Biomedical subjects

L Malcus

Publications and source records attributed to L Malcus.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1995

Indirect scapegoating via projective identification and the mother group.

This article proposes an indirect route to role suction and scapegoating via projective identification (PI) of members' split-off feelings into the group. For these members, the group is a good, soothing mother. Other members, sensitive to a projected feeling, introject it from the group and may become scapegoats. For them the group is the bad, invasive mother. This model provides a unifying explanation for the literature's contrasting depiction of the group as either a good or a bad mother. By fostering the containment and holding functions of the group and exploring and interpreting the interrelated phenomena of PI, the mother group, and indirect scapegoating, the therapist can facilitate the development of more realistic, integrated, internal-object-relations, which in turn fosters improved interpersonal relations.

Female↗

PubMed1986

Frequency discrimination: assessing global-level and element-level units in memory.

Subjects' knowledge of how often various events occur was used to assess the retention of memory units for word-like strings of letters. A series of strings was presented at one of three exposure durations. Within the series, the frequencies of occurrence of different strings and of the letters composing the strings were varied orthogonally. At relatively long exposure durations, subjects could discriminate the frequency of occurrence for both strings and their constituent letters. The formation of global-level (string) memory units was indicated by judgments of string frequency being unaffected by either the frequencies of their component letters or experimental conditions (brief exposures) that prohibited accurate judgment of letter frequency. Although judgments of letter frequency were sometimes biased by the frequency of the strings containing the letters, the success with which the judgments discriminated different levels of letter frequency did not depend on the activation of string-level memory units. Furthermore, subjects' frequency judgments for letters were not predictable from their recall of the strings containing the letters. These results, which could not be explained by Tversky and Kahneman's (1973) "availability heuristic," provided evidence for the formation of element-level (letter) memory units. A converging experiment established that element-level frequency information could be abstracted from words as well as nonwords, and further, that this information was stored in long-term memory.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1985

Peripheral visual field is radially organized.

The visibility of vertical, horizontal, and 45 degrees oblique square wave gratings was measured at 10 to 45 degrees of eccentricity along the vertical, horizontal, and the 45 degrees oblique meridians. A forced-choice orientation identification response to the stimulus grating and a subjective rating of the confidence in response accuracy were the response measurements. The best seen grating orientation was always the one parallel to the meridian upon which it was presented. Along the vertical and horizontal meridians the most poorly seen orientation was the one perpendicular to the meridian. Along the 45 degrees oblique meridians the horizontal grating was as poorly seen as the meridian perpendicular to the grating orientation, except in the infranasal quadrant of the field. Pinhole experiments show these results unlikely to be due to off-axis optical aberrations. It is hypothesized that the radial organization of the peripheral visual field is due to underlying neural factors ontogenically determined, not due to environmental adaptations.

Form Perception↗