Access can either be first-order or second-order. First order access concerns whether contents achieve representation in phenomenal consciousness at all; second-order access concerns whether phenomenally conscious contents are selected for metacognitive, higher order processing by reflective consciousness. When the optional and flexible nature of second-order access is kept in mind, there remain strong reasons to believe that exclusion failure can indeed isolate phenomenally conscious stimuli that are not so accessed. Irvine’s [Irvine, E. . Signal detection theory, the exclusion failure paradigm (...) and weak consciousness—Evidence for the access/phenomenal distinction? Consciousness and Cognition.] partial access argument fails because exclusion failure is indeed due to lack of second-order access, not insufficient phenomenally conscious information. Further, the enable account conforms with both qualitative differences and subjective report, and is simpler than the endow account. Finally, although first-order access may be a distinct and important process, second-order access arguably reflects the core meaning of access generally. (shrink)

Freud proposes that in unconscious processing, logical connections are also (heavily) based upon phonological similarities. Repressed concerns, for example, would also be expressed by way of phonologic ambiguity. In order to investigate a possible unconscious influence of phonological similarity, 31 participants were submitted to a tachistoscopic subliminal priming experiment, with prime and target presented at 1ms. In the experimental condition, the prime and one of the 2 targets were phonological reversed forms of each other, though graphemically dissimilar (e.g., “nice” and (...) “sign”); in the control condition the targets were pseudo-randomly attributed to primes to which they don’t belong. The experimental task was to “blindly” pick the choice most similar to the prime. ERPs were measured with a focus on the N320, which is known to react selectively to phonological mismatch in supraliminal visual word presentations. The N320 amplitude-effects at the electrodes on the midline and at the left of the brain significantly predicted the participants’ net behavioral choices more than half a second later, while their subjective experience is one of arbitrariness. Moreover, the social desirability score (SDS) significantly correlates with both the behavioral and the N320 brain responses of the participants. It is proposed that in participants with low SDS the phonological target induces an expected reduction of N320 and this increases their probability to pick this target. In contrast, high defensive participants have a perplexed brain reaction upon the phonological target, with a negatively peaking N320 as compared to control and this leads them to avoid this target more often. Social desirability, which is understood as reflecting defensiveness, might also manifest itself as a defense against the (energy-consuming) ambiguity of language. The specificity of this study is that all of this is happening totally out of awareness and at the level of very elementary linguistic distinctions. (shrink)

Biases towards negative information, as well as away from positive information, are associated with psychopathology. Examining biases in multiple processes has been theorised to be more predictive than examining bias in any process alone. Anhedonia is a core symptom of psychopathology and predictive of future psychopathological symptoms. Finding that combined biases are associated with anhedonia would advance knowledge of the nature of emotional processing biases and the value of objective performance-based measures for identifying early risk markers. Participants completed tasks that (...) assess latency bias and biased recognition of emotional information, as well as an anhedonia measure. An index was computed for each task’s performance reflecting biased processing of positive and negative words. Only combined biases on both tasks were associated with anhedonia. Attentional bias was positively associated with anhedonia, but only when recognition bias for emotional words was high. Thus, assessing biases in multiple domains increased sensitivity to uncover relationships between emotional processing biases and anhedonic symptoms. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFear of positive evaluation is experiencing dread during real or potential praise. FPE is associated with social anxiety, but its relation to depressive symptoms is unclear. Anhedonia is a core symptom of depression related to symptoms of anxiety in cross-sectional research. The current study investigated the indirect effect of FPE on depressive symptoms via anhedonia over time. One-hundred ninety-six participants completed three waves of questionnaires over a total timespan of approximately four months via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, including measures of FPE, (...) depressive symptoms, and anticipatory and consummatory anhedonia. Findings indicated that anticipatory anhedonia at Time 2 mediated the relationship between FPE at Time 1 and depressive symptoms at Time 3. Consummatory anhedonia, however, did not. Each model was contextualised by accounting for prospective covarying relationships, such as depressive symptoms predicting the same symptoms at later waves. The constellation of findings is c... (shrink)

Some individuals devalue positivity previously associated with negativity (Winer & Salem, 2016). Positive emotions (e.g. happiness) may be seen as threatening and result in active avoidance of futu...

