Immediate source-monitoring, self-focused attention and the positive symptoms of schizophrenia

Previous research suggests that tendencies to misattribute one's own thoughts to an external source, as assessed by an immediate source-monitoring test, are associated with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). However, recent research suggests that such tendencies are associated instead with symptoms of thought interference. The main aim of the present study was to examine whether such tendencies are differentially associated with different types of thought interference, with AVHs, or with both. It has also been suggested that external misattributions are especially likely to occur with emotionally salient material and if the individual's focus is on the self. These suggestions were also tested. The positive psychotic symptoms of 57 individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia were assessed and they then completed the Self-Focus Sentence Completion blank. Immediately after completing each sentence they were asked to indicate to what extent the sentence was their own. The number of sentences that were not rated as completely their own served as their externalisation score. Externalisation scores correlated significantly with the severity of three symptoms: voices commenting, delusions of being controlled, and thought insertion. In a logistic regression analysis, all three of these symptoms were significantly and independently related to externalisation. Externalisation was not associated with either a negative or a neutral self-focus. Thus tendencies to misattribute one's own thoughts to an external source are associated with AVHs and some, but not all, symptoms of thought interference. The importance for externalisation of self-focused attention and of the emotional salience of the elicited thoughts was not supported.     

SELF-MONITORING AND WORK PRODUCTIVITY WITH MENTALLY RETARDED ADULTS

We examined the use of self-monitoring to increase the productivity of five mentally retarded adults in a sheltered workshop. Data were collected daily during a 30-minute intervention and 30-minute generalization period. Following baseline, verbal praise, prompts, and physical encouragement were administered contingent on productive behavior on a specific task during the intervention period. In the next phase, self-monitoring was trained during the intervention period. During both phases, baseline conditions prevailed in the generalization periods. In the final phase, self-monitoring was extended across the intervention and generalization periods. Results showed that increased productivity levels, evident when praise and prompting were being administered, maintained with self-monitoring alone. Minimal generalization across time was observed until self-monitoring was begun in the generalization period.     

Conflict and the Stochastic-Dominance Principle of Decision Making

One of the key principles underlying rational models of decision making is the idea that the decision maker should never choose an action that is stochastically dominated by another action. In the study reported in this article, violations of stochastic dominance frequently occurred when the payoffs produced by two actions were negatively correlated (in conflict), but no violations occurred when the payoffs were positively correlated (no conflict). This finding is contrary to models which assume that choice probability depends on the utility of each action, and the utility for an action depends solely on its own payoffs and probabilities. This article also reports, for the first time ever, the distribution of response times observed in a risky decision task. Both the violations of stochastic dominance and the response time distributions are explained in terms of a dynamic theory of decision making called multiattribute decision field theory.     

Recognition memory for active and passive sentences

Data from three experiments are reported in which recognition memory for active and passive sentences is compared. The results consistently show no difference, a result taken to invalidate syntactic memory hypotheses (e.g., the kernel plus tag and markedness hypotheses) which assume that the stored representation of passive sentences is more complex than that of active sentences. Previous reports of superior recall of active sentences are attributed to a reconstructive bias. One form of propositional hypothesis and a verbatim hypothesis are consistent with the data.This research was supported by Grant MH 19859 from NIMH to the first author, and by Rutgers University Research Council grants to both authors.     

Not quite as grown-up as we like to think: parallels between cognition in childhood and adulthood

Greater continuity in cognition between children and adults may exist than is usually appreciated. It was thought that after 3 to 4 years of age, the problem in switching on the dimensional-change card-sort task disappears. We show here, however, that if speed is used as the dependent measure, the effect of the first dimension is evident even in adults. Adults, like preschoolers, show difficulty in switching from a block of sorting by color or shape to a block of sorting by the other dimension. Notably, performance throughout the session was affected by the first dimension by which stimuli were sorted. We hypothesize that perhaps adults never fully outgrow any of the cognitive and perceptual biases of infancy and early childhood. Other examples of such biases that appear to still be present in adults are discussed. Conversely, the assumption that the optimal dependent measure for adults is the most sensitive measure for children is questioned.     

“Why Didn't They Keep Me?”: The Search For Belonging in the Analysis of a Four Year Old Adopted Child

The purpose of this clinical article is to discuss aspects of the analysis of a child whose adoption functioned as organizer of her personality. Her fantasy life, defensive organization, sense of self and other, and object relations were all organized around a personal mythology surrounding her adoption. These organizing myths took various forms that emerged in the course of the analysis. Her adoptive parents also created a mythology that had a critical impact on the child's development and on their development as parents. The analytic work demonstrates how these organizing mythologies governed the parent–child relationship and how the collision of their mythologies led to a breakdown in the child's development and in parental functioning. In the course of the analysis, the child developed the capacity to grieve and to react to loss in an organized way as progressive development was restored and she was able to feel valued and loved. Her parents began to grieve the dual loss of not having biological children or a perfect adoption, and to develop more motherly and fatherly feelings for their child.     

Four Factors That May Predict the Emergence of Creative Writing: A Proposed Model

Factors that may predict that a child will become a creative writer as an adult are explored. Two areas of research are reviewed: studies documenting the incidence of mood disorders in adult creative writers and retrospective studies examining the childhoods of creative writers. The first body of research shows a clear correlation between creative writing and mood disorders. The second shows that children who later become creative writers experience an atypical amount of stress. It is suggested here that these 2 findings are related, because stress in childhood is associated with mental illness in adulthood. Stress cannot however be a necessary condition for becoming a creative writer because not all creative writers experienced stress in childhood. Nor can it be a sufficient condition since most children who experience stress do not become writers. It is argued that, along with the stress that many writers experience as children, 3 factors may be associated with creative writing ability: growing up in an enriched and child-centered family (which can co-exist with stress), having high verbal ability, and having an unusually rich imaginative life. These latter 3 factors may mediate against stress and foster resilience in these children and allow them to grow up to become writers.