ADVANCES IN PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH
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ADVANCES IN PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH
ADVANCES IN PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH. VOLUME 78
ALEXANDRA M. COLUMBUS EDITOR
Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York
Copyright © 2011 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers‘ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
ISSN: 1532-723X ISBN: 978-1-61470-789-9 (eBook)
Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York
CONTENTS Preface Chapter 1
Chapter 2
vii Treating a Clinical Sample of Highly Gifted Underachievers with Music Therapy an Exploratory Study Lony Schiltz-Ludwig
1
Marital Patterns and Psychological Adjustment among Immigrants from Ethiopia and FSU Gila Markovitzky and Hadas Doron
17
Chapter 3
Memory for Object Location: Encoding Strategies in Children Annalisa Lucidi, Clelia Rossi-Arnaud, Laura Pieroni and Vincenzo Cestari
Chapter 4
The Role of Contextual Cues and Logical Training in Differentiating Conditional from Biconditional Statements in Inference Task Olimpia Matarazzo and Ivana Baldassarre
Chapter 5
Empathy: Reflexions on a Concept C. Boulanger and C. Lançon
Chapter 6
The Context of Domestic Violence: Social and Contextual Factors Associated with Partner Violence against Women Enrique Gracia
37
57 81
97
Chapter 7
Extraversion and Suicidal Behavior David Lester
113
Chapter 8
Alcohol Related Experiences – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Karin Helmersson Bergmark
123
Chapter 9
Physiological Assessment of Forgiveness, Grudges, and Revenge: Theories, Research Methods, and Implications Everett L. Worthington and Goli Sotoohi
135
vi Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14 Index
Contents The Effect of Sexually Explicit Rap Music on Sexual Attitudes, Norms, and Behaviors Lucrezia M. Alcorn and Anthony F. Lemieux
155
Treatments for Cystic Fibrosis: The Role of Adherence, Importance and Burden Lynn B. Myers
185
The Relationship between Adolescents‘ Music Video Viewing and Risky Driving: A Two Wave Panel Survey Kathleen Beullens, Keith Roe and Jan Van den Bulck
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Extraversion and the Autonomic Nervous System: An Alternative to Eysenck‘s Theory David Lester
219
Extraversion and Interviewing for Employment Joshua Fogel and Mayer Schneider
223 241
PREFACE This continuing series presents original research results on the leading edge of psychology. Each article has been carefully selected in an attempt to present substantial results across a broad spectrum. This book reviews research on the marital patterns and psychological adjustment among immigrants; treating a clinical sample of highly gifted underachievers with music therapy; memory for object location and encoding strategies in children; the context of domestic violence; extraversion and suicidal behavior and a psychological assessment of forgiveness, grudges and revenge. Chapter 1 - Published literature as well as personal observation show that gifted adolescents suffering from severe intellectual inhibition may generally not be helped by pedagogical means alone. This special syndrome results from a deep disturbance of the affective and drive functioning and may be treated by psychodynamic music therapy in individual sessions, combined with psycho-pedagogical applications of music in group sessions. Data drawn from an exploratory study, based on a mixed research methodology, combined a psychometric scale, a projective test and an observational frame for the therapeutic sessions and showed changes induced in the cognitive, emotional and conduct variables by music therapy treatment. We compared two clinical subgroups of students treated by the above described psychotherapeutic approach (N = 20, N = 23) to a control group (N = 43) of students who had only pedagogical measures. Case material helps to illustrate the psychotherapeutic process. The discussion stresses the opportunity to offer music psychotherapy to gifted underachievers as a means of tertiary prevention. Chapter 2 - The research examines the contribution of marital patterns (role division, decision making, and marital quality) to the psychological adjustment (psychological wellbeing, emotional state, and satisfaction) of new immigrants in Israel, according to country of origin and gender. Self reported questionnaires were filled by 236 new immigrants: 112 from the FSU and 124 from Ethiopia, who came to Israel between 1990 and 2001. The findings indicate that the most important predictor of adjustment was country of origin: immigrants from Ethiopia displayed a higher level of psychological adjustment relative to those from the CIS. Among women and men from Ethiopia, level of egalitarianism in role division and decision-making was found to correlate significantly with psychological responses. In comparison, the immigrants from the FSU reported more equality in the family, but this was
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not correlated with psychological adjustment. Of all the subgroups, the Ethiopian women demonstrated the highest level of adjustment. Chapter 3 - A number of studies suggest that two separate spatial processes may be involved in short-term object location memory. First, one needs to remember the precise position occupied in a given space (positional encoding per se), then one has to decide which object was at which position (object-to-position assignment). The aim of the present study was to investigate the way children of different ages code for object locations referring to the theoretical framework of working memory. In particular, the main questions addressed in this chapter were: a) when children have to remember the location of objects do they recode visual material verbally? b) Is this process age-dependent? A modified version of Postma and De Haan‘s (1996) object location task was used and three relocation conditions were examined. In the first condition, subjects had to remember spatial positions in a twodimensional matrix. In the second task, object-location associations were examined and previously occupied positions were signalled so that children only had to remember object-toposition assignment (i.e., ―what was where‖) while in the third condition, the ―combined‖ condition, children had to perform both positional reconstruction and object-to-position assignment. In order to examine which encoding strategy children aged 5 and 11 years spontaneously use in temporary memory for object location, we interfered with the activity of the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketch pad adopting a dual task methodology. In the second experiment, to further investigate the object-to-location binding, the visual and verbal characteristics of the stimuli used in the test were manipulated and children of the same two age groups were tested. Our results show that children of age 11, like adults, use mainly a phonological recoding for pictorial stimuli while younger children show a ―mixed strategy‖ based both on visual and phonological information. Chapter 4 - In two studies we examined the role of contextual cues and logical training in differentiating conditional from biconditional statements (i.e. the statements of the form ―if p then q‖ from the statements of the form ―if and only if p then q‖) in deductive inference task (i.e. establishing which conclusions necessarily follow from syllogisms whose major premise is formed by a conditional clause). We assume that the well-documented tendency to interpret conditionals as biconditionals is due not only to pragmatic factors, such as a large amount of literature posits, but also to cognitive factors: it is much easier to understand a symmetrical (biconditional) relation between two states of affairs rather than an asymmetrical (conditional) one. We expected that this tendency would be inhibited not only by the presence of contextual cues - as alternative antecedents (e.g. c, m, r) showing that the consequent (q) can be implied by other states of affairs besides the one (p) presented in conditional clause but also by a ―logical‖ training, that is, by elucidating the formal difference between conditionals and biconditionals. On the contrary, we expected that the statement content (abstract vs. thematic) did not affect the interpretation of conditionals as biconditionals. In the first study, three hundred twenty participants performed in counterbalanced order a conditional and a biconditional inference task introduced by a very short scenario. The experimental conditions varied in function of the following variables: discrimination between conditionals and biconditionals (embedded in the scenarios vs. inferred by participants after reading the scenarios), information facilitating the appropriate interpretation of the statements (present vs. absent), content (abstract vs. thematic). The results revealed that (1) biconditional syllogisms were easily solved in any experimental conditions; (2) conditionals generated a large amount of patterns of inferences, among which the most frequent was the biconditional
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one when facilitating information (i.e. alternative antecedents) was absent; on the contrary, when this information was presented, the conditional pattern of inferences was the most frequent one and the biconditional one decreased dramatically. In the second study, two hundred participants performed a conditional and a biconditional task introduced merely by the respective statements. The manipulated variables were: logical training (present vs. absent) and content (abstract vs. thematic). The results were analogous to those of the first study. On the whole, these experiments corroborate the idea that (1) biconditional interpretation of conditional statements - reconstructed from the participants‘ patterns of inferences – is due both to cognitive and pragmatic factors and that (2) reasoners are able to rectify this misinterpretation both in presence of contextual cues and of logical training. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed. Chapter 5 - Under the influence of Scottish philosophy the concept of empathy changed, it is still shaky and still defined by many currents of thought. It is different from sympathy (emotional contagion). Empathy is the capacity to put oneself in another person‘s position to understand its feelings or to imagine its mental representation. So empathy shows itself in different phenomena such as projection, identification and altruism. Husserl, in phenomenology, regards empathy as the decisive phenomenon from which inter-subjectivity emerges to elaborate a common world. Indeed, he renewed the comprehension of empathy and anticipated the development of neurosciences. Depraz, following Varela, shows primacy granted to others is embodied in the personal practice of compassion. Chapter 6 - Available data indicates a high prevalence of partner violence against women in our societies. The World Health Organization in its ―World Report on Violence and Health‖ offers a summary of 48 population-based surveys from around the world in which between 10% to 69% of women reported being physically assaulted by an intimate partner at some point in their lives. Different surveys in western countries estimate that about one in four women experience intimate partner violence at some point in their lives. For example, an analysis of 10 prevalence studies of partner violence against women in European countries also concluded that about 25% of women suffered domestic violence during their lifetime, and between 6% to 10% of women suffered violence in a given year. Despite the high prevalence of partner violence against women, however, many instances of partner violence against women are never reported to legal authorities. The ―Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family‖ (1996) concluded that all indications are that family violence and abuse are significantly under-reported at all levels of society, and estimates that female victims of domestic violence are 6 times less likely to report the crime to law enforcement officials than female victims of stranger violence. For example, in a national crime survey sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, when an injury was inflicted upon a woman by her intimate partner, she reported the violence to the police only 55% of the time and she was even less likely to report the violence when she did not sustain injury. Chapter 7 - There has been a great deal of research on the relationship between suicidality and extraversion/introversion, but no systematic review of this research has yet appeared. The present paper reviews this body of research in order to see if there are any consistent trends and then suggests future directions for research into this issue. Chapter 8 - When asked about how they feel about alcohol and drinking, Swedes have tended to display negative and ambivalent attitudes. For this study reports of alcohol related
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experiences were used for the study of an eventual new emerging drinking culture. The aim was to analyse frequency distributions and patterns for explanatory variables, for different groups of alcohol related experiences. As drinking levels have increased in Sweden during the last decades, on the one hand we expected to find an increase of reports of alcohol related experiences. On the other hand, we could well expect less such experiences in a time when alcohol and drinking tends to be put into an every-day practise. Experiences from the good sides of drinking were more often reported, compared to the bad sides. A factor analysis resulted in four dimensions measuring aspects of pleasure (1), bad sides of drinking (2), ugly sides of drinking (3) and one on sexuality/aggression (4). Logistic regression analyses were used to see if these dimensions have unique characteristics that could be revealed with predictor variables. No clear such patterns were, however, found, even though some results indicate the upsurge of more pleasure-driven drinking styles. Chapter 9 - Forgiveness is a prosocial intrapersonal response to a transgression experienced in interpersonal context. Theorizing about forgiveness makes a myriad of distinctions, differentiating between decisions to forgive and emotional experience, and among emotions, motivations, cognition, and behavioral intensions. Research to date has not considered the conceptual advances in understanding forgiveness. Research has linked unforgiveness with poor health outcomes, but relatively little attention has been given to the physiological mechanisms that mediate the forgiveness-health connection. In the present chapter, we locate 19 empirical articles seeking to explicate the physiological processes involved in forgiving. We review the articles within an emphasis on theory. We seek to apply stress-and-coping, self-control, and broaden-and-build theories to uncovering potential questions that researchers could use to make a research agenda. Not surprisingly, in this burgeoning new field of study—forgiveness studies—more and more sophisticated research is needed. Chapter 10 - In this chapter, we review the recent literature on music and social influence, with a particular emphasis on the influence of music on sexual attitudes and behaviors. We also present an experimental study that provided an empirical investigation of the relationships between sexually explicit rap music and sexual attitudes, perceived norms, and behaviors. Results indicated no significant short-term effects of rap music on the expression of sexual attitudes or perception of norms. However, we found marginal support for sexually explicit rap in priming condom-related sexual behavior. Chapter 11 - Introduction. Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most frequent lethal genetic disease of childhood. Nowadays due to improvements in treatment most people with CF can lead fairly normal lives. To achieve this people with CF need daily treatment consisting of various medications, chest physical therapy and pancreatic enzymes as well as paying attention to dietary needs. There has been a gradual but significant improvement in the life expectancy of CF patients due to advances in the efficacy of treatment. So what was considered a disease of childhood has now also become a chronic condition of adulthood. The current study investigated factors associated with treatments in adults with CF. Method. Participants were 563 adults with CF recruited from the UK‘s Cystic Fibrosis Trust mailing list. Patients rated adherence to each treatment and reported any other treatments e.g. complementary therapies. Other measures included importance of each treatment, burden of each treatments and demographic information.
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Results. The mean number of current treatments was high (10.49). Adherence varied with different behaviors, with the highest adherence for enzymes, insulin and antibiotics and lowest for physical therapy, exercise, overnight feeding and dietary supplements. Statistical analyses were correlations and Analysis of Variance. Adherence was correlated with importance and burden for the majority of treatments, meaning high adherence was related to high importance and low burden. Treatments varied in importance, with insulin and antibiotics rated the highest and dietary treatments the lowest. For burden, treatments which are administered by injection or are time consuming were rated the highest e.g. insulin, nebulized medications, with easily administered treatments rated the lowest e.g. oral steroids, enzymes. For most treatments importance and burden were positively correlated, meaning that the more important the treatment the least troublesome it was rated. Nearly a quarter reported using some form of complimentary therapy with more females reporting such use. However, over 50% said that CF never or only occasionally interfered with their enjoyment of life. There were few gender differences, but some age differences. Conclusion .Results from this study provide an insight into treatments for adults with CF, indicating a complex picture of adherence and indicate that adherence, importance and burden are usually related. Chapter 12 - Purpose: Music video viewing is a very popular pastime among adolescents. The public criticism of music videos has encouraged researchers to examine the effects of music video exposure. Although an association between music video exposure and several health risk behaviors (e.g. drinking) has been found, the relationship between music video viewing and risky driving has remained largely unexamined. In this study the relationship between adolescents‘ music video viewing and risky driving such as driving after consuming alcohol and joy riding is explored. Methods: Participants were 354 adolescent males and females who participated in a panel study (2-year interval). Respondents were 17 or 18 years old during the first wave of data collection and did not have their driver‘s license yet. They completed a questionnaire on music video viewing, sensation seeking, aggression, attitudes towards joy riding and driving after the consumption of alcohol, and the intention to perform these behaviors in the future. Two years later the respondents had obtained their driver‘s license and were questioned on their actual risky driving behavior. The relationships between these constructs were analyzed using structural equation models. Results: The results indicate that music video viewing is indirectly associated with joy riding and driving after the consumption of alcohol through the attitudes towards these behaviors and the intention to perform these behaviors in the future. More music video viewing resulted in a more positive attitude towards risky driving, even after controlling for sensation seeking and aggression. These attitudes are positively related to the intention to perform these reckless behaviors in the future and these intentions are, in turn, a good predictor of the actual risky driving behavior two years later. Conclusions: The results indicate that music video viewing during adolescence is an important and significant predictor of risky driving two years later. Chapter 13 - An hypothesis is proposed that balance in the autonomic nervous system is the physiological basis for extraversion-introversion, with extraverts as S-types and introverts as P-types. Chapter 14 - The personality trait of extraversion is often used as a factor for understanding and predicting successful job applicants. This article reviews the empirical
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research from scholarly journals on what is known about extraversion and job interviews. The search terms of ―(extraversion) AND (employment or job) AND (interview)‖ were searched in the databases of Medline, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and Business Source Premier from the year of 1998 to 2008. The article reviews 21 articles. Almost all of the reviewed articles indicate that extraversion is associated with positive outcomes for employment interviews, promotion interviews, and also better job performance. Individuals that evaluate applicants for new jobs or consider current employees for promotion should assess extraversion as part of this initial hiring or promotion process. Versions of these chapters were also published in International Journal of Psychology Research, Volume 2, Numbers 1-4, edited by Alexandra M. Columbus, published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. They were submitted for appropriate modifications in an effort to encourage wider dissemination of research.
Advances in Psychology Research. Volume 78 Ed: Alexandra M. Columbus
ISBN: 978-1-61209-442-7 © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Chapter 1
TREATING A CLINICAL SAMPLE OF HIGHLY GIFTED UNDERACHIEVERS WITH MUSIC THERAPY AN EXPLORATORY STUDY Lony Schiltz-Ludwig Fondation François-Elisabeth, Luxembourg
ABSTRACT Published literature as well as personal observation show that gifted adolescents suffering from severe intellectual inhibition may generally not be helped by pedagogical means alone. This special syndrome results from a deep disturbance of the affective and drive functioning and may be treated by psychodynamic music therapy in individual sessions, combined with psycho-pedagogical applications of music in group sessions. Data drawn from an exploratory study, based on a mixed research methodology, combined a psychometric scale, a projective test and an observational frame for the therapeutic sessions and showed changes induced in the cognitive, emotional and conduct variables by music therapy treatment. We compared two clinical subgroups of students treated by the above described psychotherapeutic approach (N = 20, N = 23) to a control group (N = 43) of students who had only pedagogical measures. Case material helps to illustrate the psychotherapeutic process. The discussion stresses the opportunity to offer music psychotherapy to gifted underachievers as a means of tertiary prevention.
Keywords: emotional instability, intellectual ability, music psychotherapy, over adaptation, quasi experimental design, underachievement.
Schiltz Lony, Ph.D. psychologist, music therapist, doctor in clinical psychology, HDR. Head of Laboratory in Clinical Psychology, Health Psychology and Arts therapies, Fondation François-Elisabeth, Luxembourg Head of studies of the postgraduate curriculum in arts therapies (DESS en Art thérapie, Université du Luxembourg) Professional address: Fondation François-Elisabeth, Luxembourg. Hôpital Kirchberg. 9, rue Edward Steichen. L-2540 Luxembourg. e-mail:
[email protected] Mailing address : 10, rue Gabriel de Marie. L-2131 Luxembourg. Tel 00352 433668.
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INTRODUCTION Recent research results (Terrassier, 1999; Schiltz, 2002a;b; Catheline, 2003; Schiltz, Desor, Lorang and Schiltz, 2005) show that one third of students with an I.Q. of 130 or more are suffering from school failure in secondary school. Among these gifted underachievers 20 to 25% present dysfunction on the cognitive, volitional and emotional level and meet the psychiatric diagnosis of ―conduct disorders‖ or ―adjustment disorders‖ (Schiltz, 1995; 2002b; 2004b). Our personal clinical experience of more than 30 years with these pupils has shown that they need a specific kind of integrated psychotherapy to overcome their difficulties. The outcome of these interventions, as well as the therapeutic process itself, was investigated by several studies (Schiltz, 2004a;b). The psycho therapeutic sessions were offered in a regular public school.
1. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Psychological indicators for giftedness are, among others, the quickness of thought and understanding and great emotional sensitivity that begin in the first years of life (Renzulli, 1978; Grubar, Duyme and Cote, 1997; Terrassier, 1999; Terrassier and Gouillou, 2000). These children may react impatiently to other persons who need longer explanations and may be rejected by others. While most of them develop quite positively (De Groot, 1974; Webb, 1993; Vichot-Chalan, 1997) and show their intellectual creativity in many realms, about one third of them are confronted with various psychological problems (Adda, 1999; Sudres, Brandibas and Fourasté, 2004). If a gifted adolescent fails at school, a thorough psychological assessment is necessary to uncover the origin of his or her difficulties. A retrospective study over 10 years, done in the psychology service of a secondary school, showed that, with a total group of 185 gifted underachievers, there was a diagnosis of personality disorder for 20 %, that 35% presented adjustment disorders, i.e. depressive reactions to recent events (for example emigration, the death of a loved one or a serious somatic disease), and that 45% of them presented minor conduct problems linked to identity issues (Schiltz, 2002c). The inhibition we encounter among these students meets the criteria of Marcelli and Braconnier (1999) who distinguished three areas of inhibition: (a) intellectual inhibition, also called ―neurotic dullness―, (b) inhibition of fantasy, and (c) relational inhibition or timidity. It is important to note that intellectual inhibition impacts school results exclusively and not the results of the intelligence test. The pupils belonging to our experimental group had an I.Q. of 128 or higher (Cvalue ≥ 9 at the LPS, Horn, 1962), and yet their intelligence was judged mediocre by their teachers, their parents and often by themselves as well. Let us stress that according to the European norms, an IQ. of 128 is the conventionally accepted inferior limit for the definition of gifted pupils.
Treating a Clinical Sample of Highly Gifted Underachievers with Music Therapy…
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2. METHODOLOGY OF TREATMENT These gifted underachievers were treated by a combination of music psychotherapy in individual sessions and supportive music therapy combined with pedagogical measures in group sessions. The weekly one-hour sessions of individual music psychotherapy followed the restructuring method we had developed for adolescents suffering from borderline personality disorder (Schiltz, 2003a; 2004d; 2005a), combining free musical improvisation with the writing of stories under musical induction. This procedure, which functioned like a projective test, with sound as sensory stimulus (Schiltz, 2002a; 2005b), was followed up by verbal elaboration. The general design of an individual session included first a free verbal exchange about recent events and actual feelings, then a musical improvisation with ethnical instruments chosen by the student himself, then the creation of a literary text while listening to music, followed up by a second improvisation stage and a verbal elaboration based on free associations to the musical and literary production. These sessions produced a mutual enrichment of the musical and literary production; the themes of the stories were used for musical improvisation, which led to a freer floating of images and feelings and to a more personal implication in the stories written afterwards. The model of thought used here is that of the Psychology of Self of Kohut (1991) who stressed the importance of mature narcissism and postulated that the development lines for the narcissistic and objectal needs are distinct one from the other. The main goal is to resume the blocked process of subjectivation. (Cahn, 1998). The method consists in reacting to the student's musical propositions with musical responses, by reassuring him, or respectively confronting him, before moving on to verbalisation. In this process we are attentive to the manifestations of the unconscious, to any transference or counter-transference, but we leave it up to the client to discover the sense of his behaviour, proposing an interpretation in exceptional cases only. Fragments of the past eventually emerge and are elaborated upon by means of imagination, artistic production and symbolization. The therapeutic process becomes a quest to find the meaning of one's personal history. During the music therapy sessions, repressed fantasies are slowly released, imagination becomes more fertile, and students produce stories more authentically, corresponding to their intimate needs. During the process of verbal elaboration, free association to the literary production corrects both negative attitudes about oneself and dysfunctional cognitive schemata (Cottraux, 2001). The adolescents also participated in weekly two-hour group sessions based on free musical improvisation at the level of the whole group or of subgroups like duos, trios, etc. (Lecourt, 2002), combined with classical concentration and memorization training and with verbal therapeutic interventions based on group dynamics. The concentration exercises were derived from relaxation techniques, proposed in the cognitive perspective, like respiratory control, muscular release, focusing of attention, visualization (Servan, 2007). The memorization training was based on elements drawn from the school context, like foreign language vocabulary, poems, mathematical and chemical formulas, geographical maps. The goal consisted in reinforcing learning skills, motivation, self-esteem and assertiveness in the participants (Schiltz and al., 2005). The effects of both therapy situations were complementary.
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Thus we could call this approach eclectic or cognitive-psychodynamic. (Chambon and Marie-Cardine, 1994)
3. METHODOLOGY OF EVALUATION The effectiveness of music psychotherapy was assessed by using a methodology which is both quantitative and qualitative (Schiltz, 2003b), and on the basis of a quasi-experimental design using a control group (Raulin and Graziano, 1995). In accordance with ethical principles, all the adolescents who asked for treatment were accepted in the clinical group. It consisted of 43 twelve to fourteen-year-old adolescents. They were selected according to the criterion: general performance ≥ 9th percentile at the LPS (corresponding to an IQ ≥ 128). The LPS (Leistungsprüfsystem, Assessment of Cognitive Achievement, Horn, 1962) is a broadly used test in German clinical and scholastic orientation centres working with adolescents. It is based on Thurston‘s Primary Mental Abilities and combines measures of convergent and divergent thinking. Its norms, differentiated according to age and gender, are based on N=10 000 subjects. The pupils belonging to our clinical group were treated by the above described methodology during a period lasting from six to eight months, i.e. from the midst of the fall term to the end of the summer term. The control group was comprised of adolescents who underwent pedagogic measures but did not request a psychotherapeutic intervention. They were matched to the clinical group by age, gender, I.Q. and school results (N=43). In a quasi-experimental or non-equivalent control-group design (Graziano and Raulin, 1993) the role of the control group is to check that the results of the experimental group are not merely due to spontaneous maturation (normal changes in subjects in the course of time) or to contingent events of personal history (changes in subjects during the study due to events other than the independent variable, i.e. the treatment). The results may be interpreted in a causal sense if the experimental or clinical group changes markedly in the predicted direction, whereas the control group remains at the same level. The general hypothesis of the research is that gifted underachievers can be effectively treated through the above described kind of integrated psychotherapy, because it leads to an imaginative and symbolic elaboration of archaic fantasies, overcoming the tendency towards cognitive, emotional and volitional inhibition of further personal evolution (Schiltz, 2002a; 2004d), and also because it eventually reinforces motivation and self-esteem and improves learning strategies. Table 1. General descriptive parameters of the clinical group and the control group Variable Age School results (fall term) LPS (C value) Gender
Clinical group (N = 43) md = 13;1 md = 25,8 (max = 60) md = 9,5 Boys: N = 26, girls: N = 17
Control group (N = 43) md = 12;9 md = 46,4 (max = 60) md = 9,3 Boys: N = 26, girls: N = 17
Treating a Clinical Sample of Highly Gifted Underachievers with Music Therapy…
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Table 2. General experimental design
Clinical group Control group
Pretest A A
Therapeutic sessions B, B‘, etc
Posttest A‘ A‘
As we worked with small samples and handled data of a mixed level of measurement, we used largely non parametric statistics (Colman, 1995; Bijleveld and van der Kamp, 1998). The clinical assessment was based on a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology, combining a psychometric test, i.e. the FAF (Fragebogen zur Erfassung von Aggressivitätsfaktoren, Questionnaire for Components of Aggressivity, Hampel and Selg, 1995), an expressive test, i.e. the stories written under musical induction (Schiltz, 2003c; 2005b) and an observational frame for the therapeutic situation, (Schiltz, 1999). The tools of research contain the following general dimensions:
Second order factors of the FAF : Spontaneous Aggressiveness, Reactive Aggressiveness, Irritability, Self Aggression, Inhibition, Dimensions of the rating scale for the stories: Primary Aggressivity, Elaborated Aggressivity, Anxiety, Depressive Feelings, Creativity, Quantitative Productivity, Bodily and Emotional Implication, Sensitivity to the Expression of Emotions Dimensions of the observational frame : Non Verbal Expression, Verbal Communication, Musical Production
The FAF has an internal consistency of scales ranging from r = .61 to r = .79. The rating scale and the observational frame are scored at the nominal or ordinal level of measurement and have an inter rater reliability ranging from r = .75 to r = .83; their content validity was explored in several previous studies (Schiltz, 1999-2004e). We made separate evaluations for two clinical sub-groups of gifted underachievers. The first group was characterized by a false self and over adaptation (sub group I; N = 20); the second one by impulsivity and emotional instability (sub group II, N = 23). The assignment to the subgroups was made through a semi-structured clinical interview conducted by experienced clinical psychologists. It was based on a thorough anamnesis with the parents and the clients and on behavioural criteria drawn from the ICD10.
4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS For mathematical reasons, analysis of variance does not apply to small groups and non metrical data. Thus all the between groups and within groups comparisons have been computed separately. As the whole study, i.e. the complete within and between groups comparisons are to be presented in detail in a research report (Schiltz and al., 2008), I shall focus in this article on the data allowing to understand the mode of action of music therapy, presenting the pretest-comparisons at the level of the clinical subgroups and the results of the total clinical group versus control group comparison at the level of the external validation criteria.
