Beitrag der Neurowissenschaften zur forensischen Psychiatrie

Forensic psychiatry is a subspecialty dedicated to the interface between psychiatry and law. It uses paradigms and knowledge from general psychiatry for diagnostics, assessment, therapy and research under consideration of the special requirements of legal aspects and framework conditions; therefore, scientific development in forensic psychiatry is substantially dependent on scientific progress in psychiatry and thus nowadays also in neurosciences. Neurobiological hypotheses on the neuronal foundations of psychiatric diseases have been established, for example the dopamine hypothesis for schizophrenia, in a manner that led to important therapeutic advances in the treatment and long-term quality of life for affected persons. Analogous advances should not be withheld from forensic psychiatric patients, who are doubly affected by the disease and the accompanying limitations in their rights to freedom, which is why research in this field must be driven forwards. Clear advances in knowledge of the neurobiological foundations of forensic psychiatric illnesses have, for example, already been made in the field of pedophilia and psychopathy. Based on studies of investigation populations, such neuroscientific knowledge on the neurobiological principles of forensic psychiatric diseases, however, requires a carefully concerted communication with respect to dissemination in the media as well as in the interpretation of individual cases, for example in court. This is of great importance in order to prevent simplifying misconceptions and to avoid a subsequent loss of trust in the scientific process. Therefore, training of the new generation of forensic psychiatrists in the understanding and communication of scientific methods of modern forensic psychiatric neuroscience is of great importance for the societal impact and further advancement of the discipline.     

Deep thinking increases task-set shielding and reduces shifting flexibility in dual-task performance

Performing two tasks concurrently is difficult, which has been taken to imply the existence of a structural processing bottleneck. Here we sought to assess whether and to what degree one's multitasking abilities depend on the cognitive-control style one engages in. Participants were primed with creativity tasks that either called for divergent thinking-which were suspected to induce a holistic, flexible task processing mode, or convergent thinking-which were assumed to induce a systematic, focused processing mode. Participants showed reduced cross-talk between tasks and increased task-component switching costs (dual-task costs) for the convergent-thinking group compared to both, a divergent-thinking group and a neutral control group. The results suggest that the cognitive-control style people engage in prior to the task predicts their multitasking performance.     

List-method directed forgetting: The forget cue improves both encoding and retrieval of postcue information

In list-method directed forgetting, people are cued to forget a previously studied item list and to learn a new list instead. Such cuing typically leads to forgetting of the first list and to memory enhancement of the second, referred to as list 1 forgetting and list 2 enhancement. In the present study, two experiments are reported that examined influences of items' serial learning position in a list and the two lists' output order on list-method directed forgetting. The results show that list output order influences list 2 enhancement but not list 1 forgetting. The enhancement was higher when list 2 was recalled first than when list 1 was recalled first and, in both cases, was higher for early list 2 items than for middle and late list 2 items. In contrast, the forgetting was equally present for all list 1 items and did not depend on the two lists' output order. The findings suggest that two separate factors can contribute to list 2 enhancement: one (encoding) factor that is restricted to early list 2 items and does not depend on list output order, and another (retrieval) factor that pertains to all list 2 items and varies with the two lists' output order. A new two-mechanism account of directed forgetting is suggested that reconciles previous (encoding or retrieval) views on list 2 enhancement.     

Individual Determinants of Behavioral Intentions: What tells us that practitioners really want to change hiring strategies?

The current study investigated hiring managers' intentional readiness to change hiring procedures as a function of individual determinants, such as their self‐efficacy beliefs, causal attributions, and past behaviors. Hiring managers from three large organizations were recruited to participate and provide information about their current hiring processes and personal experiences. Results showed that self‐efficacy beliefs had a strong negative relationship with intentional readiness to change. Managers' past behavior, in terms of use of unstructured interviews and external attributions of failure, were negatively associated with intentional readiness to change, while use of unstructured interviews and external attribution of success were positively associated with intentional readiness to change. Furthermore, the interactive effect of causal attribution and use of selection methods played a significant role in explaining intentional readiness for change. The results indicated that recruiting managers who preferred using unstructured interviews and attributed failures to external causes were less willing to change hiring practices than those who made less use of unstructured interviews and explained their failure externally. Implications and limitations are discussed.     

Wenn Psychotherapie schadet …

Background

The examination of the negative and harmful effects of psychotherapy has recently moved into the focus of psychotherapy research. The investigation described in the following article specifically analyzes for the first time the contents of complaints by psychotherapy patients and presents a practical category system for classification of the negative effects of psychotherapeutic treatment.

Samples and method

A total of 67 cases of complaints submitted to the Ethics Association (reg. co). Ethics in Psychotherapy during the time period from 18.02.2008 to 27.12.2010 were analyzed with respect to the content in the sense of an inductive categorization and quantitative evaluation.

Results

From the available patient complaints a reliable category system could be elucidated. The violation of therapeutic base variables and violations of sexual limitations were the most common cause of complaints against male therapists whereas for female therapists accusations of violation of medical confidentiality and documentation duty were significantly higher.

Conclusions

The results of this study allow formulation of research recommendations for extended investigation of the negative effects of psychotherapy and reveal options for the development of a targeted risk management.     

Affective regulation of cognitive-control adjustments in remitted depressive patients after acute tryptophan depletion

Negative affect in healthy populations regulates the appraisal of demanding situations, which tunes subsequent effort mobilization and adjustments in cognitive control. In the present study, we hypothesized that dysphoria in depressed individuals similarly modulates this adaptation, possibly through a neural mechanism involving serotonergic regulation. We tested the effect of dysphoria induced by acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) in remitted depressed patients on conflict adaptation in a Simon task. ATD temporarily lowers the availability of the serotonin precursor L-Tryptophan and is known to increase depressive symptoms in approximately half of remitted depressed participants. We found that depressive symptoms induced by ATD were associated with increased conflict adaptation. Our finding extends recent observations implying an important role of affect in regulating conflict-driven cognitive control.     

Parafoveal processing in reading: Manipulating n+1 and n+2 previews simultaneously

The boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) with a novel preview manipulation was used to examine the extent of parafoveal processing of words to the right of fixation. Words n+1 and n+2 had either correct or incorrect previews prior to fixation (prior to crossing the boundary location). In addition, the manipulation utilized either a high or low frequency word in word n+1 location on the assumption that it would be more likely that n+2 preview effects could be obtained when word n+1 was high frequency. The primary findings were that there was no evidence for a preview benefit for word n+2 and no evidence for parafoveal-on-foveal effects when word n+1 is at least four letters long. We discuss implications for models of eye-movement control in reading.     

From outcome prediction to action selection: developmental change in the role of action–effect bindings

Ideomotor theory considers bidirectional action–effect associations to be the fundamental building blocks for intentional action. The present study employed a novel pupillometric and oculomotor paradigm to study developmental changes in the role of action‐effects in the acquisition of voluntary action. Our findings suggest that both 7‐ and 12‐month‐olds (and adults) can use acquired action–effect bindings to predict action outcomes but only 12‐month‐olds (and adults) showed evidence for employing action‐effects to select actions. This dissociation supports the idea that infants acquire action–effect knowledge before they have developed the cognitive machinery necessary to make use of that knowledge to perform intentional actions.