Stone Age Minds in Modern Medicine: Ancient Footprints Everywhere
Pat Croskerry, Karen S. Cosby, Mark L. Graber, Hardeep Singh in Diagnosis, 2017
With the exception of some basic reflexes, all of our behavior is under some degree of cognitive control, as it is with other animals. Further back on the evolutionary scale, the behavior of simpler forms is driven by instinct—a particular stimulus appears in the environment and triggers a fixed-action pattern (Figure 6.1). No conscious mediation is involved. We talk about the instinct of birds to migrate, cats to hunt, and salmon to swim upstream in the breeding season. All of these complex behaviors are instinct s—no purposeful thought or decision making is involved. Although a robin’s nest may appear to be a thoughtful design, no learning was involved, no deliberate thinking went into it, and the next generation will build one almost exactly the same with no input from parents. Following instinct, Hogarth [5] describes the next level of cognitive function as primitive processing—this again involves innate automatic responses but is distinct from instinct in that there is now cognitive involvement that can recognize co-variation of events and frequencies, and some basic inferences might be made about weather, food, shelter, and predators. The next level is unconscious processing, which again, is automatic and unconscious and does not require specific attention, but involves tacitly learning about the environment and may involve a memory for important stimuli. Sophisticated processing is the next level and involves meaning and affect.
ENTRIES A–Z
Philip Winn in Dictionary of Biological Psychology, 2003
Ethology's theoretical framework attracts little attention now, but the influence of its approach has totally pervaded behavioural science. It is now accepted that whatever level of organisation is under scrutiny, explanation is incomplete without knowledge of its place in the life history of the animal subject. In a classic paper Tinbergen (1963) set out four interrelated aims for ethology: to study the function, evolution, causation and development of the behaviour we are studying. These aims have proved as important for psychologists involved in the study of learning or higher cognitive abilities as for zoologists working in the field on the ecological constraints on SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR. The old boundaries between ethology, psychology and physiology have largely broken down as a result. Learning and instinct are no longer seen as alternatives; now we investigate how genetic and environmental influences operate in the development and evolution of all behaviour.
Instincts and emotions
Allan Hobson in Psychodynamic Neurology, 2014
The term instinct means a built-in or inherited behavior with the twin implications of primitiveness and importance to survival. Thus instincts such as sexuality and aggressiveness dominated post-Darwinian thought and were prominent in the theoretical work of Sigmund Freud, who reasoned that dreams, the ego, and the emotions all derived from primitive instincts. Now that we see that the criterion of genetic inheritance can clearly be applied to such functions as sleep and thus to dreaming (as the immediate outgrowth of instinctual sleep), it is imperative to radically revise our theoretical structure.
Child and Adult Attachment Styles among Individuals Who Have Committed Filicide: The Case for Examining Attachment by Gender
Published in International Journal of Forensic Mental Health, 2020
L. Eriksson, U. Arnautovska, S. McPhedran, P. Mazerolle, R. Wortley
The contemporary conceptualization of attachment within interpersonal relationships emerges from the theoretical foundations laid by the joint work of Bowlby (1973) and Ainsworth (1978). Bowlby, an ethological psychiatrist, identified that when infants are distressed or alarmed, they will seek contact with caregivers by eliciting a range of innate vocal and expressive signals that promote caregiving and attention. Bowlby theorized that just as infants are expressing innate signaling behavior, the caregiver response, of attending and caregiving, is also an innate behavior. ‘Attachment’ is developed through the repeated signal and response patterns of the infant-caregiver relationship. With stronger attachment linked to greater (in terms of response time and accuracy of signal interpretation) caregiver responsiveness. Infants who experience predictable, timely and accurate responses from their caregiver(s) were observed to display intense emotional stress behaviors when separated from their caregiver(s). It was assumed that reactions to the availability of the attachment figure, predominantly the mother, would have a profound effect on the child and the parent-child relationship. As such, the mother-infant bond, and especially its disruption resulting from prolonged separation, deprivation, or bereavement, is considered to have an important developmental impact (Bretherton, 1992).
Creating Occupational Therapy: The Challenges to Defining a Profession
Published in Occupational Therapy In Health Care, 2018
The concepts of teaching and teachers occur frequently in the discussion regarding who made the best occupation instructors. In the military, Johnson (1919) comments in her notes that occupation therapy was used for the purpose of teaching academic subjects including grammar, literature, arithmetic, and geography. After the war the emphasis on academic subjects decreased but the concepts of good teaching remained. For example, Hutchings (1922) suggested there are three qualities of a good occupational therapy teacher: 1) a clear vision of what is to be accomplished; 2) the teaching instinct; and 3) personality by which he means leadership skills to inspire, command respect and attain personal regard. He further suggests the training as a teacher is useful especially at the kindergarten level where the instructor had to learn how to give simple or to simplify instructions. Pollock (1920) advocates for trained teachers (of occupational therapy) who have the “ability to interest and inspire patient; to marshal material and equipment; to manage and training assistants; (and) to secure co-operation among officers, employees, and patients” (p. 39). Furthermore, the person must also be able to initiate and carry out “a systematic graded course of instruction beginning with habit training and ending with industrial work or discharge from the institution” (p. 39). Ridgway (1921) states “Occupation rooms such as these (with a variety of occupations) can only be managed efficiently by trained teachers and only by those trained teachers who have an aptitude for the work” (p. 92)
“We all need Purpose and Reason to be here.”: A Qualitative Investigation of howmembers of Alcoholics Anonymous with Long-term Recovery Experience Aging
Published in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 2022
Kevin McInerney, Gulcan Garip, Tony Benson
Theoretically, the present study considers the participants’ narratives from a logotherapeutic perspective (Frankl, 2014). Logotherapy is an existential and spiritual, meaning-centered psychotherapy. According to Holmes (1991) AA is essentially logotherapy because it addresses four of Frankl’s (2014) major concepts: the spiritual dimension, existential frustration, freedom and responsibility. Whereas Adlerian psychology and Freudian psychoanalysis, respectively, advance the notions of the will to power and the will to pleasure, as the fundamental forces that drive human beings, Frankl (1963) proposes that the individual’s “primary motivation” is “the will to meaning” (p. 105). In other words, there is a deep-rooted instinct within every human being to find purpose and meaning in life. Frankl (2014) further proposes that when this primary need is not satisfied, people “suffer from a sense of meaningless and emptiness,” which he conceptualized as an “existential vacuum,” a phenomenon born out of boredom and apathy (p. 61). Equally central to logotherapy is the spiritual aspect of humanness, which, in logotherapy is contextualized as what it means to be human. All of which, is particularly relevant to the elderly demographic in the current paper, who are likely to experience major late-life events (e.g., bereavement of a partner, retirement, social isolation) that may cause them to question the purpose and meaning of their existence.
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