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4.1. Pretest- Posttest Comparison of the Stories Written under Musical Induction For the stories written under musical induction, for which we have shown that they function like a projective test and are complementary to the Rorschach and the TAT (Schiltz, 2005b), we have constructed a rating scale in the phenomenological and structural tradition (Mucchielli, 1983). It contains the following general dimensions: Personal implication, Quality of imaginary elaboration, Type of aggressivity, Formal qualities, Level of elaboration, Nature of conflict, and Archetypal themes. The scale closes the gap between qualitative analysis and the use of inferential statistics suited to nominal and ordinal data. In the clinical subgroup I (N = 20), which is characterized by over-adaptation, we see a significant increase in elaborated aggressivity, qualitative creativity, sensitivity to the expression of emotions, quantitative productivity, as well as in emotional and bodily implication. There is a significant reduction of depressive feelings. In the clinical subgroup II (N = 23), characterized by impulsivity, we also see a significant reduction in primary aggressivity, qualitative creativity, bodily and emotional implication, sensitivity to the expression of emotions, and there is a significant reduction of anxiety. Table 3. Pretest-posttest comparison of the stories: clinical subgroup I, N = 20 (Wilcoxon’s Sign Rank Test) Variable
Z
Elaborated aggressivity Creativity Depressive feelings Quantitative productivity Bodily and emotional implication Sensitivity to the expression of emotions
-3.130 -2.646 -2.394 -2.070 -2.070 -2.011
Bilateral significance P < .01 P < .01 P < .05 P < .05 P < .05 P < .05
Direction of difference Pre < post Pre < post Pre > post Pre < post Pre < post Pre < post
Risk α > .10 for the following variables : primary aggressivity, anxiety.
Table 4. Pretest-posttest comparison of the stories: clinical subgroup D, N = 23 (Wilcoxon’s Sign Rank Test) Variable
Z
Primary aggressivity Creativity Anxiety Bodily and emotional implication Sensitivity to the expression of emotion
-3.122 -2.646 -2.303 -2.280 -1.972
Bilateral significance P < .01 P < .01 P < .05 P < .05 P < .05
Direction of difference Pre > post Pre < post Pre > post Pre < post Pre < post
Risk α > .10 for the following variables : elaborated aggressivity, depressive feelings, quantitative productivity.
The findings in the two clinical subgroups are very close and corroborate the statements we made in other studies (Schiltz, 2004d;e); the fact that music therapy leads to a similar
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evolution, independent of the diversity of prior surface symptoms, speaks in favour of the broader, psychodynamic conception of the underlying personality organization (Dulz and Schneider, 1996). In the control group (N = 43), the only significant change concerns sensitivity to the expression of emotions (Z = -2.343; p = .05); the other variables remained stable during the treatment period of the clinical group.
4.2. Pretest- Posttest Comparison of the FAF The FAF (Fragebogen zur Erfassung von Aggressivitätsfaktoren, Questionnaire for Components of Aggressivity, Hampel and Selg, 1975) is a self-reported questionnaire made up of the following general dimensions : Spontaneous aggressivity, Reactive aggressivity, Irritability, Interiorized aggressivity, and Inhibition of aggressivity. These dimensions allow evaluation of self perception of aggressive feelings and behaviour conducts. In the clinical subgroup I, we see a significant reduction of irritability and of interiorized aggressivity, whereas in the subgroup II we see a tendency towards an increase of controlled aggressivity and towards a reduction of global exteriorized aggressivity. Thus, on the symptomatic level, as measured by the self-reported questionnaire FAF, both subgroups show a compensatory evolution concerning their self-image. In the control group, global exteriorized aggressivity and reactional aggressivity increased during the same period of time. Thus, the control group partially evolved in an opposite direction to that of the clinical group. This case constitutes a probate figure according to the criteria of Raulin and Graziano (1995) for quasi experimental designs, showing that the changes are probably not merely due to contingent external events or to spontaneous developmental maturation. Table 5. Pretest-posttest comparison of the FAF: clinical subgroup I, N = 20 (Wilcoxon’s Sign Rank Test) Variable FAF 3 FAF 4
Z -2.646 -2.029
Bilateral significance P < .05 P < .05
Direction of difference Pre > post Pre > post
Risk α > .10 for the following variables : FAF 1, FAF 2; FAF 5, FAF sigm.
Table 6. Pretest-posttest comparison of the FAF: clinical subgroup D, N = 23 (Wilcoxon’s Sign Rank Test) Variable Z Bilateral significance Direction of difference FAF 5 -1.844 P < .10 Pre < post FAF Sigm -1.660 P < .10 Pre > post Risk α > .10 for the following variables : FAF 1, FAF 2, FAF 3, FAF 4.
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Table 7. Pretest-posttest comparison of the FAF: control group, N = 43 (Wilcoxon’s Sign Rank Test) Variable FAF Sigm FAF 2
Z -2.394 -1.844
Bilateral significance P < .05 P < .10
Direction of difference Pre < post Pre < post
Risk α > .10 for the following variables : FAF 1, FAF 3, FAF 4, FAF 5.
Table 8. External validation criteria: total clinical group, N = 43 (Wilcoxon’s Sign Rank Test) Variable School results Creative pleasure activities
Z -2.217
Bilateral significance P < .01
Direction of difference Pre < post
-2.078
P < .05
Pre < post
4.3. External Validation Criteria The external validation criteria show long lasting positive results from our integrated approach. In the total clinical group, there were significant positive changes in school results and creative leisure activities. Seventy-six percent of the pupils who suffered from a complete school failure at the beginning of the year (general median of school results in the fall term: 25,8) and who were treated by the above described form of psychotherapy had overcome their difficulties by the end of the summer term (median 38,6). In the final between groups comparison there is still a difference between the control groups and the total clinical group, but the superiority of the control group is less important (general median in the summer term: 44,5). In leisure activities there is no more difference between the groups.
5. DISCUSSION Our pretest-posttest comparison shows the advantage of using a mixed methodology that combines a psychometric test, a projective test, and an observational frame for the evaluation of psychotherapy. This combination allows us to consider the structural functioning of personality as well as the descriptive one and yields a more adequate interpretation. The observed changes are plausible in the light of structural psychopathology (Dulz and Schneider, 1996), which stresses that the same underlying personality organization (i.e. of the psychotic, borderline or neurotic type) may give expression to various fluctuating symptoms at the observational level. Our research with borderline adolescents (Schiltz, 2004e) leads to the conclusion that long term music psychotherapy may permit the restructuring of personality; in fact, the profile of the clinical group approached that of normal control group. Our results with gifted underachievers, as evaluated through the projective test, suggest a personal maturation and a reduction of the cognitive, volitional and emotional inhibitions in the two clinical subgroups. That the first group shows an increase in elaborated aggressivity
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and the second one a reduction in primary aggressivity is a result that may also be interpreted in structural terms. On the descriptive level of a self-reported questionnaire, interiorized aggressivity has diminished with adolescents suffering from over-adaptation, whereas with those suffering from impulsivity the aggressive reactions appear to be better integrated and controlled. These positive effects allow us to understand the long term improvement in school results and the personal implication in more creative leisure activities. There is more energy available when frightful fantasies and negative feelings are elaborated on an imaginary and symbolic level instead of being acted out or directed towards one‘s own body.
6. CLINICAL VIGNETTES ILLUSTRATING THE THERAPEUTIC PROCESS 6.1. John John is a puny fourteen-year-old boy coming from a family of refugees. He has done very badly in school since the beginning of the year. John appears to be a shy, anxious and depressive boy who does not dare to stand up to his father and who is longing for his native country. He invents lies to escape punishment. He suffers from sleep disorder and frequent nightmares and he is tormented by suicidal thoughts. He has been the target of his school friends' racist reactions. We invited John to participate in a music communication group in order to resolve his social exclusion problem and to attend individual sessions at the same time. From the beginning he tried to get involved, but his instrumental play remained timid and monotonous for a long time. When playing a duet, he completely adapted to his partner's play without doing anything on his own initiative. The themes of his imaginary productions show his authentic feelings and are clearly suicidal as his story written to Plate 4 of the TAT proves.
TAT Plate 4 "His parents didn't look mean at all, but you never know what their character is like. His mother was a real beauty; his father looked like a grey devil, with blazing eyes and black hair. His parents buried their heads in the sand or tried to achieve their own ends at the others' expense. They put their heads in the sand like an ostrich. His father is an unemployed tramp who has eyes only for television, but not for his family. More than ten years had passed when the boy committed suicide. He threw himself off the red bridge. "Why?" asked the others. It's quite logical. All his life the boy felt remorse. He could not put up with it, so he committed suicide."
Although John never criticises his real parents, this dramatic story reveals his persecuted feelings; it is remarkable for using denial and splitting and for the pre-eminence of the bad object and the massive expression of primary affects. In an alarming way, it also shows that the author of the story does not have many options. Despite the pejorative description of his parents, the nameless hero of the story "the boy", who is not present on the plate, does not feel angry with them at all; instead, he turns his aggressivity against himself.
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It is only after some months that John describes his real family situation. His father is very violent; his mother is too weak to protect him. However, the boy says that under no circumstances would he leave his family for an institution and that he is very attached to both his parents. Little by little, as his anguish is verbally elaborated, John starts playing more spontaneously, preferring African melodic instruments like the balafo and the sanzar. One day, in the group session, he is fascinated when discovering a balalaika among the instruments. He tries to play it and cannot leave it alone. His friends understand that something important is happening to him, and they let him be the soloist and listen to him admiringly. For the first time, he talks about his uprooting, about the nostalgia he feels for his native land. At the end of the session, he grips the balalaika as if he would like to take it with him. As of this moment his musical play becomes much more energetic. He starts investigating rhythmic variations and becomes interested in the big percussion instruments. At the same time, the tone of his imaginary texts changes. The negative image of his father seems to fade into the background in favour of a positive image of his mother. He writes to TAT, Plate 8GF: "…Then his mother came back from work, she couldn't believe her eyes, then she ran towards her son, hugged him, caressed him, gave him a radiant smile, and that's the way it was."
This was the first imaginary expression of his unfulfilled need for affection. At the end of the year he writes an eloquent poem which reveals the significant reduction in the intensity of his state of depression and a recently acquired sense of the possibility to free himself from his sadness and to pass fluently from one emotional state to another.
Vivaldi Viola d'Amore " The violin is playing his favourite story, which is a very sad one; while playing, he expresses all his feelings, but he is also thinking about love. Now he is happy, he joyfully travels over mountains, dancing, he talks to himself and plays for himself. He is married and the father of two children. Oh! play the violin, isn't it beautiful!! I'm so happy. Yes, this way, life is pleasant. Yes, yes! I dance! I play! I live. Oh, isn't life beautiful And once again. Yes, I'm happy, I live, I play, I dance, I live. Olé! I make music and I like it very much. And once again. It's the play of my life. And now it's your turn. And think of it, life is pleasant. And now it's over, and now it's your turn."
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Anxious and depressive sideration has given way to movement, dance and love. John emphasises both his narcissistic restoration and the fulfilment of his object needs. He has found his place in relation to the others. At the same time, John begins to pass his school exams. He no longer feels rejected by his friends. He has distanced himself from his father and he describes the family relations with more realism. At the end of the year, he writes in a free text: "Sometimes, when I don't hear music, I hear it in my head, I have feelings, I feel fantastically well. I sometimes sing without instruments, only with my feelings."
John now has an intra-psychic space of his own, a mental stage on which" the play of his life" can develop itself. Music therapy allowed him to elaborate his repressed ambivalent feelings in an imaginary and symbolic way, overcoming his sense of rejection and permitting integration into his peer group.
6.2. Mary We shall present a shorter clinical illustration from the subgroup characterized by emotional instability. Mary is 17 years old. She is very oppositional with adults and aggressive with her classmates. At the beginning of the therapy, her stories are quite commonplace. One of her last texts shows an astonishing insight into the stages of her psychological maturation.
Beethoven: Violin Concerto ―It is night in the big forest. In the middle of the forest, there is a lake. On its surface the moon and the surrounding firs are mirrored. Sometimes you can see everything with precision. The scene makes one think of a movie. But sometimes, when a breeze is getting up, you can see the firs swaying. Then everything seems horrifying and far away you can hear the howling of the wolf. If you go a little further, you come to a waterfall which is flowing slowly and quietly. At the top of the rock where the water is calm, a wolf is mirroring himself with the moon at the background. Though he looks terrifying, he is quite peaceful. He remains sitting and watching at me. Suddenly I have the impression that he is smiling. He comes nearer and licks my hands. I begin stroking him and I am feeling quite happy, because I have desired this for ever; wolves are my favourite animals. Suddenly I wake up and I become aware that all this was only a dream. From that moment I return to my friend in the forest every night.‖ This story symbolizes first the freezing of her emotions and drive, then her being overwhelmed by her repressed feelings, going through a stage of anxiety; finally there is the integration of her longing for love into her conscious self. Mary‘s therapy was marked by an evolution from factual, descriptive stories and melodic poverty to personal implication and sensitive integration of rhythm and melody, her
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emotional stability and her ability to elaborate the conflicts of daily life on an imaginary and cognitive level have very much increased, whereas her temper tantrums have diminished. The tender part of her personality has emerged and it is much easier for her to find new friends. At the same time her school results have improved.
CONCLUSION According to our clinical experience and our research results, the severe inhibition of gifted underachievers may be overcome if we offer them a thorough psychotherapeutic treatment. The artistic mediation is well adapted to their special sensitivity to intrusion. Pedagogical measures alone are insufficient as is underlined by the outcome of several studies (Vichot-Chalon, 1997; Terrassier, 1999; Catheline, 2003; Schiltz and al., 2005), whereas psychiatric measures for conduct disorders or school phobia are often proposed in an hospital setting (Perisse and al., 2005; Gaspard and al. 2007), focusing on medication and short therapeutic interventions, without addressing the specific means of gifted underachievers. Without treatment the students belonging to our clinical group risk leading a diminished life, never realizing their true potential (Rogers, 1961). They risk becoming more openly depressive later on, because, at an unconscious level, they may be aware of the discrepancy between their actual functioning and their potential (Brandibas and al., 2004). Psychic health is linked to the possibility of realisation of one self in accordance with innate and acquired abilities (Kohut, 1991; Becker, 1997). Thus it is important to propose to this population an adapted psychotherapy as a means of self actualisation and of tertiary prevention, i.e. treating people as soon as they show the first symptoms of possible psychopathological complications. Music therapy can be easily introduced into the natural surroundings of school.
REFERENCES Adda, A. (1999). Le livre de l'enfant doué. The Book of the Gifted Child. Paris: Ed. Solar. Becker, P. (1997). Psychologie des seelischen Gesundheit. Psychology of Mental Health. Göttingen: Hogrefe. Bijleveld, C.J.H., and van der Kamp, L.J.T. (1998). Longitudinal Data Analysis. Designs, Models and Methods. London : Sage. Brandibas, G., Jeunier, B., Clanet, C., and Fourasté,R., (2004). Truancy, School Refusa and Anxiety. School Psychology International, 25 (1); 117-126. Cahn, R. (1998). L'adolescent dans la psychanalyse. L'aventure de la subjectivation. The Adolescent in Psychoanalysis. The Advanture of Subjectivation. Paris: PUF. Catheline, N. (2003). Psychopathologie de la scolarité. School Psychopathology. Paris : Masson. Chambon, O.,and Marie-Cardine, M. (1994). Psychothérapie cognitive des psychoses chroniques. Cognitive Psychotherapy of Chronic Psychoses. Paris : Masson. Colman, A.M., (Ed).(1995). Psychological Research Methods and Statistics. London: Longman.
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Cottraux, J.(2001). La répétition des scénarios de vie. Demain est une autre histoire. Repetition of Life Scenarii. To-morrow another Story Will Begin. Paris : Ed. Odile Jacob. De Groot, J.(1974). Statistische Redundanzbildungsprozesse in ihrer Beziehung zur Intelligenz. Processing Statistical Redundancy Related to Intelligence. Diplomarbeit am Psychologischen Institut von Erlangen. Dulz, B.,and Schneider, A.. (1996). Borderline Störungen. Theorie und Therapie. Borderline Disorders. Theory and Therapy. Stuttgart: Schattauer. Gaspard, J.-L., Brandibas, G., and Fourasté, R. (2007). Refus de l‘école: les strategies thérapeutiques en medicine générale. School Refusal: Therapeutic Strategies in general medicine. Neuropsychiatrie de l’enfance et de l’adolescence, 55; 362-366. Graziano, A. M. and Raulin, M.L. (1993). Research Methods : A Process of Inquiry (2nd edn.). New York : Harper Collins. Grubar, J-C., Duyme, M., and Cote, S. (Eds).(1997). La précocité intellectuelle. Intellectual Precocity. Sprimont: Mardaga. Hampel, R., and Selg, H. (1975). FAF Fragebogen zur Erfassung von Aggressivitätsfaktoren. Questionnaire for Components of Aggressivity. Göttingen: Hogrefe. Horn, W. (1962). Leistungsprüfsystem. Assessment of Intellectual Achievement. Göttingen : Hogrefe. Kohut, H. (1991). Analyse et guérison (trad. fr.). How Does Analysis Cure ? Paris: PUF. Lecourt, E. (2002). La musicothérapie, le groupe, et la musicothérapie de groupe. Music Therapy, Group and Group Music Therapy. Revue de Psychothérapie Psychanalytique de Groupe, 37 ; 97-100. Marcelli, D., and Braconnier, A. (1999). Adolescence et psychopathologie. Adolescence and Psychopathology. Paris: Masson. Muchielli,A. (1983). L‘analyse phénoménologique et structurale en sciences humaines. Phenomenological and Structural Analysis in Humanities. Paris : PUF. Perisse, D., Gerardin, P., Cohen, D., Flament, M., and Mazet T. (2006). Le trouble des conduites chez l‘enfant et l‘adolescent : une revue des abords thérapeutiques. Conduct Disorders with Children and Adolescents : a Survey of Therapeutic Approaches. Neuropsychiatrie de l’enfance et de l’adolescence, 54 ; 401-410. Raulin, M.L, and Graziano, M..(1995). Quasi-Experiments and Correlational Studies. In A.M. Colman, (Ed). Psychological Research Methods and Statistics (pp 58-77). London: Longman. Renzulli, J.S. (1978). What Makes Giftedness? Re-examining a Definition. Phi Delta Kappau; 60; 180-184. Rogers, C. R. (1961). On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Schiltz, L. (1995). De l‘utilisation de la musicothérapie avec des adolescents souffrant d‘un blocage du fonctionnement pulsionnel. Using Music Psychotherapy with Adolescents Suffering from Inhibition of Desire. Paris : D.U. Art en Thérapie et en Psychopédagogie, Université René-Descartes- Paris V. Schiltz, L. (1999). Musique et élaboration imaginaire de l‘agressivité à l‘adolescence Evaluation d‘une expérience thérapeutique. Music and Imaginary Elaboration of Aggressivity in Adolescents. Assessment of a Therapeutic Experiment. Thèse de doctorat en psychologie clinique. Paris : Université René Descartes- ParisV.
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Schiltz, L. (2002a). Archétypes signalant la reprise du processus de subjectivation. Archetypes Linked to the Resumption of Subjectivation, La Revue de Musicothérapie, XXII,1 ; 8-11. Schiltz, L. (2002b) Motivation de performance et mécanismes d'ajustement. Approche longitudinale. Achievement Motivation and Coping Strategies. A Longitudinal Approach. Rapport de recherche. Luxembourg: MENPFS-SCRIPT. Schiltz, L. (2002c). Elèves surdoués en situation d'échec scolaire. Gifted Pupils Failing at School. Rapport de recherche. Luxembourg: MENFPS-SCRIPT. Schiltz, L. (2003a). The Restoration of a Broken Self in Adolescence. Some Results of an Efficiency Study of Music Therapy. In: R. Hampe, and P. Martius (Eds). Trauma, Kreativität, Therapie mit künstlerischen Medien. Trauma, Creativity, Arts Therapies, (pp 435-443). Bremen : Verlag Universität Bremen. Schiltz, L (2003b). Some epistemological considerations about music therapeutic research. In: L. Schiltz, (Ed). Epistemology and Practice of Research in the Arts Therapies, (pp 4555). Luxembourg: CRP-Santé et FNR. Schiltz, L. (2004a). Motivation de performance, destinée scolaire et mécanismes d'ajustement. Quelques implications d'une étude longitudinale comparée. Achievement Motivation, School Destiny and Coping Strategies. Implications of a Comparative Longitudinal Study. Neuropsychiatrie de l'enfance et de l'adolescence, 52, 2 ; 70-77. Schiltz, L. (2004b). Le blocage cognitif, émotionnel et motivationnel des élèves surdoués en situation d'échec scolaire grave. Résultats d'études cliniques et expérimentales sur la" résignation apprise. Cognitive, Emotional and Motivational Inhibition of Gited Underachievers. Results of Clinical and Experimental Studies on « Acquired Resignation », La Revue française de Psychiatrie et de Psychologie médicale, VII, 79 ; 39-44. Schiltz, L. (2004c). Psychodiagnostik, Psychotherapie und Forschung mit Hilfe von musikalisch induzierten Geschichten. Stories Written under Musical Induction: A Tool of Psycho diagnosis, Psychotherapy and Research, In: I., Frohne-Hagemann (Ed). Rezeptive Musiktherapie; Theorie und Praxis. Receptive Musictherapy. Theory and Pratice, (pp 3950). Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag.. Schiltz, L. (2004d). Musicothérapie et processus de symbolisation chez les adolescents à fonctionnement limite. Music Therapy and Symbolization with Borderline Adolescents. La Revue française de Psychiatrie et de Psychologie médicale, VII, 73, 17-20. Schiltz, L. (2004e). La subjectivation entravée. Approche clinique et expérimentale intégrée. Hampered Subjectivation. A Clinical and Experimental Approach. Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches.Metz : Université Paul Verlaine-Metz. Schiltz, L. (2005a). La créativité entravée. Données cliniques et expérimentales sur les élèves surdoués en situation d‘échec scolaire. Hampered Creativity. Clinical and Experimental Results with Gifted Underachievers. La Revue de Musicothérapie, XXV, 1, 81-89. Schiltz, L. (2005b). Dysfonctionnements cognitifs liés aux pathologies limites à l'adolescence. Etude comparée de quelques tests projectifs. Cognitive Dysfunctioning related to Borderline Disorders in Adolescence. A Comparative Study of some Projective Tests. Neuropsychiatrie de l’Enfance et de l’Adolescence, 53, 3 ; 107-113. Schiltz, L., Desor, D., Lorang, G.,and Schiltz, J. (2006). Elèves surdoués en situation d‘échec scolaire. Approche multidisciplinaire de la « résignation apprise ». Gifted
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Underachievers. A Multidisciplinary Approach of the « Acquired Resignation ». Luxembourg : Editions Saint-Paul. Schiltz, L., Schiltz, J., and Soulimani, R., (2008). Application de l‘art thérapie à quelques problèmes cruciaux de la société luxembourgeoise. Rapport de recherche. Application of Arts Therapies to some Crucial Problems of Luxembourg Society. Research Report. Luxembourg : FNR. Sudres, J.L., Brandibas, G.,and Fouraste, R. (2004) La phobie scolaire : symptôme, entité spécifique, syncrétisme ou syndrome d‘inadaptation. School Phobia : Symptome, Specific Entity, Syncretism or Maladjustment Syndrome. Neuropsychiatrie de l’Enfance et de L’Adolescence, 52 ; 556-566. Terrassier, J-C. (1999). Les enfants surdoués ou la précocité embarrassante. Gifted Children or Embarrassing Precocity. Issy-les- Moulineaux : ESF. Terrassier, J-C.,and Gouillou, P. (2000). Guide pratique de l‘enfant surdoué. Practical Guide of the Gifted Child. Issy-les-Moulineaux : ESF. Vichot-Chalon; M.C. (1997). Reconnaissance et devenir des enfants précoces non reconnus. Possibilities of Screening and Development of Gifted Children. In : J.C. Grubar, M. Duyme and S. Côte ,(Eds). La précocité intellectuelle. Intellectual Precocity, (pp 187198). Sprimont : Mardaga. Webb, J.T. (1993). Social-emotional Development of Gifted Children. In: K.A. Keller, F.J. Mönks and A.H. Panow (Eds). International Handbook of Research and Development of Giftedness and Talent,(pp 528-538). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Advances in Psychology Research. Volume 78 Ed: Alexandra M. Columbus
ISBN: 978-1-61209-442-7 © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Chapter 2
MARITAL PATTERNS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ADJUSTMENT AMONG IMMIGRANTS FROM ETHIOPIA AND FSU Gila Markovitzky and Hadas Doron Tel-Hai Academic College, Israel
ABSTRACT The research examines the contribution of marital patterns (role division, decision making, and marital quality) to the psychological adjustment (psychological well-being, emotional state, and satisfaction) of new immigrants in Israel, according to country of origin and gender. Self reported questionnaires were filled by 236 new immigrants: 112 from the FSU and 124 from Ethiopia, who came to Israel between 1990 and 2001. The findings indicate that the most important predictor of adjustment was country of origin: immigrants from Ethiopia displayed a higher level of psychological adjustment relative to those from the CIS. Among women and men from Ethiopia, level of egalitarianism in role division and decision-making was found to correlate significantly with psychological responses. In comparison, the immigrants from the FSU reported more equality in the family, but this was not correlated with psychological adjustment. Of all the subgroups, the Ethiopian women demonstrated the highest level of adjustment.
Keywords: Immigration, Psychological adjustment, Marital relations, Ethiopian women.
Address for correspondence: Dr. Hadas Doron, 127 Nahal Keret St. Yokneam Hamoshava. 20600 Israel. e-mail:
[email protected]
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INTRODUCTION Marital Patterns and Immigration Immigration is a powerful, stressful event which requires adaptation to a new, culturally unfamiliar environment that involves changes and challenges within the immigrant's family. The relationship with the host culture and the coping efforts to adjust to the new country, may be accompanied by changes in the relationship within the family (Booth, Crouter, and Landale,1997). These demands may follow with distress and in some case with crisis and trauma (Padilla and Perez, 2003; Stamm, Stamm, Hundnall, and Higson, 2004). On the one hand, the transition between countries may bear potential benefits for individuals and families including a solution to economic difficulties, opportunities for new status or a better future for the children. On the other hand it also involves potential losses, such as separation from extended family members left behind or disturbances in the spouse equilibrium (Fox, 1991; Lipson and Miller, 1994). Due to immigration, a family may suffer a loss of resources like skills, roles, values, social status, and culture, and must learn to change in order to acquire a new equilibrium (Anson, Pilpel, and Rolnik, 1996; Furnhan and Bochner, 1986). The period of adjustment is accompanied by distress for both the individual (Markovitzky, 1998) and the family (Berry, Kim, and Mindel, 1987). The process calls for flexibility and different styles of coping strategies. Successfully coping with crisis depends upon personal as well as familial and social resources (Aroian and Norris, 2003; Fox, 1991). Numerous studies have been devoted to different aspects of immigrants' family life: the impact of immigration on the quality of family life (Ben-David, 1994; Grant, 1982; Poskanzer, 1995; Thomas, 1995); the influence of various aspects of family life on the adjustment of the immigrants (Aroian and Spitzer, 1996; Boyd, 1989; Scott and Scott, 1989); and relations between the family and social support institutions (Ben-David, 1995; Krausz, 1994). No studies have dealt with the relationship between marital patterns and psychological adjustment (PA). Marital patterns may play an important role during the acculturation period, which tests family strengths and resources available to them (Mirsky, Barasch, and Goldberg, 1992). Gender, also, has been reported to be strongly related to emotional well-being of recent immigrants (Ritsner, Ponizovsky, Nechamkin and Modai, 2001), as well as culture of origin. Investigators found that women have higher rate of psychological distress than men (Ritsner, Ponizovsky and Ginath, 1999). and exposure to more role-related stressors < (Nazroo, Edwards and Brown, 1998).