Volume 23 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis _departs from its predecessors in offering three lengthy studies of unususal interest. Fred Levin's three-part examination of psychoanalysis and knowledge is a simulating, timely effort to relate "a psychoanalyst's thinking about knowledge" to both the clinical situation and what is now known about learning, memory, and knowledge formation in the neurosciences. The late Roy R. Grinker, Sr.'s history of analysis in Chicago was solicited by _The Annual_ in 1975 but declined for publication at (...) the time as too abrasive in tone and too critical in content. It is published here in unexpurgated form, and emerges as both a provocative historical document and a valuable commentary on the state of psychoanalytic education 20 years ago. Finally, in a fascinating contribution to applied analysis, Carol M. Ravenal reexamines Matisse's artwork in the context of the painter's arrested development and subsequent adult conflicts in "Henri Matisse: Love as Art - A Psychobiographical Study." These major contributions are supplemented by clinical and theoretical papers of characteristic excellence. John Gedo's probing evaluation of the "pragmatics of empathy" highlights how empathic responsiveness obliges analysts "to tailor our manner of discourse to the specific requirements of the analysand's current state." Michael Hoit argues that the hermeneutic point of view is an important addition to clinical theory, allowing analysts to understand phenomena outside the boundaries of specific schools and theories. Otto Kernberg examines the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of eating-disorder patients with borderline personality organization. Alice Rosen Soref proffers a revised understanding of the etiology and treatment of narcissistic pathology on the basis of three decades of infant research. And Samuel Weiss discusses the resistance to child analysis of parents who know their children need help but balk at the actual recommendation for treatment. In all, Volume 23 is a worthy response to the ferment of the present time. Encompassing a key period in psychoanalytic history, a scholarly investigation in applied analysis, and a thoughtful assessment of psychoanalysis and brain research, it offers a fine overview of the major tributaries of contemporary analytic scholarship. Supplement these monographic efforts with a careful selection of clinical and theoretical studies and you have an exemplary contribution to the literature. (shrink)

Volume 26/27 begins with publication of _The Annual's_ first prize essay, Samuel Abrams's "How Child and Adult Analysis Inform and Misinform One Another." This is followed by a series of papers originally prepared for a symposium honoring John E. Gedo. These papers span the clinical topics of obsessiveness, sublimation, dreams and self-analysis, and analyzability, and also delve into applied psychoanalysis and art history, with two studies of Vincent van Gogh and another of Alberto Giacometti. These papers not only convey (...) the impressive range of Gedo's own interests, but embody the high scholarly and clinical standards that Gedo has long held, both for himself and for the field in general. Section III offers original contributions to clinical analysis in the form of the consideration of the role of affective engagement in the analyst's "usability"; thoughtful assessment of the perils of parental projection in child analytic work; and comparison of a failed and successful supervision in the same psychoanalytic case. Section IV examines psychoanalysis and the arts, with two further studies of van Gogh, an analytic reading of Nabokov's _Lolita_, and more general examinations of psychoanalysis in relation to dramatic art and film analysis. The volume closes with two provocative scholarly essays bearing on the roots of psychoanalysis: the correspondence between Mabel Dodge and her analysts Smith Ely Jelliffe and A. A. Brill as a vehicle for reviewing the issue of extra- and postanalytic contact between analyst and patient; and an examination of Freud, Lacan, and the uneasy relationships among literature, psychoanalysis, and the female subject. Volume 26/27 offers readers a rich harvest of contemporary insights about psychoanalysis, including its history and evolution, its continuing clinical refinement, and its scholarly applications outside the consulting room. (shrink)

Although computation and the science of physical systems would appear to be unrelated, there are a number of ways in which computational and physical concepts can be brought together in ways that illuminate both. This volume examines fundamental questions which connect scholars from both disciplines: is the universe a computer? Can a universal computing machine simulate every physical process? What is the source of the computational power of quantum computers? Are computational approaches to solving physical problems and paradoxes always fruitful? (...) Contributors from multiple perspectives reflecting the diversity of thought regarding these interconnections address many of the most important developments and debates within this exciting area of research. Both a reference to the state of the art and a valuable and accessible entry to interdisciplinary work, the volume will interest researchers and students working in physics, computer science, and philosophy of science and mathematics. (shrink)

