Tangled webs: tracing the connections between genes and cognition

The rise of molecular genetics is having a pervasive influence in a wide variety of fields, including research into neurodevelopmental disorders like dyslexia, speech and language impairments, and autism. There are many studies underway which are attempting to determine the roles of genetic factors in the aetiology of these disorders. Beyond the obvious implications for diagnosis, treatment and understanding, success in these efforts promises to shed light on the links between genes and aspects of cognition and behaviour. However, the deceptive simplicity of finding correlations between genetic and phenotypic variation has led to a common misconception that there exist straightforward linear relationships between specific genes and particular behavioural and/or cognitive outputs. The problem is exacerbated by the adoption of an abstract view of the nature of the gene, without consideration of molecular, developmental or ontogenetic frameworks. To illustrate the limitations of this perspective, I select two cases from recent research into the genetic underpinnings of neurodevelopmental disorders. First, I discuss the proposal that dyslexia can be dissected into distinct components specified by different genes. Second, I review the story of the FOXP2 gene and its role in human speech and language. In both cases, adoption of an abstract concept of the gene can lead to erroneous conclusions, which are incompatible with current knowledge of molecular and developmental systems. Genes do not specify behaviours or cognitive processes; they make regulatory factors, signalling molecules, receptors, enzymes, and so on, that interact in highly complex networks, modulated by environmental influences, in order to build and maintain the brain. I propose that it is necessary for us to fully embrace the complexity of biological systems, if we are ever to untangle the webs that link genes to cognition.     

The nature of connections: young fathers and their children

The purpose of this study was to examine the involvement of young fathers with their children at entry to a fatherhood program and at subsequent follow-up. Thirty-eight young fathers participated in this analysis. Using open-ended questions at intake and subsequent follow-up, they were asked to describe in their own words their relationships with their children. A thematic analysis was used to explore their self-reported statements. Three themes emerged from the analysis: Positive Emotionality, Accessibility, and Engagement. A comparison between thematic categories at intake and follow-up revealed that the most dramatic shift occurred in regard to Engagement. A third of the young fathers shifted from describing Positive Emotionality at intake to the more active process of Engagement at follow-up. The area that showed little change between intake to follow-up was related to Accessibility. These findings may suggest that for young fathers, becoming more involved with their children is a process which can be facilitated by participating in a fatherhood program.     

The five connections: A human rights framework for psychologists

This article provides a brief introduction to human rights, describes why human rights are intrinsic to psychology, and introduces the “Five Connections Framework,” which was adopted by the American Psychological Association in 2021. This framework articulates five distinct relationships between human rights and psychology: (a) Psychologists possess rights by virtue of being human, as well as specific rights essential to their profession and discipline; (b) Psychologists apply their knowledge and methods to the greater realisation of human rights; (c) Psychologists respect human rights and oppose the misuse of psychological science; (d) Psychologists ensure access to the benefits of psychological science and practice; and, (e) Psychologists advocate for human rights. Each of the five connections is described, highlighting implications for psychological research, practice, training and advocacy, with suggestions for how these connections can guide and inspire individual psychologists and psychological associations worldwide.     

Executive function in paediatric medulloblastoma: The role of cerebrocerebellar connections

Executive functions (EFs) are involved in the attainment, maintenance, and integration of information; these functions may play a key role in cognitive and behavioural outcomes in children treated for medulloblastoma (MB). At present, it remains unclear which EFs are most sensitive to the treatment effects for MB and whether damage to cerebrocerebellar circuitry is associated with EF. We completed a comprehensive evaluation of EF in 24 children treated for MB and 20 age‐matched healthy children (HC) and distilled these measures into components. Six components (C1–C6) were extracted from our model, reflecting dissociable constructs of EF: C1 = cognitive efficiency; C2 = planning/problem‐solving; C3 = positive cognitive emotion regulation; C4 = working memory; C5 = negative cognitive emotion regulation; and C6 = mixed cognitive emotion regulation. Group differences were found for C1, C2, C3, and C4; the MB group showed poorer performance on EF tasks and made less use of positive cognitive emotion regulation strategies relative to HC. Compromise to cerebrocerebellar microstructure – cerebro‐ponto‐cerebellar and cerebello‐thalamo‐cerebral pathways – was evident in children treated for MB compared to HC. We found that cerebrocerebellar circuitry has a mediating effect on one component of EF following treatment for MB – working memory.     