Immigration to Israel Israeli society has absorbed a constant influx of immigrants from the Jewish Diaspora throughout the world. It expressed the central theme in the Israeli national ethos – the reunification of the Jewish nation (Leshem, 2003). Almost 40% of the actual Jewish population today was born abroad and in its 56 years of independence, Israel has absorbed more than 50% of its population through immigration. Much of the immigration to Israel
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came in waves from common demographic origins. Two current waves of immigration are from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Ethiopia. The largest wave of Russian immigration began in 1989 and brought to Israel 1 million immigrants, currently representing more than one fifth of the total population (Leshem and Sicron, 1998).As a minority group in the Former Soviet Union, the Jews were not allowed to practice their religion (Cohen and Yitzhak, 1989). Thus the transmission of Jewish private culture took place within the family. They valued work and were educated to believe that all types of work are equally accessible to women and men. In their private culture, Jews maintained a conservative and highly gendered perception of family roles (Shouval, Kav Venaki, Bronfenbrenner, Devereux and Kiely, 1986). In their public culture, Former Soviet Union family was encouraged, in cases of conflicts in the family, to rely on medical services whereas in their private culture they rely on psychological and social services, family members and friends (Slonim-Nevo and Shraga, 1999). Jews of Ethiopia enjoyed a unique cultural context in which Jewish tradition was preserved for many generations in relative isolation from Western influences. Most Ethiopian Jews were farmers and resided in rural areas; only a minority received a formal education. The Jewish Ethiopian culture places strong emphasis on family relationships and values mutual help in the community (Ben-Ezer, 1992a). One of the main values it transmits, is respect for elders and authority figures in the family and community (Ben-Ezer, 1992b). Immigration to Israel from Ethiopia was essentially comprised of two waves in the 1980s and 1990s and involved approximately 80,000 people. The motives for this migration are structurally similar to the parallel migration from the Former Soviet Union, namely acute economic distress, an unstable political climate and a wish to live in a Jewish society. The traditional, religious Ethiopian families were faced with dramatic transformations upon immigration to Israel and were also exposed to remarks related to their color. The culture shock of a drastically different society and a growing perception of racial discrimination led the community to painful feelings of hopelessness and despair (Ben David and Ben Ari, 1997). The degree of the alienation from the host culture may cause confusion, stress or resistance to change that may lead to low level of adaptation. It is important to understand the differences between Western and traditional cultures regarding views of the "self": in Western cultures, the individual is most important while in traditional cultures, the family and community are dominant (Airhibenbuwa and Obergon, 2000).
LITERATURE REVIEW Psychological Adjustment and Marital Patterns among Immigrants The adjustment of immigrants to their new country may be a difficult process that can produce stress within the spousal and/or family relationship and lead to increased tension and conflict, deterioration in quality of relationships, and disorganization of family life. Changes in marital composition and patterns may be stressful as well as important to the social, economic, and cultural transformations in a society. Family support and positive relations in the family is important to the process of adaptation to immigration (Booth, Crouter and Landele, 1997) and has implications for the adjustment itself (Balcazar, Peterson
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Gila Markovitzky and Hadas Doron
and Krull, 1997; Lay et. Al, 1998:Lee, Moon and Knight, 2004). The gap between cultural patterns of family relations of the immigrant vis-à-vis those relations in the host culture, may play an important role in the adaptation process and for the status of the family members. Studies have found that a high degree of social support, including family support, decreases the impact of acculturation stress and help individuals to cope with the pressures of living in the new environment (Kue and Tsai, 1986). Family issues are related to cultural beliefs, norms and values, especially with respect to gender roles (Treas and Widmer, 2000). Research indicates that changes in marital roles and transition from traditional patriarchal cultures to modern Western ones, usually involves redefinition of gender roles and power relations regarding decision-making in the family (Comas-Diaz and Green, 1994; Gil and Vazquez, 1996; Menjivar, 1999). Women's education and their participation in the work force, are emerging as especially critical catalysts for bringing about changes in other aspects of marital patterns (McDonald, 1985; Isiugo-Abanihe et al, 1993). Numerous studies have examined different aspects of immigrants' family life, including: the impact of immigration on the quality of family life (Ben David, 1994; Grant, 1982, Poskanzer, 1995, Thomas, 1995) and the influence of various aspects of family life on the adjustment process (Aroian and Spitzer, 1995, Scott and Scott, 1989). Israel, a modern country that emphasizes liberalization and emancipation of women, absorbs immigrants from Eastern and Western countries that represent different cultures and different family relations. Women have an important role in the coping of the family with immigration difficulties and are also increasingly involved in work outside the home.
Psychological Adjustment and Socio-Demographic Differences: General, Gender and Country of Origin Demographic factors (age, gender, occupation, education, and length of stay) were found as important predictors of adjustment and acculturation to immigration.(Neto,-Felix, 2002; Ouarasse, O.A. and V., Fons., 2005). Research shows that loss of occupational and communication resources are associated with emotional distress more than personal variables such as gender, age, and marital status (Aroian and Norris, 2003). However, the cultural gaps between the country of origin and country of immigration reveal acculturative difficulties that are not necessarily associated with psychological distress (Lackland and Erkki, 2003). Loss of former social support and experiences of traumatic events are physical and mental negative factors that may be linked to both male and female immigrants. In spite of this, many female immigrants succeed in learning a new language and finding jobs (Akhavan, Bildt, Franzen and Wamala, 2004). Other researchers have found a higher level of distress among immigrant women, especially those employed in low-level jobs relative to their education (Kaufman and Mirsky, 2004). With regard to the link between age and acculturation, it was found that younger males from Russia adjusted better than the females did (Katz and Lowenstein, 1999). Older and divorced or widowed immigrants (both men and women) were more likely to report high levels of distress (Ritsner, Ponizovsky, Kurs, and Modai, 2000). Gender-related adjustment
Marital Patterns and Psychological Adjustment among Immigrants…
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differences exist mainly during middle age, and most of them disappear with age (Ritsner, Ponizovsky, and Ginath, 1999). Education is another socio-demographic variable that is associated with adjustment. Immigrants with higher levels of education are more flexible and egalitarian and adapt better to Western culture (Waller and Hovav, 1976). However, other researchers have found a higher level of distress among immigrant women who are employed in low-level jobs relative to their education (Kaufman and Mirsky, 2004).
Gender Gender is an important variable in terms of adjustment to immigration. Some studies indicate that females adjust more quickly than men, and are more flexible in adapting to the new culture and new occupations (Itzhaky and Levy, 2002). However, other studies have found that women reported higher psychological distress and incidence of related symptoms (Ritsner, Ponizovsky, Nechamkin and Modai, 2001). Women were found to have higher levels of symptoms of anxiety and depression when compared to men (Ritsner, Ponizovsky, Kurs, and Modai, 2000; Tabassum, Macaskill and Iftikar, 2000). Women who immigrated from the Former Soviet Union to Israel report higher levels of psychiatric symptoms when compared to men, on most scales of distress (Kohn, Flaherty, and Levav, 1989; Ritsner, Ponizovsky, and Ginath, 1999; Ritsner, Ponizovsky, Kurs, and Modai, 2000). Immigrant women often encounter a two-sided situation: since they tend to be more flexible and willing than men to compromise and accept unskilled jobs, they often find jobs and increase their income more quickly than men, who tend to remain unemployed longer. This, in turn, creates a new order, altering the traditional gender roles (Foster, 2001). Although most women work outside of their homes due to economic need, both spouses still believe that women should stay at home and fulfill their traditional roles (Kim and Kim, 1998). This finding is also supported by Ki-Tov and Ben David‘s (1993) research among Ethiopian immigrants in Israel. This group of immigrants is faced with rapid change in their traditional family patterns, which were based on the religious, traditional family. In Israel, the concepts of family and community change and, consequently, so do the gender roles. The Ethiopian women have been absorbed more successfully; they learned the new language and adjusted to the new situation more quickly. Women who live with spouses often have to cope with the unemployment of their husbands, who feel threatened by the altered division of power in the family. In some groups of immigrants, these conditions have been found to correlate with a heightened asymmetry in power relations leading to violence (Comas-Diaz and Greene, 1994; Straussner, 2000). When a husband still maintains a patriarchal ideology, changes in the wife‘s economic role often lead to a rise in stress and conflict in the marriage. Among these groups of immigrants, the economic power of the women increases while the social role and status of the men as breadwinners, weakens significantly (Min, 2001). Among immigrants from Morocco to Canada it was found that there is greater egalitarianism in couples in which the women‘s power increased, but greater satisfaction of both spouses with the marriage in couples that maintained the traditional gender roles of their
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Gila Markovitzky and Hadas Doron
country of origin. In other words, changes in family power relations correlate with decreased satisfaction with the marriage (Elhaieli and Larsy, 1998). Simon (1992) found that gender differences in distress were explained by differences in exposure to parental role strains, but salience of the parental identity contributed to both women's and men's vulnerability to parental distress. Research has shown that marital quality among immigrant couples declines as a result of conflicts between parents and children, especially in families with adolescent children. Gender gaps over issues of control and tradition constitute a focal point of pressure and conflict (Bean, Perry, and Bedell, 2001). New immigrants in a new culture generate a high level of uncertainty with their family patterns and required adaptation to the patterns characterized by the host society (Sharlin and Moin, 2001). The above review suggests that marital patterns are significant variables in the adjustment of immigrants to a new country.
Culture and Country of Origin The different cultures of origin may have implications on the rate and direction of sociocultural change that family members make (Booth, Crouter, and Landale,1997). Information on the gender-related differences in psychological adjustment (PA) among Ethiopian immigrants to Israel is very sparse. A study that compares distress symptoms among immigrants from Ethiopia with those from the Former Soviet Union suggests a similar level of distress among men in both groups but greater distress among the women from the Former Soviet Union than their Ethiopian counterparts. These findings are explained by the change in status of the women in both groups. Women from the Former Soviet Union may experience a decline in professional status, while the women from Ethiopia enjoy opportunities they did not have in the past, such as equal rights with men, the possibility of studying, and economic rights (Ponizovksy, Ginath, Durst, and Wondimeneh, 1998). Another study, which examines the integration and absorption of immigrants from Ethiopia, reveals better integration of Ethiopian women than Ethiopian men in Israeli society (Benita and Noam, 1995). The two populations differ in their cultural background, family relations and marital patterns but are similar regarding the motivation for their immigration -- escape from a political regime. The purpose of this study is to compare the levels of psychological adjustment (PA) between men and women (gender differences) of the two populations according to the countries of origin. Since family is important to the adjustment of the immigrant, and can represent either a source of stress or a source of support, our research was directed to examine how demographic features and marital patterns affect the psychological well-being of the new immigrants to Israel. The high proportion of immigrants to Israel from two countries of origin — Ethiopia and the Former Soviet Union — provide an opportunity to examine the contribution of these variables to psychological adjustment while comparing and contrasting family and cultural differences between the Former Soviet Union and Ethiopian immigrant populations to Israel.
Marital Patterns and Psychological Adjustment among Immigrants…
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METHOD Participants and Procedure The sample included 236 participants comprised of 77 married couples as well as 82 nonmarried singles in a couple relationship (mainly cohabitating couples). They all arrived in Israel between 1990 and 2001, and at the time of the research they resided in northern Israel. This area absorbed 34% of all the immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) who came to Israel, a higher percentage than in the overall population (20%). Twenty-nine couples came from FSU (mean age 37.6, SD=6.1), and 48 couples from Ethiopia (Mean age 43.97, SD=12.0) (t(75) = 3.07, p <.01). A higher rate of employment was found among FSU male immigrants (69%) as compared to male Ethiopian (35%) immigrants (χ²(1)=8.15, p <.01). A similar pattern of employment status was found among female subjects: 79% and 46% of FSU and Ethiopian female subjects (respectively) reported on being employed ((χ²(1)=8.34, p <.01). Twenty-eight percent of Former Soviet Union (FSU) couples reported on living with their parents, vs. none of Ethiopian couples ((χ²(1)=14.8, p <.001). FSU families reported having less children as compared to Ethiopians (M1.48, SD=0.63; Mean = 4.73, SD=2.07; t(75) = 8.19, p <.001). The sample was based on a list of immigrants maintained by the neighborhood cultural centers. After the interviewers visited the homes of the immigrants and explained the purpose of the research in their native language, the response rate was 94%. The research assistants administered and completed the questionnaires in the homes of the respondents, in their native language (Amharic or Russian). The research assistants were members of the respective ethnic groups who worked at the neighborhood center. The researchers trained them in administering the questionnaires. The questionnaires were translated from Hebrew to the respective foreign languages and then back into Hebrew; they were tested in a pilot study and amended accordingly, including deletion of items that were difficult to understand or ambiguous. Data was collected between 2002-2003 using several self-report questionnaires that took approximately 90 minutes to complete. Researchers and longstanding immigrants, all Russian or Amharic speakers, distributed the questionnaires to the respondents in their homes. The participants were asked a set of demographic questions that included: gender, age, marital status, living arrangements, number of children, length of residence in Israel, education and employment.
Data Analysis Comparison between groups was conducted using 2-way MANOVA repeated measures, with Origin (between subjects variable) X Gender (within subjects variable) as independents, and adjustment, role perception and marriage quality as dependents. In order to predict psychological adjustment, multiple linear forced steps regression analyses were conducted.
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Gila Markovitzky and Hadas Doron
RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS The psychological adjustment of the participants was examined using two questionnaires: Emotional state. A self-report questionnaire, based on Lazarus‘s (1991) theory, was developed for this study and was used to assess the range of positive and negative emotions that the immigrants experienced. The questionnaire examines 20 different emotions such as happiness, security, disappointment, anger, and guilt ( =.88) (Markovizky, 1998). Satisfaction. A self-report questionnaire was used to examine the respondents‘ satisfaction with their economic, social, and cultural situation in Israel ( =.89). This questionnaire was developed for the present research, to evaluate the extent to which new immigrants are satisfied with six aspects of their life: standard of living, degree of democracy, economic situation, lifestyle, social ties, and culture.
General Adjustment Score Because there are identical effects in the indices of Emotional State and Satisfaction, a general adjustment index was calculated as the weighted average of both ( =.75). The marital patterns were examined by means of three questionnaires: Family role division. We used a questionnaire that was developed by Blood and Wolfe (1960) and adapted for Israel by Katz (1980). The questionnaire presents a list of different household roles; the respondents are asked to note which spouse performs each role in their home. Examples include washing the dishes, cleaning the house, dealing with financial matters, taking care of the car, laundry and ironing, helping children with homework, meeting with teachers, and the like. To measure role division, the following categories were constructed: (1) I alone; (2) mainly I; (3) both of us; (4) mainly my spouse; (5) not applicable. Scores were calculated so that a high score (3) denotes egalitarian role division and a low score (0) denotes performance by one of the spouses. The reliability of the items in this research is =.87. Marital quality. We employed a scale of marital quality based on the American instrument ENRICH and shortened by Fowers and Olson (1992), which was translated and adapted to the Israeli milieu by Lavee (1995). This scale includes 10 items that examine the degree of satisfaction, agreement, and fit between the spouses in terms of dimensions cited in the clinical literature as significant in evaluating the quality of marital relations. These items include: spouse‘s traits, communication, conflict resolution. The scale is constructed as a five-point Likert scale, from 1 – ―absolutely agree‖ to 5 – ―strongly disagree‖ for each item. A high score denotes perception of high quality of marriage. The internal consistency of the short scale was found to range from.77 to.88. The reliability of the items in this research is =.91.
Marital Patterns and Psychological Adjustment among Immigrants…
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RESULTS Analysis of variance was used to examine differences among immigrants from two different countries of origin– FSU and Ethiopia– in Psychological Adjustment and Marital Patterns. Table 1 below displays means and standard deviations of two groups of variables: (a) level of adjustment of immigrants from Ethiopia and the FSU in terms of two sub criteria, level of emotional state (positive, negative) and level of satisfaction with life in Israel; and (b) marital patterns in the population according to three sub criteria, (role division, decisionmaking in the family, and marital quality). These are presented (in Table 1) by gender and country of origin. Repeated measures MANOVA yielded significant main effect of country of origin (Wilks =.11, MF (6,71) = 98.92, p <.001), but non-significant main effect of gender (Wilks =.86, MF (6,71) = 1.93, p >.05), nor interaction effect of Origin X Gender (Wilks =.88, MF (6,71) = 1.63, p >.10). Although non-significant gender main effect was found, the following univariate ANOVA indicated that FSU as well as Ethiopian male subjects perceive role division more egalitarian than female subjects (F(1,76) = 4.84, p <.05). Univariate ANOVAs for country of origin effect showed that Ethiopian couples reported higher levels of emotional state (F(1,76) = 52.08, p <.001), satisfaction (F(1,76) = 11.53, p <.001), overall adjustment (F(1,76) = 78.45, p <.001), role division (F(1,76) = 92.99, p <.001), and power (F(1,76) = 426.75, p <.001) (for means and SDs see table 1).
Correlations of Adjustment The Pearson correlations between adjustment and the dimensions of marital quality, by country of origin and gender, are displayed in Table 2. The findings show that among the women of Ethiopian origin, there was a significant correlation between degree of equality in role division in the family and emotional state (r =.42, p <.001), between egalitarian decisionmaking and emotional state (r =.66, p <.001), and between marital quality and satisfaction (r =.37, p <.01). Among the women from the FSU, there was a significant correlation between egalitarian decision-making and satisfaction (r =.25, p <.05). Significant correlation was found between Total score of adjustment and role division (r =.23, p <.05) and between Total score of adjustment and decision-making (r =.22, p <.05). Among women from the two country of origin – Ethiopia and FSU - Significant correlations were found between Total score of adjustment and role division (r =.41, p <.001) and between Total score of adjustment and decision-making (r =.53, p <.001). Among the men of Ethiopian origin, a significant correlation was found between marital quality and Emotional state (r =.44, p <.01) and between equality in family role division and satisfaction (r =.35, p <.01). Among the men from the FSU, a significant correlation was found between quality in family decision-making and satisfaction (r =.37, p <.01). In the Total score of adjustment, Significant correlation was found between Total score of adjustment and role division (r =.28, p <.05) and between Total score of adjustment and marital quality (r =.38, p <.01).
Table 1. Means and Standard Deviation of Psychological Adjustment and Marital Patterns, by gender and country of origin
Emotional state Satisfaction Overall adjustment score Role division Decision making Marital quality
Men N = 89
Women N = 146
Mean 4.11 3.93 4.01 1.96 2.07 3.99
Mean 3.94 3.80 3.92 1.79 .90 3.92
S.D. (.70) (.94) (.60) (.33) (.49) (.67)
S.D. (.77) (.96) (.62) (.43) (.61) (.74)
From FSU N = 112 Mean S.D. 3.67 (.57) 3.09 (.74) 3.70 (.54) 1.88 (.48) 2.25 (.67) 3.82 (.51)
From Ethiopia N = 124 Mean S.D. 4.31 (.76) 4.53 (.50) 4.22 (.54) 0.83 (.32) 1.73 (.34) 4.04 (.79)
Total N = 236 4.01 3.85 3.95 1.85 1.97 3.96
Table 2. Pearson Correlations between Adjustment and Dimensions of Marital Quality, by country of origin and gender
Country of origin N Emotional state Satisfaction Adjustment score
*p <.05. **p <.01. ***p <.001.
FSU 35 .11 (.52) .30 (.07) .15 (.36)
Role division Men Women E FSU E 54 76 70 .19 .17 .42*** (.16) (.15) (.001) .35** .20 .20 (.01) (.08) (.09) .28* .23* .41*** (.05) (.05) (.001)
FSU 35 .21 (.21) .37* (.03) .32* (.05)
Decision making Men Women E FSU E 54 76 70 .06 .11 .66*** (.53) (.24) (.001) .24 .25* .12 (.03) (.33) .17 .22* .53*** (.05) (.001)
FSU 35 .26 (.16) .09 (.63) .36* (.05)
Marital quality Men Women E FSU E 54 76 70 .44** .25 .15 (.01) (.16) (.28) .20 .14 .37** (.43) (.01) .38** .30 .21 (.09) (.13)
Table3. Forced steps regression (Beta standardized values) predicting adjustment by demographic and emotional variables among male and female, Ethiopian and FSU subjects FSU Male
Ethiopian Male
FSU Female
Ethiopian Female
Male
Female
Age
-.41*
.30
-.02
-.01
.04
-.04
Occupational status
.17
.35*
.12
.02
.24**
.03
Number of children
-.12
-.05
-.04
.07
.21
.19
Education
.03
-.08
.04
.17
-.53***
-.47***
Step I
R =.21,F(4,30) = 1.96, p =.12
R =.15, F(4,49) = 2.08, p =.10
R =.01, F(4,30) = 1.96, p =.12
R =.03, F(4,49) = 2.08, p =.10
R =.40, F(4,84) = 14.14, p=.001
R2 =.36, F(4,84) = 11.60, p=.001,
Age
-.37
.20
.05
.07
-.04
-.07
Occupational status
.19
.35**
.02
.10
.27**
.06
Number of children
-.11
-.09
.03
.11
.16
.13
Education
.04
-.04
-.01
.07
-.40***
-.23
Marriage quality
.19
.45**
.30
.17
.33***
.28***
Equality of roles
.01
.09
-.22
.33*
-.22*
-.38**
2
2
Summary of step I
2
2
2
2
2
Step II
Summary of step II
* p <.05; ** p <.01.
2
R =.24, F(4,28) = 1.48, p =.22, Fchange = 0.63, p =.63
2
R =.36, F(4,47) = 4.47, p =.001, Fchange = 8.05, p =.001
R =.13, F(4,28) = 1.48, p=.22, Fchange = 1.93, p =.16
R =.19, F(4,47) = 4.47, p=.001, Fchange = 4.67, p =.01
2
R =.50, F(6,82) = 13.78, p<.001, Fchange = 8.21, p<.001
R2 =.47, F(6,82) = 12.24, p<.001, Fchange = 9.06, p<.001
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Gila Markovitzky and Hadas Doron
Among the men of FSU origin, there was a significant correlation between egalitarian decision-making and satisfaction (r =.37, p <.05). Significant correlation was found between Total score of adjustment and decision-making (r =.32, p <.05) and between Total score of adjustment and marital quality (r =.36, p <.05). Significant correlations were found in most of the pairs of dimensions of adjustment and dimensions of marital quality. Overall adjustment correlates significantly and positively with the three dimensions of marital quality, according to country of origin and gender, in most of the subgroups of the research population.
Predicting Psychological Adjustment According to Country of Origin and Marital Relations Regression analyses were conducted for each origin separately, for male and female subjects, with the overall adjustment score as dependent and independent variables: subject's age, education level, employment status, number of children at home at the first step, and equality between the couple (combination of role division and power) and marriage quality at the second step. We had to analyze each origin in a separate regression since a high correlation was found between some of the independent variables and origin (education level and equality between couple). In addition, equality variables (power and role division) were combined in one variable because a high correlation (r=.70, p <.001) was found between them. The regression analyses among male subjects yielded a significant model for Ethiopian subjects (F(6,47) = 4.47, p <.001, R2=.36), explained by employment status (β =.20, p <.01) and marriage quality (β =.45, p <.001). Employed subjects' status was associated with higher levels of adjustment, and a higher marriage quality was also associated with higher levels of adjustment. The model for FSU immigrants was not significant. None of the regression models among female subjects was found to be significant. In step-wise regression analysis for prediction of differences in adjustment according to country of origin, gender, and marital patterns, country of origin emerged as the first predictor, explaining 33% of the variance in adjustment (F (1,160) = 77.22, p <.001), followed by marital quality, which added 6% to the variance in adjustment (F (1,159) = 14.73, p <.001). In total, the regression predicted 38% of the variance in adjustment, with a standardized regression coefficient for origin of.53, and a standardized regression coefficient for marital quality of.24.
DISCUSSION This study examined the effect of marital patterns on the psychological adjustment among two different groups of new immigrants to Israel: immingrants from Ethiopia and the Former Soviet Union (FSU). In addition, the study placed special focus on gender, or the different ways in which husbands and wives perceived the effects of their marital patterns and satisfaction, on their psychological adjustment in immigration. The main findings were fourfold:
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First, the marital patterns, in most of their sub-measures, were associated with psychological adjustment; positive feelings and life satisfaction among male and female Ethiopian and Former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrants. There is one exception: no correlation between marital quality and psychological adjustment has been found among female immigrants from the FSU. These findings are in line with other research studies concerning the negative correlation between family conflicts and psychological well-being (Aycan and Eskin, 2005; Downie, Koestner, EIGeledi and Cree, 2004). In addition to indicating the importance of country of origin in predicting psychological adjustment, the research also reveals marital quality as an important predictor: in all subgroups of respondents, high quality of marriage correlated with positive affect and less psychological distress. This finding is consistent with other research and theories that associate quality of marriage with good coping, especially in life situations where the spouses face difficulty, such as physical or mental illness of one of the partners, trauma, security-related instability, or employmentrelated instability (Bocchieri, Meana, and Fisher, 2002; Rydstrom, Dalhim-Englund, Segesten, and Rasmussen 2004; Shamai and Lev, 1999; Zettel and Rook, 2004). Second, this study was conducted in two cultural contexts: the traditional cultural context of Ethiopian couples, and the modern cultural context of Former Soviet Union couples. Ethiopian couples present significantly higher level of psychological adjustment* – more positive emotional state and better life satisfaction in Israel. With respect to marital patterns, the FSU couples presented more egalitarianism than the Ethiopians in role division and power division, but the Ethiopians represented better quality of marriage than the FSU immigrants. Third, the findings further underscore the importance of family patterns for the psychological adjustment (PA) during the adjustment to a new country. Marital patterns are relevant in various ways to PA of new immigrants: equality of roles and marriage quality were found as important predictors of PA although the nature of these variables depends on the spouses' gender and origin. Apparently, as far as the predictors of sub-measures of PA are concerned, equality of roles is more important for wives' PA than for husbands, while marriage quality was found as a more important predictor for husbands' PA. Kulik (2004) also found differences between men and women: the relationship between spousal relations, marital quality and life satisfaction was stronger for the wives than for their husbands. Another study revealed that egalitarianism is associated with cultural adaptation (Downie, Koestner, Eigeledi and Cree, 2004): the more the partners perceived their participation in decision-making as equitable, the higher their cultural adaptation. Regarding "inside" and "outside" family variables: Regarding women, the one variable of education (among socio-demographic variables) was found to be a predictive variable. However, among men, two variables (both occupational status and education) were important for psychological adjustment. This is congruent with findings of earlier research (e.g. Aycan and Eskin, 2005; Greenberger and O'Neil, 1993), which suggest that men need both work and family to cope with societal pressures. The changes in family roles result from the immigration transition, challenging the men to define themselves again and maintain their sense of self worth (Lee and Owens, 2002). Fourth, with respect to cultural origin, the independent variables do not predict psychological adjustment among Former Soviet Union male and female immigrants, but yield a significant model for both Ethiopian males and females. For Ethiopian husbands, marriage quality predicts psychological adjustment and the Ethiopian wives are more affected by equality of roles. This single variable was found as an important source of Ethiopian wive's
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psychological adjustment. One explanation could be the impact of the different implications of the gender ideology in the country of origin on expectation and adjustment.The Ethiopian family represents the traditional family role ideology while Israel as a host society represent a more egalitarian role ideology. Thus, for Ethiopian women, adopting equality during the immigration transition means positive acculturation in the new country. This, in term, typically causes her to be more satisfied. This tendency was also cited by Nock (2001), Wilcox and Nock (2006), Greenstein (1996) and others. In a circular way-the positive adjustment, sense of marital quality, of the Ethiopian men effected by his wife satisfaction. Relationship variables, including changes in communication and marital patterns, were significantly associated with aggression in family (Schumacher, Smith and Heyman, 2001). Comparing the two gender ideologies of Former Soviet Union and Ethiopian spouses, we see greater satisfaction within the last category. We want to suggest that the more the couples change their marital patterns (role division, decision-making) to conform to the ideology of the host country, the more satisfied they are and experience positive feelings. In addition, we suggest that this shift in marital patterns is one of the predictors of positive /negative immigrant adjustment. Previous research has shown that while cultural gaps do correlate with objective difficulties in adjustment to a new country, they do not necessarily correlate with psychological adjustment problems (Lackland and Erkki, 2003). There is a major difference between Ethiopian and FSU female immigrants: role-equality among Ethiopian wives is associated with significantly higher levels of psychological adjustment, while among FSU wives it is associated with lower level of psychological adjustment. However, another point must. Unfortunately, however, while role-equality among Ethiopian immigrant couples is associated with higher levels of psychological adjustment, it is also associated with higher levels of spousal violence. The reason for this is that Ethiopian men tend to have lower levels of psychological adjustment due to dissatisfaction with changing marital patterns and gaps between spouses (working wife, unemployed husband) and these gaps may translate into family violence. Although this finding is not related to the issues of the study, we feel that it must be mentioned. Perhaps the change that women make in the intercultural transition from traditional, conservative countries enables their personal development and rapid rise in status. According to the literature on immigration, difficulty in adapting to the host country is liable to be associated with immigrants‘ distress and negative psychological reactions, but when the new environment enables benefits and development, it may be associated with positive emotions and adjustment (Ben Shalom and Horenezyk, 2000; Kibria, Barnett, Baruch, and Marshall, 1990; Straussner, 2000). Of all the subgroups examined, the Ethiopian women demonstrate the most positive level of adjustment, both in terms of positive affect and in terms of satisfaction with life in Israel. Ethiopian women must adjust to significant changes in their social and cultural surroundings. Many work outside of the home in order to help support the household, the marital power relations change, there is a new role division at home, and more. It has been shown that Ethiopian women are influenced by the change in their status in the family: as the level of equality in the family rises, the women‘s adjustment reactions are more positive. Apparently, the Ethiopian women mobilize many strengths in order to adapt to integration in Israeli society without segregating and distancing themselves from their ethnic and gender identity.
