Relational schemas and the developing self: perceptions of mother and of self as joint predictors of early adolescents' self-esteem

This 1-year longitudinal study examined early adolescents' (N=278, age 11-13 years) perceptions of their mother's behavior (affection, knowledge of child's activities, and psychological control) and of how they react to their mother (trust in mother, defiance, and debilitation) as predictors of self-esteem among peers. Perceived maternal affection predicted self-esteem for girls; perceived psychological control forecast lower self-esteem for boys. Perceptions of self as untrusting, defiant, or debilitated led to lower self-esteem. Furthermore, perceived maternal behavior interacted with perceived self-reactions to predict self-esteem: Perceived debilitation led to reduced self-esteem only under high perceived maternal psychological control; perceived defiance predicted lower self-esteem only under low perceived maternal knowledge. The prediction of self-esteem is clearly enhanced when perceived self-reactions are included along with perceived maternal behavior as predictors. Combinations of perceived maternal behavior and perceived self-reactions--relational schemas--warrant increased attention as possible influences on the developing self.     

Cognitive schemas and thought as determinants of attitude change

It was hypothesized that thought would result in greater attitude polarization than distraction and that this effect would be more pronounced with better developed schemas (naive theories) for thinking about the attitude object. In Study 1, it was reasoned that persons have better developed schemas (e.g., implicit personality theories) for thinking about individuals than for thinking about groups. In Study 2, it was reasoned that men have better developed schemas for thinking about football and women have better developed schemas for thinking about women's fashions. In both studies, the hypothesis was significantly confirmed.     

Foundations for self and other: a study in autism

There is controversy over the basis for young children's experience of themselves and other people as separate yet related individuals, each with a mental perspective on the world - and over the nature of corresponding deficits in autism. Here we tested a form of self-other connectedness (identification) in children with and without autism, who were group-matched according to CA (approximately 6 to 16 years) and verbal MA (approximately 2 1/2 to 14 years), and therefore IQ. We gave two forms of a novel 'sticker test' in which children needed to communicate to another person where on her body she should place her sticker-badge. Across the trials of Study 1, all of the non-autistic children pointed to their own bodies at least once, but over half the children with autism failed to point to themselves at all, even though they communicated successfully in other ways. In Study 2, where a screen was introduced to hide the tester's body, group differences in the children's communicative self-orientated gestures were most marked after the tester had 'modelled' a point-to-herself gesture in communicating to the child. Our interpretation is that autism involves a relative failure to adopt the bodily-anchored psychological and communicative stance of another person. We suggest that this process of identification is essential to self-other relations and grounds young children's developing understanding of minds.     

A model of the synchronic self

The phenomenology of the self includes the sense of control over one's body and mind, of being bounded in body and mind, of having perspective from within one's body and mind and of being extended in time. I argue that this phenomenology is to be accounted for by a set of five dissociable cognitive capacities that compose the self. The focus of this paper is on the four capacities that compose the synchronic self: the agentive(B) self, which underlies the sense of control over one's body; the boundary(B) self, which underlies the sense of being bounded within one's body; the agentive(M) self which underlies the sense of control over one's thoughts; and the boundary(M) self which underlies the sense of being bounded within one's mind. I model the agentive(B) and agentive(M) selves as parts of the motor control system and the boundary(B) self as the capacity to form and integrated map of the body. I point to the delusion of thought broadcast as a possible source of evidence for future research on the boundary(M) self.     

Reliance on schemas in source memory: age differences and similarity of schemas

The present study has examined the effects of source-schema-consistency, schematic distinctiveness and encoding time of schematic information on source memory of younger and older adults. Participants were administered a source memory test, in which two sources presented statements that were congruent with, incongruent with or irrelevant to sources' professions. Professions of sources were schematically similar or distinct, and they were revealed before or after the presentation of items. The results yielded that revelation of profession information before presentation of items enhanced source memory for incongruent items. Aging was associated with a general decrease in source monitoring processes. Participants who were assigned to similar-source condition and had their schemas activated before learning phase had higher source monitoring scores. Results are discussed in relation to source monitoring framework and aging of memory.     