Self-control is considered broadly important for many domains of life. One of its unfortunate features, however, is that it tends to wane over time, with little agreement about why this is the case. Recently, there has been a push to address this problem by looking to the literature in exercise physiology, specifically the work on the central governor model of physical fatigue. Trying to explain how and why mental performance wanes over time, the central governor model suggests that exertion is (...) throttled by some central nervous system mechanism that receives information about energetic bodily needs and motivational drives to regulate exertion and, ultimately, to prevent homeostatic breakdown, chiefly energy depletion. While we admire the spirit of integration and the attempt to shed light on an important topic in psychology, our concern is that the central governor model is very controversial in exercise physiology, with increasing calls to abandon it altogether, making it a poor fit for psychology. Our concerns are threefold. First, while we agree that preservation of bodily homeostasis makes for an elegant ultimate account, the fact that such important homeostatic concerns can be regularly overturned with even slight incentives (e.g., a smile) renders the ultimate account impotent and points to other ultimate functions for fatigue. Second, despite the central governor being thought to take as input information about the metabolic needs of the body, there is no credible evidence that mental effort actually consumes inordinate amounts of energy that are not already circulating in the brain. Third, recent modifications of the model make the central governor appear like an all-knowing homunculus and unfalsifiable in principle, thus contributing very little to our understanding of why people tend to disengage from effortful tasks over time. We note that the latest models in exercise physiology have actually borrowed concepts and models from psychology to understand physical performance. (shrink)

In order to achieve genuine web intelligence, building some kind of large general machine-readable conceptual scheme (i.e. ontology) seems inescapable. Yet the past 20 years have shown that manual ontology-building is not practicable. The recent explosion of free user-supplied knowledge on the Web has led to great strides in automatic ontology building, but quality-control is still a major issue. Ideally one should automatically build onto an already intelligent base. We suggest that the long-running Cyc project is able to assist here. (...) We describe methods used to add 35K new concepts mined from Wikipedia to collections in ResearchCyc entirely automatically. Evaluation with 22 human subjects shows high precision both for the new concepts’ categorization, and their assignment as individuals or collections. Most importantly we show how Cyc itself can be leveraged for ontological quality control by ‘feeding’ it assertions one by one, enabling it to reject those that contradict its other knowledge. (shrink)

Preliminary Material --Foreword /Samuel M. Natale --Acknowledgements /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --Introduction /William O'Neill and Samuel M. Natale --Section I /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --The Working Class Spirituality /Joseph M. McShane --Comparative Christian Perspectives on the Meaning of Work /Joseph W. Ford --Work, Spirituality, and the Moral Point of View /Kenneth E. Goodpaster --Can Christian Ethics Inform Business Practice?: (...) A Typological Road Map and Criteria of Adequacy for an Ethic of Capitalism /David A. Krueger --The American and Catholic Models of Worker Rights: A Comparison and Appraisal /Michael A. Zigarelli --Section II /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --The Work Ethic and Notions of Character in Scottish Education /W. A. Gatherer --The Multidimensionality of Values Conflicts in the Organizational Life /Michel Dion --New Organizational Structures: A Chance for Workers or a New Mode of Control? /Jacques Delcourt --Defining Forces in Work Attitudes: Cultural Values and Economic Environment /Eduardo S. Paderon and Charles F. O'Donnell --The Growing Dilemma of Loyalty to the Firm /John C. SJ. Haughey --Section III /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --Values/Work/Education: Definitions and Context /Lee J. Richmond --Six Questions for Ethical Educational Management /Michael Bottery --Values Education: A More Effective Route to Managerial Competence? /W. M. Robb --The Educative Dimensions of Workplace Democracy /W.J. Toth --Influences on the Value-Mediating Work of Educational Leaders /K.D. Walker --Personal and Social Education in Vocational Preparation /Richard Pring --Contributors /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --Index /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden --VIBS /Samuel M. Natale, Brian M. Rothschild, Joseph W. Sora, and Tara M. Madden. (shrink)

The classical interpretation of mathematical statements can be seen as comprising two separate but related aspects: a domain and a truth-schema. L. E. J. Brouwer’s intuitionistic project lays the groundwork for an alternative conception of the objects in this domain, as well as an accompanying intuitionistic truth-schema. Drawing on the work of Arend Heyting and Michael Dummett, I present two objections to classical mathematical semantics, with the aim of creating an opening for an alternative interpretation. With this accomplished, I (...) then make the case for intuitionism as a suitable candidate to fill this void. (shrink)