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A possible explanation of this may be that the Ethiopian women separate their functioning from their cultural identity: they accept the cultural expectations and identity, but at the same time respond to the need to support the family members and make functional changes. However, the Ethiopian women, despite the significant change they have undergone, do not express difficulties. To the contrary, they display positive satisfaction and affect. Further research may broaden our understanding of the variables that mediate between required role changes and adjustment, such as functional efficiency and personal qualities of flexibility, optimism, a sense of achievement, and self-esteem, which contribute directly to mental well being.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH This study serves to highlight the importance of marital patterns in succesful adaptation to a new country. This insight needs to be shared with immigrant families and host communities in order to establish adaptation. Two distinct approaches to facilitating adjustment have social relevance as well as psychological importance for new immigrants. Good adaptation to the new country lies in achieving a delicate balance between two goals: adapting to the demands of the host society on one hand (such as by changing marital patterns towards equality) as well as preserving elements of the former former customs and culture (perhaps by preserving elements of the patriarchal relationship). This necessitates a delicate balancing act, often carried out by the woman. The literature is lacking the contribution of marital patterns and changes in spousal relationship to psychological adjustment to immigration. Given that the country is a tapestry made up of immigrants from different ethnic and national backgrounds, the authorities had a larger stake in accelerating the process of national integration than in preserving the immigrants‘ ethnic relationship. The research shows that Ethiopian women benefit from their immigration, which serves as a lever for personal and family change, and that their success in supporting their families evidently gives them positive feelings, which help mediate the responses to the immigration crisis. Immigrant absorption authorities in Israel can take advantage of these strengths of the Ethiopian women, cultivating them to facilitate the absorption of other family members. The Ethiopian immigrant woman's well-being increased as well as their marital power and status-in spite of altering the traditional gender role ideology brought from their country of origin. Two main study directions can be derived from these findings: First, the marital pattern is an important factor in adjustment to immigration. This understanding can help the absorption authorities to assist the new immigrants more effectively in the adaptation process. Second, it is important to examine how the rapid changes in marital patterns affect the psychological well-being of the immigrants and how we, as the absorption society, can help them preserve their ethnic ideology of family relations on one hand, and adapting to the host society, on the other hand.
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Limitations of the Research This study has several limitations. Firstly, since the data was collected from members of two different ethnic groups, it is possible that ethnic tendencies of Ethiopian and FSU immigrants influence the way they fill out the questionnaires. For example, perhaps Ethiopians have an ethnic tendency to present their satisfaction and emotional state more positively. Thus the findings should be interpreted cautiously. Second, the sample is not large enough to arrive at conclusive results regarding the influence of marital patterns in the absorption of different ethnic and cultural immigrant groups. However, our research findings strongly suggest that immigration may trigger problems and changes in marital patterns, but the specific ways this happens and the psychological reactions it causes, should be addressed in future study. This study is in line with the widely accepted view of immigration as a potentially stressful process. It proposes that family relationships and marital patterns are important risk factors, when variables of gender and country of origin are controlled; this direction is still rare in the study of immigration. We hope that future studies will investigate the theme of immigration versus changes in marital patterns in different ethnicities in Israel and around world with larger samples, and that they refine and implement these preliminary findings.
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Kim, K. C., and Kim, S. (1998). Family and work roles of Korean immigrants in the United States. In H. I., McCubbin, R. A., Thompson, et al. (Eds.) Resiliency in Native American and immigrant families. Resiliency in Families Series, Vol. 2. (pp. 225-242). Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications. Ki-Tov, Y, and Ben David, A. (1993). The cultural component in marital therapy with immigrants from Ethiopia. Hevra Verevaha, 13, 265-277 (in Hebrew). Kohn, R., Flaherty, J. A., and Levav, I. (1989). Somatic symptoms among older Soviet immigrants: An exploratory study. Journal of Social Psychiatry, 35, 350-360. Kue, W.H., and Tsai, Y.M. (1986). Social networking, hardiness and immigrants' mental health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 27, 133-149. Lackland, D. S., and Erkki, V. (2003). Integrational value discrepancies in migrant and lost national families and their impact on psychological adaptation. Journal of Adolescence, 26, 213-231. Lavee, Y. (1995). Marital assessment scale: Clinical and research uses. Beersheva: Israel Psychological Association, 25th Academic Conference, Ben -Gurion University. Lazarus, R.S. (1991). Emotion and adaptation. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Lee, C. and Owens, R.G. (2002). Men, work and gender. Australian Psychologist, 37(1), 1319. Lee,H-Y., Moon, A and Knight,B.G. (2004). Depression among elderly Korean immigrants: Exploring socio-cultural factors. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity in SocialWork, 2004; Vol 13 (4): 1-26. Markovizky, G.(1998). The relationship between personal and social comparisons and psychological adjustment to immigration stress. Unpublished PhD thesis, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel (in Hebrew). Menjivar, C. (1999). The interaction of work and gender: Central American immigrant women and employment in California. American Behavioral Scientist, 42, 601-627. Min, P. G. (2001). Changes in Korean immigrants' gender role and social status, and their marital conflicts. Sociological-Forum, 16, 301-320. Mirsky, J. and Barasch, M. and Goldberg, K.(1993). Adjustment problems among Soviet immigrants at risk: Reaching out to members of the "1000" families organization. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences. 29(3), 135-149. Nazroo, JY., Edwards, AC. and Brown, GW. (1998). Gender differences in the onset of depression following a shared life event: A study of couples. Psychological Medicine, 17, 9-19. Neto-Felix (2002). Social adaptation difficulties of adolescents with immigrant backgrounds. Social Behavior and Personality, 30(4), 335-346. Nock, S.L. (2001).The Marriages of equally dependent spouses. Journal of Family Issues, 22:755-775. Ouarasse, O.A. and V., Fons. (2005). The role of demographic variables and acculturation attitudes in predicting sociocultural and psychological adaptation in Moroccans in the Netherlands. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 29(3), 251-272. Padilla, A., and Perez, W. (2003). Acculturation, social identity and social cognition: A new perspective. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 25, 35-55. Ponizovsky, A., Ginath, Y., Durst, R, and Wondimeneh, B. (1998). Psychological distress among Ethiopian and Russian Jewish immigrants to Israel: A cross-cultural study. The International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 44, 35-45.
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Ritsner, M., Ponizovsky, A., and Ginath, Y. (1999). The effect of age on gender differences in the psychological distress ratings of immigrants. Stress Medicine, 15, 17-25. Ritsner, M., Ponizovsky, A., Kurs, R., and Modai, I. (2000). Somatization in an immigrant population in Israel: A community survey of prevalence, risk factors, and help seeking behavior. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157, 385-392. Ritsner, M., Ponizovsky, A., Nechamkin Y. and Modai, I. (2001). Gender differences in psychosocial risk factors for psychological distress among immigrants. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 42(2), 151-160. Rydstrom, I., Dalhim-Englund, A. C., Segesten, K., Rasmussen, B. H. (2004). Relations governed by uncertainty: Families of a child with asthma. Journal of Pediatric Nursing, 19, 85-94. Schumacher, J.A., Smith, A.M. and Heyman, R.E. (2001). Risk factors for male to female partner psychological abuse. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 255-268 Shalom, U. Ben and Horenzyk, G.(2004). Cultural identity and adaptation in an assimilative setting: Immigrant soldiers from the former Soviet Union in Israel. International Journalof Intercultural Relations.28(6), 461-479. Shamai, M., and Lev, R. (1999). Marital quality among couples living under the threat of forced relocation: The case of families in the Golan Heights. Journal of Marital Family Therapy, 25, 237-252. Sharlin, S. and Moin, V. (2001). New Immigrants' Perceptions of Family Life in Origin and Host Cultures: In-group and Out-group Favoritism Effect. Journal of Comparative Family Studies 32 (3) pp. 405-422. Shuval, J.T. (1982). Migration and stress. In: L. Goldberger, and S. Breznitz (Eds.), Handbook of Stress: Theoretical and Clinical Aspects. (pp.677-699). London: Macmillan Publishers. Sikron, M., and Leshem, E. (Eds.) (1998). Profile of an immigration wave: Tel aviv. Sikron, M., and Leshem, E. (Eds.) (1998). Profile of an immigration wave: The absorption process of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, 1990-1995. Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Stamm, B., Stamm, H., Hundnall, A., and Higson, S. (2004). Considering a theory of cultural trauma and loss. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 9, 89-111. Straussner, L. A. (2000). Ethno cultural issues in substance abuse treatment. New York: Guilford Press. Tabassum, R., Macaskill, A., and Iftikar, A (2000). Attitudes towards mental health in an urban Pakistani community in the United Kingdom. International Journal of Social Psychiary, vol. 46(3):170-181. Weller, L., Don,Y and Hovav, H. (1976). The impact of education on family change. Israel Annals of Psychiatry and Related Disciplines. Vol 14(3), 266-274. Wilcox, W.B.and Nock, S.L. (2006). What`s love got to do with it? Equality, Equity, Commitment and Women`s Marital Quality. Social Forces, vol. 84, iss.3,1321-1346. Yeh, C. J. (2003). Age, acculturation, cultural adjustment and mental health symptoms of Chinese, Korean and Japanese immigrants youth. Cultural-Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 9, 34-48. Zettel, L. A., and Rook, K. S. (2004). Substitution and compensation in the social networks of older widowed women. Psychology and Aging, 19(3), 433-443.
Advances in Psychology Research. Volume 78 Ed: Alexandra M. Columbus
ISBN: 978-1-61209-442-7 © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Chapter 3
MEMORY FOR OBJECT LOCATION: ENCODING STRATEGIES IN CHILDREN Annalisa Lucidi1, Clelia Rossi-Arnaud2, Laura Pieroni2 and Vincenzo Cestari1,3 1
2
Faculty of Educational Science, LUMSA University, Rome Department of Psychology, Università di Roma ‖La Sapienza‖ 3 Ist. Neuroscienze, C.N.R. Rome, Italy
ABSTRACT A number of studies (Cestari et al., 2007; Postma and De Haan, 1996) suggest that two separate spatial processes may be involved in short-term object location memory. First, one needs to remember the precise position occupied in a given space (positional encoding per se), then one has to decide which object was at which position (object-to-position assignment). The aim of the present study was to investigate the way children of different ages code for object locations referring to the theoretical framework of working memory (Baddeley, 1986, 2000; Baddeley and Hitch, 1974). In particular, the main questions addressed in this chapter were: a) when children have to remember the location of objects do they recode visual material verbally? b) Is this process age-dependent? A modified version of Postma and De Haan‘s (1996) object location task was used and three relocation conditions were examined. In the first condition, subjects had to remember spatial positions in a two-dimensional matrix. In the second task, object-location associations were examined and previously occupied positions were signalled so that children only had to remember object-to-position assignment (i.e., ―what was where‖) while in the third condition, the ―combined‖ condition, children had to perform both positional reconstruction and object-to-position assignment. In order to examine which encoding strategy children aged 5 and 11 years spontaneously use in temporary memory for object location, we interfered with the activity of the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketch pad adopting a dual task methodology. In the second experiment, to further investigate the object-to-location binding, the visual and verbal characteristics of the stimuli used in the test were manipulated and children of the same two age groups were tested. Our results show that children of age 11, like adults, use mainly a phonological recoding for pictorial stimuli while younger children show a ―mixed strategy‖ based both on visual and phonological information.
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INTRODUCTION The ability to remember where objects are located in space is necessary for a number of everyday tasks. These go from remembering where the emergency exit is if lights were to suddenly be switched off in an unfamiliar room to remembering the position of landmarks in an unknown city to even learning geography at school or performing mental calculation. So the topic is of interest when studied in adults but is particularly so when considering school age children. The aim of the present experiments was to examine object location memory in children aged 5 and 11 and more specifically to investigate age-related differences in the way children code for object locations. The main questions addressed were: a) when children have to remember the location of objects do they recode visual material verbally? b) Is this process age-dependent? Our approach was based upon the working memory model put forward by Baddeley (Baddeley, 1986, 2000; Baddeley and Hitch, 1974) which postulates the existence of an attentional system, the central executive and two slave systems, the visuo-spatial sketch pad and the phonological loop. Our experiments also made use of an experimental paradigm developed by Postma and De Haan (1996), which has led to the suggestion that object location memory, or more specifically, the ability to remember static spatial configurations, might in fact depend upon a number of different processes, namely reconstructing the spatial locations per se (i.e., which positions in space were occupied) and an object-to-location binding process (i.e., being able to reconstruct what was where). Postma and De Haan's experimental paradigm compares performance in 3 relocation conditions. In the first condition positional encoding per se can be tested by presenting stimuli in which the objects that need to be relocated are all the same, so only the exact positions have to remembered; in the second task condition, the Object-to-Position assignment can be examined by presenting a number of different objects which will have to be relocated but, in the memory test, the positions that were occupied by the objects are marked; finally, in the Combined condition, one has to relocate a number of different objects on the screen, without any marking of the original positions. Studies in adults have shown that disrupting the phonological loop, by asking subjects to perform a concurrent verbal task (articulatory suppression) interferes with the object-to-position assignment process, suggesting that this process relies to some extent upon verbal coding (Postma and De Haan, 1996; Dent and Smyth, 2005; Cattaneo, Vecchi and Postma, 2007). On the other hand, a spatial tapping concurrent task has been shown to disrupt positional encoding in static and dynamic versions of the matrices task in children (Pickering, Gathercole, Hall, and Lloyd, 2001). These data together with neuropsychological (Shoqeirat and Mayes, 1991; Postma, Kessels and Van Asselen, 2004) and developmental data (Schumann-Hengsteler, 1992; Cestari, Lucidi, Pieroni and Rossi-Arnaud, 2007) support the proposed distinction between the two processes. In children, studies on memory for object position paid attention to three specific issues: a) is there a developmental trend for the object-to-position association? (SchumannHengsteler, 1992; Conte, Cornoldi, Paazaglia and Sanavio, 1995; Rossi-Arnaud, Alfano, Longoni, 1999); b) is memory for spatial positions age-dependent ? (Conte et al., 1995; Rossi-Arnaud et al.,1999); and finally, c) which type of coding is used to remember the object-to-position association? (Schumann-Hengsteler, 1992; Walker, Hitch, Doyle and Porter, 1994).
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With regards to object-to-position assignment, there is agreement in the literature that a developmental improvement in the number of associations remembered is found. SchumannHengsteler (1992) reported that there is an improvement with age in remembering the positions of specific objects. In this study, a picture reconstruction task with simultaneous presentation of scene-like visual spatial arrangements was used. Children had to recognize the objects and reconstruct the initial spatial arrangement. An age-dependent improvement in remembering the locations of specific objects was shown when examining 3-, 4-, 7- and 11year-olds. Other studies have found this developmental improvement for tasks in which different objects have to be linked to different positions (Cestari et al., 2007; Siemens, Guttentag, and Mclntyre, 1989). On the other hand, with regards to spatial location, Hasher and Zacks (1979) suggested that it is encoded and retained automatically and that, as a consequence of being automatic, memory for spatial location should not show any developmental enhancement. Although a number of studies have investigated the development of spatial memory (Hamilton, Coates, and Heffernan, 2003; Logie and Pearson, 1997; Orsini, Grossi, Capitani, Laiacona, Papagno and Vallar, 1987), few have specifically addressed the issue of the development of positional encoding per se. Schumann Hengsteler (1992), in the experiments mentioned previously, observed that whereas children improved with age in remembering the locations of specific objects, there was no age effect on memory for the critical loci themselves. In contrast with these findings, Walker et al. (1994) reported a study in which a probed memory task was used to investigate children's short-term visual memory for an object's spatial location or colour. The results of their second experiment indicate that there was a developmental improvement in memory for spatial positions in children of 5 and 7 years of age. Other results are in line with the latter study and report a developmental improvement in positional encoding (Conte, 1995; Siemens, Guttentag, and Mclntyre, 1989, Cestari et al., 2007). In the most recent of these studies (Cestari et al., 2007), the Postma and De Hann‗s experimental paradigm was used to compare the performance of children of different ages in the three different relocation conditions described previously, namely positional encoding, object-to-position assignment task, and the integration of these two in the combined task. A span procedure was used to assess spatial memory in children aged 6, 8 and 10 years tested in these three tasks. Data provided spans for each of the relocation task, showing different developmental patterns for the relocation tasks considered. Namely the results showed a significant development both in positional encoding and in object-to-position assignment at 8 years of age, but this increase in the efficiency was not accompanied by an increase in the combined task between ages 6 and 8. The improvement in the combined condition was evident only later, at age 10. This pattern of results supports data collected in adult participants and suggests that spatial memory comprises a number of different component processes. The developmental patterns observed in the three spatial tasks considered might be related to the way children encode the information in each condition. The encoding strategies used by children and thus the role of visuo-spatial and verbal working memory in the temporary retention of object location information is the focus of the experiments presented here. As mentioned previously, data from studies in adults indicate that positional encoding relies on visuo-spatial working memory whereas the object to location binding is based on a verbal coding. It is thus interesting to assess whether the ability of children in remembering the association of spatial position and object identity makes use of different encoding strategies during the cognitive development.
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One important line of evidence on children‘s memory for visually presented information comes from studies involving the recall of a series of pictures (Hitch, Halliday, Dodd and Littler, 1989; Hitch, Halliday, Schaafstal and Heffernan, 1991; Hitch, Halliday, Schaafstal and Schraagen, 1988; Longoni and Scalisi, 1994; Palmer, 2000; Walker et al., 1994). Although not exactly a ―pure‖ test of visuospatial working memory, performance in these tasks provides us with some important indications as to the developmental changes that may occur in children‘s use of encoding strategies. A number of studies, mainly based on visual similarity effects, have shown that children under the age of 7 years make use of a visual code when they are asked to memorize visually presented material. Hitch et al. (1988), for instance, reported visual confusion errors occurring in young children‘s recognition memory. The children in these studies were shown pictures depicting objects that were either visually similar, such as a brush, a rake, or a pen, or visually dissimilar, such as a pig, a ball and a pen and showed impaired recognition with visually similar items (see also Walker et al., 1994). Visual similarity effects are found in children under 7 whether they are told to label the pictures verbally at presentation (Hitch et al., 1988), prevented from labelling the pictures (Hitch et al., 1989, Hitch et al., 1988), given no instructions about labelling when the visual material is presented (Brown, 1977), or when the verbal label is provided (Hayes and Schultze, 1977). Older children, over the age of 8 years, do not appear to use a visual coding (Hitch et al, 1988; 1989) unless they are prevented from using the phonological loop by asking them to perform articulatory suppression (Hitch, Woodin and Baker, 1989b; Hitch et al., 1991). Older children behave in the same way as adults (Brandimonte, Hitch and Bishop, 1992; Postma and De Haan, 1996), using a speechbased memory code for drawings, thus allowing maintenance of information via phonological rehearsal. It has been argued that younger children rely on visual codes because their use of verbal codes (objects name) and their rehearsal process (Baddeley, Gathercole and Papagno, 1998) are not yet fully developed while older children adopt a strategy of verbally recoding pictures where possible and rely on subvocal rehearsal to mediate performance on the ―visual‖ memory task. An alternative theoretical position regarding the strategies children use to encode pictorial material can be found in the literature namely that ―phonological translation is not an all or nothing phenomenon but possibly forms part of a continuum of dual coding‖ (Palmer, 2000, p. 181), suggesting that there is during development a period of dual coding strategy. We therefore decided to explore the encoding strategies used by children below and above 8 years of age using the adapted version of Postma and De Haan‘ paradigm (Cestari et al. 2007). In the first experiment the aim was to replicate the experiments performed in adults making use of concurrent interfering tasks to impair the verbal and visuo-spatial working memory component functioning. Articulation was suppressed by asking children to repeat aloud an irrelevant word while a spatial tapping task was performed concurrently to interfere with visuo-spatial working memory functioning. In the second experiment, to further investigate the object to location binding, the visual and verbal characteristics of the stimuli used in the test were manipulated and children of the same two age groups were tested. Considering that under the age of 8 years children are reported to use mainly a visual strategy in the serial recall of pictures, we decided to use samples of familiar visually similar or dissimilar objects to test whether a visual similarity effect would arise when children have to bind object identity and location. If children make use of a visual code, we expect a decreased performance when children have to relocate similar pictures. On the other hand, older
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children have been assumed to behave in the same way as adults, using speech-based memory codes for drawings. Thus we manipulated another characteristic of objects‘ names i.e. simply whether they can easily be named or not (nameable and non-nameable objects), in order to analyze its effect on children‘s performance in the process of the object to position association.
EXPERIMENT 1 The aim of the present experiment was to investigate which codes 5- and 11-year olds use to encode and maintain object positions. Adopting Baddeley‘s working memory model as a theoretical framework (Baddeley, 1986, 2000; Baddeley and Hitch, 1974) one way to study which code children use to recall pictorial stimuli is to interfere selectively with the component responsible for that process. Namely if children adopt a visuo-spatial code to remember objects in space this process should be more affected by a concurrent visuo-spatial interference than a verbal one; on the other hand, if they adopt a verbal code a lower performance with a concurrent verbal interference and a preserved recall with a visuo-spatial concurrent interference should emerge. This double task methodology was used in children to address different questions in different fields. For instance it has been used to study the strategies used in arithmetical performance in children from 6 to 9 years of age (McKenzie, Bull and Gray, 2003). It has also been applied in order to explore the development of spatial short-term memory from 5 to 9 years of age (Kemps, De Rammelaere and Desmet, 2000) or to investigate the executive and the spatial contribution to the spatial and visual span maintenance in 6 to 13 year old children (Hamilton et al., 2003). Thus, in the present experiment we decided to use the double task paradigm. Previous studies in adults (Postma and De Hann, 1996) have shown that object-toposition assignment is disrupted by a task interfering with the phonological loop, suggesting that it relies, to some extent, upon verbal coding. Furthermore, studies using dual-task interference methodology have suggested that temporary retention of a sequence of locations is interfered with by concurrent movements generated in response to targets (e.g., Baddeley and Lieberman, 1980; Logie and Marchetti, 1991; Smyth and Scholey, 1994). For this reason the two different concurrent tasks chosen in this case were spatial tapping and articulatory suppression. In the present experiment the modified version of Postma and De Hann (1996) paradigm that recently used in children to investigate spans in memory for object locations (Cestari et al. 2007) was adopted. Our aims were to investigate which codes children use in these tasks, examine whether they are the same as those used by adults and assess if these codes change with development.
METHOD Participants. The total sample comprised 96 children of a kindergarten and a junior high school in middle class areas in Rome, Italy. The sample was subdivided into two age groups. There were 48 kindergarten children (mean age= 5 years and 5 months), 48 first- graders (mean age= 11 years and 4 months). The parents gave their consent to the participation at the study.
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Materials. The stimuli were similar to the ones used in a previous study in children of similar age ranges (Cestari et al., 2007) and comprised 10 × 10 cm paper cards arranged in a 4 × 4 paper matrix on a table, with each cell measuring 10 × 10 cm. In the position condition, the stimuli were dark grey paper cards. In the object-to-position and combined condition, the stimuli were line drawings of familiar objects selected from a larger group of items tested (Longoni and Scalisi, 1994; Nisi, Longoni, and Snodgrass, 2000) because of their high frequency in children‘s language (Marconi, Ott, Pesenti, Ratti, and Tavella, 1993) and according to the number of syllables of the object name. We chose to present children with a supra span number of cards on the basis of previous data (Cestari et al. 2007). Five-year-old children were presented with 5 cards depicting 5 different objects while 11-year-old children had to study 8 cards. The pictures depicted objects with three-syllable names, visually and phonologically dissimilar (bicchiere - glass, albero - tree, tavolo - table, forbici – scissors, macchina – car; plus pallone – ball, cappello – cap and pistola – gun, for 11 years old). Procedure. Each child was tested individually in a quiet testing room in the school. Cards were arranged over a paper matrix while children had their backs turned. When the array was ready, children studied the pictures placed on the matrix for a 30 s observation period. Each child was tested in a control and interference condition of six trials each and in one of the three relocation condition. According to Postma and de Haan‘s paradigm, one relocation task was the Object-to Position assignment, in which the position where objects were to be relocated was marked on the matrix, and the children were required to remember which object had previously been at each marked location; the other condition is the Combined condition in which subjects had to relocate the cards on the matrix, without any marking of the original positions. In the positional encoding task (Position), children had to remember only the exact place occupied on the matrix by the black paper cards. Examples of the stimulus displays in the 3 relocation tasks are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Example of the stimulus display in the Experiment 1, in the study and in the test phase for each of the tasks considered: a) Position encoding (Position); b) Object-to-position assignment; and c) Combined.
