Does the Brain’s Reward Response Occur Even Without Actual Reward? A Response to Fielding et al. (2017)

A recent paper by Fielding et al. (J Gamb Stud, 2017) argued that the brain’s reward response could occur without the presentation of actual reward. We suggest that since (a) the event-related potentials reported in this paper are atypical of the previous literature, and, (b) a simpler account of the data in terms of sensitivity to outcome frequency cannot be ruled out, the extent to which the brain’s reward response can occur without the presentation of actual reward should remain an open question.     

The Adoptee’s Journey

The subject of adoption has often been mired in wishful thinking and denial. Because of the secrecy in the system, adopted children have beenforced to repress their need to know about their origins; many feel invisible because an essential part of them is unacknowledged by their adoptive parents and society. The purpose of this article is to help mental health and legal professionals, as well as those in the extended community, to see what is specific about the formation of the adoptee’s inner world. It introduces the concept of cumulative adoption trauma and discusses the adoptee's need to dissociate feelings of loss, grief and anger. The struggle to form a coherent sense of selfmay eventually lead to the adoptee's need to search out the birth parents in order to integrate the past and the present and move on into the future.     

Jia’s The Chinese Version

Abstract

The Chinese Character Simplification Programme of 1955–1957 that remains a national standard by force of law in the People’s Republic of China, not only degraded the aesthetic properties of the Chinese written character, but also hindered literacy by means of a haphazard formal reduction of the number of strokes, and by eliminating two-thirds of characters from the lexicon of those allowed for publication. In The Chinese Version painting series by Jia (b.1979), the artist arranges Chinese characters according to formal rather than semantic criteria, in order to generate by means of their juxtaposition, abstract or figurative patterns. Each character may retain its individual meaning, but not its function as a sequential syntagm. This strategy invests the characters with a formal aspect to ‘return’ that which was mutilated by the Simplification Programme. As the Simplification Programme’s formal changes ended characters’ role as image-signs, the artist’s choice to present each work as a painting alludes to their lost image capacity while appearing to imitate the outward aspect of printed characters, thereby implicitly turning against itself the pretext of character simplification for the sake of efficiency.     

Response to Ross’s Comment to Miccio-Fonseca and DeFeo

ABSTRACT

Response to Ross on his comments regarding my purported misunderstanding of Ross’s article and the DSM-V (Ross, 2015). Although Ross claims he offered no personal opinions of any kind in his commentary, undeniably there were two separate and independent comments in (Miccio-Fonseca (2015) and DeFeo (2015) addressing similar issues. Is this coincidental? This author maintains the stance expressed in the cited commentary.     

Symbols in Anderson’s The Egg

The application of symbolism makes Sherwood Anderson's The Egg better in the depth of thinking and in the portrayal of people' s life and destiny.This essay is going to interpret different symbols embodied in this short story.     

The World’s Mightiest Naval Station

The Korean War is often given a cursory glance, if that, in U.S. foreign relations today. This article provides all the information necessary to conduct a role-play in one class period to help students understand the events of the war. Introductory and follow-up questions are also included to stimulate discussion and to connect the events of a war over half a century ago to the events of today.     

Effects of a Mindfulness Task on Women’s Sexual Response

Mindfulness-based interventions are effective at improving symptoms of sexual dysfunction in women. The mechanisms by which mindfulness improves sexual function are less clear. The main objective of our study was to investigate the impact of a mindfulness task on sexual response in women. Forty-one women (mean age = 27.2, SD = 5.6) participated in two laboratory sessions that each included two erotic films and one attention task that were presented in counterbalanced order. Both attention tasks consisted of a six-minute audio recording of either a modified body scan, focusing on genital arousal sensations (mindfulness condition), or a visualization exercise. Subjective and genital sexual arousal were measured continuously during stimulus presentation. The mindfulness task led to greater subjective and lower genital arousal. The agreement of subjective and genital sexual arousal (i.e., concordance) was greater in the mindfulness condition. Trait mindfulness was related to lower sexual arousal but also greater sexual concordance in women. Mindfulness-based interventions that encourage women to focus on physical arousal sensations in the here and now may be associated with women’s improved sexual function by enhancing feelings of sexual arousal during sexual activity and by increasing concordance between subjective and genital sexual arousal.     