The Shadow of God combines history and philosophy in a way that is, unlike Hegel, fundamentally pluralistic. It presents the period of German Idealism as a time when philosophers aimed to bring faith and reason together through the idea of autonomy. At the same time, the tensions endemic in that process led to a transfer of individual hope from an afterlife of reward or punishment to participation in a collective, historical process. This article responds to a series of critical questions: (...) Does the book assimilate consolation and reconciliation? Does it sufficiently distinguish knowledge and justification? Does it open the possibility for a reaffirmation of the individual? Does it underestimate the potential for a secularized Kantian philosophy to bring together equality, justification, and community? Does its interpretation of Kant give a place for his account of historical progress? Is awareness of the way in which theodicy came to be historicized helpful in understanding contemporary democracy and its discontents? (shrink)

The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas (1 Sam 2:11-36), served along with their father as priests at Shiloh in the tabernacle, where the ark of the covenant was housed (11am 1:3). While in service, Eli’s children became sons of worthlessness (bənȇ-bəliyyaʿal), dishonest, wicked and corrupt, as well as refused to know the Lord (lō’ yāḏə‘û ՚eṯ-ʾădōnāi) and his teachings. They were unrighteous, greedy, intimidating, immoral, and abusive to women at the entrance of the temple (vv. 12-22). Eli did (...) little to correct them, leading to God’s punishment. Some scholars have examined this narrative with Western historical models, lacking African stories, cultures, customs, and experiences, where there are similar incidences of children’s misbehaviors and challenges of their upbringing in the African context. Using an African Biblical Hermeneutical approach with illustrative stories from Zain E. Asher’s memoir, “Where the Children Take Us: How One Family Achieved the Unimaginable,” this work contextually examines 1 Sam 2:11-17, within the theological contexts of the Books of Samuel and Deuteronomistic History (Josh–2 Kings). It compares Obiajulu’s disciplined and trained children (Obinze, Chiwetel, Zain, Kandibe) and the obedient boy, Samuel (vv. 18-22), with the consequences of the blasphemies and corruption of Eli’s children (vv. 11-17). It proposes lessons that no matter how we perform our duties in the church, schools and families, sadness may still come if we neglect to train our children responsibly in righteousness, integrity, hard work, and in the fear of the Lord. (shrink)

Hume’s arguments against the cosmological argument have, in the past century, often been highly praised by commentators such as H.D.Aiken and E.C. Mossner. While Hume’s argument often receives strong philosophical support, the four major objections raised against the cosmological argument in book IX of his Dialogues hinge upon a misunderstanding of Newtonian natural philosophy. Hence, when the proper historical context is considered, Hume’s objections are weak at best, for they assume an understanding of matter and physical necessity that are inconsistent (...) with Newtonian natural philosophy. This paper will outline Hume’s objections, and explore how the formulation of the cosmological argument put forth by the English philosopher Samuel Clarke was reliant upon the best available scientific evidence, i.e. Newtonian philosophy. Consequently, any contemporary supporter of Hume who believes that his argument was successful in quenching the enlightenment era reiteration of the cosmological argument does so anachronistically. (shrink)

Machery argues that concepts do not constitute a natural kind. We argue that this is a mistake. When appropriately construed, his discussion in fact bolsters the claim that concepts are a natural kind.

In two experiments subjects attempted to identify words presented below the objective threshold using two task strategies emphasizing either allowing a word to pop into their heads or looking carefully at the stimulus field . Words were selected to represent both meaningful and structural dimensions. We also asked subjects to indicate their strategy preference and to rate their motivation to perform well. In the absence of conscious perception, both strategy preference and word meaning interacted with strategy condition, mediating the accuracy (...) of subjects′ direct word identification judgments. Motivation also mediated performance. Word structure had no effect. Unconscious perception manifested only in the pop condition, underscoring the importance of task strategy in determining whether subliminal effects are observed. A follow-up control experiment using sham flashes demonstrated that strategy preference and motivation effects were not artifacts resulting from performance feedback cues. (shrink)