The assignment to a relocation condition and to the interference task was randomized between the subjects; furthermore, the order of the absence, presence of interference task was
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balanced between the subjects. In the interference condition the child performed the interference task (articulatory suppression or spatial tapping) during the observation period, starting the secondary task a few seconds before observing the matrix. To suppress the activity of the visuo-spatial sketch pad children were asked to repeatedly tap four felt plates (4 x 4 cm) positioned in a square pattern, with 2 cm between adjacent plates. The articulatory suppression task consisted of the continuous repetition of the word ―cola‖ at a rate of approximately twice per second. Performance on the secondary task was continuously monitored by the experimenter. An interval of approximately 4 s followed during which children had again their backs turned and the experimenter gathered cards in a pile, mixed them, and then displayed them randomly ordered in a column on a side of the matrix. Children were asked to relocate as accurately as possible the cards on the matrix. They were told there was no time restriction and the cards could be shifted to a new position as many times as necessary. Design. In order to perform analyses, the number of correctly relocated objects and correctly remembered positions was calculated. The number of correctly remembered positions was calculated in the Position and Combined conditions while the number of correctly relocated objects was calculated in the Object to Position and Combined conditions. This was possible because the configurations that the children had to study were exactly the same in the three relocation conditions, and relocation condition was a between-subject variable. Namely in a configuration the objects and the grey cards occupied the same positions in the three relocation conditions and the object associated with that particular position was always the same for that configuration. The maximum number of correct hits across the 6 repeated trials was 36 for 5 year olds and 48 for 11 year olds. Separate mixed factorial analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were performed for the two measures recorded. Furthermore, two separate ANOVAs was performed for each age group (5 and 11 year olds), with two between-group factors: the relocation condition with two levels (Position vs. Combined, or Object to Position vs. Combined) and the Interference task with two levels (Spatial tapping, Articulatory Suppression); finally, in the analysis was considered one within factor with two levels (Absence, Presence of interference).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Position 5 year olds: a mixed factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the total number of positions correctly relocated in the Position and Combined tasks. The mean span and standard error for correctly relocated items in the two tasks are shown in Figure 2. No significant main effect of relocation condition (F(1;28)= 0.661, p=n.s.), interference task (F(1;28)= 0.01, p=n.s.), absence-presence of interference (F(1;28)= 0.41, p=n.s.), was found. No interaction between the factors was observed. Results show, on the one hand, that no difference in the recall of positions was observed when children only had to remember positions or when they performing a double task i.e. also remembering the associations between objects and locations. On the other hand results also show that recall of locations per se in 5-year-old children was unaffected both by spatial tapping and by articulatory suppression.
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Figure 2. Mean and standard error for correctly relocated positions for the two tasks: Position and Combined, as a function of interference (absent vs. present) and the type of interference (articulatory suppression vs. tapping).
Object 5 year olds: a mixed factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the total number of objects correctly relocated in Object-To-Position and Combined tasks. The mean span and standard error for correctly relocated items in the two tasks are shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Mean and standard error for correctly relocated objects for the two tasks: Object-to-position and Combined, as a function of interference (absent vs. present) and the type of interference (articulatory suppression vs. tapping).
A significant main effect of relocation condition (F(1;28)= 14.517; p<.001) was found showing that, differently from what has been shown previously for the recall of locations per
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se, the mean number of correctly relocated objects is significantly lower in the combined than in the object-to-position condition; a significant main effect of absence-presence of interference (F(1;28)= 8.49; p<.01) was also found showing that the presence of interference decreases the objects recall. The absence of a significant interaction suggests that both types of interference affect performance when children have to bind objects and occupied location. Position 11 year olds: a mixed factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the total number of position correctly relocated in Position and Combined tasks. The mean span and standard error for correctly relocated items in the two tasks are shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Mean and standard error for correctly relocated positions for the two tasks: Position and Combined, as a function of interference (absent vs. present) and the type of interference (articulatory suppression vs. tapping).
The following effect was found: a significant main effect of relocation condition (F(1;28)= 18.751; p<.001) showing that in the Combined condition the recalled of position was worse compared to the Position only condition. No main effect of interference was found (F(1;28)= 0.04; p=n.s.), and no effect due to the absence or the presence of interference (F(1;28)= 3.59; p=n.s.). These results suggest that, like in 5 year old children, recall of locations per se in 5 year old children was unaffected both by spatial tapping and by articulatory suppression. Object 11 year olds: a mixed factorial analyses of variance (ANOVA) was performed on the total number of objects correctly relocated in Object-To-Position and Combined tasks. The mean span and standard error for correctly relocated items in the two tasks are shown in Figure 5. The following effects were found: a significant main effect of relocation condition (F(1;28)= 13.031; p< .005) which shows that, like in younger children, the recall of objects is better in the Object to Position assignment than in the Combined condition. Furthermore a significant main effect of interference (F(1;28)= 22.331; p<.001) was found and, more
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interestingly, a significant interference x type of interference (Articulatory Suppression vs Tapping) (F(1;28)= 8.411; p< .01).
Figure 5. Mean and standard error for correctly relocated objects for the two tasks: Object-to-position and Combined, as a function of interference (absent vs. present) and the type of interference (articulatory suppression vs. tapping).
Newman-Keuls post-hoc comparisons indicated that in both relocation condition the number of correctly relocated objects is significantly lower with articulatory suppression (p<.001) whereas tapping does not influence performance (p=.207). Experiment 1 demonstrated that neither a concurrent spatial tapping task nor a rehearsal suppression interferes with the recall of locations in the Position only and Combined tasks and this is true for the two age groups considered (5 and 11 years of age). Regarding the tasks where object identities need to be remembered (object to position and combined) overall our results indicate that performance in younger children is affected by concurrent tasks that affect both visuo-spatial and verbal working memory components while older children‘s performance is impaired only when subvocal rehearsal is prevented. The absence of a selective effect but rather the effect of both types of interfering tasks considered may, on the one hand, suggest that these tasks put an excessive load on cognitive processes in children aged five years. However, the fact that the same interference tasks have no effect on the recall in the position only condition, a task of similar difficulty, renders the hypothesis that the concurrent tasks put an excessive load on cognitive processing in 5-year-old children highly unlikely. Data seem to indicate, as previous results have shown (Palmer, 2000), that children at this age use a ―mixed‖ type of coding, verbal and visual. To further analyse this point we decided to change methodology, and we manipulated the stimuli characteristics instead of using direct interferences. This change of procedure allows to examine the codes used by children with a more ecological experimental design.
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EXPERIMENT 2 In the present experiment, like in Experiment 1, the modified version of Postma and De Hann‘s (1996) paradigm (Cestari et al. 2007) was adopted to investigate encoding strategies in memory for object locations in children. However, in the experiment described below, only two (Object-to Position assignment and Combined) out of the three relocation tasks were examined since our main concern was to examine the codes used by 5- and 11-year-old children in associating objects to their location in space. Two stimuli characteristics, namely visual similarity and nameability, were manipulated in order to test their effect on children‘s performance. We compared the levels of performance observed with stimuli that could be readily named and with stimuli that were difficult to label verbally. A second characteristic manipulated consisted of making subject perform the task with object that were visually similar or dissimilar. As a summary the types of stimuli that were used can be divided into four categories: a) nameable visually dissimilar objects; b) nameable visually similar objects; c) non-nameable visually dissimilar objects and d) non- nameable visually similar objects. According to previous work (Hitch et al., 1989; Schumann-Hengsteler, 1992), one would expect 5-year-old children to use a visual encoding strategy. As a consequence one would expect to see an interfering effect of the visual similarity on children‘s performance in the number of object correctly relocated when objects share similar visual features. Thus, if 5 year-old children use a visual coding strategy they were expected to better recall dissimilar than similar items. However, on the basis of the results of Experiment 1, and of data by Palmer (2000), one would expect a dual code in children this age, and thus 5-year.old children should be affected both by visual similarity and nameability. On the other hand, we hypothesised an effect of nameability on the performance of 11-year-old children since the existing literature (Hitch et coll., 1989; Schumann-Hengesteler 1992) suggests a verbal coding of pictorial stimuli. We therefore expected older children to have a better performance with nameable stimuli than with non nameable ones.
METHOD Participants. A total of 92 children participated in the study. This sample was composed of 44 children aged 5 (mean age = 5 years and 7 months) and 48 children aged 11 (mean age=11 years and 3 months). Children were recruited from a nursery school and a junior high school in middle class areas in Rome, Italy. The parents gave their consent to the participation at the study. In each age group, children were randomly assigned to one of 4 groups according to the type of stimulus: visually dissimilar nameable objects; visually dissimilar non nameable objects; visually similar nameable objects and visually similar non nameable objects. They performed both types of tasks (object-to-position and combined) which order was counterbalanced across subjects. Materials. Like in Cestari et al. (2007) the stimuli used were 10x10 cm paper cards arranged in a 4x4 matrix on a table, with each cell measuring 10x10 cm. The stimuli were black and white line drawings of objects but unlike that previous study this time stimuli could be either familiar objects (nameable) or abstract objects which were difficult to name (nonnameable) and within each category, half the objects were all visually dissimilar while the other half comprised objects which all looked the same in shape and orientation (visually
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similar). Four types of stimuli were thus obtained by manipulating two characteristics of the objects: nameability (nameable vs. non-nameable) and visual similarity (visually similar or dissimilar). The four types of stimuli are depicted in Figure 6. The drawings of nameable familiar objects (similar and dissimilar) were selected from a larger group of items tested (Longoni, Scalisi, 1994; Nisi, Longoni, Snodgrass, 2000) on the basis of their high frequency in children‘s language (Marconi, Ott, Pesenti and Tavella, 1993). Some of these had already been used in Cestari et al. (2007). The non-nameables pictures were selected from a larger group of items in the Microsoft Word, from which we created different sets of stimuli. These sets were examined and evaluated by 5 independent judges chosen among perception experts. Each of them ranked the sets on the basis of their visual similarity, from the more homogeneous to the more dissimilar. The similar and dissimilar sets were chosen according to the classification. Procedure On the basis of previous studies (Cestari et al. 2007) and like in Experiment 1 younger children were presented with 5 paper cards, whilst older children with 8 cards.
Figure 6. Stimuli presented in Experiment 2: a) Dissimilar nameable; b) Dissimilar Non nameable; c) Similar nameable; d) Similar Non nameable.
Each child was tested individually in a quiet testing room in the school. Cards were randomly arranged over a paper matrix while children had their backs turned. When the array
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was ready, children studied the pictures placed on the matrix for a 30 s observation period. An interval of approximately 4 s during which children had again their backs turned and the experimenter gathered cards in a pile, mixed them, and then displayed them randomly in a column on a side of the matrix. Children were asked to relocate as accurately as possible the cards on the matrix. They were told there was no time restriction and the cards could be shifted to a new position as many times as necessary. Children of both age groups had to relocate pictures of objects within the matrix in two conditions. According to the Postma and De Hann‘s paradigm, one relocation task was the ―Object-to-Position Assignment‖, in which the position where objects were to be relocated was marked on the matrix, and the children were required to recall which object had previously been at each marked location; the other condition was the ―Combined‖ condition in which subjects had to relocate the cards on the matrix, without any marking of the original positions. Children performed the task 6 times for each of the tasks considered. The order of the relocation conditions was counterbalanced. In both conditions one parameter was measured: the number of objects correctly relocated.
Design Two separate mixed factorial analyses of variance (ANOVA) with two between- group factors, nameability and visual similarity and one within–group factor, relocation condition (object-to-position and combined), were performed on the total number of correctly relocated across the 6 repeated trials by children aged 5 and children aged 11.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Results for 5-year-old-age group will be reported separately from 11-year-olds. Table 1 shows the mean of number of objects correctly relocated, in the two different conditions in 5year-olds. Table 1. Mean and standard error for correctly relocated objects for the two tasks: Object-to-position and Combined with the four types of stimuli considered (dissimilar nameable, dissimilar non nameable, similar nameable, similar non nameable) 5-year-old children Dissimilar Nameable Dissimilar Non nameable Similar Nameable Similar Non nameable
Object-to-Position Mean St.Error 13,27 0.95 14 1.02 13.73 1.35 12.18 1.37
Combined Mean St.Error 10 1.04 9.73 0.96 12.09 0.74 7.45 0.9
5-year-olds—When the number of correctly relocated objects in children aged 5 was analysed, statistical analysis indicated a significant main effect of relocation condition, F(1,40)= 17.69, p.<.001, indicating that, as in Experiment 1, the mean number of correctly
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relocated objects is significantly lower in the combined than in the object-to-position condition. The analysis also revealed a significant main effect of nameability (i.e. whether objects can be easily named or not) F(1,40)= 4.58, p.<.05, and a significant nameability x visual similarity interaction, F(1,40)= 6.14, p<.05. Post hoc comparisons indicated that, in both relocation tasks, the number of correctly relocated objects is significantly lowest with visually similar non-nameable than with all other objects types. 11-year-olds —When the number of correctly relocated objects in 11-year- old children was analysed, statistical analysis indicated a significant main effect of relocation condition, F(1,44)= 26.76, p.<.01, showing also in this case performance is always higher when relocation positions are premarked than when children have to recall them. The analysis also revealed a significant main effect of visual similarity, F(1,44)= 7.93, p.<.01. Results thus show that independently of whether objects are nonsense or readily named, visual similarity significantly lowers performance. Table 2 shows the mean number of objects correctly relocated, in the two different conditions in 11-year-olds. Experiment 2 demonstrates that in younger children the worst performance is observed with visually similar non nameable objects. The fact that performance with the latter type of stimulus is worse than that with visually similar objects that can be readily named suggests that 5-year-old children do rely to some extent also on verbal coding. In older children visual similarity affects performance whether stimuli were built to be readily named or difficult to name. Table 2. Mean and standard error for correctly relocated objects for the two tasks: Object-to-position and Combined with the four types of stimuli considered (dissimilar nameable, dissimilar non nameable, similar nameable, similar non nameable) 11-year-old children Dissimilar Nameable Dissimilar Non nameable Similar Nameable Similar Non nameable
Object-to-Position Mean St.Error 35 2.74 34.92 2.23 31 1.69 28.5 2.13
Mean 29.25 28.49 25.83 20.25
Combined St.Error 1.87 2.50 2.42 2.68
This result can lead to two interpretations: either that older children do not phonologically recode or that they verbally code all the stimuli presented. Considering findings in the literature, and the effect of articulatory suppression shown in Experiment 1, the first interpretation is highly unlikely. Rather, it appears that older children verbally recode all stimuli presented but rely to some extent also on visual coding for completing the task. It must be noted that Hitch et al. (1989) found evidence of a visual component in older children‘s recall with articulatory suppression and Brandimonte, Hitch and Bishop (1992) found the same with adults, suggesting that both visual and verbal component remain available. Overall results of Experiment 2 lend support to Palmer‘s hypothesis of a continuum of dual coding (Palmer, 2000).
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CONCLUSION Two experiments are presented which investigate how children encode the location of objects in the framework of Baddeley‘s model of working memory (Baddeley, 1986; Baddeley and Hitch, 1974) and using a version adapted for children of Postma and De Haan‘s paradigm (Cestari et al. 2007). Overall results indicate that, as suggested by Palmer (2000), there is during development an intermediate period of dual, verbal and visual, coding and that in older children and in adults the visual code remains available. The experiments presented here show that 5-year-old children do not show, as one might have expected on the basis of previous literature, a pure visual coding of the pictorial material to be remembered, but rather used a mixed code based both on visual and verbal information. Later, in children aged 11, the coding seems to be, as expected, mainly phonological, although, as shown by data on visual similarity effects in Experiment 2, also the visual component remains available. Let us analyse in more detail the data of our two experiments. First, the different effect of secondary interference tasks on the position-only and the object-to-position tasks indicate that two separate processes are involved in short-term object location memory: positional encoding per se and object-to-position assignment. This result provides strong support for previous findings (Cestari et al., 2007) that have shown different developmental patterns for the relocation tasks considered: children first improve their ability in remembering the spatial positions per se and in object-position assignment. It is only later that children improve in their ability to perform these two tasks together in the combined condition. A further aspect that was examined here, particularly in Experiment 2, was the direct comparison of children‘s performances in two of the three experimental conditions included in the paradigm: the object-to-position and the combined task. We expected the two groups of children to show a similar trend in the two experimental conditions: higher scores in the object-to-position condition than in the combined condition, as reported by Postma and De Hann (1996), in adults, and by Schumann-Hengsteler (1992) and by Cestari et al. (2007) in children. Accordingly, when the number of objects correctly relocated was analyzed in 5- and 11-yearold children, data indicate that children‘s performance is always better when the positions are premarked, in the object-to-position association condition, than when subjects have to remember them in the combined condition. Our data provide support for the hypothesis that children have more difficulties in the combined condition, since, as has been proposed in adults by Postma and De Hann (1996) and Walker, et al., (1994) and by SchumannHengsteler (1992) and Cestari et al. (2007) in children, they seem to be performing two different tasks. Let us now turn to the analysis of the working memory components involved in encoding and short-term maintenance of object location information in children of different ages. Regarding the recall of positions, results in 5 year olds showed no selective effect of tapping on the total number of positions recalled and no effect of articulatory suppression. The insensitivity of spatial recall to the tapping interference might seem surprising although it could be related to the use of a matrix in which objects had to be relocated. The matrix might provide such an important frame of reference (Kemps, 1999) that subjects remember the stimuli as a visual configuration, thus decreasing significantly the amount of spatial information to remember. Tapping is known to interfere more with spatial than visual aspect of the configuration to recall. Other authors have also made a distinction between static
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format, such as a matrix in which locations are presented simultaneously, and dynamic formats like in the Corsi test (Pickering et al., 2001) suggesting that they may depend upon different visuo-spatial working memory processes. A related idea was proposed by Lecerf and de Ribaupierre (2005) who suggested a form of ―intrinsic encoding‖ (as opposed to ―extrinsic encoding‖) which involves a pattern encoding leading to a global image of the stimulus. The visuo-spatial working memory process underlying the latter type of encoding may well be insensitive to a spatial suppression such as spatial tapping. As in children aged 5, those aged 11 did not show any effect of tapping interference on the recall of the position-only task. It is interesting to note that adults‘ performance on the recall of static matrices has been shown to be unaffected by a spatial tapping concurrent task (Pickering et al., 2001). To explain their results these authors have suggested that subjects might be using a more visual strategy, with little reliance on spatial processing. These data are in line with Della Sala, Gray, Baddeley, Allamano and Wilson‘s results (1999) which have shown, in a selective interference experiment, that the Visual Pattern Test and the Corsi test were found to show a double dissociation pattern of interference from visual and spatio-sequential subsidiary tasks, respectively. Regarding the binding of objects to their location, a general effect of interference was found on the number of objects correctly relocated by 5-year-old children. Both articulatory suppression and tapping decrease performance in the Object-to-Position and Combined tasks. The absence of a selective effect but rather the effect of both types of interfering tasks considered may, on the one hand, suggest that these tasks put an excessive load on cognitive processes in children aged five years. However, the consideration previously discussed that the same interference tasks have no effect in the position-only condition, a task that cannot be considered to be less difficult (for spans in each task in children of different ages see Cestari et al., 2007), renders the hypothesis that the concurrent tasks put an excessive load on cognitive processing in this age group highly unlikely. On the other hand these results may indicate, as previous data have shown (Palmer, 2000), that children at this age use a ―mixed‖ type of coding susceptible to be disrupted by both verbal and visuo-spatial interferences. In children of 11 years our data on the number of objects correctly relocated show a selective effect of articulatory suppression. This result strongly supports the idea that children at this age, like adults, recode pictorial stimuli in a phonological way. To further examine the encoding strategies used by 5- and 11-year-old children specifically in tasks that require an association between objects and their specific locations, two stimuli characteristics were manipulated in Experiment 2:a) how easily they could be named (nameability) and b) how easily they could be visually discriminated (visual similarity). Four groups of stimuli were thus used: a) nameable visually dissimilar objects; b) nameable visually similar objects; c) non-nameable visually dissimilar picture-objects and d) non- nameable visually similar objects. In 5-year-old children performance is detrimentally affected when objects are similar and non nameable. Our results suggest that when younger children are given 30 seconds to observe the to-be-remembered stimuli they seem to be able to give verbal labels, at least to the nameable objects, and to utilize these labels for a verbal coding. Younger children thus seem to use a mixed strategy, although mainly visual, with dissimilar objects. When the main strategy is hampered by visual similarity and they are not able to discriminate visually similar objects, younger children are forced to adopt a different strategy thus naming the objects. With stimuli that look alike and are difficult to label, performance drops in both the experimental conditions considered, object-to-position and
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combined, because of visual similarity which affects their main coding strategy, the visual code, and because of the lack of possibility to give objects a name. In 11-year-old children, a main effect of visual similarity effect was found in our experiment. The visual dissimilar objects are better recalled than the visually similar objects in both the experimental conditions considered, object-to-position and combined. Two alternative interpretations are possible. The first is that older children do not use a verbal code although this seems unrealistic since adults (Postma and De Hann, 1996) and younger children in our study make use of them. The other hypothesis is that older children, having reached maturity in the phonological loop function, use a verbal code even when they are engaged in remembering stimuli that are difficult to name. We can hypothesize that older children use a mixed coding strategy, but the effect of the nameability does not appear because children give a name to all stimuli in an equal measure. In this way, only the effect of visual similarity is visible, and it appears when the task is more difficult since the objects are difficult to discriminate (visually similar objects). The latter interpretation is in line with what has been found in adult subjects. In Postma and De Hann‘s study (1996) a main effect of the articulatory suppression, which decreases the performance in adults, is evident in the objectto-position association. The latter was found both with nameable objects (letters) and with nonsense unfamiliar stimuli difficult to name (a selection of Hebrew characters on which a lower-case ―c‖ was superimposed). The fact that there was a substantial articulatory suppression effect with the nonsense stimuli suggests that subjects relied to some extent upon verbal coding even when the use of verbal labels was not straightforward. This was confirmed by subjects reporting afterwards that they usually invented names for the nonsense objects. It must also be noted that in adults the visual similarity effect is evident in specific circumstances, namely when the material is presented visually and the verbal code is prevented by the articulatory suppression (Hitch and Walker, 1991; Logie, Della Sala, Wynn and Baddeley, 2000). On the whole, our results provide evidence that usually, in older children, the visual component is present but masked in most cases by a major use of phonological memory codes (Hitch et al., 1988, 1989). In conclusion, our data provide support for the idea that the ability to use visual codes is not lost completely in older children and adults but play a minor role in recall for easily labelled visual stimuli. It therefore appears that, as suggested by Palmer (2000), visual and verbal coding may exist alongside each other forming a continuum, and that executive processes are responsible for representations towards either the visual-spatial sketch pad or the phonological loop. In general, together with our previous study (Cestari et al., 2007), we have shown how children develop from the age of 5 to the age of 11 different abilities related to their working memory system both in terms of capacity, namely the number of positions and objects remembered, but also in terms of specific processes such as the ability to bind together objects and locations and to switch codes when necessary.
REFERENCES Baddeley, A. D. (2000). The episodic buffer: a new component of working memory? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 417–423. Baddeley, A., Gathercole, S. and Papagno, C. (1998). The Phonological Loop as a Language Learning Device. Psychological Review, 105 (1), 158-73.
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Baddeley, A.D. and Hitch, G.J. (1974). Working Memory. In: G.A. Bower (Ed). Recent advances in learning and motivation, (Vol.8, pp. 47-90). New York: Academic Press. Baddeley,A.D. and Lieberman, K.(1980). Spatial working memory. In: R. Nickerson, Editor, Attention and performance, (VIII, pp. 521-539). Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associate Inc. Brandimonte M. A., Hitch G. J., Bishop D. V. M. (1992). Influence of short-term memory codes on visual image processing: Evidence from image transformation task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, memory, and cognition, 18 (1, 157-165. Brown, M. (1977). Examination of visual and verbal coding in preschool children. Child Development, 48, 38-45. Cattaneo,Z., Postma, A., Vecchi, T. (2007). The picture superiority effect in working memory for spatial and temporal order. Psychologia, 50, 102-109. Cestari, V., Lucidi, A., Pieroni, L., Rossi-Arnaud, C. (2007). Memory for object location: a span study in children. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61 (1), 13-20. Conte, A., Cornoldi, C., Pazzaglia, F., and Sanavio, S. (1995). The development of the visuospatial working memory and it‘s role in spatial memory. Ricerche di Psicologia, 2, 19, 95-113. Della Sala, S., Gray, C., Baddeley, A.D., Allamano, N., Wilson, L. (1999). Pattern span: a tool for unwelding visuo-spatial memory. Neuropychologia, 37, 1189-1199. Dent, K. and Smyth, M.M. (2005). Verbal coding and the storage of form-position associations in visual-spatial short-term memory. Acta Psychologia, 120, 113-140. Hamilton, C. J., Coates, R.O., and Heffernan, T. (2003). What develops in visuo-spatial working memory development? European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 15(1), 4369. Hasher, L. and Zacks, R.T. (1979). Automatic and effortful processes in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 108, 356-395. Hayes,D. and Shulze, A.(1977). Visual encoding in preschoolers serial retention. Child Development, 66, 1066-1070. Hitch, G. J., Halliday, M. S., Dodd, A., Littler, J. E. (1989). Development of rehearsal in short-term memory: Differences between pictorial and spoken stimuli. Journal of Developmental Psychology, 7, 347-362. Hitch, G.J., Halliday, M. S. Schaafstal, A. M. and Heffernan, (1991). Speech, ―Inner Speech‖ and the Development of Short-Term Memory: Effects of Picture-labeling on Recall. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 51(2), 220-234. Hitch, G.J., Halliday, M. S., Schaafstal, A. M. and Schaargen, J.M. (1988). Visual working memory in young children. Memory and Cognition, 16(2), 120-132. Hitch, G.J. and Walker, P. (1991). Visuo-spatial working memory in children and in adults. Paper presented at the International Conference on Memory, University of Lancaster, United Kingdom. Hitch, G, Woodin, M. E., and Baker, S. (1989b). Visual and phonological components of working memory in children. Memory and Cognition, 17(2), 175-185. Kemps, E. (1999). Effects of complexity on visuo-spatial working memory. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 11 (3), 335-356. Kemps, E., De Rammelaere, S. and Desmet, T. (2000). The Development of Working Memory: Exploring the Complementarity of Two Models. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 77, 89–109.
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Lecerf, T. and De Ribaupierre, A. (2005). Recognition in a visuo-spatial task: the effect of presentation. European Journal of cognitive Psychology, 17, 47-75. Logie, R.H., Della Sala, S., Wynn, V., Baddeley, A.D. (2000). Visual similarity in immediate verbal serial recall. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53A, 626-646. Logie, R.H. and Marchetti, C. (1991). Visuo-spatial working memory: Visual, spatial or central executive? In: Logie, R. H. and Denis, M. (Eds.) Mental Images in Human Cognition (pp.105-115), Amsterdam: North Holland Press. Logie, R.H., and Pearson, D.G. (1997). The inner eye and the inner scribe of visuo-spatial working memory: Evidence from developmental fractionation. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9 (3), 241-257. Longoni, A.M, and Scalisi, T.G. (1994). Developmental aspects of phonemic and visual similarity effects: Further evidence in Italian children. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 17(1), 57-71. McKenzie, B., Bull, R. and Gray, C. (2003). The effects of phonological and visuo-spatial interference on children‘s arithmetical performance. Educational and Child Psychology, 20 (3), 93-108. Marconi L., Ott M., Pesenti E., Ratti D., and Tavella M. (1993). Lessico Elementare. Dati statistici sull'italiano letto e scritto dai bambini delle elementari. Bologna: Zanichelli. Nisi, M., Longoni, A.M., and Snodgrass, J.G. (2000) Misure italiane per l‘accordo sul nome, familiarità ed età di acquisizione per le 260 figure di Snodgrass e Vanderwart (1980). Giornale Italiano di Psicologia, 1, 205-218. Orsini, A., Grossi, D., Capitani, E., Laiacona, M., Papagno, C., and Vallar, G. (1987). Verbal and spatial immediate memory span. Italian Journal of Neurological Science, 8, 539-548. Palmer, S. (2000). Working memory: a developmental study of phonological recoding. Memory, 8(3), 179-93. Pickering, S.J., Gathercole, S.E., Hall, M., and Lloyd, S. (2001). Development of memory for pattern and path: Further evidence for the fractionation of visuo-spatial memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54A, 397-420. Postma, A., and De Haan, E.H.F. (1996). What was where? Memory for object location. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49A, 178-199. Postma, A., Kessels, R.P.C., Van Asselen, M. (2004). The neuropsychology of object location memory. In C. Auen (Ed.), Remembering where: Advances in understanding spatial memory. Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum associates. Rossi-Arnaud, C., Alfano, F. and Longoni, A.M. (1999). The development of short-term memory for object locations in children. Proceedings of the Seventh European Workshop on Imagery and Cognition. Brunel University, UK. ISBN 1-902316-02-9. Shoqierat, M. A. and Mayes, A. R. (1991). Disproportionate incidental spatial and recall deficit in amnesia. Neuropsychologia, 29(8), 749-769. Schumann-Hengsteler, R. (1992). The development of visuo-spatial memory: How to remember location. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 15(4), 455-471. Siemens, L., Guttentag, R. E., and McIntyre, M. (1989). Age differences in memory for itemidentity and occupied-location information. American Journal of Psychology, 102(1), 5368.
