Disintegrated experience: the dissociative disorders revisited

We present proposed changes to the dissociative disorders section of the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and review the concept of pathological and nonpathological dissociation, including empirical findings on the relations between trauma and dissociative phenomenology and between dissociation and hypnosis. The most important proposals include the creation of two new diagnostic entities, brief reactive dissociative disorder and transient dissociative disturbance, and the readoption of the criterion of amnesia for a multiple personality disorder diagnosis. We conclude that further work on dissociative processes will provide an important link between clinical and experimental approaches to human cognition, emotion, and personality.     

Spirituality in Clinical Practice: The Perspective of Brazilian Medical Students

Journal of Religion and Health - The purpose of this study was to evaluate the beliefs, opinions, and experiences of medical students from a Catholic confessional university concerning spirituality...     

Transfer of value from fit

People experience regulatory fit when they pursue a goal in a manner that sustains their regulatory orientation (E. T. Higgins, 2000). Five studies tested whether the value experienced from regulatory fit can transfer to a subsequent evaluation of an object. In Studies 1 and 2, participants gave the same coffee mug a higher price if they had chosen it with a strategy that fit their orientation (eager strategy/promotion; vigilant strategy/prevention) than a strategy that did not fit. Studies 3-5 investigated possible mechanisms underlying this effect. Value transfer was independent of positive mood, perceived effectiveness (instrumentality), and perceived efficiency (ease), and occurred for an object that w as independent of the fit process itself. The findings supported a value confusion account of transfer.     

Recognition by association: Within‐ and cross‐modality associative priming with faces and voices

Recent literature has raised the suggestion that voice recognition runs in parallel to face recognition. As a result, a prediction can be made that voices should prime faces and faces should prime voices. A traditional associative priming paradigm was used in two studies to explore within‐modality priming and cross‐modality priming. In the within‐modality condition where both prime and target were faces, analysis indicated the expected associative priming effect: The familiarity decision to the second target celebrity was made more quickly if preceded by a semantically related prime celebrity, than if preceded by an unrelated prime celebrity. In the cross‐modality condition, where a voice prime preceded a face target, analysis indicated no associative priming when a 3‐s stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was used. However, when a relatively longer SOA was used, providing time for robust recognition of the prime, significant cross‐modality priming emerged. These data are explored within the context of a unified account of face and voice recognition, which recognizes weaker voice processing than face processing.     

Movement planning and attentional control of visuospatial working memory: evidence from a grasp-to-place task

In this study, we have investigated the influence of available attentional resources on the dual-task costs of implementing a new action plan and the influence of movement planning on the transfer of information into visuospatial working memory. To approach these two questions, we have used a motor–memory dual-task design in which participants grasped a sphere and planned a placing movement toward a left or right target according to a directional arrow. Subsequently, they encoded a centrally presented memory stimulus (4 × 4 symbol matrix). While maintaining the information in working memory, a visual stay/change cue (presented on the left, center or right) either confirmed or reversed the planned movement direction. That is, participants had to execute either the prepared or the re-planned movement and finally reported the symbols at leisure. The results show that both, shifts of spatial attention required to process the incongruent stay/change cues and movement re-planning, constitute processing bottlenecks as they both reduced visuospatial working memory performance. Importantly, the spatial attention shifts and movement re-planning appeared to be independent of each other. Further, we found that the initial preparation of the placing movement influenced the report pattern of the central working memory stimulus. Preparing a leftward movement resulted in better memory performance for the left stimulus side, while the preparation of a rightward movement resulted in better memory performance for the right stimulus side. Hence, movement planning influenced the transfer of information into the capacity-limited working memory store. Therefore, our results suggest complex interactions in that the processes involved in movement planning, spatial attention and visuospatial working memory are functionally correlated but not linked in a mandatory fashion.     

Open-mindedness and Religious Devotion

To be open-minded is to be willing to revise or entertain doubts about one’s beliefs. Commonly regarded as an intellectual virtue, and often too as a moral virtue, open-mindedness is a trait that is generally desirable for a person to have. However, in the major theistic traditions, absolute commitment to one’s religious beliefs is regarded as virtuous or ideal. But one cannot be completely resolved about an issue and at the same time be open to revising one’s beliefs about it. It appears, then, that religious devotion is inconsistent with open-mindedness. The more religiously devout a person is, the more firmly she will hold to her convictions. And the stronger her belief commitments, the less open-minded she will be regarding these beliefs. So there appears to be a paradox here, where from the standpoint of religious devotion, it is virtuous to display an intellectual vice, namely closed-mindedness. I discuss this problem and explore some potential routes of escape from the paradox.