"Sleights of mind": delusions, defences, and self-deception

Two different modes of theorising about delusions are explored. On the one hand is the motivational approach, which regards delusions as serving a defensive, palliative, even potentially adaptive function. On the other, is the cognitive deficit approach, which conceptualises delusions as explicitly pathological, involving abnormalities in ordinary cognitive processes. The former approach, prominently exemplified by the psychoanalytic tradition, was predominant historically, but has been challenged in recent years by the latter. Some grievances against psychoanalytic theory are briefly discussed, and it is argued that although the reasons for psychoanalysis falling into scientific disrepute are partly justified, the psychodynamic notion that motivation has access to the mechanisms of belief formation is of potentially crucial theoretical utility. A variety of possible syntheses of the two theoretical modes are therefore explored, in the belief that the most comprehensive account of delusions will involve a theoretical unification of both styles of explanation. Along the way, an attempt is made to locate the notions delusion, defence, and self-deception in a shared theoretical space.     

Individual behavioral phenotypes: an integrative meta-theoretical framework. Why "behavioral syndromes" are not analogs of "personality"

Animal researchers are increasingly interested in individual differences in behavior. Their interpretation as meaningful differences in behavioral strategies stable over time and across contexts, adaptive, heritable, and acted upon by natural selection has triggered new theoretical developments. However, the analytical approaches used to explore behavioral data still address population-level phenomena, and statistical methods suitable to analyze individual behavior are rarely applied. I discuss fundamental investigative principles and analytical approaches to explore whether, in what ways, and under which conditions individual behavioral differences are actually meaningful. I elaborate the meta-theoretical ideas underlying common theoretical concepts and integrate them into an overarching meta-theoretical and methodological framework. This unravels commonalities and differences, and shows that assumptions of analogy to concepts of human personality are not always warranted and that some theoretical developments may be based on methodological artifacts. Yet, my results also highlight possible directions for new theoretical developments in animal behavior research.     

Primed Lymphocyte Typing (PLT): Dichotomizing Responses into "Positives" and "Negatives"

In primed lymphocyte typing (PLT), it will often be useful to divide the test cells for any given reagent into a positive and a negative group. Some general problems in PLT analysis are discussed here. The author describes a model for PLT data, to provide a conceptual framework, and suggests a statistical procedure based on the model.     

Comments on methods and results in: Sherman et al., "Segregation analysis of balanced pericentric inversions in pedigree data"

The analysis by Sherman et al. (1986), its basis and results have been examined. The analysis relies on general methods, which may give acceptable results under the special conditions considered by the authors, but will usually produce more or less misleading results. The program POINTER (Lalouel & Morton 1981) is shown to be based partly on a chain of irrelevant arguments for the actual context. The so-called "conventional ascertainment rules" (Morton et al. 1983) are shown to produce misleading results in cases where their assumptions are not satisfied. The mean risk for unbalanced offspring is underestimated because of an erroneous ascertainment correction. The segregation frequencies are found to be different in three national samples, contrary to the claim by Sherman et al. Only a small proportion of all information available in the data has been utilized. Alternative and more appropriate models, hypotheses and procedures have been suggested. The frequent use of packages with computer programmes of standard statistical procedures in nonstandard situations with data from collaborative studies in human cytogenetics is discussed.     

Fetal mortality in oral cleft families(IV): the "doubling effect"

Fetal mortality data from Lancaster, Penn., Chicago, Ill. and Minneapolis, Minn. are presented which support the authors' earlier findings in Indiana and Montreal that a positive relationship exists between the degree of liability to malformation and the incidence of fetal deaths in probands' sibships. Altogether, the study involved 189 CL sibships, 690 CLP sibships, and 3,416 pregnancies. On the basis of these data, which are derived from families of several different backgrounds of European ancestry, it is generalized that, as we proceed from CL sibships to CLP sibships, there is a doubling effect on fetal mortality. The consistency of this finding in several population samples is impressive. The implications of this observation are discussed with reference to genetic counseling.     

Modeling of Transcutaneous Inductive Power Transmission

The results of this work are discussed in the context of theoretical research into different wireless power and data transmission methods, subject to a specific environment, such as bioimplantable devices. According to this study, the optimal wireless power transmission method is inductive; optimal power transmission frequency range is 0.1–1 MHz. A mathematical model of transcutaneous wireless power transmission system and a tool for its design are suggested.     