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Smyth, M.M., Scholey, K.A.(1994). Characteristics of spatial memory span: Is there an analogy to the word length effect, based on movement time ?. Quartely Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47A, 91-117. Walker, P., Hitch, G. J., Doyle, A., and Porter, T. (1994). The development of short-term visual memory in young children. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 17(1), 73-89.
Advances in Psychology Research. Volume 78 Ed: Alexandra M. Columbus
ISBN: 978-1-61209-442-7 © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Chapter 4
THE ROLE OF CONTEXTUAL CUES AND LOGICAL TRAINING IN DIFFERENTIATING CONDITIONAL FROM BICONDITIONAL STATEMENTS IN INFERENCE TASK
Olimpia Matarazzo and Ivana Baldassarre Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Italy
ABSTRACT In two studies we examined the role of contextual cues and logical training in differentiating conditional from biconditional statements (i.e. the statements of the form ―if p then q‖ from the statements of the form ―if and only if p then q‖) in deductive inference task (i.e. establishing which conclusions necessarily follow from syllogisms whose major premise is formed by a conditional clause). We assume that the well-documented tendency to interpret conditionals as biconditionals is due not only to pragmatic factors, such as a large amount of literature posits, but also to cognitive factors: it is much easier to understand a symmetrical (biconditional) relation between two states of affairs rather than an asymmetrical (conditional) one. We expected that this tendency would be inhibited not only by the presence of contextual cues - as alternative antecedents (e.g. c, m, r) showing that the consequent (q) can be implied by other states of affairs besides the one (p) presented in conditional clause - but also by a ―logical‖ training, that is, by elucidating the formal difference between conditionals and biconditionals. On the contrary, we expected that the statement content (abstract vs. thematic) did not affect the interpretation of conditionals as biconditionals. In the first study, three hundred twenty participants performed in counterbalanced order a conditional and a biconditional inference task introduced by a very short scenario. The experimental conditions varied in function of the following variables: discrimination between conditionals and biconditionals (embedded in the scenarios vs. inferred by participants after reading the scenarios), information facilitating the appropriate interpretation of the statements (present vs. absent), content (abstract vs. thematic). The results revealed that (1) biconditional syllogisms were easily solved in any experimental conditions; (2) conditionals generated a large amount
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Olimpia Matarazzo and Ivana Baldassarre of patterns of inferences, among which the most frequent was the biconditional one when facilitating information (i.e. alternative antecedents) was absent; on the contrary, when this information was presented, the conditional pattern of inferences was the most frequent one and the biconditional one decreased dramatically. In the second study, two hundred participants performed a conditional and a biconditional task introduced merely by the respective statements. The manipulated variables were: logical training (present vs. absent) and content (abstract vs. thematic). The results were analogous to those of the first study. On the whole, these experiments corroborate the idea that (1) biconditional interpretation of conditional statements - reconstructed from the participants‘ patterns of inferences – is due both to cognitive and pragmatic factors and that (2) reasoners are able to rectify this misinterpretation both in presence of contextual cues and of logical training. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.
Keywords: Conditionals, biconditionals, inferential task.
INTRODUCTION The purpose of this paper is to investigate how conditional and biconditional statements – i.e. the statements of the form, respectively, ―if p then q‖ and ―if and only if p then q‖ – are interpreted in inference task and whether their interpretation is affected by contextual or general information aimed at clarifying their difference. In propositional logic, conditionals are conceived as material implication (p → q), that is as statements formed by two clauses connected by an asymmetric relation: the antecedent (p) implies the consequent (q) but not vice versa. Thus, the antecedent is sufficient but not necessary for the consequent, which, on the contrary, is necessarily implied by the antecedent. Therefore, conditionals are false when p is true and q is false, and are true in the remaining combinations of truth-value of p and q (true p and true q; false p and false q; false p and true q). Conditional syllogism – an argument whose major premise is an ―if p then q‖ utterance followed by one of the four possible minor (categorical) premises: affirmation of the antecedent (p), affirmation of the consequent (q), negation of the antecedent (not-p), negation of the consequent (not-q) – allows to endorse only two valid inferences: q from minor premise p (Modus Ponens or MP) and not-p from minor premise not-q (Modus Tollens or MT). No valid inference can be drawn from the affirmation of the consequent and from the denial of the antecedent (see Table 1). The not-q conclusion endorsed from not-p and the p conclusion endorsed from q are called, respectively, fallacy of Denial of the Antecedent (DA) and fallacy of Affirmation of the Consequent (AC). In propositional logic, biconditionals correspond to the material equivalence (p ↔ q), in which the two clauses p and q are connected by a symmetric relation: p implies q and q implies p. Thus, each of them is a necessary and sufficient condition of the other. Biconditionals are true when antecedent and consequent are both true or both false, and are false otherwise (true p and false q; false p and true q). In biconditional syllogism, where the major premise is represented by ―if and only if p then q‖ statement, all the four inferences MP, MT, AC and DA - are valid (see Table 1).
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In everyday reasoning the ―if... then‖ statements (or –in brief– if statements) are widely utilized to formulate and test hypotheses, to express possibilities or states of affairs and to draw conclusions from them, to establish relations between events (e.g. inclusive, temporal, causal, counterfactual), to designate illocutionary (e.g. treats, promises, advices) and deontic acts (e.g. obligations, permissions), and so on. The intrinsic polysemy of natural language makes it possible to express such a variety of meanings carried out by the same lexical entry. If-sentences are extremely variable depending on extra-logical aspects, such as linguistic and pragmatic factors: people understand the same statement in different ways as a function of its pragmatic modulation (Barrouillet and Lecas, 2002; Fillenbaum, 1976; Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 2002; Johnson-Laird, Byrne, and Girotto, 2008). Table 1. Conditional and biconditional syllogisms
Conclusion for
If p then q (conditional) Major If and only if p then q Premise p (biconditional) If p then q q If and only if p then q
q
Minor Premise q
non-p
non-q
indeterminate conclusion
indeterminate conclusion
non-p
p
non-q
non-p
For example, since in natural language propositions of the form ―if and only if p then q‖ (iff) are scarcely used, ―if‖ encompasses also the meaning of iff (Fillenbaum, 1975, 1976; Lolli, 2002). The polysemy of ―if‖ is one of the reasons that can be advocated in order to explain the robust empirical evidence emerging from psychological research, i.e. the great variability of naive reasoners‘ performances in conditional reasoning. Indeed, the inferences drawn by people without any prior knowledge of logic vary as a function of the task proposed, experimental instructions, statements‘ content, contextual cues, level of agreement with conclusions, level of cognitive development, and so on (Barrouillet and Lecas 1998; Cummins, 1995; Cummins, Lubart, Alksnis, and Rist, 1991; Dieussaert, Schaeken, and d‘Ydewalle, 2002; Girotto, 1990; Newstead, Ellis, Evans, and Dennis, 1997; Quinn and Markovits, 1998, 2002; Thompson, 1994, 1995, 2000; Vadeboncoeur and Markovits, 1999). In inference task, such variability barely affects MP, that is endorsed by almost all the people, whereas it is more evident with MT, that is endorsed less than it should be from a logical point of view, and with DA and AC fallacious inferences, whose frequency seems largely to depend on the above mentioned factors (see for review, Evans, 2002; Evans, Newstead and Byrne, 1993). Although the number of theories elaborated to explain human reasoning – e. g. mental logic (Braine and O‘Brien, 1991), mental models (Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 1991, 2002), dual process (Evans and Over, 1996; Sloman, 1996; Stanovich and West, 2000), probabilistic approach (Evans and Over, 2004; Evans, Handley, and Over, 2003; Oaksford. and Chater, 2003; Oaksford, Chater, and Larkin, 2000) – take in account these factors in different or opposite ways, many of them acknowledge that the inferential process starts on the basis of the interpretative process. Thus, the way in which conditional statements are understood
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becomes central when investigating the features of human conditional reasoning (Beller and Spada, 2003; Schroyens, Schaeken, and Dieussaert, 2008; Thompson, 2000). In this paper we focused on biconditional interpretation of conditionals in inference task, i.e. the interpretation that people is supposed to give when drawing all four inferences in conditional syllogisms (Evans, 2002; Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 2002; Verschueren, Schaeken and d'Ydewalle, 2003). According to mental logic theories (Braine and O‘Brien, 1991; Rips, 1994), in conditional inference task, DA and AC ―fallacies‖ could be due, respectively, to the inversion (if not-p then not-q) and the conversion (if q then p) of the conditional statement, i.e. the invited inferences (Geis and Zwicky, 1971) elicited, as well as many authors (e.g. Horn, 2000, van der Auwera, 1997) posit, by the pragmatics of language, in particular by Grice's (1975) maxim of quantity. The mental models theory (Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 2002) states that biconditional interpretation derives from pragmatic modulation of the ‗core‘ meaning of conditionals (i.e. the meaning compatible with the material implication): this interpretation originates from semantic or contextual information which convey the idea that the antecedent is both necessary and sufficient for the consequent. For instance, statements that involve binary terms are more likely to be interpreted as biconditionals (Legrenzi, 1970; Barrouillet and Lecas, 1998, 2002). More specifically, the biconditional interpretation corresponds to the construction of two explicit models of the initial representation of the conditional clause: the model with the co-occurrence of p and q, and the model with the co-occurrence of not-p and not-q. Instead, the representation of conditionals requests the construction of an additional model, contemplating the co-occurrence of not-p and q. In the frame of this theory, some authors have shown a developmental trend in the interpretation of conditionals according to which from childhood to adulthood it evolves from a conjunctive to a conditional model, with the biconditional one being typical of adolescents (Barrouillet and Lecas, 1998, 2002; Barrouillet, Grosset, and Lecas, 2000; Markovits and Barrouillet, 2002). On the contrary, so far as the frame of mental logic theory is concerned, Rumain, Connell, and Braine (1983) showed that children were able to inhibit the biconditional representation of if when the invited inferences were experimentally countermanded (e.g. by presenting alternative antecedents yielding the same consequent). Similar results have been found also recently (Daniel and Klaczynski, 2006). The probabilistic approach (e.g. Geiger and Oberauer, 2007; Oaksford, Chater, and Larkin, 2000) assumes that people draw inferences not on the basis of deductive principles but according to the probabilistic strategies they use for everyday reasoning. Thus, in conditional arguments any conclusion would be endorsed as a function of its estimated conditional probability, given the minor premise. Such evaluation is based on background knowledge which makes available the frequency with which the contingencies described in the conclusion and in the minor premise co-occur, compared with the frequency of their non co-occurrence. So, if the conditional probability of a conclusion is estimated to be high, it will be endorsed. Among the pragmatic factors affecting the representation of conditionals with thematic content, a well documented role is played by the availability of alternative antecedents, which influences the perceived sufficiency and necessity relations between the antecedent and the consequent (Cummins et al., 1991; Cummins, 1995; Dieussaert et al., 2002; Thompson, 1994, 1995, 2000). Perceived sufficiency can be defined as the degree to which the occurrence of an event is held to guarantee the occurrence of another event; instead, perceived necessity can be
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defined as the degree to which the absence of an event is held to guarantee the absence of another one (Thompson, 2000). The perceived sufficiency of p influences the acceptance rates of MP and MT inferences and it is undermined when the consequent doesn‘t follow from the antecedent, that is in presence of disabling conditions (Cummins et al., 1991). The perceived necessity of p influences the acceptance rates of DA and AC inferences and it is undermined when the same consequent follows from alternative antecedents. When people discover or imagine at least an alternative antecedent leading to the same consequent, they could not endorse DA and AC inferences whereas, when they are unable to imagine more than one antecedent, they understand it as the sufficient and necessary condition for the consequent: thus, conditional is interpreted as biconditional (Manketelow and Fairly, 2000; Quinn and Markovits, 1998, 2002; Thompson, 1994, 1995, 2000). Several authors posit that the knowledge stored in long-term memory plays a central role in perceiving the necessity and sufficiency relations. For example, Quinn and Markovits (1998, 2002) have shown that the strength of association between antecedent and consequent affects the interpretation of their relation in causal conditionals: the greater the degree of association between antecedent and consequent, the more difficult it is to activate and retrieve information about alternative antecedents. Thus, the relation between antecedent and consequent is conceived as necessary and sufficient and all four conclusions tend to be drawn in the inference task. The opposite process occurs in the presence of a weak association between antecedent and consequent: in this case, an indeterminate conclusion is the more frequent response for DA and AC arguments. The research on necessity and sufficiency relations enables to explain the content effect in inference task and, more generally, in deductive reasoning. Such findings are compatible, as Thompson (2000) affirms, with both mental logic and mental models theories. In terms of mental logic theory, they show that the information about the relation between antecedent and consequent affects the interpretive component underlying the inferential component of reasoning. In terms of mental models theory, they highlight that the type of propositional content of the premises allows reasoners to build or block explicit models and counterexamples. Since these studies are generally conducted with knowledge-rich conditionals, providing semantic and contextual information, the question about the factors influencing the interpretation of abstract conditionals, where antecedent and consequent are arbitrarily associated in neutral context, is not sufficiently clarified. Some authors (e.g. Ahn and Graham, 1999) look at necessity and sufficiency relations as a central explanatory concept, and found that it affected the comprehension of conditionals also when presenting in abstract form, thus corroborating the claim of domain-general features of human reasoning. Instead, Verschueren, Schaeken and Schroyens (2006), found that the assessment of the necessity and sufficiency in abstract causal context hardly mediate the conditional reasoning. Among other things, their study showed that participants understood more easily a biconditional representation of the causal relation (i.e. the cause is sufficient and necessary for the effect) rather than a conditional one (i.e. the cause is sufficient but non necessary for the effect). In their developmental account of conditional reasoning, Markovits and Barrouillet (2002) attempted to explain how the ability to reason with abstract premises develops from concrete reasoning, by resorting to two hypotheses: Gentner's (1983) structure-mapping model of analogical reasoning, according to which the concrete forms of reasoning would be analogically represented in a way independent from their specific content, and Karmiloff-
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Smith‘s (1995) notion of representational redescription, suggesting that information is stored in increasingly abstract forms. As these processes increase with development, children and adolescents are more likely to produce biconditional inferences with abstract premises than with realistic ones (Markovits and Vachon, 1990; Venet and Markovits, 2001), whereas adults should be less affected by statement content. Beller and Spada (2003) propose a dual source theory according to which form and content of an argument represent two distinct sources of inference, domain-general and domain-specific, respectively. Through the argument‘s form people are able to understand the relation between basic propositions by means of logical connectors (form competence); the specific conceptual knowledge about the content relations (e.g. spatial relations, necessity and sufficiency relations) represents an additional inferential source, from which also people can draw valid deductions (content competence). Persons can use either sources to produce an inference. Nevertheless when the content relations are in contrast with the structure of the premises, or when the latter are understood in a different way than that intended by the experimenter, the deductive competence prevails on the logical competence (content effects). In accordance with this theory (see also Politzer, 1986), in this paper we tested if people is sensitive to both the two sources of inferences in performing reasoning tasks with conditionals and biconditionals. We speculate that the tendency to understand conditionals as biconditionals derives not only from pragmatic factors, such as conversational implicatures, but also from cognitive factors, i.e. the ―natural‖ propensity of human mind toward symmetry - as well as documented by archeologists (e.g. Kohn and Mithen,1999) and by Gestalt principles of visual organization (e.g. Wertheimer, 1923) - and toward cognitive closure (Zeigarnick, 1927; Webster and Kruglanski, 1997). Consequently, we assume that symmetrical relations such as those expressed by biconditionals are much easier to understand than the asymmetrical ones, such as those uttered by conditionals. Therefore, reasoning with biconditionals would be more natural and straightforward than reasoning with conditionals. The principle of ―conditional perfection‖ postulated by Geis and Zwicky (1971), according to which ―if p then q‖ utterances tend to be completed in virtue of pragmatic invited inferences, would be, in our opinion, an ubiquitous principle, at least among naive reasoners, since it would grasp the most automatic meaning of ―if....then‖ sentential connective. Obviously the polysemy of if and the rare use of iff sentences in everyday language are the semantic preconditions that make the conditional perfection possible. Only the inhibition of such a tendency would would make it possible to have different interpretations of ―if....then‖. The conditional interpretation would be activated, in our opinion, by two sources: from the presence or the retrieval of counterexamples (e.g. alternative antecedents) showing that the antecedent is sufficient but not necessary for the consequent – according to content-dependent source posited by Beller and Spada (2003) – or from a more deeply comprehension of ―if ... then‖ connector, allowing to take it literally without extending its meaning, according to form-dependent source postulated by Beller and Spada (2003). It is worthy specifying that content source encompasses both semantic and contextual factors, since both interact in the comprehension of the relation between the events: in other terms, the meaning of a proposition derives from both the meaning of its constituents and contextual cues.
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OVERVIEW OF THE PRESENT STUDIES The main goal of these two studies was to examine whether people is sensitive both to contextual cues and logical training in differentiating conditional from biconditional statements in inference task. In addition we investigated whether the content of the utterances – abstract vs. thematic – affects their respective interpretation. Finally, in the first study we evaluated also the possible influence of the way in which the discrimination between conditionals and biconditionals was structured (use of the sentential connectives vs. description of the events relation followed by the choice between if or iff sentences). Although numerous studies have examined the biconditional interpretation of conditionals, there are only a few works contrasting conditional with biconditional statements in inference task (e.g. Schroyens and Byrne, 1998, cit. in Schroyens, 2008). In fact, the study of biconditional reasoning has been largely neglected in the literature of the field and this, in our view, represents a gap that needs to be filled because the use of co-implication is an important part of everyday deductive reasoning. Sometimes people really intend to express a biconditional relation between the events even though, in line with their respective frequency in daily language, if is used in place of iff. On the contrary, other times people express a conditional relation but deal it as a biconditional one and make fallacious inferences. In any case, in our opinion, biconditional reasoning in se deserves more attention than it receives. Therefore in both experiments we compared conditionals and biconditionals in order to examine the factors that differentiate them and to scrutinize the features of each of the two types of reasoning. On the basis of the idea that biconditionals are straightforward to understand, we expected that participants would correctly perform biconditional inference task, regardless of the presence/absence of the contextual or logical factors aiming to differentiate them from conditionals, and irrespective of their abstract vs. thematic content. As far as conditionals are concerned, we supposed that participants would inhibit the automatic tendency towards the biconditional interpretation through both a content-based process and a logical process, i.e. a domain-specific and a domain-general process of reasoning. Therefore, in the first study we provided contextual cues, i.e. alternative antecedents, in order to elucidate the asymmetric conditional relation between antecedent and consequent, and we added information stressing the one-to-one relation between antecedent and consequent for biconditionals. In the second study we clarified the difference between conditionals and biconditionals from a logical point of view, that of propositional calculus. The first procedure is content-dependent because the alternative antecedents refer to the specific conditional presented in the task and it does not permit to determine whether the correct interpretation that they are supposed to activate would be generalized to any conditional. The second procedure is form-dependent because it first provides the general criterion for discriminating conditionals from biconditionals and then requests its application to specific contingencies, according to the proper deductive procedure. In the first study the inference tasks were introduced by short scenarios aimed at creating the frame in which the major premise (conditional or biconditional) of the subsequent syllogisms could be considered as true and the minor premises could be considered as liable to occur. To deactivate possible disabling conditions, the inferences requested were explicitly referred to the specific domain depicted in the scenarios. In order to reduce the influence of
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pragmatic factors, the information presented in each scenario was limited to describe a factual relation between the events. Conditionals with thematic content referred to a causal or a quasi-causal relations, abstract conditionals and all biconditionals referred to arbitrary or associative relations, described in fictional terms. The role of previous knowledge was quasieliminated with abstract contents and was reduced with the thematic ones. In the second study, focused on general-domain reasoning, any contextual information was removed and the statement acting as major premise of the syllogisms was presented alone. Participants were requested to read it and then to choose the logical conclusion deriving from its combination with each of the four contingencies acting as minor premise. In this study the distinction between thematic and abstract content was more emphasized: the abstract statements referred to arbitrary association between antecedent and consequent, but the thematic ones concerned familiar situations. So, the role of background knowledge was minimized or eliminated only with abstract contents. In this way a possible distinction between abstract vs. thematic content could be assessed more clearly than the in first study. As we mentioned before, in the first study we also examined whether demanding to infer the appropriate sentential connective (―if.. then‖ vs. ―if and only if ....then‖ ) to express the factual relations described in the scenarios would improve the participants‘ capability of discriminating between conditionals and biconditionals. To this end, we contrasted this procedure with the usual one, demanding to infer the events relation from their linguistic description with if or iff statements. The two procedures will be described in more detail later. In our opinion, if participants were more sensitive to content source of inference, the first procedure should improve the performance; the opposite outcome would occur if they were more sensitive to form source of inference. In sum, our main predictions were the following: • both contextual cues (alternative antecedents) and logical training would be able to improve the differentiation between conditionals and biconditionals, irrespective of the type of content (abstract vs. thematic); • in absence of these differentiating procedures, the biconditional interpretation of conditionals would increase with abstract content and without background context; • biconditional inference task would be straightforward solved in any experimental condition.
EXPERIMENT 1 Method Participants Three hundred twenty undergraduates (271 females, 49 males) of two introductory courses in Psychology of the Second University of Naples participated in this study as unpaid volunteers. Their age ranged from 18 to 47 (M = 20.35; SD = 4.54). None of the participants had any prior knowledge of logic or reasoning psychology. Design The 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 mixed design involved the manipulation of five variables: inference task (conditional vs. biconditional), discrimination between conditionals and biconditionals
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(embedded in the scenarios vs. inferred by participants after reading the scenarios), information facilitating the appropriate interpretation of the statements (present vs. absent), content (abstract vs. thematic), and scenario (each scenario was constructed in two versions, A and B). The inference task was a within-subjects variable, the remaining variables were between-subjects. The scenario variable was included only to check specific context and content effects.
Procedure and Materials Participants were randomly assigned to the between-subjects conditions and performed the task in groups of 40 persons. They were presented with a paper-and-pencil questionnaire containing in counterbalanced order two inferential tasks - conditional and biconditional syllogisms – each of them introduced by a short scenario aimed at providing a minimum of contextual information. In the conditions where the discrimination between conditionals and biconditionals was embedded in the scenarios, a conditional statement of the form ―if p then q‖ and a biconditional statement of the form ―if and only if p then q‖ were explicitly formulated in the respective scenarios. In the conditions where the discrimination had to be inferred by participants, in each scenario the implication or coimplication relation between two events was described. Then, a choice between two statements was presented: participants had to choose which assertion, whether a conditional – if…then – or a biconditional – if and only if…then – statement, better expressed what was previously described. In conditions with facilitating information, a further sentence was added in the scenarios. In conditional tasks this sentence specified that other antecedents implied the same consequent; in biconditional tasks it emphasized the coimplication between antecedent and consequent. In thematic tasks, scenarios presented plausible events described in natural language terms; in abstract tasks made-up events, depicted in fictional terms, were presented. The thematic conditionals referred to causal (or quasi-causal) relations; the abstract conditionals and all the biconditionals concerned arbitrary or associative relations. Each scenario was constructed in two structurally analogous versions differing only for the specific events described. On the whole thirty-two scenarios were created, sixteen for conditional tasks and sixteen for biconditional tasks. An example of conditional scenario with thematic content, facilitating information, and discrimination to be inferred by participants is the following: ―A pharmaceutical company conducted a study concluding that people who use the X medicament are intolerant to coconut. This study also revealed that people who use Y and Z medicaments are intolerant to coconut.‖ In the tasks without facilitating information the last sentence was omitted. The scenario was followed by this question: ―Which of the following statements better expresses what has emerged from the study? • •
If a person uses the X medicament, then s/he is intolerant to coconut. If and only if a person uses the X medicament, then s/he is intolerant to coconut.‖
In the condition with the embedded discrimination and without facilitating information, the scenario was the following: ―A pharmaceutical company conducted a study concluding that if a person uses the X medicament, then s/he is intolerant to coconut.‖
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Olimpia Matarazzo and Ivana Baldassarre
An example of biconditional scenario with abstract content, facilitating information, and discrimination to be inferred by participants was the following: ―A scientists team created a new material called bollock. By using bollock they built only an object, the dricton, that is the only object in the world having the bollock features‖. In tasks without facilitating information the last sentence was omitted. Also this scenario was followed by a choice between two statements similar to the one reported above. In the condition with the embedded discrimination and without facilitating information, the scenario was the following: ―A scientists team created a new material called bollock with which they built an object called dricton. One of these scientists specified that if and only if an object is the dricton, then it is built with the bollock.‖ Following each scenario, the four categorical premises – p, not-p, q, not-q – of conditional and biconditional syllogisms were presented. For the abovementioned conditional scenario, the categorical premises were the following: this person uses the X medicament (p); this person does not use the X medicament (not-p); this person is intolerant to coconut (q); this person is not intolerant to coconut (not-q). For each syllogism, participants were asked to choose, on the basis of the information previously acquired, the most appropriate conclusion among the three presented: acceptance of inference, rejection of inference and indeterminate conclusion. For example, for MP (―this person uses the X medicament‖), the three proposed conclusions were the affirmation of the consequent – q – as acceptance of inference (―this person is intolerant to coconut‖), the negation of the consequent – not-q – as rejection of inference (―this person is not intolerant to coconut‖), and ―no conclusion is certain‖ as indeterminate conclusion. The order of syllogisms and conclusions was randomized across participants.
Results The preliminary analyses performed to check the possible effects of scenario and task order on choice of the statement, inference task, and patterns of inferences did not show any significant effect of these variables. Therefore, they were eliminated from the subsequent analyses.
Choice of Statement Data concerning the choice of statement were classified into correct vs. wrong answers, coded as 1 vs. 0. These data referred only to the participants (N = 160) who had to infer the discrimination between conditionals and biconditionals after reading the scenarios. They were analyzed using a 2 x 2 x 2 mixed design ANOVA with type of scenario (scenario describing a conditional relation vs. scenario describing a biconditional relation) as a within-subjects variable, and facilitating information (present vs. absent) and content (abstract vs. thematic) as between-subjects variables. Results showed a main effect of scenario, F(1,156) = 9.53, p<.01, η2 = .058: the percentage of correct choices was higher for ―if ... then‖ statements related to the conditional scenarios - than for ―if and only if ... then‖ statements – related to the biconditional ones (96% vs. 86%).
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Table 2. Study 1 - Mean percentages and standard deviations of the accepted inferences as a function of experimental conditions
Inference
Facilitating information
Conditional task
Biconditional task
Content
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
abstract
1
0
1
0
thematic
0.97
0.16
0.95
0.22
abstract
0.95
0.22
1
0
thematic
0.95
0.22
1
0
abstract
0.23
0.42
0.93
0.27
thematic
0.10
0.30
0.97
0.16
abstract
0.48
0.51
0.95
0.22
thematic
0.35
0.48
0.97
0.16
abstract
0.15
0.36
0.97
0.16
thematic
0.30
0.46
1
0
abstract
0.55
0.5
0.93
0.27
thematic
0.55
0.5
0.97
0.16
abstract
0.13
0.33
0.85
0.36
thematic
0.6
0.5
0.95
0.22
abstract
0.67
0.47
0.92
0.27
thematic
0.65
0.48
0.97
0.16
abstract
1
0
1
0
thematic
0.97
0.16
1
0
abstract
1
0
0.98
0.19
thematic
0.97
0.15
1
0
abstract
0.13
0.33
0.85
0.36
present MP
Discrimination inferred by participants
absent
present DA absent
present AC absent
present MT
Discrimination presented in scenarios
Discrimination presented in scenarios
absent
present MP absent
present DA
Inference
thematic
0.28
0.45
1
0
absent
abstract
0.6
0.5
0.87
0.33
Conditional task
Biconditional task
Facilitating information
Content
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
thematic
0.55
0.5
0.97
0.16
abstract
0.5
0.22
0.77
0.42
thematic
0.18
0.38
0.97
0.16
abstract
0.62
0.49
0.8
0.4
thematic
0.57
0.5
0.9
0.3
abstract
0.75
0.44
0.97
0.16
thematic
0.67
0.47
0.97
0.16
abstract
0.88
0.33
0.95
0.22
thematic
0.85
0.36
0.93
0.27
present AC absent
present MT absent
MP = Modus Ponens, DA = Denial of the antecedent, AC = Affirmation of the consequent, MT = Modus Tollens.