The detection and tracing of melodic key changes

Adjusting to key changes in music is vital to a listener's understanding of it, although it is unclear when this adjustment occurs. In three experiments, participants heard obscure melodies that sometimes contained key changes. Both the number of notes after the change and the change distance were manipulated. For one task, the participants were explicitly asked to detect a change. For another task, the participants rated probe tones. These ratings allowed us to trace the listeners' multiple representations of keys. Results suggest that old keys were abruptly abandoned but that new keys were accepted gradually. More distant key changes (e.g., C-F#) were associated with more accurate detection of change, as well as with more time being required to adapt to the new key.     

The points of concepts: their types,tensions, and connections

ABSTRACT

In the literature seeking to explain concepts in terms of their point, talk of ‘the point’ of concepts remains under-theorised. I propose a typology of points which distinguishes practical, evaluative, animating, and inferential points. This allows us to resolve tensions such as that between the ambition of explanations in terms of the points of concepts to be informative and the claim that mastering concepts requires grasping their point; and it allows us to exploit connections between types of points to understand why they come apart, and whether they do so for problematic ideological reasons or for benignly functional reasons.     

The temporal–hippocampal region and retention: The role of temporo-entorhinal connections in rats

Results from previous studies suggest that the entorhinal cortex may be involved in mnemonic processes. The present study was carried out to investigate whether disruption of fibre connections between the temporal cortex and lateral entorhinal area may impair retention of a pre-operatively acquired simultaneous brightness discrimination task. The lesion resulted in a severe impairment in retaining the discrimination task (Experiment 1). The retention deficit could not be traced into the hippocampal formation by making perforant path lesions or hippocampal lesions (Experiment 2). The results indicate that the lateral entorhinal cortex is more crucial for reference memory than the hippocampal formation.     

The Problem of Silence: Training Analyses

An unusual set of silences mark the history of psychoanalysis, and the origins of training analysis is notable among them. Organizational trade unionist politics too often substitute for genuine scholarship. The advantages and limitations of the practice of training analysis need to be explored. Both Glover and Lacan pioneered politicization. A variety of authoritarian devices have been operating for suppressing "dissidence." The future of psychoanalysis may depend on the extent to which the political, social, and strictly philosophic sides of psychoanalysis get explored. in proposing that training analysis leads to     

The role of callosal connections in speech prosody

A 39-year-old right-handed woman suffered an aneurysmal hemorrhage damaging the anterior four-fifths of the corpus callosum as shown on MRI. Computer-aided acoustical analyses of fundamental frequency (Fo) contours and durational patterns were performed on emotive and nonemotive utterances at 4 weeks, 4 months, and 1 year postsurgery. The patient read sentences in each of five tones (happy, sad, angry, neutral, questioning) or with emphasis on certain words. She showed little Fo distinction with intended mood at 4 weeks, but her performance improved over time. This improvement in speech production was accompanied by an improvement in perceptual judgments of her intended tone by six normal listeners. Fo patterns characteristic of emphatic stress and question forms were found at all test periods, but again improved with time. Durationally, the patient showed appropriate emotive and nonemotive distinctions on most sentences. These results provide acoustic evidence that interhemispheric connections via the corpus callosum are important to proper Fo programming, especially emotive distinctions. The results suggest that the right hemisphere contributes to Fo programming but, following callosal damage, such programming can later be performed by the left hemisphere.     

The Widening Gulf: Group Therapy Training and Traditional Training Models

The decline of training programs using traditional methods in group psychotherapy training may correspond to a static growth in membership and certifications in the two recognized national group associations. In addition, the increasing distance of group therapy from family therapy, two modalities that utilize group principles, may further illustrate the isolation of group training from the reality of today's practice. New ideas are needed for training programs to combine the varieties of group practice and settings, and the various practitioners, with standards of competency. A three-tiered training model may serve as an example of a training model that moves in a much needed, new direction.     

Training for Task Performance Under Stress: The Effectiveness of Phased Training Methods

Studies on the training of individuals for task performance in stressful situations have typically considered two approaches. One approach requires that, while training on the task, trainees be exposed to stressors of a kind and intensity characteristic of the situations for which they are being trained ("high fidelity" training). Such an approach might suffer from the interference of stressors with task acquisition. Another approach allows the trainee to train on the task in a stress-free environment or under low-intensity stressors ("low fidelity" training). This approach leaves the trainee insufficiently prepared for task performance under stress. The present study compared these two basic approaches to three forms of "phased" training, which consisted of different combinations of three separate and distinct training phases: a phase which allows the trainee to acquire the task under stress- free conditions; a phase which allows him or her to passively experience the stressor; and a phase in which newly acquired skills are practiced under stress. The results showed that a phased training process which combines the first and third phases just described, is more effective than either "high fidelity" training or "low fidelity" training.     

