Recognizing people seen in events via dynamic "mug shots"

This study examined effects of an event and dynamic mug shots on facial recognition. Witnesses saw either a film of a liquor store holdup staged by six perpetrators, slides of the same targets, or freeze-framed views from the filmed event. Slides of different facial views of targets among 12 foils, or dynamic 180 degrees mug shots of the same men, or multiple static views were administered 24 hr later in yes-no recognition tests. Recognition (d') was poorer for the same men seen in the event than in slides, but better for dynamic than for static mug shots. Nondynamic event characteristics were responsible for poor recognition of people seen in events, whereas dynamic aspects of facial transformations, not multiple views, seemed responsible for the superiority of dynamic mug shots. The implications of these results for issues of ecological validity of traditional face recognition methodology and for static feature models vs. dynamic transformation models of face recognition are discussed.     

Memory lapses during a pandemic: Differential associations between COVID-stress and daily memory lapses?

The policies related to COVID-19 pandemic such as stay at home orders and social distancing increased daily stress and associated impairments in mental health. This study examines the association between COVID-related stress and cognitive functioning by examining two different types of daily memory lapses, those related to prospective memory (i.e., memory for future plans) and retrospective memory (i.e., memory for past information) as well as the perceived emotional and functional consequences of daily memory problems. As part of a larger study, 58 adults (18 men; 22 ± 3 years) completed a web-based version of the daily inventory of stressful events including stress related to COVID-19 and positive/negative affect for eight consecutive days between 8 September 2020 and 11 November 2020. Findings showed that prospective lapses were positively correlated with COVID-19 stressors (r = 0.41, p = 0.002). At the within-person level, daily COVID-19 stressors were significantly associated with the number of prospective lapses (b = 0.088, SE = 0.040). COVID-19-related stressors were not significantly related to retrospective lapses (all ps > 0.05). Our findings suggested that more daily COVID-19 stressors were related to greater numbers of prospective lapses in daily life even among healthy younger adults. Thus, future research should address long term relations of COVID-19 stress and cognitive functioning in addition to the specific cognitive impairments related to COVID-19 infection.     

“Yours,Thirsty for Honesty,Ferenczi”: Some Background to Sandor Ferenczi's Pursuit of Mutuality

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Comparison of two creativity style measures

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between two measures of creativity style for a sample of beginning teachers. 116 student teachers enrolled in an undergraduate teacher-education program in a medium-sized, metropolitan university completed the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory and Basadur Creative Problem Solving Profile measures. A preference for an Innovator style (higher scores on Kirton's inventory) was correlated with the Generator profile on the Basadur profile (r=.36, p<.01). The KAI Efficiency scores, suggesting a preference for broad, global ideas as opposed to narrow, specific ones, was correlated with the Basadur Conceptualizer scores (r=.26, p<.01). Implications are discussed for teachers who must adapt to newer instructional and assessment methods designed to foster students' higher-level thinking skills.     

Selective exposure in decided and undecided individuals: differential relations to automatic associations and conscious beliefs

People often show a preference for information that confirms their attitudes and beliefs, and this tendency is reduced for opinions that are not held with conviction. The present study shows that both decided and undecided individuals show a tendency to selectively expose themselves to confirmatory information, albeit with different antecedents and consequences. Whereas selective exposure in decided participants was predicted by conscious beliefs and not by automatic associations, selective exposure in undecided participants was predicted by automatic associations and not by conscious beliefs. Moreover, selective exposure led undecided participants to adopt conscious beliefs that were in line with their preexisting automatic associations. Conversely, for decided participants, selective exposure shifted automatic associations in a direction that was in line with their preexisting conscious beliefs. Implications for decision making and mutual influences of automatic associations and conscious beliefs in attitude change are discussed.     

Between narratives of reconciliation and resistance: Re-locating social cohesion in the current South African statue debates

“Social cohesion” is a complex concept, characterised by a “prism of meanings”. In South Africa social cohesion has been tied to the question of nation building, with the arts, culture and heritage domains having been identified as key players in this ethical task, since the idea is that social cohesion would be promoted if citizens were sensitised to the diversity of identities. Despite these ideals, however, social cohesion among South Africans still seems far away. This is not merely due to practical capacity and economic issues, but also because of operational challenges. In this article, I argue that the ongoing statue debates on South African public university campuses (specifically a case study of events at the University of the Free State from 2008 to date) offer a critical opportunity to reflect on the relationship between social cohesion and identity. However, the moment risks being lost due to the current understanding that the statue debates represent only identity polarisation and the breakdown of social cohesion, cynicism about these very concepts, and operational confusion. The question arises of whether we could think differently regarding heritage and social cohesion. Could we view the conflicts and contradictions around these statues as spaces for ongoing re-imagination, and the pursuit of identity as a continual process of negotiation?     

Attachment to God,Spiritual Coping,and Alcohol Use

We examined the effect of emotional God attachment on undergraduates' alcohol use generally and for coping purposes and whether spiritual coping styles (collaborative, deferring, and self-directing) drive this effect. As hypothesized, people who feel secure in their emotional relationship with God use significantly more deferring, more collaborative, and less self-directing coping styles than people who feel anxious-ambivalent in their emotional relationship to God. Anxious-ambivalents use significantly more deferring, more collaborative, and less self-directing coping than people who feel disengaged from God (avoidants). Secures use alcohol significantly less than anxious-ambivalents, who use alcohol significantly less than avoidants. The effect of God attachment on general alcohol use was mediated by the use of self-directing (but not deferring or collaborative) spiritual coping style.     

Context-Dependent Learning in People With Parkinson's Disease

Context-dependent learning is a phenomenon in which people demonstrate superior performance in the context in which they originally learned a skill but perform less well in a novel context. This study investigated context-dependent learning in people with Parkinson's disease (PD) and age-matched nondisabled adults. All participants practiced 3 finger sequences, each embedded within a unique context (colors and locations on a computer screen). One day after practice, the participants were tested either under the sequence-context associations remained the same as during practice, or the sequence-context associations were changed (SWITCH). Compared with nondisabled adults, people with PD demonstrated significantly greater decrement in performance (especially movement time) under the SWITCH condition, suggesting that individuals with PD are more context dependent than nondisabled adults.     

The Boundaries of the Analytic Encounter: Clinical and Ethical Dimensions: A Roundtable Discussion: January 15, 1998

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -