Cognitive discernible factors between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia (SZ) and schizoaffective disorders (SA) are associated with cognitive deficits. Generally, a schizoaffective diagnosis is associated with better prognosis on the level of social integration. It is also well established that cognition is an important factor for good social outcome in schizophrenia. We hypothesized that, although patients suffering from SA share symptoms with SZ, they can be differentiated on the basis of neurocognitive function and that SA perform better in several domains. METHOD: Performances of two groups SA (N = 13) and SZ (N = 44) were compared on several visual-motor tasks using CANTAB [Motor Screening (MOT), Reaction Time (RTI), Paired Associates Learning Task (PAL), and Stockings of Cambridge items (SOC)]. The two groups were matched for symptom severity. ANOVA with repeated measures was employed to determine whether any difference in cognitive scores during a 2-year period was significantly related to the diagnostic status. RESULTS: A significant and durable difference was observed between SZ and SA on motor screening and explicit memory tests where SA performed better. CONCLUSION: Neurocognitive tests may be relevant for distinguishing schizoaffective from schizophrenia, chiefly via tests tapping into visuo-spatial and visuo-motor coordination abilities (e.g., paired associated learning and motor screening).     

Identity,Love, and the Imaginary Father

The father of personal prehistory serves as the earliest and most enduring representation of God. This sexually undifferentiated father is identified by Freud as both parents and the flow of feeling between them. Kristeva elaborates to say that the first father creates the foundation for the infant's sexual differentiation, that is, a primary narcissistic screen. When parental flow of feeling provides inadequate compensation for the loss of oneness with Mother, the infant intrapsychically constructs its own foundation, an Other that has both parents' ideal qualities, a God who is a psychologically necessary He. Consequently, females have different experiences than males as they form and relate to their self- and God-representations.     

Reconciling Spiritual Values Conflicts for Counselors and Lesbian and Gay Clients

Counselors and lesbian and gay clients experience parallel values conflicts between religious beliefs/spirituality and sexual orientation. This article uses critical thinking to assist counselors to integrate religious/spiritual beliefs with professional ethical codes. Clients are assisted to integrate religious/spiritual beliefs with sexual orientation.     

The Effects of Exploration on Preschoolers' Problem-Solving Ability

Specific contributions of exploration for divergent and convergent problem-solving ability in preschool children were investigated. Participants were identified as players or nonplayers based on naturalistic observations of free-play activities, and were assigned to either an exploration or nonexploration control condition prior to administration of two divergent and two convergent problem-solving tasks. No significant differences were found between the exploration and nonexploration groups on either divergent or convergent problem-solving tasks. Subjects in the exploration group, however, spent significantly less time in the related convergent problem-solving task than in the nonrelated convergent task. The player/nonplayer distinction was also nonsignificant.     

Friendship Work on Facebook: Young Adults' Understandings and Practices of Friendship

Young adults use social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook to engage as friends, yet there has been little systematic research that has investigated their sense‐making of friendship in relation to their uses of Facebook, as well as how Facebook as a socio‐technical system interacts with their friendship practices. Twelve friendship discussion groups were conducted in urban and non‐urban New Zealand, with 26 women and 25 men aged 18–25 years, in same and mixed‐gender groups. Our social constructionist thematic analysis showed the young adults made sense of friendship through themes of ‘fun times together’, an ‘investment’, ‘protection’ and ‘self‐authenticity’, and these meanings were enacted in particular ways within Facebook. This SNS was used primarily for enjoying friendship and ‘investing in’ friendships, and friendship protection was required to maintain friends' online privacy. Facebook provided a way to demonstrate self‐authenticity within friendship relationships through censored ‘show off’ self‐displays and favoured friendship activities. Facebook supported, disrupted and modified these particular friendship understandings by broadening the audience for friendship actions and intensifying friends' responses through 24/7 accessibility and instantaneous activity notifications. These interactions between friendship understandings and Facebook as a socio‐technical system demonstrate how friendship was reinforced, negotiated and re‐worked through this online context. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cruel nature: Harmfulness as an important,overlooked dimension in judgments of moral standing

