“From war to peace”: Military festival visitors’ quality-of-life

The Voortrekker Monument Military festival is one of several military festivals held in South Africa. This study sought to determine the travel motives and life domain effects on the quality-of-life of visitors. Data were gathered from 330 visitors on their travel motives, overall life domains, and quality-of-life. Structural Equation Modelling analysis indicated a positive linear relationship between the visitors’ travel motives, life domains (social-life, leisure-life, and self-life), life domains overall, and quality-of-life; all of which attained good reliabilities. The findings indicate that a visit to a military heritage festival has a positive effect on visitors’ quality-of-life. This research adds to literature in the social sciences, positive psychology, and quality-of-life.     

General attentiveness effects of discriminative training

Using a design that permitted the simultaneous assessment of intra-, inter-, and extradimensional effects of discriminative training, the generality of discriminative effects that have been said to reflect increases in “general attentiveness” was assessed. Pigeons received either discriminative training with two stimuli correlated with reinforcement and one stimulus correlated with nonreinforcement, or nondifferential reinforcement (control) training. One positive stimulus was part of an intradimensional task and the other was not. After training, generalization tests were conducted to assess stimulus control along several dimensions. Discriminative training resulted in increased control along dimensions of the positive stimulus involved in the intradimensional task, but not along any dimensions of the other positive stimulus. The results suggested that discriminative training leads to increases in attention that are neither so general as suggested by the “general attentiveness” view nor so specific as to be revealed solely by intradimensional effects.     

Conceptualizations of the psychoanalytic process

A demonstrable psychoanalytic process involves elaborate and sustained intrapsychic experiences and phenomena for both analysand and analyst. It also includes a complex and at times subtle interpersonal relationship in which each participant is actively sensitive and responsive to verbal and nonverbal input from the other. These interpersonal experiences stimulate further intrapsychic responses which in turn may have further interpersonal effects. Within the framework of the psychoanalytic situation, these combined intrapsychic and interpersonal responses lead first to facilitative and ultimately to definitive changes in the patient's psychological organization and function. A method for demonstrating a psychoanalytic process is described.     

Effects on an adult of incest in childhood: a case report

Recognition of the widespread incidence of overt incest in childhood has significantly increased in recent years. The described long-term effects range from severe psychopathology and behavioral disorder to mild and subtle manifestations. The interplay of the child's sexual developmental processes and intrapsychic fantasies with the overtly incestuous behaviors adds complexity to the understanding of longterm effects. In this case presentation successful analysis revealed previously repressed extensive father-daughter incest resulting in typically autoplastic neurotic symptomatology and character formation. Effects on ego development and function were traced, and an attempt was made to develop recognition of cues suggestive of past overt incest. The case suggests that many additional factors contribute to the final long-term effects of overt incest in childhood.     

Conditions of directed attention inhibit recognition performance for explicitly presented target-aligned irrelevant stimuli

The fate of irrelevant and overtly presented stimuli that was temporally aligned with an attended target in a separate task was explored. Seitz and Watanabe (2003) demonstrated that if an irrelevant motion stimulus was implicit (i.e., subthreshold), a later facilitation for the same motion direction was observed if the previously presented implicit motion (of the same direction) was temporally aligned with the presence of an attended target. Later research, however, demonstrated that if the motion stimulus aligned with the attended target was explicit (i.e., suprathreshold), a later inhibition was observed (Tsushima, Seitz, & Watanabe, 2008). The current study expands on this by using more salient stimuli (words and pictures) in an inattentional blindness paradigm, and suggests that when attention is depleted, recognition for target-aligned task-irrelevant items is impaired in a subsequent recognition task. Participants were required to respond to either immediate picture, or word, repetitions in a stream of simultaneously presented line drawings and written words, and later given a surprise recognition test that measured recognition for the words or the pictures. When analyzing word recognition performance after attention had been directed to the pictures, words that had appeared simultaneously with a picture repetition in the repetition detection task were recognized at levels significantly below chance. The same inhibition was mirrored when testing for picture recognition after having attended to the words in the repetition detection task. These data suggest an inhibitory mechanism that is exhibited in later recognition tests for salient information that was previously unattended and had been simultaneously being presented with an attended target in a different task.     

Transference regression and real experience in the psychoanalytic process.

At the patient's level of reality testing and integration in the transference neurosis, the analyst serves as an effective parent who halpd the 'child' master various danger situations. This results in the patients relearning and development as the analyst provides new experiences for the regressive childhood components of the patient's personality. There is also a sequential or simultaneous cognitive element which is important in the ultimate development of mastery and is particularly useful in the process of working through. This cognitive element, however, cannot be effectively used until there have been repeated new and real experiences for the fixated and/or regressive components of the patient's personality.