Building more solid bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology.

Introducing the ways of cultivating mental balance, B. A. Wallace and S. L. Shapiro attempted to build bridges between Buddhism and psychology. Their systematic categorization of Buddhist teachings and extensive review of empirical support from Western psychology are valuable for future study. However, it remains a matter of concern that some more profound parts of Buddhist philosophy can be disregarded by focusing only on practical aspects of Buddhism within the context of mental health. In this comment, the authors briefly address four substantial themes to be considered: reality, identity, causality, and logicality. They suggest that the way to interpret Buddhism as techniques for well-being would certainly be viable in encouraging the study of Buddhist teachings in psychology. Yet, such attempts should not result in superficial imports and applications of Buddhist practices but give due weight to the deeper philosophical issues to build more solid bridges between Buddhism and psychology.

[Interpersonal coordination between breathing and limb movements].

This study examined the stability and variability of interpersonal coordination, in which one person breathed while the other moved a wrist back and forth with an inverted pendulum in hand. Nine pairs of subjects coordinated each other's movement in two relative phase modes. In one mode, Radial flexion-Inspiration and Ulnar flexion-Expiration (RIUE), one subject radially flexed the wrist as the other inhaled and ulnarly flexed it as the other exhaled. In the other, Ulnar flexion-Inspiration and Radial flexion-Expiration (UIRE) mode, the wrist was ulnarly flexed at inhalation, and radially flexed at exhalation. Results were as follows: (1) The two were more highly coordinated in RIUE mode than UIRE mode as the frequency of oscillation increased. (2) Phase transitions were observed from URIE to RIUE mode, as the frequency of oscillation increased. And (3) the more different in preferred frequency the pendulum and breathing movements were, the more deviated from the intended relative phase the coordination became. These results suggest that interpersonal coordination of breathing and wrist-pendulum movement is qualitatively equivalent to intra personal coordination between them.

[Modes of reinforcement and gender and culture of experimenter and subject: effects of "alien" and external reinforcement for Japanese and American men and women].

In this study, we examined external and "alien" reinforcement (ER and AR. respectively) as a factor in social learning, and studied the combined effects of culture and reinforcement mode. A female (Experiment 1) and a male (Experiment 2) experimenters conducted experimental sessions. Both men and women, who grew up in the same culture as the experimenter, participated and performed the experimental task. A three-way interaction effect of experimenter gender, culture, and reinforcement mode was found on task performance. And the effect was more pronounced for a Japanese experimenter. A female and a male experimenters conducted Experiments 3 and 4, respectively; however participants this time were men and women who grew up in different cultures than the experimenter. Results indicated that the pattern of the subject gender and reinforcement mode interaction effect, when the experimenter was Japanese with American subjects, was exactly opposite to that when the experimenter was American. These experiments showed that AR was as effective for social learning as ER, and that the cultural backgrounds of experimenter and subject influenced AR and ER effectiveness.