Contextualising Fred Wander’s The Seventh Well

Between East and West: The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk. Robert J. Brym with the assistance of Rozalina Ryvkina, The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk: Identity, Antisemitism, Emigration, edited and with an introduction by Howard Spier. London: Macmillan and New York: New York University Press, both in association with the Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1994. 142 pp. Tables. Appendices. Illus. Name Index. Subject Index. £35.00 hardcover; $30.00 hardcover; $18.50 paperback.

A Jewish Ambassador at the Kremlin Court. Mordechai Altshuler, Yitshak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski (eds.), Sovetskiye evrei pishut llye Erenburgu 1943–1966 (Soviet Jews Write to llya Ehrenburg 1943–1966). Jerusalem: The Centre for Research and Documentation of East‐European Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 1993. 539 pp. Bibl. Name and Subject Index. Paperback.

An Encouraging Start. Yakiv Suslensky, Spravzhni heroi: pro uchast hromadian Ukrainy u riatuvaniiyevreiv vid fashystskoho henotsydu (True Heroes: The Part Played by Ukrainian Citizens in Rescuing Jews from the Fascist Genocide). Ed. I. F. Kuras et al. Foreword by Leonid Kravchuk. Kiev: Tovarystvo ‘Ukraina’, 1993. 152 pp. Photographs. (Hromadiany Ukrainy—pravednyky svitu 1 (Ukrainian Citizens—Righteous of the World, Series, no. 1)). Paperback. Printrun 25,000. ISBN 5–87168–026–7.

The ‘Rational Core’ of Nazism. Ernst Nolte, Streitpunkte. Heutige und künftige Kontroversen um den Nafionalsozialismus. Berlin/Frankfurt (Main): Propyläen, 1993. 493 pp.

Volume on Hungarian Holocaust Updated. Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, revised and enlarged ed., 2 vols. New York: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and Boulder, Co: Social Science Monographs, 1994. 1,486 pp. Illus. Chronology. Index. $310.50; £155.00 hardcover. (Distributed by Columbia University Press.)

Gray Dawn or Swan Song?. Charles Hoffman, Gray Dawn: The Jews of Eastern Europe in the Post‐Communist Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. 349pp. Index. Selected bibliography. $25.00 hardcover.     

Blowout!: Firestone’s image restoration campaign

In this application of image restoration theory, Blaney, Benoit, and Brazeal discover that Firestone botched its recovery efforts. Its attempt to shift blame to Ford was poorly conceived. Its corrective action was not perceived as addressing the problem at hand. Moreover, its use of Michael and Mario Andretti to bolster its product and reputation was limited by the obvious financial relationship with these professional drivers. Finally, the authors support past scholarship that scrutinizes the appropriateness of certain strategy combinations. Specifically, mortification and bolstering can be undermined by denial and corrective action.     

The Effects of Children’s Health on Mothers’ Employment

When children have health problems, mothers face a tradeoff between the decision to work to satisfy increased expenses and the decision to stay home to fulfill enlarged caregiving needs, especially for children with chronic conditions. This research used an instrumental variables approach to investigate the labor market consequences of mothers due to burden to care children with health problems. We found mothers’ employment probability increased by 0.9% for every $100 of increased out-of-pocket medical spending, while employment probability fell by 1.0% for every half day of school/day care a sick child missed. By correcting for endogeneity we addressed a potential empirical bias. Analyses by subgroups showed that Hispanic mothers were less likely to work in the labor market with high caregiving burden. We also found that the effects of time burden on labor market outcomes were magnified for black mothers.