Mirroring patients – or not. A study of general practitioners and psychiatrists and their interactions with patients with depression

For mentalization theorists, implicit mentalization is a key component of all forms of therapy. However, it has been difficult to grasp and to describe precisely how implicit mentalization works. It is said to take place partly by mirroring others in posture, facial expression and vocal tone. Based on studies of imitative behaviour within linguistics and psychology, we argue that interactional mirroring is an important aspect of displaying implicit mentalization. We aimed to explore if, and in that case how, mirroring is displayed by general practitioners (GPs) and psychiatrists in consultations with patients with depression. We wanted to see how implicit mentalizing unfolds in physician–patient interactions. Consultations were video-recorded and analysed within the framework of conversation analysis. GPs and psychiatrists differed substantially in their propensity to mirror body movements and verbal and acoustic features of speech. GPs mirrored their patients more than psychiatrists in all modalities and were more flexible in their interactional behaviour. Psychiatrists seemed more static, regardless of the emotionality displayed by patients. Implicitly mirroring and attuning to patients could signify enactment of implicit mentalization, according to how it is described by mentalization theorists. We discuss reasons for the differences between GPs and psychiatrists, and their implications.     

Challenges in Developing a Cultural Evidence‐Based Psychotherapy in the USA: Suggestions for International Studies

In this article, we underscore some of the cultural challenges and limitations of the evidence‐based psychotherapy (EBP) utilised within the USA with the hope that these problems will be avoided or ameliorated in Australia and other countries. Although the EBP research is very diverse and complex, we categorise this fast‐growing literature using a threefold classification system that underscores culture. This classification system is proposed to examine the influence of culture on EBPs. The three categories used are (a) universal evidence‐based psychotherapies or universal psychotherapies, (b) race and ethnic minority evidence‐based psychotherapies or racial/ethnic psychotherapies, and (c) cultural evidence‐based psychotherapies or cultural psychotherapies. After each category is described, its benefits and limitations are discussed, emphasising implications for culturally diverse and international studies. We conclude with suggestions to promote the advancement of a more effective and inclusive cultural EBP in which researchers from different countries can collaborate and learn from each other.     

Will Julia Roberts harm Nicole Kidman? Semantic priming effects during face naming

Three experiments are reported, which examine whether face naming is vulnerable to semantic competition in a similar way to object naming. Previous experiments with object naming have shown that a related prime picture presented 3 trials before a target picture results in an increase in error rate and naming latencies when compared to unrelated prime conditions. The experiments here use the same paradigm, with errors as the main dependent variable. In Experiment 1, the prime and target faces were from the same occupational category (e.g., politicians, actors), and in Experiment 2, the primes and target faces were also associated to each other. In Experiment 3, the prime was presented as a name to be read aloud. Unrelated filler stimuli intervened between prime and target. In all experiments, there was a reduction in target-naming errors in the related conditions, and in Experiment 3 this was shown to be largely a reduction in naming failures. The results suggest that related name representations for famous people are not activated in parallel and in competition, and that there is some evidence for a relatively long lasting facilitatory effect. These results require some modification to any serial account of face naming to differentiate it from the generally well-established serial account of object naming.     

Relation availability was not confounded with familiarity or plausibility in Gagné and Shoben (1997): Comment on Wisniewski and Murphy (2005)

C. L. Gagné and E. Shoben (1997) proposed that the conceptual system contains information about how concepts are used to modify other concepts and that this relational information influences the ease with which concepts combine. Recently, E. J. Wisniewski and G. L. Murphy suggested that C. L. Gagné and E. Shoben's measure of relation availability was confounded with familiarity and plausibility and that the participants could simply retrieve the stored meanings of the phrases because the phrases were not novel. In this article, the authors demonstrate that E. J. Wisniewski and G. L. Murphy's plausibility and familiarity judgments are dependent variables that (a) are themselves responsive to changes in relation availability, (b) modifier relation availability predicts response time even when the influence of phrase familiarity and plausibility is controlled, and (c) the materials consisted of mainly novel phrases.     

Demonstrations of spatiotemporal integration and what they tell us about the visual system

Five sets of displays are presented on the journal website to be viewed in conjunction with the text. We concentrate on the factors that give rise to the integration and disruption of the direction of apparent motion in two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. In the first set of displays we examine what factors contribute to the integration and disruption of apparent motion in the Ramachandran/Anstis clustered bistable quartets. In the second set we examine what factors give rise to the perception of the direction of motion in rotating two-dimensional wheels and dots. In the third and fourth sets we examine how the depth cues of shading and disparity contribute to the perception of apparent motion of opaque displays, and to the perception of rotating unoccluded displays, respectively. In the fifth set we examine how the depth cue of motion parallax influences the perception of apparent motion. Throughout, we make inferences about the roles which various parallel pathways and cortical areas play in the perceptions produced by the displays shown.     

A paradoxical effect of presession attention on stereotypy: antecedent attention as an establishing, not an abolishing, operation

Previous studies have shown that presession attention for problem behavior can serve as an abolishing operation when attention functions as a positive reinforcer. In the current study, we show that the stereotypy of a child with severe disabilities was undifferentiated during standard analogue functional analysis conditions. However, when noncontingent presession attention was provided, stereotypy occurred for social attention as a positive reinforcer, suggesting that the antecedent manipulation functioned as an establishing operation.     

Overcoming the self-promotion dilemma: interpersonal attraction and extra help as a consequence of who sings one's praises

Prior research has shown that positive information presented by a third party shields people from the negative consequences of being perceived as self-promoting. But in many contexts, those third parties are intermediaries with a financial interest in the person being promoted rather than neutral parties. In three experimental studies, the authors demonstrate that even when intermediaries are not neutral, they can be helpful for overcoming the self-promotion dilemma--the need to assert one's competence but not be harmed by the fact that people who self-promote are viewed negatively. The authors find that hiring an agent to sing one's praises results in more favorable perceptions of the client, which contributes, in turn, to a greater willingness to offer that person assistance. It is also shown that even when the intermediary is physically present and seen to be complicit with the client, the positive effects of having someone else speak on one's behalf persist.     

Changes in step variability of new walkers with typical development and with Down syndrome

Models of human gait are based on adult locomotion. C. E. Bauby and A. D. Kuo (2000) proposed that adults rely on passive mechanisms at the spinal level to control motion in the anteroposterior direction and rely on direct monitoring of postural control in the lateral direction. The authors' purpose in this study was to determine if that model applies to control at the onset of walking in typically developing toddlers (n = 9) and in toddlers with Down syndrome (n = 6). Their longitudinal data suggested that toddlers control gait in a distinctly different manner than adults do. An adult pattern of control emerges with experience. In addition, the effect of experience on the emergence of that pattern is magnified by task-specific early intervention. The present data support the emergence and discovery of efficient patterns of control in this fundamental human behavior.