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Inference Task Since in inference task the rejection of inference was never chosen as an answer, the participant responses were dichotomously coded into 1 (acceptance of inference) and 0 (indeterminate conclusion). In table 2 mean percentages of the accepted inferences as a function of the experimental conditions were reported. Data were submitted to a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 4 mixed design ANOVA with discrimination between conditionals and biconditionals (embedded in the scenarios vs. inferred by participants), facilitating information (present vs. absent), and content (abstract vs. thematic) as between-subjects variables, and task (conditional vs. biconditional) and inference (MP, DA, AC, MT) as within-subjects variables. Significant results showed three main effects, due respectively to task, F(1,312) = 503.49, p<.001, η2 = .617, to inference, F(3,936) = 211.77, p<.001, η2 = .404, and to facilitating information, F(1,312) = 31.62, p<.001, η2 = .092; six two-way interactions - task x discrimination, F(1,312) = 7.08, p<.01, η2 = .022, task x facilitating information, F(1,312) = 44.57, p<.001, η2 = .125, inference x discrimination, F(3,936) = 6.61, p<.001, η2 = .021, inference x content, F(3,936) = 4.11, p<.05, η2 = .013, task x inference, F(3,936) = 169.69, p<.001, η2 = .352, and inference x facilitating information, F(3,936) = 16.62, p<.001, η2 = .051 - and one three-way interaction: task x inference x facilitating information, F(3,936) = 23.07, p<.001, η2 = .069. The main effects were as follows: the percentage of accepted inferences was higher in biconditional than in conditional task; MP was the most accepted inference, followed by MT, and then by DA and AC, which did not differ from each other; the percentage of inferences decreased in presence of facilitating information. The main effects were modulated by the interactions, interpreted through the simple effects analyses. The three-way interaction including all the main effects and their two-way combinations - task x inference x facilitating information - revealed that the percentage of accepted inferences in biconditional task was not affected either by the type of inference or by facilitating information, whereas in conditional task, the presence of facilitating information decreased the acceptance of DA and AC inferences. The interaction between inference and content was due to the augmentation of AC inferences with thematic content compared to the abstract one; the other inferences were not affected by content. The criterion discriminating conditionals from biconditionals affected the results only when interacting with the type of task and with the type of inference: when participants had to infer this criterion, the overall percentage of inferences in biconditional task augmented, whereas the inferences in conditional task did not vary with the type of discrimination; in both tasks, AC increased and MT decreased with the discrimination criterion inferred by participants, whereas MP and DA did not vary in function of the type of discrimination.
Pattern of Inferences In order to reconstruct how the statements – whether presented in scenarios or inferred by participants – were understood, the four conclusions chosen by each participant for MP, DA, AC, and MT inferences in each of the two inference tasks were considered as a whole. In this way for each participant the statement interpretation compatible with the endorsed inferences was inferred. Concerning the conditional task, the most frequent patterns of inferences (percentage frequency > 5%) were the following: conditional (acceptance of inference for MP and MT and indeterminate conclusion for DA and AC); biconditional (acceptance of all the four
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inferences); quasi-conditional (acceptance of inference for MP and indeterminate conclusion for the remaining inferences); conjunctive (acceptance of inference for MP and AC and indeterminate conclusion for DA and MT). The remaining infrequent patterns were grouped into the ―other‖ category. In table 3 the frequencies of patterns of inferences for conditional task were tabulated by experimental conditions. General log-linear analysis was performed to assess the relationship between patterns of inferences for conditional task and facilitating information, content, and discriminating criterion. The best parsimonious model, LR (25) = 26.14, p = .400, was the one implying the main effect of pattern of inferences and two-way interactions: facilitating information x pattern of inferences, and discriminating criterion x pattern of inferences. About the main effect of pattern of inferences, the parameter estimates revealed that – compared to the reference category (i.e. ―other‖) - the conditional (λ = 1.08, z = 3.22, p<.001) and the biconditional (λ = 1.62, z = 4.96, p<.001) patterns of inferences were more frequent, whereas the conjunctive pattern of inferences (λ = -1.53, z = -2.26, p<.05) was less frequent. As regards the interactions, the parameter estimates showed that in presence of facilitating information the conditional pattern of inferences (λ= 0.62, z = 3.38, p<.01) and the quasi-conditional pattern of inferences (λ = 0.66, z = 2.15, p<.05) increased whereas the biconditional pattern of inferences decreased (λ = -1.54, z = -5.41, p<.001); when the discriminating criterion had to be inferred by participants, the conjunctive pattern of inferences augmented (λ= 1.54, z = 2.42, p<.05). In order to specifically examine the patterns of inferences for conditional task without alternative antecedents, a second general log-linear analysis was conducted omitting facilitating information variable. The model with the main effect of pattern of inferences and the interaction between pattern of inferences and discriminating criterion best fitted the data, LR (10) = 6.45, p = .776. The parameter estimates concerning main effect showed that compared to the reference category (i.e. ―other‖) - the conditional (λ = 1.61, z = 3.29, p<.001) and the biconditional (λ = 2.15, z = 4.55, p<.001) patterns of inferences were more frequent; the interaction was due to higher frequency of ―other‖ category in the condition where discriminating criterion was inferred by participants compared to the condition where this criterion was presented in scenarios, (λ = 1.03, z = 1.98, p<.05). With regard to biconditional task, almost all participants (92,5%) endorsed the four inferences, suggesting that they understood biconditional statement in a logically correct way. The other idiosyncratic patterns of inferences were included into the ―other‖ category (see Table 4). Binary logistic regression (using the enter method) was performed to test the relative influence of content, discriminating criterion, and facilitating information in predicting the frequency of the two types of patterns of inferences. All variables were coded as 1-0. The model assessing the main effect of facilitating information and the content x discriminating criterion interaction fitted the data well, χ2(2) = 11.88, p< 0.01, Nagelkerke R2 = 0.67. When the discrimination between statements was embedded in scenarios, the frequency of biconditional pattern of inferences decreased with abstract vs. thematic content, whereas no significant difference for content was found when the discriminating criterion had to be inferred by participants, B(1) = -1.19, Wald χ2 = 2.24, p< 0.001. Facilitating information did not affect the results, B(1) = 0.11, Wald χ2 = 0.11.
Table 3. Study 1 - Frequencies of the patterns of inferences in conditional task in function of experimental conditions
Pattern of inferences Conditional Biconditional Quasiconditional Conjunctive Other Total
Discrimination inferred by participants Thematic content Abstract content Not Not Facilitation Facilitation facilitation facilitation 18 10 22 10 3 13 5 14
Discrimination presented in scenarios Thematic content Abstract content Not Not Facilitation Facilitation facilitation facilitation 17 12 27 13 5 22 2 21
9
7
7
4
7
4
8
1
47
5 5 40
5 5 40
1 5 40
3 9 40
1 10 40
1 1 40
0 3 40
1 4 40
17 42 320
Total 129 85
Table 4. Study 1 - Frequencies of the patterns of inferences in biconditional task in function of experimental conditions
Pattern of inferences Biconditional Other Total
Discrimination inferred by participants Thematic content Abstract content NonNonFacilitation Facilitation facilitation facilitation 37 39 35 35 3 1 5 5 40 40 40 40
Discrimination presented in scenarios Thematic content Abstract content NonNonFacilitation Facilitation facilitation facilitation 38 34 30 30 2 6 10 10 40 40 40 40
Total 278 42 320
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Congruency between Choice of Statement and Pattern of Inferences In order to establish if the choice of statement made by the participants requested to infer the discrimination between conditional and biconditional predicted the patterns of inferences, binary logistic regression was performed for each inference task. For conditional task, the patterns of inferences were recoded as 1-0 (conditional pattern vs. all other incorrect patterns): thus, all measures were dichotomous. The results showed that choice of statement failed to predict patterns of inferences both in conditional and biconditional tasks.
EXPERIMENT 2 Method Participants Two hundred undergraduates (102 females, 98 males) of the Second University of Naples participated in this study as unpaid volunteers. Their age ranged from 19 to 39 (M = 25.21; SD = 5.82). None of the participants had any prior knowledge of logic or reasoning psychology. Design The 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 design involved the manipulation of three between-subjects variables – ―logical‖ training (present vs. absent), content (abstract vs. thematic) statement (each statement was created in two versions, A and B) – and one within-subjects variable: inferential task (conditional vs. biconditional). The statement variable was included only to check specific content effects. Materials and Procedure Participants were randomly assigned to the between-subjects conditions and performed the task in groups of 50 persons. They were given a paper-and-pencil questionnaire containing in counterbalanced order two inferential tasks on two separate pages: conditional and biconditional syllogisms. For each task, participants were told to read the statement which followed and then to indicate the logical conclusion deriving from the four syllogisms built on the basis of the initial statement. The instructions explicitly demanded to choose the logical conclusion because this study focused on domain general reasoning and we were interested in investigating what participants intended as a logical deduction. As in the experiment 1, the conclusion had to be chosen among the three presented: acceptance of inference, rejection of inference and indeterminate conclusion. Four examples of statements were the following: ―If Mark reads a beautiful book, then he is happy‖ (thematic conditional) ―If an angle is right, then it measures 90 degrees‖ (thematic biconditional) ―If an item has a squared shape, then it is labeled gup‖ (abstract conditional) ―If and only if an item is in liquid state, then it is labeled bor‖ (abstract biconditional).
The statements with thematic content referred to plausible or well-known situations. In the abstract clauses the role of previous knowledge was reduced, if not eliminated, and their
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interpretation would be based only or mainly on the respective sentential connectives. In accordance with everyday language, the thematic biconditionals were introduced simply by "if", whereas the abstract biconditionals were introduced by "if and only if" since in that case the linguistic form is the only way to differentiate biconditional from conditional. The order of syllogisms and conclusions was randomized across participants. Before the inferential task, only participants in ―logical‖ training condition were presented with a preliminary page where the distinction between conditionals and biconditional utterances in conformity with propositional logic was elucidated. More specifically, participants were told that in conditional statements (i.e. statements of the form A→B) the antecedent implies the consequent but not vice versa, whereas in biconditional statements (of the form A↔B) the antecedent and the consequent imply each other. Note that for indicating conditional and biconditional clauses logical connectives instead of the sentential ones were used. Then, four clauses (two conditional and two biconditional) were presented in random order and participants were requested to indicate for each of them whether it was a conditional or a biconditional clause. The statements‘ content was abstract or thematic in function of the experimental conditions. Two examples of thematic conditional and biconditional were the following: ―If I fall into a ditch, then I feel pain‖. ―If an athlete gets through the semifinals, then s/he gains access to the finals‖.
Results No effects of statement and task order on dependent variables emerged from preliminary analyses conducted to check them. Thus, these variables were removed from the subsequent analyses.
Discrimination between Conditional and Biconditional Statements Responses concerning the discrimination between conditional and biconditional statements were classified into correct vs. wrong, coded as 1 vs. 0. These data referred only to the participants (N = 100) in the logical training condition. On the number of correct answers, transformed into square root to assure the omoschedasticity of variance, a 2 x 2 mixed design ANOVA with statement category (conditional vs. biconditional) as a within-subjects variable and content (abstract vs. thematic) as a between-subjects variable was performed. No significant effect was found: the mean of correct answers varied between 1.68 and 1.78 across the variables. Inference Task Also in this study the rejection of inference was never chosen as an answer: thus the participant responses were dichotomously coded into 1 (acceptance of inference) and 0 (indeterminate conclusion). Mean percentages of the accepted inferences as a function of the experimental conditions were reported in table 5. Data were analyzed through a 2 x 2 x 2 x 4 mixed design ANOVA with logical training (present vs. absent), and content (abstract vs. thematic) as between-subjects variables, and task (conditional vs. biconditional) and inference (MP, DA, AC, MT) as within-subjects
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variables. The results showed that the endorsed inferences were affected by each of these variables, alone or in reciprocal interaction. Table 5. Study 2 - Mean percentages and standard deviations of the accepted inferences as a function of experimental conditions
Inference
Logical training
Conditional
Biconditional
Content
Mean
S.D.
Mean
S.D.
abstract
0.96
0.12
0.98
0.14
thematic
0.88
0.33
1
0
abstract
0.94
0.24
0.98
0.14
thematic
0.90
0.30
1
0
abstract
0.42
0.5
0.96
0.2
thematic
0.24
0.43
0.96
0.16
abstract
0.80
0.40
0.94
0.2
thematic
0.52
0.5
0.96
0.2
abstract
0.30
0.46
0.98
0.14
thematic
0.32
0.47
1
0
abstract
0.82
0.39
1
0
thematic
0.55
0.5
0.90
0.3
abstract
0.74
0.44
0.96
0.2
thematic
0.66
0.48
0.95
0.22
abstract
0.82
0.39
0.94
0.24
thematic
0.48
0.5
0.98
0.14
present MP absent
present DA absent
present AC absent
present MT absent
MP = Modus Ponens, DA = Denial of the antecedent, AC = Affirmation of the consequent, MT = Modus Tollens.
As to the main effects, inferences increased with biconditional task, F(1,196) = 246.75, p<.001, η2 = .557, and with abstract content, F(1,196) = 12.39, p<.001, η2 = .059, while decreased when logical training was present, F(1,196) = 14.95, p<.001, η2 = .071, MP was the most accepted inference, followed by MT, and then by DA and AC, which did not differ from each other, F(3,588) = 56.24, p<.001, η2 = .223. These effects were modulated by four twoway and two three-way interactions: task x content, F(1,196) = 16.51, p<.001, η2 = .078, task x logical training, F(1,196) = 13.69, p<.001, η2 = .065, task x inference, F(3,588) = 50.0, p<.001, η2 = .203, inference x logical training, F(3,588) = 13.39, p<.001, η2 = .064, task x content x logical training, F(1,196) = 4.51, p<.05, η2 = .022, and task x inference x logical training, F(3,588) = 16.44, p<.001, η2 = .077. Since the two-way interactions were included in the three-way ones, only the latter will described: biconditional task was not affected by logical training or by content, whereas in conditional task the accepted inferences increased with abstract content and decreased with logical training; no difference among the four inferences was found in biconditional task regardless the presence/absence of logical training, whereas in conditional task, AC and NA inferences decreased in presence of logical training.
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Pattern of Inferences As in the previous study, the patterns of inferences resulting from the four syllogisms MP, AC, DA, and MT were considered in order to reconstruct how conditional and biconditional statements were understood. Concerning conditional task, the most frequent patterns of inferences (percentage frequency > 5%) were the following: conditional (acceptance of inference for MP and MT and indeterminate conclusion for DA and AC); biconditional (acceptance of all the four inferences); quasi-conditional (acceptance of inference for MP and indeterminate conclusion for the remaining inferences); inverse (acceptance of MP and DA inferences and indeterminate conclusion for AC and MT); conjunctive (acceptance of MP and AC inferences and indeterminate conclusion for DA and MT). The remaining infrequent patterns were grouped into the ―other‖ category. In table 6 the frequencies of patterns of inferences for conditional task were reported as a function of experimental conditions. Table 6. Study 2 - Frequencies of the patterns of inferences in conditional task in function of experimental conditions
Pattern of inferences
Conditional Biconditional Quasi-conditional Inverse Conjunctive Other Total
Presence of logical training Thematic Abstract content content 21 18 7 7 7 4 1 8 4 2 10 11 50 50
Absence of logical training Thematic Abstract content content 2 1 20 32 15 4 3 1 3 2 7 10 50 50
Total
42 66 30 13 11 38 200
General log-linear analysis was run to assess the relation between patterns of inferences for conditional task, logical training, and content. The best parsimonious model, LR (6) = 7.09, p = .313, was the one implying the main effect of pattern of inferences and two-way interactions: logical training x pattern of inferences, and content x pattern of inferences. About the main effect of pattern of inferences, the parameter estimates revealed that – compared to the reference category (i.e. ―other‖) – the biconditional (λ = 1.19, z = 3.58, p<.001) pattern of inferences was more frequent, whereas the conditional (λ = -1.94, z = 2.91, p<.01), the inverse (λ = -1.22, z = -2.02, p<.05), and the conjunctive (λ = -1.64, z = 2.48, p<.05) patterns of inferences were less frequent. As regards the interactions, the parameter estimates showed that in logical training condition the conditional pattern of inferences (λ= 2.57, z = 4.28, p<.001) increased whereas the biconditional one decreased (λ = -1.31, z = -4.36, p<.001); with thematic content the quasi-conditional pattern of inferences augmented (λ= 1.01, z = 2.45, p<.05). With regard to biconditional task, also in this study almost all participants (93%) endorsed the four inferences, suggesting that they understood biconditional statement in a logically correct way. The other idiosyncratic patterns of inferences were included into the ―other‖ category. (see Table 6). Since the distribution of the two categories is substantially
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flat, it is not reported here. As was expected from data inspection, binary logistic regression found no effect either of logical training or of content on biconditional patterns of inferences.
Congruence between Statements Discriminating and Pattern of Inferences In order to investigate whether the discrimination between conditional and biconditional statements made by participants in logical training condition predicted the patterns of inferences, binary logistic regression was performed for each inference task. As in the previous study, the patterns of inferences for conditional task were recoded as 1-0 (conditional pattern vs. all other incorrect patterns). The results revealed that the choice of the statement for conditional task predicted the relative patterns of inferences, B(1) = 1.82, Wald χ2 = 6.6, p<.05; instead, the choice of the statement for biconditional task failed to do it, B(1) = 0.83, Wald χ2 = 3.27.
DISCUSSION The results of both studies can be summarized as follows: the one-to-one relation between two events was easily understood and biconditional syllogisms were correctly solved by almost all participants, regardless of the presence/absence of information emphasising the coimplication between the antecedent and the consequent. On the contrary, conditionals generated a large amount of interpretations the most frequent of which was the biconditional one when no criterion for differentiating conditionals from biconditionals was provided. The presence of both alternative antecedents and logical training made it easier to understand the asymmetric relation between antecedent and consequent and, therefore, increased the conditional interpretation and decreased the biconditional one. These findings corroborate our main predictions about the greater cognitive availability of the biconditional interpretation of the ―if .... then‖ connective and the effectiveness of both form and content sources of inference in differentiating between conditionals and biconditionals. From this perspective, Beller and Spada‘s theory (2003) of the dual source of inference from which we partly derived our predictions is supported by these results. Nevertheless, there are some relevant dissimilarities between the two studies as to conditional interpretations which deserve a comment. In the first study the conditional pattern of inference was produced, in absence of alternative antecedents, by 28% of participants – a higher percentage than the one reported in literature (see for review, Evans, 2002; Evans et al., 1993) – while in the second study it was produced, in absence of logical training, by 3% of participants. The corresponding percentages for the biconditional pattern were 43% and 52%. In the first study content scarcely affected the results – only AC inference augmented with thematic content – whereas in the second study its influence was more relevant: with abstract content the proportion of endorsed inferences increased while the frequency of the quasi-conditional pattern augmented with thematic content. Note that in the first study this pattern augmented in presence of alternative antecedents, mirroring a result that was first reported by Rumain et al. (1983) and that was later replicated (Simoneau and Markovits, 2003; Daniel and Klaczynski, 2006). In our opinion, the different findings between the two studies are due to the methodological differences we introduced in the second study in order to investigate the naive deductive competence: any background context was absent and the experimental instructions demanded to indicate the logical conclusion deriving from each argument, whereas in the first
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study participants were asked to choose the most appropriate conclusion. In the conditions with no logical training, the quasi total absence of the conditional pattern of inference and the great proportion of the biconditional one uphold our assumption about the automatic tendency to conditional perfection (Geis and Zwicky, 1971): the fact that the inferences increased with abstract content suggests that this tendency is generated not only by conversational norms but also by cognitive factors. In absence of background knowledge able to retrieve counterexamples, the propensity to search one-to-one correspondence between antecedent and consequent was hardly countermanded. We speculate that even the instruction to choose the logical conclusion activated this tendency toward the coimplication, in a sort of semantic overlap between the meanings of ―logic‖ and ―symmetric correspondence‖. The increase of quasi conditional pattern with thematic content suggests that, at least in some cases, previous knowledge allowed to retrieve alternative antecedents able to prevent the endorsement of AC and DA, but that this effect was extended also to MT. If our hypothesis is viable, the increase of this pattern with thematic content in study 2 and with the presence of alternative antecedents in study 1 derived in both cases from the availability of counterexamples which 1 served as disabling conditions for MT (e.g. Simoneau and Markovits, 2003) . Anyway, it must be noted that whereas in the first study the patterns of inferences presented a hierarchic organization with a relatively small dispersion of idiosyncratic responses, in the second study their dispersion increased and their hierarchy decreased, thus supporting the idea that the absence of a contextual frame multiplies if interpretations. The different procedures of discriminating conditionals from biconditionals we tested in the first experiment - i.e. inferring the appropriate sentential connective after reading the description of events relation vs. inferring the events relation from the apposite connective – did not affect significantly this distinction. Nevertheless, when it was requested to choose the connector, AC increased, while the conjunctive pattern of inferences augmented, compared with its very rare frequency when the ―if ...then‖ connective was embedded in the scenario. Also in the second experiment this pattern had low frequency. In our opinion, this finding suggests that only a few people understand the conditional as implying the mere conversion of ―if....then‖ clause. In terms of mental models theory (Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 1991, 2002), this means that only a few people limit the representation of conditionals to the initial model entailing the co-occurrence of antecedent and consequent, whereas people who use only this initial model increase when the relation of implication between antecedent and consequent is described as a state of fact. As far as biconditionals are concerned, it is worth highlighting that when participants had to choose the appropriate connective after reading the scenario, the proportion of correct choices for iff statements was lower than that for if clauses. This finding mirrors the lesser frequency of iff in everyday language compared to that of if: even when the two sentential connectives were explicitly contrasted, some participants still chose if connective to express even the meaning of one-to-one relation. Moreover, when iff statements were embedded in scenarios, the biconditional pattern of inferences decreased with abstract content, whereas no content difference was found when the coimplication was 1
In terms of mental logic (Rumain et al.,1983), the presence of alternative antecedents countermands the invited inferences and therefore inhibits the endorsement of the fallacious conclusions, AC and DA, but in this way also MT would be blocked: in fact inhibiting the inversion of the conditional no longer allows to draw MT as symmetric inference. To endorse this inference with a conditional premise a reductio ad absurdum procedure is requested. Reasoners who are unable to handle it and who have inhibited the invited inferences, are also unable to draw MT.
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depicted in scenarios as a state of affairs. Such a result suggests that the meaning of iff was somewhat ambiguous, at least for some participants, who, in absence of the activation of background knowledge provided by thematic content, seemed barely to understand the kind of relationship between the events it designated. When this relation was provided by scenarios as a state of fact, it was very easy to recognize it. However, it is worthy to underline that these differences occurred in a framework where the participants‘ capability to understand the meaning of the biconditional is generally very high. It can be argued that as regard to biconditionals, people are very sensitive both to argument source and content source. As we have seen, the picture is more complex and somewhat puzzling with conditionals, which also explains why the research on them continue to proliferate. On the whole, our results suggest that the mere presence of the ―if...then‖ statement is not a sufficient condition for understanding conditionals and that other conditions are necessary for this to happen: e.g., the presence of alternative antecedents, of a background context, the enunciation of the formal criterion of definition. From this point of view, such results are polysemic: on the one hand, they corroborate the idea that both contextual information and general rules enable to increase the logical interpretation of conditionals, but on the other hand, they show that this interpretation is not routinely available. In sum, people appear to be able, at least in part, to learn and apply a basic distinction of the propositional calculus and use contextual information to countermand what we suppose to be an automatic propensity towards symmetrical relations but, in absence of these conditions, they are not very sensitive to the form of the argument. This evidence seems to weaken Beller and Spada‘s (2003) theory of the dual source of inference and seems to be also in contrast with the mental models theory, at least as regards its assumption that the ‗core‘ meaning of basic conditionals – as well as the abstract conditionals of our experiments – corresponds to the material implication of propositional calculus. Our results show that this meaning matches the one some naive reasoners give conditionals, which proves its psychological reality (Schroyens et al., 2008). They also show that a number of persons are sensitive to the factors we have manipulated in order to improve the discrimination between conditionals and biconditionals but, as we have seen, our results reveal that the dispersion of ―if…then‖ interpretation is a non negligible finding which deserves to be explained. Perhaps the dual process theories of reasoning (Evans and Over, 1996; Sloman, 1996; Stanovich and West, 2000) are the best candidates to do so. They posit the existence of two different systems of thinking: an implicit system – automatic, pragmatic, independent of language, contextualized, driven by learning and innate modules, independent of general intelligence – and an explicit system – controllable, logical-abstract, related to language, correlated with general intelligence and limited by working memory capacity. The implicit system would be able to provide fast responses to routine problems by means of pragmatic process; the explicit system is slow, rule-based, capable to activate complex procedures to find solutions to logical or decisional problems. For instance, the research of Stanovich and West (2000) on individual differences in reasoning has shown that they are linked to the differential use of these two systems: more intelligent individuals, with greater cognitive capacity, are more capable of blocking automatically activated responses and of producing more accurate logical analyses when facing a task (see also Daniel and Klaczynski, 2006). As far as our results are concerned, we could speculate – since individual differences have not been assessed in these studies – that only the participants who were more used to the explicit system made an accurate reflection on the task, while others responded automatically on the basis of the pragmatic relevance that the ―if ...then‖ connective took at
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that time for them. Further research is needed to further investigate interpretive processes in human reasoning.
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Quinn, S., and Markovits, H. (2002). Conditional reasoning with causal premises: evidence for a retrieval model. Thinking and reasoning, 8, 179-191. Rips, L.J. (1994). The psychology of proof: Deduction in human thinking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Rumain, B., Connell, J., and Braine, M.D.S. (1983). Conversational comprehension processes are responsible for reasoning fallacies in children as well as adults: If is not the biconditional. Developmental Psychology, 19, 471–481. Schroyens, W., and Byrne, R. (1998). The role of a conditional or bi-conditional interpretation in conditional reasoning about ‗if (Psychological reports No. 242). Leuven: University of Leuven. Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. Schroyens, W., Schaeken, W., and Dieussaert, K. (2008). ―The‖ interpretation(s) of conditionals. Experimental Psychology, 55, 173-181. Simoneau, M., and Markovits, H. (2003). Reasoning with premises that are not empirically true: Evidence for the role of inhibition and retrieval. Developmental Psychology, 39, 964-975. Sloman, S.A. (1996). The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 3-22. Stanovich, K.E. and West, R.F. (2000). Individual differences in reasoning: Implications for the rationality debate? Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 23, 645-726. Thompson, V.A. (1994). Interpretational factors in conditional reasoning. Memory and Cognition, 22, 742–758. Thompson, V.A. (1995). Conditional Reasoning: The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49, 1-58. Thompson, V.A. (2000). The task-specific nature of domain general reasoning. Cognition, 76, 209–268. Vadeboncoeur, I. and Markovits, H. (1999). The effect of instructions and information retrieval on accepting the premises in a conditional reasoning task, Thinking and Reasoning, 5, 97-113. van der Auwera, J. (1997). Pragmatics in the last quarter century: The case of conditional perfection. Journal of Pragmatics, 27, 261-274. Venet, M. and Markovits, H. (2001). Understanding uncertainty with abstract conditional premises. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 47, 74-99. Verschueren, N., Schaeken, W., and d'Ydewalle, G. (2003). Two reasoning mechanisms for solving the conditional ‗fallacies‘. Proceedings of 25th annual meting of the cognitive science society (July 31-Aug 2). Verschueren, N., Schaeken, W., Schroyens, W. (2006). Necessity and sufficiency in abstract conditional reasoning. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 18, 255-276. Wason, P.C., and Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1972). Phychology of Reasoning: Structure and Content, Boston: Harvard University Press. Wason, P.C. (1966). Reasoning. New Horizons in Psychology. Penguin: Harmondsworth. Webster, D.M., and Kruglanski, A.W. (1997). Cognitive and social consequences of the need for cognitive closure. European Review of Social Psychology, 18, 133–173. Wertheimer, M. (1923). Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt. Psychologische Forschung, 4, 301-350. Zeigarnik, B. (1927). Das Behalten erledigter und unerledigter Handlungen, Psychologische Forschung, 9, 1-85.