Theoretical and experimental investigation of a technique for obtaining continuous cardiac volumes using thermal dilution

The results of a study using thermal dilution to determine continuous left ventricular volume versus time curves are presented. Data from three sources are analysed: theoretical data from a computer model of the left ventricular thermal response during infusion; experimental data from a chamber which simulated the left ventricle; and experimental data from dogs. The fundamental limitations of the technique are discussed in relationship to the mixing processes occurring in the ventricle. These limitations seem to preclude the use of this technique for determining any accurate cardiac volumes.     

Apropos of the "Lesson in anatomy"

Some striking features from the famous lesson of Prof. Tulp are presented: the implication of the spectator in the scene, the unity of the action exalted by the "chiaroscuro", the expression of the movement and of Tulp's personality. In addition, the probable scientific and philosophical underlying thoughts of Rembrandt are discussed having respect to historical data concerning Descartes and Constantin Huygens. The indications given by the lesson of Pr. Deyman about Rembrandt's conception of this subject and the evolution of his art, are then presented. Among the "Anatomy lessons" of the Dutch painting which have preceded and followed those by Rembrandt, the three having particular relevance to the Master are discussed, allowing to better appreciate his originality, his audaciousness and his mastery of his art.     

Commentary on "Issues in the Debriefing Debate for the Emergency Services: Moving Research Outcomes Forward"

Tuckey's (2007) article explores reasons why the debate on psychological debriefing has persisted for two decades without apparent resolve. One of its strengths lies in the focus on the methodology of the research literature (rather than findings), and problems are discussed without favor to either side. This disciplined approach has enabled delineation of flaws in the data as well as conclusions drawn on the basis of findings. The author uses her analysis of "what not to do" when you are conducting research in this area to develop research guidelines on what should be done. The present commentary begins with a historical précis of the debate on psychological debriefing and then explores some of the issues raised by Tuckey.     

Comments on review by Swaab--brain aging and Alzheimer's disease. "Wear and tear" versus "use it or lose it"

This review discusses a new hypothesis about cellular ageing in the context of current experimental observations and other well-known ideas, particularly "wear and tear," the relationship between metabolic rate and life span, and "free radical" reactions. However, even though these concepts are frequently used in the literature it is clear from the data discussed by Swaab that there are fundamental disagreements between the theories and experimental observations.     

Can patients specify treatment parameters? a preliminary investigation

In this paper I provide data that were obtained when patients made decisions regarding the scheduling of treatment sessions. I outline relevant information from the literature and describe Perceptual Control Theory as the theoretical basis of this work. The implications and limitations of the data are discussed as well as suggestions for future research. The data are interpreted as preliminary evidence that patients can take responsibility for decisions made during psychological treatment programs. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Severe developmental letter-processing impairment: A treatment case study

We report the case of ET, a 7-year-old child with a severe developmental letter-processing impairment. Detailed assessment revealed multiple impairments of the letter-processing system affecting abstract visual letter representation, semantics, and connections between the phonological processing modules and the orthographic buffer. Treatment methods focused on letter sounding through development of abstract visual representation and semantic representation of letters. Treatment resulted in dramatic and enduring improvements in cross-case matching, letter/number categorization, and letter sounding.

Cognitive neuropsychological reading research has largely focused on word processing, with a relative neglect of single-letter processing. The current study investigated letter processing in greater detail than has been usual and outlines a broad theoretical framework for letter processing. ET's assessment and treatment data are used to support and question predictions from the framework. A number of theoretical implications are discussed with reference to ET's data and that of other reported cases of impaired single-letter processing. Finally, the paucity of investigation of letter processing in children is highlighted, particularly with regard to integrity of abstract letter representation in developmental dyslexia.     

Ab initio elastic properties and tensile strength of crystalline hydroxyapatite

We report elastic constant calculation and a “theoretical” tensile experiment on stoichiometric hydroxyapatite (HAP) crystal using an ab initio technique. These results compare favorably with a variety of measured data. Theoretical tensile experiments are performed on the orthorhombic cell of HAP for both uniaxial and biaxial loading. The results show considerable anisotropy in the stress–strain behavior. It is shown that the failure behavior of the perfect HAP crystal is brittle for tension along the z-axis with a maximum stress of 9.6 GPa at 10% strain. Biaxial failure envelopes from six “theoretical” loading tests show a highly anisotropic pattern. Structural analysis of the crystal under various stages of tensile strain reveals that the deformation behavior manifests itself mainly in the rotation of the PO₄ tetrahedron with concomitant movements of both the columnar and axial Ca ions. These results are discussed in the context of mechanical properties of bioceramic composites relevant to mineralized tissues.     

