Integrating research with NHS clinical practice: Unwelcome intrusion or constructive triangulation?

When embarking on research into the effectiveness of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the NHS or the application of psychoanalytic principles, researchers come up against a number of hurdles: many clinicians still see empirical research as antithetical or disruptive to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy; psychoanalytic psychotherapy has previously fared poorly in evidence-based policy guidelines and this can discourage ambition, and there are technical problems of research design, measurement and standardization. Nevertheless, in a political climate which stresses service evaluation, measurable outcomes and empirical evidence, psychoanalytic psychotherapy must participate to survive. There may be gains from conducting research beyond simply meeting the requirement to provide evidence of effectiveness. Research may be viewed by some clinicians as an unwelcome intruder but it may have the potential to offer triangulation, the perspective of the 'third', and so strengthen the foundations of clinical practice and the development of psychoanalytic thought

Effects of Emotion on Memory Specificity in Young and Older Adults

To examine how emotional content affects the amount of visual detail remembered, we had young and older adults study neutral, negative, and positive objects. At retrieval, they distinguished same (identical) from similar (same verbal label, different visual details) and new (nonstudied) objects. A same response to a same item indicated memory for visual details (specific recognition), whereas a same or similar response to a same or similar item signified memory for the general sort of object (general recognition). Both age groups showed enhanced specific recognition for negative (not positive) objects. Young adults' general recognition advantage also was restricted to negative objects, whereas older adults showed enhanced general recognition for positive and negative objects. Negative (not positive) content enhanced the visual specificity of memory in both ages, but positive content conferred a general memory advantage only for older adults.Psycholog

Beyond-brand effect of television food advertisements on food choice in children: The effects of weight status

Copyright © The Authors 2007.Objective - To investigate the effect of television food advertising on children’s food intake, specifically whether childhood obesity is related to a greater susceptibility to food promotion. Design - The study was a within-subject, counterbalanced design. The children were tested on two occasions separated by two weeks. One condition involved the children viewing food advertisements followed by a cartoon, in the other condition the children viewed non-food adverts followed by the same cartoon. Following the cartoon, their food intake and choice was assessed in a standard paradigm. Setting - The study was conducted in Liverpool, UK. Subjects - Fifty-nine children (32 male, 27 female) aged 9–11 years were recruited from a UK school to participate in the study. Thirty-three children were normal-weight (NW), 15 overweight (OW) and 11 obese (OB). Results - Exposure to food adverts produced substantial and significant increases in energy intake in all children (P < 0·001). The increase in intake was largest in the obese children (P = 0·04). All children increased their consumption of high-fat and/or sweet energy-dense snacks in response to the adverts (P < 0·001). In the food advert condition, total intake and the intake of these specific snack items correlated with the children’s modified age- and gender-specific body mass index score. Conclusions - These data suggest that obese and overweight children are indeed more responsive to food promotion, which specifically stimulates the intake of energy-dense snacks.University of Liverpoo

How Negative Emotion Enhances the Visual Specificity of a Memory

Some studies have suggested that emotion primarily increases memory for “gist,” and does not enhance memory for detail. There are, however, some instances in which negative objects (e.g., snake, grenade) are remembered with more visual detail than neutral objects (e.g., barometer, blender). In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we examined the encoding processes that lead a person to remember the exact visual details of negative and neutral objects, and to remember which of two decisions were made about the objects (a size decision or an animacy decision). The enhancement in memory for a negative item's visual details appeared to result from enhanced visual processing: The right fusiform gyrus, a region known to be critical for processing exemplar-specific details, showed a greater extent and magnitude of activity during the successful encoding of negative objects. Activity in the right amygdala also corresponded with memory for visual detail, although it did not relate to memory for the task performed with the item. These data provide strong evidence that engagement of some amygdalar regions can correspond with enhanced memory for certain types of details, but does not ensure successful encoding of all contextual details.Psycholog

Visualization Techniques for Transforming Qualitative Data

Although procedures for coding raw data qualitatively are well known, ways in which these results are processed and transformed from case to case to create themes, theories, conceptual maps, and models remain obscure. To address this gap we present how we use sketch books, extraction and display tables, and Microsoft Word SmartArt to visualize relationships between qualitative concepts, categories, and variables helping us manage qualitative data analysis separation and connection recursively

Self, memory, and imagining the future in a case of psychogenic amnesia

We report a case of psychogenic amnesia and examine the relationships between autobiographical memory impairment, the self, and ability to imagine the future. Case study JH, a 60 year old male, experienced a 6 year period of pervasive psychogenic amnesia covering all life events from childhood to the age of 53. JH was tested during his amnesic period and again following hypnotherapy and the recovery of his memories. JH’s amnesia corresponded with deficits in self-knowledge and imagining the future. Results are discussed with reference to models of self and memory and processes involving remembering and imagining

International entrepreneurship : exploring the logic and utility of individual experience through comparative reasoning approaches

In this paper, we suggest that individual experience and reasoning, as applied to new endeavors in internationalization, are concepts with high potential to advance conceptual and empirical research in international entrepreneurship (IE). Experience is known to be important in internationalization, but the logic or reasoning with which it is applied is insufficiently understood. Cognitive, comparison-based reasoning theories explain how individuals draw on experience to make sense of uncertain, novel, and complex situations. Drawing on two such theories, heuristics and analogical reasoning, we delineate the logic of experience and advance speculative propositions on its utility in the context of internationalization research

Transfer of information into working memory during attentional capture

Previous research has shown that task-irrelevant onsets can capture spatial attention even when attending to the onset is inconsistent with our intentions. The present study investigated whether information acquired during attentional capture is transferred into working memory. To measure whether this is the case, 25% of visual search trials were followed by a distractor recognition task. The results showed that the onset letter was recognized more often than a nononset letter. In addition, the magnitude of attentional capture was positively correlated with the onset letter recognition advantage. The results suggest that attentional capture results in transfer of information into working memory

The Disunity of Consciousness

It is commonplace for both philosophers and cognitive scientists to express their allegiance to the "unity of consciousness". This is the claim that a subject’s phenomenal consciousness, at any one moment in time, is a single thing. This view has had a major influence on computational theories of consciousness. In particular, what we call single-track theories dominate the literature, theories which contend that our conscious experience is the result of a single consciousness-making process or mechanism in the brain. We argue that the orthodox view is quite wrong: phenomenal experience is not a unity, in the sense of being a single thing at each instant. It is a multiplicity, an aggregate of phenomenal elements, each of which is the product of a distinct consciousness-making mechanism in the brain. Consequently, cognitive science is in need of a multi-track theory of consciousness; a computational model that acknowledges both the manifold nature of experience, and its distributed neural basis

Neural Correlates of True Memory, False Memory, and Deception

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine whether neural activity can differentiate between true memory, false memory, and deception. Subjects heard a series of semantically related words and were later asked to make a recognition judgment of old words, semantically related nonstudied words (lures for false recognition), and unrelated new words. They were also asked to make a deceptive response to half of the old and unrelated new words. There were 3 main findings. First, consistent with the notion that executive function supports deception, 2 types of deception (pretending to know and pretending not to know) recruited prefrontal activity. Second, consistent with the sensory reactivation hypothesis, the difference between true recognition and false recognition was found in the left temporoparietal regions probably engaged in the encoding of auditorily presented words. Third, the left prefrontal cortex was activated during pretending to know relative to correct rejection and false recognition, whereas the right anterior hippocampus was activated during false recognition relative to correct rejection and pretending to know. These findings indicate that fMRI can detect the difference in brain activity between deception and false memory despite the fact that subjects respond with “I know” to novel events in both processes