Despite claims to the contrary, the science of ecology has a long history of building theories. Many ecological theories are mathematical, computational, or statistical, though, and rarely have attempts been made to organize or extrapolate these models into broader theories. The Theory of Ecology brings together some of the most respected and creative theoretical ecologists of this era to advance a comprehensive, conceptual articulation of ecological theories. The contributors cover a wide range of topics, from ecological niche theory to population (...) dynamic theory to island biogeography theory. Collectively, the chapters ably demonstrate how theory in ecology accounts for observations about the natural world and how models provide predictive understandings. It organizes these models into constitutive domains that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of ecological understanding. This book is a milestone in ecological theory and is certain to motivate future empirical and theoretical work in one of the most exciting and active domains of the life sciences. (shrink)

Can phenomenality without access occur? We suggest that the crucial issue is not to show phenomenality that cannot be accessed, but whether phenomenality sometimes simply is not accessed. Considering this question leads to positing a distinct, second form of consciousness: Reflective consciousness. The most important form of access is then from phenomenal (first-order) to reflective (second-order) consciousness.

Erdelyi does us all a great service by his customarily incisive discussion of the various ways in which our field tends to neglect, confuse, and misunderstand numerous critical issues in attempting to differentiate conscious from unconscious perception and memory. Although no single commentary could hope to comprehensively assess these issues, I will address Erdelyi’s three main points: How the dissociation paradigm can be used to validly infer unconscious perception; The implications of below-chance effects; and The role of time. I suggest (...) that significant progress on construct validity issues is possible; below-chance effects are part of a more general bidirectional phenomenon, very likely unconscious, and do not threaten absolute subliminality; and practice/learning effects pose potential difficulties for time-based dissociation paradigms. (shrink)

Van Selst and Merikle argued that the critical Preference × Strategy interaction findings could be alternatively explained by positing individual differences as a function of preference and strategy. They further argued that ruling out conscious perception depends on making the exhaustiveness assumption. We argue that the inhibitory effects satisfy objective threshold criteria regardless of possible individual differences in thresholds. We further suggest that the inhibitory findings are inherently incompatible with the conscious perception explanation and that therefore we do not need (...) to make the exhaustiveness assumption. We thus stand by our original conclusion that subliminal perception at the objective threshold has been demonstrated. (shrink)

CEO compensation has received much attention from both academics and regulators. However, academics have given scant attention to understanding judgments about CEO compensation by third parties such as investors. Our study contributes to the ethics literature on CEO compensation by examining whether judgments about CEO compensation are influenced by two aspects of a company’s tone at the top—social ties between the CEO and members of the Executive Compensation Committee and the CEO’s Reputation, particularly for financial reporting and disclosures. Although, stock (...) exchanges such as NASDAQ require ECC members to be independent, CEOs still may have social connections to the ECC. In addition, CEOs develop a reputation for the quality of their company’s financial reporting and disclosures. We expect both CEO Social Ties and CEO Reputation to impact say-on-pay judgments, and that fairness perceptions about the CEO compensation will mediate the relationship. We conduct an experiment to test our hypotheses. In this study, we employ a two by two experimental design where we manipulate CEO Social Ties with members of the ECC and CEO Reputation for the quality of financial reporting disclosures . Participants were MBA students who provided a say-on-pay judgment , and judgments about the fairness of the CEO’s compensation. Results indicate that CEO Social Ties affected participants’ say-on-pay judgments, which were fully mediated by their perceptions about fairness of the CEO’s compensation. Further, the CEO’s Reputation also affected participants’ say-on-pay judgments, which were fully mediated by their perceptions about fairness of the CEO’s compensation. Implications for research and public policy are presented. (shrink)