Women as generalized other and self theory: A strategy for empirical research

Following the argument that women as generalized other (Mead, 1934) could be empirically explored in much the same manner as self concepts, a variant of Kuhn's (1960) twenty statements test was applied to an examination of perceptions of women in general and of the relationship between self concepts and conceptions of women. College men and women were asked to reply to the questions “Who are they (women)?” and “Who am I?” in 20 open-ended responses. Content analysis of the statements revealed findings both consistent and inconsistent with other sex-role research findings.     

A new look at the schema therapy model: organization and role of early maladaptive schemas

This study reexamined the organization of Young’s 18 early maladaptive schemas and their hypothesized associations with experiences of need-thwarting parental experiences in childhood and the “vulnerable child” mode of emotional distress in adulthood. A large Danish sample (N = 1054) of 658 clinical- and 391 nonclinical adults completed measures of early maladaptive schemas, parenting styles, and the vulnerable child mode. We identified four higher-order schema domains as most appropriate in terms of interpretability and empirical indices (“Disconnection & Rejection”, “Impaired Autonomy & Performance”, “Excessive Responsibility & Standards”, and “Impaired Limits”). All four schema domains were differentially associated with conceptually relevant need-thwarting parental experiences. Apart from “Impaired Limits”, the schema domains meaningfully accounted for the association between need-thwarting parental experiences in childhood and emotional states of feeling like a “vulnerable child” in adulthood. We conclude that four domains of early maladaptive schemas are empirically and conceptually consistent with Young’s schema therapy model of personality pathology and longstanding emotional disorders. Findings warrant replication using different populations and if possible a prospective multi-method design. A scoring key for computing the four schema domains is provided.     

Ambiguity between self and other: Individual differences in action attribution

Individuals differ in their ability to attribute actions to self or other. This variance is thought to explain, in part, the experience of voice-hearing. Misattribution can also be context-driven. For example, causal ambiguity can arise when the actions of two or more individuals are coordinated and produce similar effects (e.g., music-making). Experience in such challenging contexts may refine skills of action attribution. Forty participants completed a novel finger-tapping task which parametrically manipulated the proportion of control that ‘self’ versus ‘other’ possessed over resulting auditory tones. Results showed that action misattribution peaked in the middle of the self-to-other continuum and was biased towards other. This pattern was related to both high hallucination-proneness and to low musical-experience. Findings suggest not only that causal ambiguity plays a key role in agency but also that action attribution abilities may improve with practice, potentially providing an avenue for remediation of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia.     

The self and possibilites for change

In the context of a formulation of self, the possibility for self-defined change and its occurrence were specified. Views of self, defined as concordant (actual and preferred self views are the same) or discordant (actual and preferred self views are different) were analyzed in terms of the implicative capacity of each view of self and willingness to change one's view of self. The general formulation was confirmed. Individuals tend to (1) maintain a desired and current view of self, and (2) either shift or avoid a shift to the desired view of self depending on the relative implicative capacity of the desired or preferred view of self. Theoretical implications of the nature of the self and the possibilities of change, of self-defined change, and insight were discussed.     

Failure to deactivate in autism: the co-constitution of self and other

A new brain imaging study demonstrates that patients with autism have a strikingly different pattern of brain activity compared with control subjects. During cognitive tasks, cortical areas known as the "default state" network--areas that have been implicated in both self-referential processing and processing of socially relevant information--typically reduce their brain activity. In patients with autism, such a reduction was not observed. This new finding indicates that a core deficit in autism might be related to the construal of a sense of self in its relationship with others and will certainly generate exciting new research on the neurobiology of autism.     