Entities that possess moral standing can be wronged and deserve our moral consideration. Past perspectives on the folk psychology of moral standing have focused exclusively on the role of “patiency” (the capacity to experience pain or pleasure) and “agency” (usually defined and operationalized in terms of intelligence or cognitive ability). We contend that harmfulness (i.e., having a harmful vs. benevolent disposition) is an equally if not more important determinant of moral standing. We provide support for this hypothesis across four studies using non-human animals as targets. We show that the effect of harmfulness on attributions of moral standing is independent from patiency and intelligence (Studies 1–2), that this effect pertains specifically to an animal’s harmful disposition rather than its capacity to act upon this disposition (Study 3), and that it primarily reflects a parochial concern for human welfare in particular (Study 4). Our findings highlight an important, overlooked dimension in the psychology of moral standing that has implications for real-world decisions that affect non-human animals. Our findings also help clarify the conditions under which people perceive patiency and agency as related versus truly independent dimensions.     

Reflective minds and open hearts: Cognitive style and personality predict religiosity and spiritual thinking in a community sample

We examined associations between two psychological constructs, analytic cognitive style and the personality facet ‘Openness to Experience’, and several dimensions of religiosity: religious affiliation, strength of faith and spiritual epistemology. In a relatively large (N = 1093), older community sample (M = 55.4 years), analytic cognitive style was associated with a lower probability of affiliating with a religious denomination and a higher probability of possessing strong religious faith. Overall, openness was also associated with a lack of religious affiliation but was positively related to possessing a spiritual epistemology. A path‐analytic model revealed that openness had a positive relationship to both faith and religious denomination that was mediated by spiritual epistemology, but negative direct relationships with religiosity after the meditational effects were taken into account. Taken together, these results extend previous findings on the effect of cognitive style on religiosity and provide a new perspective on the complex relationship between cognitive and personality factors and different dimensions of religiosity. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Response Bias on the Personality Inventory for DSM–5 (PID–5)

Valid self-report assessment of psychopathology relies on accurate and credible responses to test questions. There are some individuals who, in certain assessment contexts, cannot or choose not to answer in a manner typically representative of their traits or symptoms. This is referred to, most broadly, as test response bias. In this investigation, we explore the effect of response bias on the Personality Inventory for DSM–5 (PID–5; Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2013 Krueger, R. F., Derringer, J., Markon, K. E., Watson, D., & Skodol, A. E. (2013). The Personality Inventory for DSM–5 (PID–5)–Adult (Full version). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. [Google Scholar]), a self-report instrument designed to assess the pathological personality traits used to inform diagnosis of the personality disorders in Section III of DSM–5. A set of Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory Restructured Form (MMPI–2–RF; Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2008 Tellegen, A., & Ben-Porath, Y. S (2008). MMPI–2–RF technical manual. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]/2011 Ben-Porath, Y. S., & Tellegen, A. (2011). MMPI–2–RF manual for administration, scoring, and interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 2008) [Google Scholar]) validity scales, which are used to assess and identify response bias, were employed to identify individuals who engaged in either noncredible overreporting (OR) or underreporting (UR), or who were deemed to be reporting or responding to the items in a “credible” manner—credible responding (CR). A total of 2,022 research participants (1,587 students, 435 psychiatric patients) completed the MMPI–2–RF and PID–5; following protocol screening, these participants were classified into OR, UR, or CR response groups based on MMPI–2–RF validity scale scores. Groups of students and patients in the OR group scored significantly higher on the PID–5 than those students and patients in the CR group, whereas those in the UR group scored significantly lower than those in the CR group. Although future research is needed to explore the effects of response bias on the PID–5, results from this investigation provide initial evidence suggesting that response bias influences scale elevations on this instrument.     

The subject in transmission: the phantomic origins of (dual) unity and the birth of the self

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - Abraham and Torok’s clinical concept of the phantom can be rethought in extended terms to account for the challenges inherent in giving birth to...