberating practices in the late 1960s and early 1970s were embraced by some of the most politically influential actors in contemporary Swedish society, such as the corporate sector and the trade unions. As blue-collar trade unions and social democrats voiced increasingly far-reaching demands concerning workplace democracy and improved workplace conditions, advocates of sensitivity training presented their method as crucial to the process of “democratizing” and “humanizing” Swedish work life. Intimately associated with the new therapies of humanistic psychology, sensitivity training was used within the corporate sector to foster a more emotional and authentic leadership style that would embrace the values of emotional awareness, self-expression, and self-actualization. The crying boss emerged in this context as a key figure in the project of creating a “democratic” and psychologically satisfying organization. Yet, sensitivity training was also described as a means for companies to make better use of what was now asserted as their most important economic asset: the human being. From the outset, the idealistic vision of an emotionally liberated, democratic workplace was thus entangled with a specific kind of economic rationality, in which the emotionally liberated, self-actualizing individual emerged as a capital or asset that would be better utilized if the organization allowed—even encouraged—employees to engage in their own well-being and self-optimization.     

The integration problem for naive realism

This paper makes explicit the basic problem perfect hallucinations pose for perceptual naive realists, more fundamental than the well-trodden Screening-off Problem. The deeper problem offers the basis for an overarching classification of the available naive- realist-friendly approaches to perfect hallucinations. In the course of laying out the challenges to the different types of response, the paper makes a case for the superiority of a particular approach to perfect hallucinations, on which they would be understood as a special kind of perceptual anomaly—arising from a secondary mode of perceptual processing.     

Other minds,other people,and human opacity

This paper explains the absence of the problem of other minds in ancient philosophy and links its rise in early modern philosophy with the distinction between primary and secondary qualities and the consequent veil of ideas. The futile struggles of early modern philosophers with the problems is delineated. So too are the incoherent theories of modern neuroscientists and psychologists. The sources of the manifold confusions are pinned down to use and misuse of the concept of mind, to misunderstandings about the nature of the human ability to say how things are subjectively with oneself, to misconstruals of the nature of introspection and self-knowledge, and to the misguided picture of the “inner” and the “outer”. Philosophical misunderstandings about knowledge of other minds has masked the genuine limitations on our knowledge and understanding of our fellow human beings. Some of these rest on ignorance, others on the constitutional indeterminacy of the mental.     

Self-compassion reduces parental burnout: Mediation roles of parental psychological control and support

This study investigated the mediating role of parental psychological control (PPC) and support in the relationship between self-compassion and parental burnout syndrome. The study participants included 1185 Vietnamese parents who completed questionnaires regarding demographic information, parental burnout, self-compassion, parental support of the child, and PPC. We used data analyses, including structural equation modeling, to test the mediation roles of PPC and parental support of the child. Our main findings include: (1) self-compassion had a significant negative effect on parental burnout; (2) the mediation roles of PPC and parental support of the child were also significant. These results suggest that parents with high self-compassion tend to provide more support for children in daily parenting, which helps reduce parental burnout. In contrast, parents with low self-compassion were more likely to use PPC, which exacerbated their burnout. The results from this study provide suggestions for creating effective interventions in the family context to reduce parental burnout and improve parenting effectiveness.     

PTSD Symptom Cluster Severity Predicts Momentary Emotion Dynamics During Couple Conversations

This study investigated the associations between momentary emotion dynamics and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Using a sample of 61 couples (N = 122 individuals) in which all individuals were trauma exposed and at least one partner screened positive for PTSD, we examined the intra- and interpersonal regulation of vocally encoded emotional arousal (fundamental frequency [f₀]) and how these momentary emotion regulatory patterns relate to specific PTSD symptoms during two couple conversations: one designed to elicit conflict and one to elicit intimacy. PTSD symptoms were assessed using a gold standard clinical interview. In both conversations, higher reexperiencing symptoms were associated with greater emotional inertia (i.e., more resistance to change in emotional state following deviation from one’s emotional equilibrium), and higher avoidance symptoms were associated with less emotional inertia (i.e., quicker return to emotional equilibrium). In the intimacy conversations, individuals also responded to their partners’ arousal. Furthermore, individuals whose partners exhibited higher emotional numbing symptoms exhibited more emotional inertia, suggesting that emotion regulation may be a function of both one’s own and one’s partner’s PTSD symptoms. Attending to the interpersonal context of emotion dynamics during PTSD treatment may enhance outcomes.     

“Shame: The Misplaced Debt of Structural Sin”

Although sexual violence and economic distress are often understood and responded to as individual problems, they are rooted in and must be understood within the social systems of patriarchy and advanced global capitalism, both of which normalize these traumas. The problem is that social systems divert guilt for structural sin onto individuals in the form of shame, which I argue is the misplaced debt of structural sin. Through narrative and analysis, I demonstrate the problems of silence, judgement, and death associated with the misplaced debt of shame in structural sin. Preliminarily, I suggest that the theology of the cross enables Christians to name structural sin for what it actually is; judge who or what is truly guilty; and remove shame and guilt from survivors to foster flourishing.