Schizophrenic speech as a disordered trajectory in a collapsed cognitive "Small-World"

New theoretical instruments, as goal-directed neural networks models and geometric representations based on semantic graphs, open new approaches for our understanding of the schizophrenic speech. The neuropathologic disorders of the schizophrenia can be simulated using neural models, and these models can eventually explain the origin of goal confusion and incoherence in the schizophrenic discourse trajectory. Moreover, these models are useful to evaluate the different hypothesis about the pathogenic mechanisms of the disease. At the same time, a geometric representation of the trajectory of the speech can be obtained from real data. Our conjecture is that a context-dependent graph can be constructed in order to explore if, when the disease became more severe, a transition from a quasi ordered graph to a nearly completely random graph occurs. Plausibly, there exists a wide region where the graph has the properties of a "small-world". This kind of analyses could be potentially carried out using data coming from the spontaneous speech of schizophrenic patients, and can help to evaluate the progress of the disease. At the same time, these geometrical representations could help to evaluate the effect of treatments.     

Some discontents with theoretical unification: a response to Henriques' "psychology defined"

In response to Henriques' article "Psychology Defined" (this issue), I argue that theoretical unification should not be pursued for its own sake and that many psychologists are unlikely to endorse the specific unifying principles of the Tree of Knowledge System. It is suggested that other scholarly endeavors such as the open pursuit of truth, sustained dialogue among diverse discourse communities, and critical reflection on psychological theories and practice are more important than theoretical unification.     

An efficient method for estimating the probability of misclassification applied to a problem in medical diagnosis

The problem of estimating the performance of a given classifier on a given data set is discussed for the case when no knowledge is available concerning the underlying distributions. A new method of estimating the probability of misclassification is proposed which yields essentially unbiased results similar to Lachenbruch's U-method with far less computation involved. While no theoretical work is presented, a practical rule of thumb is given for choosing the parameters of the estimator. The results are based on experiments performed with a data set concerning six diseases related to epigastric pain, and underline the importance of reporting performance on both the testing data and the training data. Whereas previous papers have continually reported results with a probability of correct classification as high as 74.3 per cent on the raw data and 92.0 per cent on “processed” data, in this paper it is shown that a much more significant estimate of the probability of correct classification based on this data set is 51.0 per cent.     

Codetype base rates for the "I Mean Business" suicide items on the MMPI-2

This study focused on the frequency with which two MMPI-2 suicide items (506 and 520) were endorsed. These two items can be referred to as the "I Mean Business" items, for there is no denying that the client is reporting the recent contemplation of actively taking his or her life. A large sample (N = 23,646) of well-defined MMPI-2 codetypes was examined from the Caldwell (1997) data set. The frequencies with which individuals within a particular codetype endorsed Item 506, Item 520, or both are provided by gender. Results provide information that is consistent with the clinical lore concerning suicidal ideation/intent and codetypes. Unexpected findings are also noted. The implications of these base rates in psychotherapy are discussed from clinical and risk management perspectives.     

Evaluation of segregation ratio in Wilson''s disease.

Two problems relating to segregation analysis for Wilson's disease are discussed and a practical solution is presented. A problem in the ascertainment of families with Wilson's disease is illustrated by comparing segregation ratios calculated by the single selection, complete truncate, and multiple incomplete selection methods. The effect on the segregation ratio of exclusion from the analysis of those sibs who had died of other diseases at a young age is also discussed and a method of adjustment of the number of the affected using the data on age at onset is proposed. The segregation ratio by multiple incomplete selection (Weinberg proband method) after adjustment for those sibs who had died of other diseases was 0.243, consistent with the theoretical value for autosomal recessive inheritance. The segregation ratio calculated by the single selection method tended to give a lower value, while that calculated by the complete truncate method was greater than the theoretical value. Recessive inheritance is, however, supported. The actual effect of exclusion of those sibs who had died of other diseases on gene frequency estimation is shown to be very small.     

Comparison of linear accelerations from three measurement systems during "reach & grasp"

Given the increased use of accelerometers in movement analysis, validation of such inertial sensors against conventional 3D camera systems and performance comparisons of different sensors have become important topics in biomechanics. This paper evaluates and compares linear acceleration trajectories obtained from two different 3D accelerometers and derived from Vicon position data for an upper limb "reach & grasp" task. Overall, good correspondence between the three measurement systems was obtained. Sources of error are discussed.