JUDGMENTAL VERSUS STATISTICAL PREDICTION:

Abstract— The relative predictive accuracy of humans and statistical models has long been the subject of controversy even though models have demonstrated superior performance in many studies. We propose that relative performance depends on the amount of contextual information available and whether it is distributed symmetrically to humans and models. Given their different strengths, human and statistical predictions can be profitably combined to improve prediction.     

Learning spatial sequences in unilateral neglect

Brain-damaged patients with unilateral spatial neglect ignore aspects of the world located on the side opposite their lesion. In the present study we examined the performance of unilateral neglect patients (UN) on an SRT task in which a hybrid repeating sequence (21313) was used. We analyzed the patients' performance for each location separately as a function of the target's location in the trial preceding the response. The UN patients were severely limited in their learning of the sequence when compared to normal controls. In particular, they appeared to learn unique associations (21 and 13) but not ambiguous ones (31 and 32). We discuss two possible explanations for this phenomenon. The first is that UN patients show a deficit similar to that of normal subjects in dual task situations. The second is that the learning deficit is unique to spatial processing impairments of UN patients and is not directly related to research with normal population. We outline future research that may distinguish between these two explanations.     

Training Soviet immigrant therapists in the field of group psychotherapy

Between 1970 and 1990 about one-half million Jews immigrated to Israel, most of them from the former Soviet Union, including many mental health therapists who had trained and worked in the Soviet Union. This article addresses the special characteristics of this population, in general, and of the mental health therapists, in particular. It relates these characteristics to training for group psychotherapy. Key issues include their unique experience of the inner world as a source of danger, the specific defensive modes connected with this experience, their perception of authority as an agent of ideology, and their representation of the group as a persecutory entity and as a vehicle of indoctrination.     

Philosophy of Education in a Poor Historical Moment: A Personal Account

Under the post-metaphysical sky “old” humanistic-oriented education is possible solely at the cost of its transformation into its negative, into a power that is determined to diminish human potentials for self-exaltation. Nothing less than total metamorphosis is needed to rescue the core of humanistic genesis: the quest for edifying Life and resistance to the call for “home-returning” into the total harmony that is promised to us within nothingness.     

The earliest memory in individuals raised in either traditional and reformed kibbutz or outside the kibbutz

In two studies we compared the age of traditional kibbutz members' first memories with the first memories of people raised in Israeli cities (Study 1) and of people who were raised in reformed kibbutzim (Study 2). Building on the socio-cultural model of autobiographical memory, we predicted and found that children raised in the traditional kibbutz, not by their parents, but by a metapelet, had a significantly later onset of autobiographical memory than children raised in reformed kibbutzim or outside the kibbutz, who were under the primary care of their parents. We also examined gender differences in reporting the earliest memory. No gender differences were observed within each setting in the age of the earliest memory, but consistent with past research, memories reported by females were more elaborate than those reported by males.