Object loss, renewed mourning, and psychic change in Jane Austen's Persuasion

Austen's extraordinary realism in depicting the dynamic internal processes which follow on the heroine's loss in Persuasion becomes clear in the light of a psychoanalytic understanding of mourning. Persuasion dramatizes the effects of a mother's death in adolescence as these come into play at the time of the heroine's separation from her fiancée and her later mourning. The thesis of this paper is that, despite falling in love with the brilliant hero, an unfinished mourning and an unconscious identification with her dead mother helped to persuade the heroine Anne Elliot to break her engagement, to create a 'final parting' as her mother had done to her in dying. The heroine's internal monologues show that she has projected some of the darker feelings of mourning, her anger and resentment, on to the hero and that she reopens a complex mourning process, partly through the displacement of affect, showing how traumatic effects of loss can be worked through in deferred action, effecting positive psychic change.     

Representing intentions in self and other: studies of autism and typical development

Two experiments were conducted to explore the extent to which individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), as well as young typically developing (TD) children, are explicitly aware of their own and others’ intentions. In Experiment 1, participants with ASD were significantly less likely than age‐ and ability‐matched comparison participants to correctly recognize their own knee‐jerk reflex movements as unintentional. Performance on this knee‐jerk task was associated with performance on measures of false belief understanding, independent of age and verbal ability, in both participants with ASD and TD children. In Experiment 2, participants with ASD were significantly less able than comparison participants to correctly recognize their own or another person’s mistaken actions as unintended, in a ‘Transparent Intentions’ task ( Russell & Hill, 2001 ; Russell, Hill & Franco, 2001 ). Performance on aspects of the Transparent Intentions task was associated with performance on measures of false belief understanding, independent of age and verbal ability, in both participants with ASD and TD children. This study suggests that individuals with ASD have a diminished awareness of their own and others’ intentions and that this diminution is associated with other impairments in theory of mind.     

Emergence of self and other in perception and action: an event-control approach

The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept 'self.' This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach (i.e., the event-control approach) that is based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system (i.e., the distal-event system) that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action (i.e., effector-control systems) in a constraining, as opposed to 'causal' manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept 'self' onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify 'the self' as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order.     

The abused child as parent: Perception of self and other

Although not all abused children grow up to be abusive parents, it is well known that people who were severely mistreated by their parents as compared to those who were not are at higher risk for mistreating their children. It has also been shown that abusive parents often have unrealistic expectations for their children—expectations based on distorted perceptions of their children's needs, feelings, and abilities. In this paper, we examine the utility of new methods developed in social psychology to study: (1) the impact of abuse on the structure and content of interpersonal and self-perception and (2) the interrelationships among an abused mother's social and self-perception, the quality of her interactions with her child, and the child's development. Case studies will be presented to illustrate how these new methods reflect risk for abuse as predicted independently by clinicians treating the cases.     

Fabricated bodies: A model for the somatic false self

This paper draws attention to a particular use of the body, one in which basic psychical security is achieved through a radical detachment from body vitality, necessitating the creation of a coercive regime of psychosomatic control and autostimulation for purposes of artificial enlivenment of the self. When the personality is organized predominantly along the lines of a systematic dissociation (and then pseudo-integration) of the mental and the somatic realms of psychical life, the psyche-soma undergoes a far-reaching transmutation: the desiring body is eclipsed and replaced with a fabricated body. Clinical observation of this set-up is obscured by the fact that, in these cases, the body is deployed in a 'realistic' manner, rather than in a recognizably symptomatic way. It is, indeed, the hallmark of a successful somatic false-self organization that the colonization of the body is disguised as natural, ego-syntonic and compatible with social norms. The treatment approach requires a broadening of analytic attention to apprehend shifts in states of consciousness and psychophysical cues.     

身与身外:儒家的一个未决问题

Fei Xiaotong's thoughts on the Confucian system of interpersonal relationships actually indicated that the Confucian theory of social cooperation leads itself to an unsettled paradox, that is, there is a lack of universal theoretical construction in the Confucian moral system. Confucian theory does not extend beyond practical circumstances. Instead, its universal principles always disappear in specific circumstances. Because of its long established position in mainstream dialogue, Confucianism failed to reflect on its flaws, but this paradox has been revealed in the face of modern challenges. Translated by Yan Xin from Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Xuebao 中国人民大学学报 (Journal of Renmin University of China), 2007, (1): 15–21