不同情境条件下幼儿交往策略的实验研究

本文采用实验研究的方法,研究了不同情境条件对幼儿交往策略的影响。结果表明:互动的、关系的、群体的情境,能显著影响幼儿交往活动中策略的运用。在比较简单的情境中,幼儿运用策略的水平较高,而在比较复杂的情境中,幼儿运用策略的水平较低。同时,无论处于何种情境,大年龄幼儿的总体水平比小年龄幼儿的总体水平高。     

Sabina Spielrein: psychoanalytic studies

The unconscious fantasies in Kuprin's Duel , p.201
Animal symbolism and a boy's phobia, p.202
The mother-in-law, p.205     

Books received

Analytical Psychology
Rowland, Susan, C. G. Jung and Literary Theory. The Challenge from Fiction
Evolutionary Psychiatry
Stevens, Anthony & Price, John, Prophets, Cults and Madness.
Existential Psychotherapy
Yalom, Irvind, Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psychotherapy.     

Learning: Association or Computation? Introduction to a Special Section

The fundamental nature of learning is a central problem in psychology. Traditionally, psychologists have assumed that learning must involve the formation of associations. Early last century, the pioneering work of Pavlov on conditioned learning in animals seemed to put this assumption beyond doubt. More recently, many psychologists came to believe that a different kind of process must underlie complex learning, such as language learning in humans, and that this process must be described as computational rather than associative. Whether complex human learning is associative or computational continues to be a subject of intense research. The articles in this Special Section turn this debate on its head by asking whether simple animal learning is associative or computational. Surprisingly, the question is still very much open, and excitingly, it appears quite tractable.     

The knowledge content of statistical data

An information-theoretic framework is used to analyze the knowledge content in multivariate cross classified data. Several related measures based directly on the information concept are proposed: the knowledge content (S) of a cross classification, its terseness (Zeta), and the separability (Gamma _X ) of one variable, given all others. Exemplary applications are presented which illustrate the solutions obtained where classical analysis is unsatisfactory, such as optimal grouping, the analysis of very skew tables, or the interpretation of well-known paradoxes. Further, the separability suggests a solution for the classic problem of inductive inference which is independent of sample size.     

Remembering successes and failures: rehearsal characteristics influence recollection and distancing

We investigated the relationship between components of rumination, brooding and reflection, and autobiographical remembering by testing whether voluntary and involuntary rehearsal mediated rumination-related variation in the sensory-affective and metacognitive features of memory experience. We focused on achievement and failure memories as both are goal-related events, yet they represent distinct experiences in terms of valence and functionality. For failure memories, brooding was associated with intense recollection and reduced psychological distance. Brooding was related to enhanced distance of achievements, indicating the disruptive effects of brooding on remembering. Although reflection attenuated the recollective experience for both achievement and failure memories, it brought achievement memories to a subjective closer past. Structural equation modelling demonstrated the mediating role of involuntary remembering on the pattern of remembering experience.     

Orienting numbers in mental space: Horizontal organization trumps vertical

While research on the spatial representation of number has provided substantial evidence for a horizontally oriented mental number line, recent studies suggest vertical organization as well. Directly comparing the relative strength of horizontal and vertical organization, however, we found no evidence of spontaneous vertical orientation (upward or downward), and horizontal trumped vertical when pitted against each other (Experiment 1). Only when numbers were conceptualized as magnitudes (as opposed to nonmagnitude ordinal sequences) did reliable vertical organization emerge, with upward orientation preferred (Experiment 2). Altogether, these findings suggest that horizontal representations predominate, and that vertical representations, when elicited, may be relatively inflexible. Implications for spatial organization beyond number, and its ontogenetic basis, are discussed.     

Breaking it or Faking it? Some Critical Thoughts on the Voluntary Suspension of Play and Six Proposed Revisions

The voluntary suspension of play (VSP) is a putative fair play norm that has emerged in the last 20 years in association football, though there is no reason in principle why it is limited to that sport. It occurs in football when an injury appears to have been sustained and another player deliberately puts the ball out of play so that the injury can receive rapid attention. It is widely understood as a positive development within the sport and philosophers have added their support on the basis that VSP is a way of players exercising autonomous moral responsibility. It is represented as a case of athletes putting care for their competitors before care for the contest. In this paper, however, it is argued that moral praise for VSP is misplaced. Attempts to induce a VSP almost always occur when a team is seeking to hold a position within a game. As a delaying tactic, it encourages the faking of injuries, which is all the more reprehensible because it exploits someone else's concern for that apparent injury. Conditions for the possibility of VSP within a sport are analysed as well as conditions for the abuse of VSP. VSP occurs because of a loophole, and ways in which this can be closed are presented. In an appendix, some initial empirical evidence is presented that backs the evaluative claims of the paper.