Mere belonging: the power of social connections

Four experiments examined the effect on achievement motivation of mere belonging, a minimal social connection to another person or group in a performance domain. Mere belonging was expected to increase motivation by creating socially shared goals around a performance task. Participants were led to believe that an endeavor provided opportunities for positive social interactions (Experiment 1), that they shared a birthday with a student majoring in an academic field (Experiment 2), that they belonged to a minimal group arbitrarily identified with a performance domain (Experiment 3), or that they had task-irrelevant preferences similar to a peer who pursued a series of goals (Experiment 4). Relative to control conditions that held constant other sources of motivation, each social-link manipulation raised motivation, including persistence on domain-relevant tasks (Experiments 1-3) and the accessibility of relevant goals (Experiment 4). The results suggest that even minimal cues of social connectedness affect important aspects of self.     

"Meaning" connections and causal connections in the human sciences: the poverty of hermeneutic philosophy

In much of psychoanalytic theory and therapy, Freud repeatedly inferred a causal connection between thematically kindred events by relying on the kinship between their thematic contents. This paper strongly endorses his search for causal explanations. But it argues in detail that (1) his causal inferences from thematic connections rest on an important fallacy, which undermines major etiologic conclusions in psychoanalysis; (2) a related, weighty inferential error is damaging to the Freudian theory of transference, when it infers the pathogenic role of an early childhood scenario from the thematic reenactment (recapitulation) of that scenario in the adult patient's interactions with the analyst, and with other people. Both arguments draw on subject matter in psychoanalysis, physics, evolutionary biology, common-sense psychology, history, and medicine to arrive at a fundamental caveat for all of the sciences: Even when the thematic kinship (or so-called "meaning connection") between events is indeed of very high degree, this fact itself does not license the inference of a causal linkage between these events. A corollary of this result is that we must reject the accusation of Karl Jaspers and the hermeneutic philosophers that Freud's own conception of the psychoanalytic enterprise suffered from a "scientistic self-misunderstanding."     

Family Therapy Training: The Institutional Base

The papers that follow present the findings of three surveys of the institutional base for training in family therapy. ¹ 1 Names and addresses of all facilities known to provide education in this field as of 1980 are available at a charge of U.S. $10.00; checks are to be made out to Family Process.
The surveys were initiated and conducted independently. To some extent they overlap. This is particularly true of the Bloch and Weiss effort in that it does not limit itself to a sector of the training process bounded by a single discipline, as do the other two papers. Despite some overlap, each paper stands independently; of particular interest are the varied analyses and special emphases each provides. We hope that their publication will stimulate similar studies in the years to come, so that family therapy can take advantage of the observation of its own growth and development. We are accustomed to including ourselves in the field of observation, so far as the family system is concerned; it seems reasonable to extend these perspectives to the more macroscopic field of the institutional development of family therapy. Of particular importance to us, and I believe to science generally, is the opportunity to observe a paradigmatic shift taking place with the development of this new field and the adoption of its associated epistemology by the senior professions of social work, psychology, and psychiatry. Family systems theory and practice have implications that extend beyond their own borders; they can make a significant contribution to the systems revolution that is taking place in science generally. These studies should be of use to practitioners, teachers, and students alike. It seems to me that their implications are clear: that training in family therapy at a sophisticated level is now to be a regular part of the future training of psychiatrists (possibly all physicians), psychologists, social workers, and psychiatric nurses and that, in addition, as a second distinctive career line, there is the new profession of family therapist, with its own entry point and academic pathway. My view is that society will support both lines of career development as far into the future as one can reasonably hope to see. The only logical ending to this will be a shift in the medical model from its present linear definitions of illness and treatment to an ecosystemic, biopsychosocial definition. These describe a historical crosssection through that process.     

Eyewitness testimony: tracing the beliefs of Swedish legal professionals

This paper examines beliefs held by Swedish legal professionals about eyewitness testimony. In a survey including questions about 13 key issues of eyewitness testimony, three groups were investigated: police officers (n = 104), prosecutors (n = 158), and judges (n = 251). The response rate was 74%. Examples of findings are that the beliefs were in line with scientific findings concerning the weapon focus effect, but were not in line for simultaneous vs. sequential lineups. Between-group differences were found for seven items. Judges were much more sceptical than police officers about the reliability and completeness of children's testimonies. The groups seldom agreed about one answer alternative, and they reported not being up to date about scientific research on eyewitness testimony. The results suggest that some important research findings have reached those working on the field. However, they hold many wrongful beliefs about eyewitness testimony, beliefs that might compromise the accuracy of legal decisions.