Advances in Psychology Research. Volume 78 Ed: Alexandra M. Columbus
ISBN: 978-1-61209-442-7 © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
Chapter 5
EMPATHY: REFLEXIONS ON A CONCEPT C. Boulangera and C. Lançonb a
Lançon Unit, SHU de psychiatrie, Hôpital Sainte-Marguerite, 270, boulevard de Sainte-Marguerite, 13009 Marseille, France b Psychiatry Dept, SHU de psychiatrie, Hôpital Sainte-Marguerite, 270, boulevard de Sainte-Marguerite, 13009 Marseille, France
ABSTRACT Under the influence of Scottish philosophy the concept of empathy changed, it is still shaky and still defined by many currents of thought. It is different from sympathy (emotional contagion). Empathy is the capacity to put oneself in another person‘s position to understand its feelings or to imagine its mental representation. So empathy shows itself in different phenomena such as projection, identification and altruism. Husserl, in phenomenology, regards empathy as the decisive phenomenon from which inter-subjectivity emerges to elaborate a common world. Indeed, he renewed the comprehension of empathy and anticipated the development of neurosciences. Depraz, following Varela, shows primacy granted to others is embodied in the personal practice of compassion.
Keywords: Empathy; Intersubjectivity; Phenomenology; Sympathy.
E-mail Address:
[email protected]
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1. INTRODUCTION Empathy is a complex phenomenon – very human- profound and it is related to emotions and experience (narrative empathy). But empathy remains a concept that is still unclear, fragile and, several schools of thought have defined it [9]. An attempt at modelling empathy has emerged with the advent of cognitive sciences [26]. The presentation of our work on the empathy concept, its imitation and its emotional contagion sheds new light on the therapeutic relation. We refer to psychological, phenomenological theories and to cognitive neurosciences and, in particular to social cognition neurosciences. First we define the empathy concept, originated from inter-subjectivity, and we relate its evolution throughout history. Then we report the contribution of phenomenology to the clinical understanding of the empathetic phenomenon. Finally we discuss about the possibility of naturalizing empathy from the neuro-phenomenological model.
2. EPISTEMOLOGY: CONCEPTS AND TERMS With regard to the etymology (definition of the Dictionary ―Le petit Robert‖), the word ―empathy‖ is derived from the Latin radical in- and im- (at-) and from the Greek suffix pathein (feeling). Empathy is defined as the ability to put oneself into another‘s shoes to understand the emotion states of other people or to experience the outlook of the mental representation of another being within oneself. It is the capacity to identify oneself to other people and to embrace the subjective perspective of other people. It is a very distinctive trait that makes us deeply human and it is the source of the social reasoning and moral behaviours. It allows us to reach another persons‘ subjectivity by a mode of thought based on implicit awareness. To Decety [2], it is based on neuro-biologic systems that have built up during our evolutionary history. In a neo-Darwin perspective, empathy should have a role in the social relationships within the members of the same species and more over within the inter-specific members. Empathy isn‘t a mechanism itself but a communication process in which one mechanism or the mechanisms have to be defined. Freud stressed the identification process. In order to ―get into other people‘s feelings without being involved emotionally‖, as defined by Greenson [16], we have to imagine that we are in other people shoes. It is a partial and temporary identification that is deliberate (but not necessarily done consciously). According to Buie [1], this imaginary construction of other people‘s subjective experience requires the action of interferential phenomena. It is because one can see the representation of the contextual universe in which other people conscious or unconscious thought is developing that one can identify to others. According to Carl Rogers [8] empathy is to grab precisely the inner references and the emotional components of somebody and to understand them as if we were this person. In the phenomenological tradition, empathy represents the apprehension of others affectivity. Empathy should also be considered independently from the term sympathy. It doesn‘t have any conjunction with sharing a feeling or a belief (by an affective contagion phenomena), but it is the representation of other‘s feelings, desires and beliefs. It is not a conscious subjectivity. According to Wispe [37], ―empathy means to understand others.
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Being sympathetic with others means to care about other‘s well-being. Empathy appears like a mental simulation that is conscious of somebody else‘s subjectivity. This simulation enables to understand what another person thinks in a present and past situation even in an anticipated situation [3].
3. CONCEPT EVOLUTION The Scottish moral philosophy has first introduced the notion of empathy. Hume observed in the Treaty of human nature [17] ― all human beings ‗spirits are similar based on their feelings and operations, and that there is no inclination felt by a human being which could not affect others to a certain degree‖ (III, p. 197). Therefore the spirit is the mirror of another: it reflects passions, feelings and opinions of another. Hume believes that one has originally an emotional link with others because there is a likely transfusion of passions between human beings via the sympathy. In Survey on the principles of morality [18] Hume also refers to the influence of the empathetic answer that could be named similarity or familiarity, ―…sympathy is weaker for people away from us with regard to how it is felt for the people close to us…‖ (p. 139). Smith [30] thought that our interpretation capacity of other‘s feelings as ―sympathy‖, different from the feelings and thoughts contagion which, according to Hume, condition to the feeling of humanity. Sympathy comes from our imaginary substitution to another unlike the simple transfusion of one‘s feelings. He specifically underlined the universal trait of human nature. To Smith ―…the viewer should, as far as possible, put himself into another‘s shoes, […] he should, somehow, adopt another‘s situation taking account every single detail…‖ (p.17); Smith then described, without being aware, the ―adoption of the other‘s perspective‖ a bit forced indeed. Einfühlung (German word for ―empathy or ―intropathy‖) is the origin of the German Romanticism theme, which designates a projection of me into beings, and it brings up the awareness of the esthetical sensitivity mechanism from which we have access to the master piece sense putting ourselves into the represented object (Vischer, 1873, in [14]). Considering Avenarius introjections concept and, on the other hand Max Scheler‘s empathy theory (Einsfühlung), Husserl makes empathy a decisive phenomenology on the basis of which ntersubjectivity forms a common world. Husser‘s empathy is mainly a cognitive mediation. On the contrary, Scheler‘s Einsfühlung concept has rather an immediate and emotional meaning [29]. Scheler‘s emotional intuitionism is related to the identification suffering of others. Therefore Scheler makes a clear distinction between the emotional empathy and two types of extreme symbiotic empathy forms (Einfühlung qua Einsfühlung) : l‘Einssetzung, the affective fusion and the Gefühlsansteckung, the affective contagion. However the Dasein is a Mitsein, one is immediately among others and recognizes others as family regardless of any upstream theoretical perspective. In the post-Husserl philosophy, Ricoeur suggests the word ―intropathy‖ with the notion of ―to feel with‖ or ―to feel within‖. Theodor Lipps, psychologist in Munich in the early XX century, transposed the German neologism « Einfühlung » that was used in the esthetical field, to the psychology. He considered empathy as a key concept in psychology and sociology, and made it as one of the basis mechanisms of the knowledge of oneself and others. To him, seeing an expression on a face wakes up ―automatically‖ the influxes necessary to this expression. These influxes induce him into the inner emotional state for that expression. The vision of the expression
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corresponds to a ―start of imitation‖, an ―inner imitation‖ [21]. One can see here the premises of stimulationism through the inner imitation described by Lipps (inner imitation). But Lipps was, above all, the first to describe the phenomenon of the active participation through kinesthesis1 in the movements and actions in the very act of perceiving them. Then the psychologist E,B Tichener created the term empathy in the 1920‘s from the Greek word empatheia (inner feeling). According to him, empathy resembles a physical imitation of others pain, imitation, which raises the same feelings in oneself. Freud refers many times to Einfühlung concept. In ―Psychology of the masses and Analysis of the Ego‖ he writes about the identification: ―…The process that psychology calls ―empathy‖ which takes the largest share in our understanding of what is foreign to me in other people‖ and notices what he means in this work ―…to limit oneself to the very first emotional effects of identification, and so to leave on the side its significance for our intellectual life. Then he adds : ― Based on the identification, a path leads through imitation to empathy, that is to say through the understanding mechanism that makes possible any position with respect to another life soul‖ [11]. To Decety [2] it would be tempting to see in identification, imitation and empathy the three sides of the same process. Some authors emphasized the importance of familiarity and similarity in the facilitation of empathy and prospect. Titchener thought that through empathy, one could comprehend people but only if having a mental and intellectual resemblance (1915, cite in [37]). Hume noticed that it was easier to sympathize with someone if one shares something in common with us [17]. According to Freud, ―everything that establishes common values between people arouses sympathy, identification‖ [12] To conclude on Einfühlung, we will retain none of the words Sympathy, Empathy or Intropathy take into account the concepts of excentration and enjoyment embodied in this concept. Actually, the best definition of Einfühlung taken by Worringer [38] is Lipps ‗one: ―The aesthetic enjoyment is an ego enjoyment that is objectified‖. The word empathy will be awarded the honour by the psychoanalysis from the 1960‘s thanks in part to Greenson who underlined the relevance of the values of proximity, intersubjectivity and identification. But empathy takes its full dimension in the course of Egopsychology where it is considered the cornerstone of any therapeutic relationship. In the approach focused on the person that was developed by Carl Rogers, empathy is ―a way of being‖ in which the therapist is emotionally immersed in his client‘s world of experience. To Rogers, the therapist role will then be feeling his client‘s sensations and emotions and communicating this comprehension back to his client. To Rogers [27], the empathy process is then based on the mode of ―as if‖. The latter distinction is crucial because for the therapist it is a significant distinction between the empathy process and the identification process. This inner comprehension ―is a way to feel the client‘s inner world and its intimate signification as if it was ours, but never dismissing that it isn‘t ours‖ [28] One may currently conceive empathy as an aware mental simulation of the others‘ subjectivity.
1
According to Husserl, kinesthesis or kinaesthetic sensations are perceived movements of one‘s own body which allows the subject receptor to distinct movements that affect the object from the movements that affect one‘s own body or more precisely the movements whose one is the initiator and the subject.
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4. EMPATHY AS A PHENOMENON ―The communication or comprehension of gestures is obtained through the reciprocity of my intentions and others‘ gestures, of my gestures, of my intentions readable in others‘ behaviour‖, Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945 [22], (p. 215). ―It‘s through my body that I understand others, as it‘s through my body that I perceive ―things‖‖, Merleau-Ponty, Op. cit., (p. 215).
Empathy, reflected on quite extensively, is not exempt of different terminologies, even in a phenomenological approach. Thus, various definitions have emerged around the project of ―intentionality‖, like a basic intentional capacity, a unique type of intentional act, and an intentional general process. It is through the shared experience of the world given by others‘ presence that objectivity can be constructed. But for Husserl, the body is the main instrument in the capacity of sharing experience with others. What we make of the behaviour of other implicitly intelligible agents is the fact that their body is lived not like a material body (körper) but rather like something alive (le ib), something similar to our experience of body acted, of body lived. Thus the concept of others is not directly presented or given to me but indicated, and in the first place through their body. The live body, through its kinematics, shows us that it has got a life within, a vital strength. When I see another man, his body -that is given to me in person via perception, like any other physical object- tells me that it is the body of some conscience. By analogy with this experience of my body as Leib, I can perceive the other‘s body as body-ofanother-man (―analogical appresentation‖). Husserl, refuting the analogical reasoning, specifies that it is by a spontaneous process of my conscience that a body takes on the meaning of ―other‖ facing me. The body of ―another‖ ―gets its meaning from an aperceptive transposition originating from my own body‖ 19. For Merleau-Ponty 22, it is through his body, considered as a system of grips on the world and manifestation in my perceptual field, that ―others‖ come into being. It then enables me to read others‘ intentions and gestures, as ―the gesture is in front of me like a question, it shows me some sensitive areas of the world, it motions me to join it. …. There is acknowlegment of others by me and of me by others‖ (p. 216). Empathy is deeply anchored in the experience of our lived body, and it is this experience that enables us to recognise others not as bodies with a mind but as persons of the same kind. According to Husserl, there couldn‘t be perception without conscience of the acted body. Empathy is what makes me recognise ―another‖ not as a mere object but as an alter ego who, despite his persistent difference, aims at the same world I do (Husserl, in 5). He was therefore able to renew the comprehension of empathy and to anticipate the development of modern neurosciences because he hasn‘t made it the foundation of inter-subjectivity : on the contrary, he has made inter-subjectiivity the starting point of the understanding of empathy. Stein (1912-1964, in 14) specifies that the concept of empathy is not only just limited to the feelings or emotions of others. There would seem to be a more elementary connotation of empathy : the other is experienced as the other as well as themselves through recognition of the similarity. An important part of this similarity lies in the mutual experience of the action. This mutual experience then turns out to be the backbone of the shared identity. In a neoHusserlian approach
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the involuntary coupling of our ―live‖ body with the ―live‖ body of the other in perception and action ; the imaginary transposition of oneself in the other‘s situation ; the interpretation of ―another‖ as an Other for oneself, and of oneself as an Other for the other ; The ethical and moral perception of others.
The empathic experience is stratified, as is shown in the static method : the first donation is perceptive, the other appears in my perceptual field and the next levels of apprehension of the Other build up from this first step:
The first form of empathy, the dynamic coupling (paarung)2 of ―live‖ bodies of oneself and the other, refers to the pre-reflexive level of perception and action. It is an instant phenomenon, direct, primary and passive, in the way that it is not initiated voluntarily, and makes up the foundation of all the other forms of empathy. Here we recognise Husserl‘s influence in ―passive syntheses‖ of the experience -automatic, antipredicative and bodily lived manifestations. Fuchs sees in the Husserlian passive syntheses the phenomenon of bodily movement taking part in the implicit knowledge of oneself and the other (in 24). Gallese 13 describes two types of identity (social identity for some, subjectivity for others) in order to account for the constancy of social interactions through species and cultures : an identity as unicity (i.e. that we own individually : i-identity) and a shared identity (i.e. that we share with others : sidentity). The latter is governed by a series of ―implicit certainties‖ that we would presumably receive about the individuals we come to mix with. These ―implicit certainties‖, consituent of the inter-subjective relationship, contribute to the sense of the other. The sense of identity with the other then gives rise to the shared identity. For Gallese, a prereflexive, implicit form of comprehension of the other is founded on a strong sense of identity that connects us to one another.
This coupling (or pairing) represents a connection between self and other on the basis of their physical similarity. This similarity doesn‘t just work at a visual perceptual level where the body image appears to the conscience like an intentional object, but more at a posture, gesture and movement level, i.e. at an unconscious bodygraph level. Therefore, empathy is not merely a projection as in Lipps or Freud‘s sense but definitely the experience of the other as a living physical subject. The imaginary transposition (Ubertragung) in others‘ lived psyche represents the second form of empathy. An active, conscious and even voluntary operation spontaneously adds on to the immediate passive and perceptive apprehension through which I endeavour to access the other‘s conscience. Instead of a coupling of self and other, involuntary and simple, the processes of cognitive perspective-taking are used to imagine or mentally transpose self into the Other‘s position. This mediation that 2
Paarung refers to the linking, the pairing, the coupling.
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takes place while it is impossible to access the other‘s conscience is the very fact of the imagination founded on perception, however diferred : all happens ―as if‖ (als ob) I could be in their place without actually going there. This transposition (Versetzung)3 testifies in favour of the spatialisation of the imagination: I am here (hier, hic) and, in a way, there (dort, illic) too, and in favour of its deep roots in the spatialisation of the intercorporelle relationship brought to light in the first stage. Both components are distinct however simultaneous, and articulate like both angles of the same experience (there are, inseparably, what the other shows me by appearing in the perceptive field and what they allow me to understand of them through the act of imagination); The third form of empathy is founded on comprehension and interpretation of others in communication and language. According to Husserl, this level is not constituent, the experience of others is given in the perception and the imagination. It doesn‘t presuppose the gestural or verbal communication that only just comes as an addition. Stein devises the term ―repeated‖ empathy to signify that I perceive myself through the perspective of the other and consequently understand myself, like an individual in an inter-subjective world; The last form of empathy is the recognition of the Other who deserves to be paid attention and respect. In an evolutionist perspective, according to Piaget and Tomasello, the moral comprehension starts to emerge when the children perceive others as intentional agents. This is not the result of any rules laid down by the adults but instead of the capacity to experiment empathy. Today, as we reject a timeworn Kantian moral philosophy, we come to think that moral feelings appear first, followed by moral principles [7]. Here, ethics must be apprehended as a responsibility towards a person who feels emotions. For Husserl, the ethical or affective dimension is not more constituent of experience that the linguistic dimension. His reasoning is then governed by the need to know, his conception of inter-subjectivity by the need to know the others. This view was criticised by Scheler [24] insisting on the fundamentally ethical and affective nature of the experience of others.
5. NATURALISATION OF EMPATHY: A NEUROPHENOMENOLOGICAL MODEL ―Conscious biology draws towards philosophy‖ Merleau-Ponty, Today‘s philosophy, 1958-1959 [23]
The emergentist model of enaction as proposed by Varela and eluding reductionism has allowed a new form of naturalisation of the conscience. Is empathy also on the way of being naturalised ? The numerous findings tend to prove it, as Gallese and Thompson‘s works show. As for Decety‘s, they still seem too close to the neo-darwinian theories and the neuropsychological model.
3
Versetzung means movement, transposition, transfer.
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But here, this reasoning must urge us to think of empathy as a ―return to things themselves‖4 [20]. Like so, phenomenology naturally falls within the scope of this reasoning which consists of the study of phenomena, not of the facts through phenomenological reduction (or epoch, l‗epoche). ―This is a test description of our direct experience as it is and regardless of its psychological genesis and explanations of its causality.‖ [22]. A phenomenological approach implies giving up on the natural attitude and, in this way, going -as Blankenburg underlines- ―against the current of the way science understands itself‖. We must then abandon or rather put aside all pre-supposed or theoretical a priori which are likely to interfere with or to marr the experiential lived of the world, in the broad sense of the term. This ―conversion of light‖, term used by Merleau-Ponty [22] to come back to experience which is the source of perception, is a conversion linked to a reviewer of science and traditional reflexive philosophy. In other words, phenomenology makes clear the absolute proximity of the observer to the observed object, and the phenomenological reduction alone according to Sartre- allows us to go back beyond the psychic, beyond man‘s position in the world to the source of mankind, of the world and of the psychic: the conscience transcendental. That is how it gets away from theory and tips the scales in favour of praxis. According to Varela, the enact must return to the human experience thanks to a nontheoretical but embodied reflexion in which body and mind are just one. This emergence of ―embodied5 cognition‖ stems from the structural coupling with the environment. This means that there is no pre-given, or a-priori, but simply physically experienced implicit phenomena. At a phenomenological level the mind is by nature alive to ―inter-subjectivity‖ as it essentially develops through the interaction with other minds (Husserl, 1960; Zahavi, 1996, 2001; Thompson, 2001, in [31]). The inter-subjectivity then requires a mental process described by Thompson [32] as ―the other‘s pre-thought, passive experience, being embodied as self‖ (p. 12). Mishara, of phenomenological allegiance, also referred to embodied cognition to describe the common sense that is then recorded in identical phenomena [24]. And this is how phenomenology and enact can converge to the same end: the effective experience. Today, we don‘t need to demonstrate the irreducibility of the conscience phenomenon to empirical justification anymore; however, such a step forward should not let us forget the necessity of ecological conditions for the scientific experimentation. For Varela and Shear [34], phenomenology is not transcendental but, in accordance with the etymological meaning of the term, it helps explain what appears as ―first person‖ in order to naturalise it. In the wake of Varela, Thompson [32] sails towards the human experience of empathy (mutual circulation) through different currents like cognitive sciences, phenomenology and Buddhist contemplative psychology. He claims that this human experience constitutionally depends on dynamic coupling and on synchronisation of self and other in empathy, and that phenomenology and contemplative psychology reveal a relational inter-subjectivity older than the concepts of reification of ―self‖ and ―other―. Besides, he suggests bringing together sciences and contemplative experience. However, this will only be
4
Zurück zu den Sachen selbst, where Sache means matter, stake, cause more than thing in the sense of physical object. 5 The word embodiment means ―corporéité‖ in Merleau-Ponty‘s sense of the word. Corporéité refers to the body both as lived structure and as context or scene of the cognitive mechanisms.
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possible if sciences reconcile with ―the first person‖6 experience (as opposed to ―the third person‖) by incorporating it directly in the empirical research methods. From this new approach of methodology ―neurophenomenology‖7 can rise. A phenomenology of empathy could stem from the conjunction of the body, the ―flesh being‖, and the ―other self‖, l‘alter ego. As Minkowski said, man is made to seek humans. Finally Depraz, following Francisco Varela, underlines that the primacy granted to others is embodied in a same experiential practice of compassion, despite the differences of epistemological and metaphysical perspectives in Husserlian , spiritual and ethical phenomenology in Buddhism [5, 6, 33, 35, 36].
DISCUSSION Dr P. Houillon - The definition of empathy is more difficult than it seems. Its formulation conveys what the author makes of it and what use he expects of it. The very documented study of the authors of this communication goes through different currents that took interest in this question with the vocabulary and in the spirit of their discipline. That‘s how they pertinently called to mind Husserl and the neo-Husserlian movement, Carl Rogers, Freud… as many authors who studied the modes of relation to others. It‘s not surprising that they each have their view on empathy. If we were to be exhaustive, we would have to synthesize the proposals of each of them but this would mean, without a doubt, running the risk of syncretism. What we have just heard can be linked with the usual definitions. However they are not completely free from pitfalls. To summarise, empathy is then considered an ability to put oneself in somebody else‘s place, understand others, interpret the behaviour of an alter ego, of a ―person‖ like us, that is to say of someone who thinks what another thinks, who can imagine others‘ beliefs, grasp a state of mind, who has the sense of self and the sense of others. In such a statement, the question of otherness is not being raised. Yet there is no possible empathy without the conscience of otherness. Isn‘t that because the other is perceived as other, as ―stranger‖ that empathy becomes of value and makes sense? Otherwise it might get altered by the therapist‘s change of heart when he is carried away by indulgence for support or by personal felt, which won‘t allow him the required objectivity. To say that empathy is issued from inter-subjectivity, as we were reminded, clearly means that it is part of an interpersonal relationship that can only reach its dimension if there is sufficient work space for the therapist‘s language and personal approach. Pr M. Laxenaire - I would like to make two comments concerning your very thorough speech: You didn‘t mention the term ―congruence‖ well in use a while ago following Carl Rogers‘ work. Congruence is the adequacy between what is expressed and what is lived. Carl 6
Daniel Dennet uses the English neologism ―auto phenomenological‖ to describe this methodology in the ―first person‖ inspired by phenomenology. It is still deeply criticised by Dennet [4] who follows the ―heterophenomenological‖ (or neutral) method in the ―third person‖ where the conscience can only be investigated as the other‘s conscience. He rejects science in the ―first person‖ (related to the Husserlian phenomenology), though accepted by Husserl, James and Varela. Some will furthermore see in the heterophenomenology something like a non-phenomenological conception [25]. 7 According to Bitbol, science expanded to the neurophenomenology sense is a science linking the subjective and the objective via the common rules of inter-subjective coordination.
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Rogers theorised about empathy in the context of the ―meeting groups‖ he contributed to form. My second comment relates to a completely different phenomenon; during a conference, J.-P. Changeux showed brain images gathered from subjects in an empathic state that were entirely symmetrical: the same brain areas were activated at the same time in the subject experiencing pain and in the subject feeling that same pain as the other. Dr C.-J. Blanc - We should thank our colleague, Dr Boulanger, for bringing back the debate on the concept of empathy which is a key element of intersubjective relationships, of aesthetic experience and, of course, of the patient-doctor relationship. A concept ―nomade‖, it was said. We must however define it to retain its relevance. Fortunately, in the diagnostic and therapeutic relationship within the area of our specialisation, the use of empathy lessens the lack of life generated by statistical questionnaires and surveys that, in the name of objectivity turn the lived experience of subjectivity into ―algebraic smokes‖, as Karl Jaspers said a very long time ago… Relational semiology through empathy and direct emotional contact is of course favourite among all the positions that claim an understanding of phenomenology of subjectivity. While on this theme, let‘s point out Natalie Depraz‘ excellent work on the ―Conscience‖ (which I have analysed in our review) and Ferdinand Alquie‘s on ―The Emotional Conscience‖ as sources of knowledge. Natalie Depraz, in connection with F. Varela‘s work, has suggested interesting neurophenomenological approaches that as usual reopen the renowned ―Brain-mind problem‖. Varela‘s proposition to resort to Buddhist metaphysics sets problems and gives rise to many reservations as we Westerners are immersed in Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures. With regards to the Anglo-Saxon ―peak experiences‖ in the aesthetic, philosophical and mystical areas, the concept of empathy stands among configurations surrounded by two other key concepts: esemplasie or ―unity and whole‖ used by the English romantic poets, in particular Coleridge, and developed by Schelling in his reflections on aesthetic experience, and of course ―l‘epoche‖, the Husserlian reduction, the brackets that form the reversed movement of the previous concept. Once again, thank you to Dr Boulanger for this communication of an exceptional interest. The reporter‘s response - To Dr Houillon: Those brief comments would, of course, require to be developed further, especially as others‘ experience is still an almost infinite field of research as it introduces many theories. Regarding the position of otherness as a necessary condition of the emergence of empathy, I have chosen to focus on the main current, phenomenology which I experiment within clinical psychopathology. Here the problem resides in that we stand at two different levels, conceptual and temporal altogether. Otherness and inter-subjectivity are concepts that do not overlap. According to Husserl, empathy is what helps me recognise the other not as an object only but as an alter ego who, despite their different persistence aims at the same world I do. But at the same time he also insisted on the irreducible difference between my lived experiences and those of others. As for Dan Zahavi, Danish phenomenologist, he attempts to base inter-subjectivity not on the carnal body‘s experience as expression but on the experience of the inherent otherness of my own body as carnal body. In that way, he attempts to delink the question of the constitution of intersubjectivity through empathy from that of inter-subjectivity that he calls constituent. To Pr Laxenaire: You are right to underline the essential nature of Carl Rogers‘ work explaining the emphatic process in the therapeutic relationship. Carl Rogers is the creator of client-focused counselling. He sets empathy in the centre of humanistic perspective in clinical
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psychology. The ―listening techniques rogerienne‖ represent a dynamic process that is perfectly defined by three bench marks: the unconditional positive consideration, congruence and empathy. The first principle proceeds from a total respect of the person, without any judgement or any intention to impose a way of thinking, in the a priori acceptance of their honesty and choices. This dimension of the utmost importance implies focusing on the person we are listening to. But, even though that might seem a paradox, it requires to be focused on oneself too