Our approach is based on a tri-partite method of integrating psychodynamic hypotheses, cognitive subliminal processes, and psychophysiological alpha power measures. We present ten social phobic subjects with three individually selected groups of words representing unconscious conflict, conscious symptom experience, and Osgood Semantic negative valence words used as a control word group. The unconscious conflict and conscious symptom words, presented subliminally and supraliminally, act as primes preceding the conscious symptom and control words presented as supraliminal targets. With alpha power as a (...) marker of inhibitory brain activity, we show that unconscious conflict primes, only when presented subliminally, have a unique inhibitory effect on conscious symptom targets. This effect is absent when the unconscious conflict primes are presented supraliminally, or when the target is the control words. Unconscious conflict prime effects were found to correlate with a measure of repressiveness in a similar previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). Conscious symptom primes have no inhibitory effect when presented subliminally. Inhibitory effects with conscious symptom primes are present, but only when the primes are supraliminal, and they did not correlate with repressiveness in a previous study (Shevrin et al., 1992, 1996). We conclude that while the inhibition following supraliminal conscious symptom primes is due to conscious threat bias, the inhibition following subliminal unconscious conflict primes provides a neurological blueprint for dynamic repression: it is only activated subliminally by an individual's unconscious conflict and has an inhibitory effect specific only to the conscious symptom. These novel findings constitute neuroscientific evidence for the psychoanalytic concepts of unconscious conflict and repression, while extending neuroscience theory and methods into the realm of personal, psychological meaning. (shrink)

Volume 22 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis_ begins with the provocative reflections of Jane Flax and Robert Michels on the current status and future prospects of psychoanalysis a century after Freud. Flax believes that analysis will not survive in the postmodern West if analysts cling to the medical model and the notion of analysis as a clinical science; Michels believes analysis will be revivified in the next century by reorganizing its training institutes within universities. A section on "Psychoanalysis and the (...) Visual Arts" includes John Gedo's probing examination of the inner world of Paul Gauguin and William Meissner's reflections on Vincent van Gogh as artist. Johann Michael Rotmann's examination of the transferential meanings of third-party payment within Germany's health insurance system is a timely consideration of issues that are increasingly salient for American analysts and therapists. A rich harvest of theoretical and clinical papers rounds out this volume of _The Annual_. In "A Time of Questioning," Leon Wurmser responds to the inner and outer challenges before analysis in a closely reasoned defense of the applicability of classical analytic technique to severely disturbed patients. Michael Hoit examines the noninterpretive, interactive aspects of the analytic relationship, arguing that the analyst's noninterpretive activities are intrinsic to treatment and must be incorporated into the theory of therapeutic action. In "Fables as Psychoanalytic Metaphors," Elaine Caruth describes some psychoanalytic metaphors contained within the lessons of the Aesopian fables, proposing that the fables address interpersonal and group conflicts that often involve moral issues. Wilma Bucci offers her "multiple code theory" as a new model of emotion and mind, based on current theory and research in cognitive science, that can account for clinical concepts and provide coherent framework for empirical research. And Ralph Roughton uses the case history of Laura to underscore the central role of repetition and interaction in the analytic process. Volume 22 will not disappoint readers of this distinguished continuing series. Like its predecessors, it is a thoroughly assembled collection responsive to the conceptual, clinical, and institutional challenges now before the field. (shrink)

Volume 25 of _The Annual_ is dedicated to the memory of Michael Franz Basch, who achieved distinction as both a psychoanalytic theorist of the first rank and an authority on the nature and conduct of dynamic psychotherapy. A wide range of original contributions bear witness to his theoretical, clinical, and educational interests. A number of papers remind us of Basch's prominence as a self-psychological theorist: Elson's self-psychological reappraisal of self-pity, dependence, and manipulation as self-states; Ornstein's developmental perspective on power, (...) self-esteem, and destructive aggression; Tolpin's review of sexuality from the standpoint of normal self development; and Wolf's discussion of self psychology and the "aging self." Basch's life-long educational concerns gain expression in Goldberg's discussion of clinical teaching, particularly the challenge of leading of case conferences; and Ornstein's and Kay's thoughtful consideration of "enduring difficulties" in American medical education. Additional highlights of the volume include: Fawcett's consideration of the role of pharmacotherapy in psychodynamic treatment; Jaffe's consideration of the applicability of hierarchical models to assessment and intervention in brief psychotherapy; Galatzer-Levy's review of the "witch" metapsychology; Gedo's analysis of mythic themes in the operas _Don Giovanni_ and _Der Rosenkavalier_; Modell's reflections on metaphor and affects; and Kernberg's discussion of a "new psychoanalytic mainstream," which he compares and contrasts with a parallel convergence of Kohutian and interpersonal analytic approaches. Many of these contributions incorporate reflections on Basch as a teacher and colleague, and the entire volume is framed by Goldberg's moving tribute. Analysts and psychotherapists sharing Basch's commitment to academic and clinical excellence and his keen awareness of the pragmatic requirements of doing effective therapy will find in Volume 25 a cornucopia of riches. (shrink)

