Existential issues in group psychotherapy

Existential issues in group psychotherapy derive from existential thought both as a philosophy and as a value system. Its origins derive from the weakening of traditional values and the growing alienation of man from himself. The unique features of existentialism can be applied to all forms of therapy. These features are universal to humankind. They are finiteness, aloneness, guilt, responsibility, and freedom. In including existential concerns as part of group psychotherapy, therapist and patients move more closely to bilateral relationships and subjective interactions.     

Infants of depressed mothers,although competent learners,fail to learn in response to their own mothers' infant-directed speech

Depressed mothers use less of the exaggerated prosody that is typical of infant-directed (ID) speech than do nondepressed mothers. We investigated the consequences of this reduced perceptual salience in ID speech for infant learning. Infants of nondepressed mothers readily learned that their mothers' speech signaled a face, whereas infants of depressed mothers failed to learn that their mothers' speech signaled the face. Infants of depressed mothers did, however, show strong learning in response to speech produced by an unfamiliar nondepressed mother. These outcomes indicate that the reduced perceptual salience of depressed mothers' ID speech could lead to deficient learning in otherwise competent learners.     

Qualitative block design analysis in posttraumatic stress disorder

Qualitative and quantitative Block Design performance was examined in Vietnam combat veterans with PTSD diagnoses (n = 23) and Vietnam combat veterans without PTSD or other mental disorders diagnoses (n = 19). Results indicated that PTSD-diagnosed veterans committed more single block rotations than the comparison sample, and that their errors occurred more frequently in right hemispace than errors made by the comparison sample. The two groups did not differ in the number of configural errors made, errors committed in left hemispace, or in quantitative performance measures. Findings are suggestive of relative left hemisphere hypoactivation and are congruent with prior research documenting cerebral asymmetries in emotional disorders.     

Dyskinesias differentiate autistic disorder from catatonia

Autistic disorder and catatonia are neuropsychiatric syndromes defined by impairments in social interaction, communication, and restricted, stereotypical motor routines. Assessments of children with these disorders are typically restricted in scope by the patients' limited ability to comprehend directions. The authors performed systematic assessments of dyskinesias on six prepubertal boys with autistic disorder and mental retardation and on one adolescent male with catatonia to determine if this type of information could be routinely obtained. The boys with autistic disorder had more stereotypies and tics, a greater degree of akathisia and hyperactivity, and more compulsions than the adolescent with catatonia. Catatonia was associated with catalepsy and dystonic postures. The authors conclude that the diagnostic accuracy and specificity of neuropsychiatric syndromes may be enhanced by the systematic assessment of the dyskinesias associated with each condition.     

Validation of a brief measure of posttraumatic stress disorder: the Distressing Event Questionnaire (DEQ)

The Distressing Event Questionnaire (DEQ) is a brief instrument for assessing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) according to criteria provided in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.). The DEQ possesses high internal consistency and exhibited satisfactory short-term temporal stability in studies with Vietnam War combat veterans and battered women. In a sample of Vietnam War veterans and 4 separate samples of abused women (with histories of incest, rape, intimate partner abuse, or prostitution and abuse), the DEQ exhibited very good discriminative validity when judged against structured interview assessment of PTSD. The DEQ exhibited strong convergent validity with other PTSD measures and other indexes of adjustment and also exhibited strong convergent validity as a measure of PTSD across ethnic groups in both the veteran sample and the combined women's sample.     

Confirmatory factor analysis of parents' and teachers' ratings of DSM-IV symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in a Spanish sample

Confirmatory factor analysis examined the factor structure of DSM IV Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder symptoms and analyzed the differences in informants' ratings of ADHD symptoms by children's age and sex. A sample of 1,018 Spanish school children, 574 girls and 444 boys, ages 4 to 12 years, was rated by teachers and parents. Confirmatory factor analysis showed a similar fit for the three-factor model of Inattention, Hyperactivity, and Impulsivity (teachers: CFI = .976, RMR = .041, % of total variance = 83.2; parents: CFI = .969, RMR = .037, % of total variance = 82.7) and for the two-factor model of Inattention and Hyperactivity Impulsivity (teachers: CFI = .958, RMR = .044, % of total variance = 79.3; parents: CFI = .961, RMR = .038, % of total variance, 79.9). The two-factor model was selected as a parsi monious representation of the teachers' and parents' ratings of ADHD symptoms. Analyses of variance indicated significant differences in teachers' and parents' mean ratings across sex and school grades of children.     

Subjective experience is probably not limited to humans: the evidence from neurobiology and behavior

In humans, conscious perception and cognition depends upon the thalamocortical (T-C) complex, which supports perception, explicit cognition, memory, language, planning, and strategic control. When parts of the T-C system are damaged or stimulated, corresponding effects are found on conscious contents and state, as assessed by reliable reports. In contrast, large regions like cerebellum and basal ganglia can be damaged without affecting conscious cognition directly. Functional brain recordings also show robust activity differences in cortex between experimentally matched conscious and unconscious events. This basic anatomy and physiology is highly conserved in mammals and perhaps ancestral reptiles. While language is absent in other species, homologies in perception, memory, and motor cortex suggest that consciousness of one kind or another may be biologically fundamental and phylogenetically ancient. In humans we infer subjective experiences from behavioral and brain evidence. This evidence is quite similar in other mammals and perhaps some non-mammalian species. On the weight of the biological evidence, therefore, subjectivity may be conserved in species with human-like brains and behavior.     

Criteria for consciousness in humans and other mammals

The standard behavioral index for human consciousness is the ability to report events with accuracy. While this method is routinely used for scientific and medical applications in humans, it is not easy to generalize to other species. Brain evidence may lend itself more easily to comparative testing. Human consciousness involves widespread, relatively fast low-amplitude interactions in the thalamocortical core of the brain, driven by current tasks and conditions. These features have also been found in other mammals, which suggests that consciousness is a major biological adaptation in mammals. We suggest more than a dozen additional properties of human consciousness that may be used to test comparative predictions. Such homologies are necessarily more remote in non-mammals, which do not share the thalamocortical complex. However, as we learn more we may be able to make "deeper" predictions that apply to some birds, reptiles, large-brained invertebrates, and perhaps other species.