Interaction of Tremor and Magnification in a Motor Performance Task With Visual Feedback

In this study, the interaction between increased gain in the visual feedback loop and motor control of the periphery was investigated. Participants (N = 15) were asked to maintain a constant finger position while they used magnified visual feedback. The measure of the accuracy of each trial was the standard deviation (trial error) of the finger position. Trials performed under magnification had lower trial errors than trials without magnification. The change in trial error between trials with and without magnification proved greater than the difference between trials at any 2 magnifications. In contrast, the differences between individual subjects were often greater than the differences between performances at individual magnifications. At higher magnifications, performance seemed to be limited by the tremor; the ratio of trial error to tremor intensity was constant. When applied to microsurgery, the present results accord with those found in earlier research, including investigations that have found that the level of magnification used in microsurgery is not the most significant factor in achieving good results and that tremor is the limiting factor in microsurgical tasks.     

Comments on the Ikonen and Rechardt papers on the death drive and the origin of shame

In this paper, psychoanalysis is viewed as a method in opposition to the reigning spirit of our age with its demands for fast and measurable results. The concept ?the psychoanalytic room” is introduced in order to grasp the uniqueness of psychoanalysis and how it distinguishes itself from what is ordinarily held to be included under the category of work. The psychoanalytic room is explored in both a concrete and metaphoric sense and is discussed in relation to the concept of time, reality, Ogden's concept of the analytic third, and, inspired by Winnicott, children's play. The playroom of the child and its similarity with the analytic room is illustrated by the book ?Benny's Bathtub” by the Danish author Flemming Kvist Møller.     

The Reconstruction of Psychic Trauma

The author discusses the difficulties that arose in the analysis of a female patient suffering from a delusional disorder, where traditional criteria of suitability for psychoanalytic treatment were initially lacking and had to be established as part of the process. The transference-countertransference interaction came to a deadlock, understood by the analyst as due to the patient’s pathological dyadic relating. She was lacking in her capacity of reflective functioning, and there was no potential space to foster a fruitful therapeutic dialogue between analyst and patient. The analyst adopted a bystander perspective as a vantage point from which to comment on the patient’s narrative, whereby she succeeded in gradually altering the dysfunctional dyadic exchange into an interaction where a triadic perspective was introduced as a means to making possible meaningful communication between patient and analyst. Substantial changes were achieved with this procedure as a point of departure. The case study highlights aspects of dyadic versus triadic functioning of the analytic pair, and serves to illustrate theoretical points pertaining to the ongoing debate between professionals on how the basic structural elements of the analytic relationship should be conceptualised.     

Close encounters of the third order kind

This article describes an exercise developed for assessing trainee family therapists' practice at the end of a placement year in a manner consistent with the third‐order positioning the trainees were endeavouring to adopt in their practice. Evaluation by the trainees confirmed that the exercise had provided them with a significant opportunity to co‐construct with the supervisors their practice learning and future learning goals.     

Comparative analyses of rider position according to skill levels during walk and trot in Jeju horse

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the rider position at walk and trot as a function of rider skill level by analyzing joint angles. Participants included three advanced riders and six beginners, and training was conducted for one hour, twice a week for 24 weeks. In the walk stage of the beginners’ group, the elbows and shoulders sustained postures comparable to those of the advanced riders group; the trunk tilted forwards at first, but later it tilted slightly behind the vertical. The knee, ankle, and left–right angle kept stable postures after 12 weeks of training (p < .05). The front-rear (FR) angle of the beginners group improved during training, but it was still lower than the advanced riders group after 24 weeks of training (p < .05). At trot, while the knee angle measurement of the beginners’ group was similar to the advanced riders, the ankle joint sustained a forward point posture. The ankle joint maintained dorsiflexion posture with 83.9° ± 5.3 in the advanced riders group, while the beginners group had plantar flexion posture with 98.7° ± 6.0. This study suggested that the correlation between the joint and body segment angles could be an important indicator in the evaluation of rider proficiency.     

“Where is the sun” for hemi-neglect patients?

Human observers use prior constraints to disambiguate a scene; in particular, light is preferentially seen as coming from above but also slightly from the left. One explanation of this lateral bias could be a cerebral hemispheric difference. The aim of the present study was to determine the preferred light source position for neglect patients. For this purpose, we used the ambiguous shaded “Polo Mint” stimulus, a ring divided into eight equal sectors. All sectors but one were the same shape, convex or concave, as determined by the light source position. Participants had to report the side (left or right) of the odd sector or, in a separate experiment, to report its shape (convex or concave). Eight patients with spatial neglect (left neglect N = 7, right neglect N = 1) after a right or left temporo-parietal or thalamic lesion and 14 control participants ran the experiment. Left neglect patients showed a significantly different light bias from the bias observed for controls and for the right neglect patient (i.e., a reduction of the left bias or a right bias rather than a left bias). We conclude that some disabilities presented by patients with spatial neglect may be due to difficulties processing information that is not present in the visual field or imagined in the representational scene.     

On the time-course of adjacent and non-adjacent transposed-letter priming

We compared effects of adjacent (e.g. atricle-ARTICLE) and non-adjacent (e.g. actirle-ARTICLE) transposed-letter (TL) primes in an event-related potential (ERP) study using the sandwich priming technique. TL priming was measured relative to the standard double-substitution condition. We found significantly stronger priming effects for adjacent transpositions than non-adjacent transpositions (with two intervening letters) in behavioural responses (lexical decision latencies), and the adjacent priming effects emerged earlier in the ERP signal, at around 200-ms post-target onset. Non-adjacent priming effects emerged about 50 ms later and were short-lived, being significant only in the 250- to 300-ms time-window. Adjacent transpositions on the other hand continued to produce priming in the N400 time-window (300- to 500-ms post-target onset). This qualitatively different pattern of priming effects for adjacent and non-adjacent transpositions is discussed in the light of different accounts of letter transposition effects and the utility of drawing a distinction between positional flexibility and positional noise.     

A broad assessment of theory of mind in adolescence: The complexity of mindreading

The aim of this research was to provide an articulated assessment of several different ToM components, namely first- vs. third-person, egocentric vs. allocentric, and first- vs. second-order ToM, in preadolescence and adolescence. Our expectations for the sample of 80 juveniles that participated in the research were that: (1) ToM abilities would improve with age; (2) participants would perform better at first-person than at third-person tasks; (3) participants would perform better at first-order than at second-order tasks; (4) girls will perform systematically better than boys. We also explored possible differences in performance (5) in the allocentric vs. the egocentric perspectives as well as (6) in the comprehension of different types of mental states, namely desires, beliefs and positive and negative emotions. Overall our expectations were confirmed. Our data confirmed that all ToM aspects we investigated keep maturing during preadolescence and adolescence.