Realising the societal gains from publicly funded health and medical research requires a model for a reflexive evaluation precedent for the societal impact of research. This research explores UK Research Excellence Framework evaluators’ values and opinions and assessing societal impact, prior to the assessment taking place. Specifically, we discuss the characteristics of two different impact assessment extremes – the “quality-focused” evaluation and “societal impact-focused” evaluation. We show the wide range of evaluator views about impact, and that these views could be (...) conceptually reflected in a range of different positions along a conceptual evaluation scale. We describe the characteristics of these extremes in detail, and discuss the different beliefs evaluators had which could influence where they positioned themselves along the scale. These decisions, we argue, when considered together, form a dominant definition of societal impact that influences the direction of its evaluation by the panel. (shrink)

This research assessed how the performance and team skills of three-person teams working with an Intelligent Team Tutoring System on a virtual military surveillance task were affected by feedback privacy, participant role, task experience, prior team experience, and teammate familiarity. Previous work in Intelligent Tutoring Systems has focused on outcomes for task skill training for individual learners. As research extends into intelligent tutoring for teams, both task skills and team skills are necessary for good team performance. This work includes a (...) brief review of previous research on ITTSs, feedback, teams, and teamwork, including the recounting of two categories of a framework of teamwork performance, Communication and Cognition, which are relevant to the present study. This research examines the effects of an intelligent agent, as well as features of the team, its members, and the task being undertaken, on team communication and team situation awareness. Thirty-seven teams of three participants, each at their own computer running a multiplayer surveillance simulation, were given just-in-time private or public performance feedback during four 5-min trials. In the fourth trial, two of the three participants switched roles. Feedback type, teamwork experience, and teammate familiarity had no statistically significant effect on communication or team situation awareness. However, higher levels of role experience and task experience showed significant and medium-sized effects on communication performance. Results, based on performance data and structured interview responses, also revealed areas of improvement in future feedback design and a potential benchmark for feedback frequency in an action-oriented serious game-based ITTS. Among the conclusions are six design objectives for future ITTSs, establishing a foundation for future research on designing effective ITTSs that train interpersonal skills to nascent teams. (shrink)

During the last 25 years, researchers studying human reasoning and judgment in what has become known as the “heuristics and biases” tradition have produced an impressive body of experimental work which many have seen as having “bleak implications” for the rationality of ordinary people (Nisbett and Borgida 1975). According to one proponent of this view, when we reason about probability we fall victim to “inevitable illusions” (Piattelli-Palmarini 1994). Other proponents maintain that the human mind is prone to “systematic deviations from (...) rationality” (Bazerman & Neale 1986) and is “not built to work by the rules of probability” (Gould 1992). It has even been suggested that human beings are “a species that is uniformly probability-blind” (Piattelli-Palmarini 1994). This provocative and pessimistic interpretation of the experimental findings has been challenged from many different directions over the years. One of the most recent and energetic of these challenges has come from the newly emerging field of evolutionary psychology, where it has been argued that it’s singularly implausible to claim that our species would have evolved with no “instinct for probability” and, hence, be “blind to chance” (Pinker 1997, 351). Though evolutionary psychologists concede that it is possible to design experiments that “trick our probability.. (shrink)

It has seemed, to many, that there is an important connection between the ways in which some theoretical posits explain our observations, and our reasons for being ontologically committed to those posits. One way to spell out this connection is in terms of what has become known as the explanatory criterion of ontological commitment. This is, roughly, the view that we ought to posit only those entities that are indispensable to our best explanations. Our primary aim is to argue that (...) the moral nonnaturalist places herself in an invidious position if she simply accepts that the nonnatural moral facts that she posits are not explanatory. Instead, we offer the nonnaturalist an alternative strategy for dealing with moral explanations. The strategy is to retain the explanatory criterion of ontological commitment and maintain that moral properties are, in fact, explanatory. The explanations they provide are not causal explanations; instead, moral properties make a non-causal difference to the physical facts. (shrink)