Hope and social support utilisation among different age groups of women with breast cancer and their spouses

Objective: Social support and hope are considered positive, important contributors to psychological well-being for women with breast cancer and their spouses. Few studies examine the role of age in relation to these variables. The current study compares the relationship between social support, hope and depression among different age groups of women with advanced breast cancer and their healthy spouses.

Design: Cross-sectional sample of 150 women with advanced breast cancer and their spouses.

Main outcome measures: Social support, hope, depression and socio-demographic data. Analysis included comparison of these variables between groups of older and younger patients and their spouses. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to examine hope as a mediator of the relationship between social support and depression within each group (older and younger patients and spouses).

Results: Older patients and spouses reported lower levels of depression than younger ones. SEM showed that social support related directly to depression among younger women and older spouses, while hope was directly related to depression among older women and younger spouses and acted as a mediator between social support and depression.

Conclusions: Theoretical, empirical and clinical implications regarding the understanding of the role of age in coping with cancer are discussed.     

Normalization in the courtroom: Does the formation of a group norm affect how judges adjust prosecutors' demands?

Legal archives concerning a new type of offence first introduced onto the French statute books in 2005 reveal a normalization effect over the following 2 years in judges' sentence decisions but not in prosecutors' sentence demands. We examine the hypothesis that the formation of a normally accepted range of sentences will influence how judges respond to the extremity of the prosecutor's initial sentence demand. In line with a normalization perspective, results reveal that judges were less influenced by extreme (out‐of‐range) sentence demands but more influenced by moderate (in‐range) sentences in 2007 than in 2005. Over time, it seems that a shared standard of reference is established, which appears to lead judges to adjust moderate prosecutor demands less and extreme prosecutor demands more. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhancing mental health and well-being outcomes for psychotherapy and counselling through idiographic analysis: A four-quadrant approach

Mental health and well-being outcomes in psychotherapy and counselling have largely been studied through the use of standardised nomothetic measurement. A key limitation is that nomothetic measurement and current statistical analyses do not necessarily capture the outcomes of the complicated and individual psychotherapy processes. There is an increased interest in the use of idiographic patient-reported outcome measures (I-PROMs), which are uniquely useful because they may explore areas of importance that are unexplored by nomothetic outcome measures. We argue that to optimise the value of I-PROMs, it is necessary to consider their contribution alongside standardised nomothetic measures. However, there are important considerations with respect to whether or not I-PROMs from different clients, or indeed from the same client, can be meaningfully explored at a team/service level, and alongside standardised nomothetic outcomes. We provide worked examples on real client data to show that delineating four quadrants of analysis is important to explore the breadth of information: (a) individual progress on single items, (b) individual progress by aggregated scores, (c) team/service-level progress by goal item/theme and (d) team/service-level progress by aggregated scores.     

Friendship Quality and School Achievement: A Longitudinal Analysis During Primary School

This study examined the longitudinal relationship between friendship quality (positive and negative) and school achievement among 228 school-age children (51% girls, M = 8.09, SD = 0.41). A three-wave cross-lagged analysis was used to determine the direction of influence between these domains across school years. Findings revealed that: (a) school achievement in second grade decreased negative friendship quality in third grade; (b) school achievement in second grade predicted positive friendship quality in third grade; (c) positive friendship quality in third grade predicted school achievement in fourth grade. The protective role of school achievement against peer relationship impairment and the reciprocal relationship between positive friendship quality and school achievement were underlined. Implications for educational practices for Italian primary schools are discussed.     

Emotional Intelligence and cognitive abilities – associations and sex differences

In order to expand on previous research, this cross-sectional study investigated the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and cognitive abilities in healthy adults with a special focus on potential sex differences. EI was assessed by means of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso-Emotional-Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), whereas cognitive abilities were investigated using the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS), which measures key aspects of cognitive functioning, i.e. verbal memory, working memory, motor speed, verbal fluency, attention and processing speed, and reasoning and problem solving. 137 subjects (65% female) with a mean age of 38.7 ± 11.8 years were included into the study. While males and females were comparable with regard to EI, men achieved significantly higher BACS composite scores and outperformed women in the BACS subscales motor speed, attention and processing speed, and reasoning and problem solving. Verbal fluency significantly predicted EI, whereas the MSCEIT subscale understanding emotions significantly predicted the BACS composite score. Our findings support previous research and emphasize the relevance of considering cognitive abilities when assessing ability EI in healthy individuals.     

Mother—infant interaction structures and presymbolic self‐ and object representations

Using research on the purely social face‐to‐face exchange, we examine patterns of mother—infant interaction and their relevance for the presymbolic origins of self and object representations, focusing on the representation of inter‐relatedness between self and object. Based on a dyadic systems view in which the system is defined by both self‐ and interactive‐regulation processes, we argue that characteristic patterns of self and interactive regulation form early interaction structures, which provide an important basis for emerging self and object representations. What will be represented, presymbolically, is the dynamic interactive process itself, the interplay, as each partner influences the other from moment to moment. This is a dynamic, process view of “interactive”; or “dyadic”; representations. The argument that early interaction structures organize experience is based on a transformational model in which there are continuous transformations and restructurings, where development is in a constant state of active reorganization. To define the capacities on which a presymbolic representational capacity is based, we review the last decade's research on infant perception and memory, which has radically changed our concepts of representation. The interaction structures we describe illustrate the salience of arousal, affect, space, and time in the early organization of experience: (1) state transforming, the expectation that an arousal state can be transformed through the contribution of the partner; (2) facial mirroring, the expectation of matching and being matched in the direction of affective change; (3) disruption and repair, the expectation of degree of ease and rapidity of interactive repair following facial‐visual mismatches; (4) “chase and dodge,”; the expectation of the misregulation and derailment of spatial‐orientation patterns, without repair; and (5) interpersonal timing, the expectation of degree of vocal rhythm matching.     

Introduction: A Systems View

Our goal in this series of four papers is a further refinement of a theory of interaction for psychoanalysis, with a specific focus on the concept of intersubjectivity. Psychoanalysis has addressed the concept of intersubjectivity primarily in the verbal/explicit mode. In contrast, infant research has addressed the concept of intersubjectivity in the nonverbal/implicit mode of action sequences, or procedural knowledge. We propose that an integration of explicit/linguistic with implicit/nonverbal theories of intersubjectivity is essential to a deeper understanding of therapeutic action in psychoanalysis today. To shed light on an implicit/nonverbal dimension of intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis, we include concepts from adult psychoanalysis, infant research, developmental systems theories, and nonverbal communication, particularly the distinction between implicit processing out of awareness and explicit processing at the declarative/verbal level. We conclude with an adult psychoanalytic case illustrating the integration of implicit/nonverbal forms of intersubjectivity into adult treatment.     

A Comparison of Meltzoff,Trevarthen, and Stern

Whereas the first paper of this series compared the work of five theorists of intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis, this paper compares three theorists of intersubjectivity in infant research, Andrew Meltzoff, Colwyn Trevarthen, and Daniel Stern. By evaluating the points at which the theorists concur and differ, we hope to clarify the meanings or “forms” of intersubjectivity in infancy. All three have addressed the question of how infants can sense the state of the other, and all have used the concept of cross-modal correspondences as a central aspect of the answer. Nevertheless each has a distinctly different theory of intersubjectivity in infancy.