Syndromes or symptoms in the assessment of aphasic patients?

The procedure generally used to diagnose aphasic patients consists of classifying them in one of the classic syndromes on the basis of the analysis of their symptoms. However, this taxonomy has several important problems, the main one being that it does not take into account the variability of aphasic patients, as there are many more disorder profiles than those included in the syndromes. In order to test the homogeneity of a sample of patients diagnosed with the classic taxonomy, 15 aphasic patients (5 Broca, 5 Wernicke and 5 Conduction) and 5 healthy controls were tested with nine comprehension and production tasks. Participants were aged 38 to 81 years old. The results indicate the existence of great variability in patients labeled with the same diagnosis, as revealed by the differences in within-group scores in each task, and a limited adjustment to the expected profile, with some patients showing symptoms allegedly corresponding to other syndromes. Our results call attention to the need to study each patient individually and interpret their disorders regardless of the syndromes.     

Psychoanalysis in Spain: A Brief Account of the Transformative Pathways Between the Psychoanalysts and Their Institutions

Psychoanalysis in Spain has a plural history. Rooted in the Freudian and Kleinian traditions, it has developed in different directions and incorporated trends from contemporary psychoanalysis. The impact of socio-political factors forced several migratory movements that came back to Spain under the form of criticism to classical psychoanalysis, following ideas that were emerging from Latin America (e.g., Pichon Rivière) and North America (Cultural and Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, Self Psychology, and Intersubjective System theories) that enriched psychoanalytic thinking, and promoted new psychoanalytic institutions. Finally, Steve Mitchell’s relational perspective plays a crucial role among present developments.     

"If …": Satisficing algorithms for mapping conditional statements onto social domains

People regularly use conditional statements to communicate promises and threats, advices and warnings, permissions and obligations to other people. Given that all conditionals are formally equivalent--"if P, then Q"--the question is: When confronted with a conditional statement, how do people know whether they are facing a promise, a threat, or something else? In other words, what is the cognitive algorithm for mapping a particular conditional statement onto its corresponding social domain? This paper introduces the pragmatic cues algorithm and the syntactic cue algorithm as partial answers to this question. Two experiments were carried out to test how well these simple satisficing algorithms approximate the performance of the actual cognitive algorithm people use to classify conditional statements into social domains. Conditional statements for promises, threats, advices, warnings, permissions, and obligations were collected from people, and given to both other people and the algorithms for their classification. Their corresponding performances were then compared. Results revealed that even though these algorithms utilised a minimum number of cues and drew only a restricted range of inferences from these cues, they performed well above chance in the task of classifying conditional statements as promises, threats, advices, warnings, permissions, and obligations. Moreover, these simple satisficing algorithms performed comparable to actual people given the same task.     

Vagal influence during worry and cognitive challenge

Abstract

The primary foci of the study were exploration of the linkage between cognitive and autonomic inflexibility of worry and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and examination of the effects of an analog cognitive restructuring task on this relationship. Cardiac responses of GAD and non-GAD participants were measured to examine the sympathetic and parasympathetic effects of worry and cognitive challenge. Diagnostic groups of undergraduate students were determined via administration of a structured interview, yielding a GAD group (n=16) and a control group (n=19) of individuals without GAD, depression, or panic disorder diagnoses. Cardiac autonomic responses were acquired via electrocardiogram during rest, worry, and cognitive challenge conditions by an experimenter blind to diagnosis. Metrics were compared between the two groups and across the three conditions. Individuals diagnosed with GAD did not differ significantly from controls on autonomic indices. Worry was associated with significantly decreased parasympathetic influence and increased sympathetic activity. Cognitive challenge did not result in significant increased cardiac responsivity. The results indicate that worry behavior is associated with decreased vagal activity, suggest a linkage between autonomic and cognitive inflexibility, and provide further suggestions for improving protocols to assess the autonomic effects of cognitive therapy techniques.     

No effects of eye movements on the encoding of the visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop in healthy participants: Possible implications for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy

Horizontal eye movement is an essential component of the psychological intervention “eye movement desensitization and reprocessing” (EMDR) used in posttraumatic stress disorder. A hypothesized mechanism of action is an overload of the visuospatial sketchpad and/or the phonological loop of the working memory.     

The effectiveness of psychoanalysis in a case study using multi‐perspective methodology: Conflict in choosing a partner due to transgenerational mandate

A case study is presented to evaluate the effectiveness of psychoanalysis and the persistence of its benefits 20 years later in a young woman with severe depression, professional inhibition, and difficulties in partner selection due to transgenerational mandate (TGM). The investigation was carried out with psychoanalytic interviews with the patient and analyst, which were evaluated by both psychoanalytic and non‐psychoanalytic judges following a methodology based on one tested in Germany by Leuzinger‐Bohleber et al. (2003). The psychoanalytic treatment began in the early 1980s in Monterrey, Mexico. The study concludes that the psychoanalysis was effective in assisting with the patient's character disorder and partner selection, mainly because of the therapeutic alliance, the analysis of transference and character, and the patient's increased capacity for mentalization as a result of the interpretation of the TGMs.     

Mental Health Practitioners: The Relationship Between White Racial Identity Attitudes and Self‐Reported Multicultural Counseling Competencies

This study documents the relationship between White racial identity development and multicultural counseling competency (MCC) as reported by mental health practitioners. Initial results were generally consistent with J. E. Helms's (1990) construction of White racial identity attitude development theory. More sophisticated statuses of White racial identity development generally correlated with higher levels of perceived MCC. Overall, there was a significant difference in MCC reported between men and women. Among counselors, conflicting relationships were observed between some racial identity statuses and multicultural competencies (skills, relationship).     

On the Bayesian Nonparametric Generalization of IRT-Type Models

We study the identification and consistency of Bayesian semiparametric IRT-type models, where the uncertainty on the abilities’ distribution is modeled using a prior distribution on the space of probability measures. We show that for the semiparametric Rasch Poisson counts model, simple restrictions ensure the identification of a general distribution generating the abilities, even for a finite number of probes. For the semiparametric Rasch model, only a finite number of properties of the general abilities’ distribution can be identified by a finite number of items, which are completely characterized. The full identification of the semiparametric Rasch model can be only achieved when an infinite number of items is available. The results are illustrated using simulated data.