The child-psychoanalytic play interview: a technique for studying thematic content.

Child psychoanalysts have long viewed play as a reflection of children's inner lives and have used the themes children represent in play for diagnostic and therapeutic work. Given the central role children's play has for clinical work, few studies have addressed play empirically. This paper presents a technique for studying the thematic content of children's play as it emerges during a play session with a child analyst. We report the steps involved in developing this investigative technique and describe the interobserver agreement among four rates using the technique with videotaped play sessions. Implications for future research using such an approach are discussed.     

Just a joke. Psychogenesis of humor in alcohol advertisements

This article asks what psychic functions humorous alcohol advertisements employ and how they are connected to the wider cultural meanings of alcohol. The material comprises 27 advertisements televised in Europe in 2013. The material is primarily examined using Freud’s ideas regarding the psychogenesis of jokes. Freud’s conceptions of humor provide in-depth point of views to understand how the advertisements address the viewer’s mind. We recognized three psychic processes: the pleasure of nonsense, recognition of the familiar, and liquidation of criticism. We argue that these are essential psychic activities which characterize the more or less unconscious functioning and content of humorous alcohol advertisements. The article suggests that the humorous strategies recall the infantile pleasure connected to playing with language. The humor in alcohol advertisements may also liquidate the critical attitudes toward drinking, enforce the process of denial of addiction and prohibit the reality-based reflection of alcohol use.     

Metabolic syndrome and Alzheimer's disease: a link to a vascular hypothesis?

Current evidence from epidemiological, neuroimaging, pathological, pharmacotherapeutic, and clinical studies indicate an association of Alzheimer's disease with risk factors of vascular atherosclerotic disease either in isolation or in aggregate. "Metabolic syndrome" (MetS) is the name for a clustering of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes that are of metabolic origin. These include central obesity, elevated plasma glucose, high blood pressure, atherogenic dyslipidemia, a prothrombotic state, and a proinflammatory state. In this article, we provide an overview of the relevant literature with regard to the relationship of Alzheimer's disease with MetS. Accumulating evidence suggests a "vascular hypothesis" to be related to the pathology of Alzheimer's disease. In the light of this evidence, clinician may consider lifestyle interventions toward an early and effective cardiovascular risk-factor management to reduce the cardiometabolic and the cognitive decline risk, while further research of other preventive strategies may be warranted.     

Judging Words at Face Value: Interference in a Word Processing Task Reveals Automatic Processing of Affective Facial Expressions

Earlier research has indicated that some characteristics of facial expressions may be automatically processed. This study investigated automaticity as evidenced by involuntary interference in a word evaluation task. Compound stimuli, consisting of words superimposed on pictures of affective faces, were presented to subjects who were given the task of evaluating the affective valence of the words while disregarding the faces. Results of three experiments showed that word evaluation was influenced by the concurrently shown affective faces. Overall, negative words were found to require longer latencies, indicating that more processing resources are invested in negative than in positive stimuli. This speed advantage for positive words was modified by the faces. Negative words were facilitated, relative to positive ones, when shown with a negative expression (e.g. a sad face). Correspondingly, negative words were inhibited, relative to positive ones, when shown with a positive expression (e.g. a happy face). The results are consistent with automatic, involuntary semantic processing of affective facial expressions.     

Zur Bestimmung des pathologischen Intelligenzalbbaus im HAWIE mit Hilfe des Albbauquotienten

Ohne ZusammenfassungAuch an dieser Stelle sei Herrn Priv.-Dozent Dr. L. Michel, Institut für Psychologie und Charakterologie an der Universität Freiburg i.Br., noch einmal sehr herzlich für viele Anregungen und kritische Hinweise gedankt.     

Pubertal development and behavior: Hormonal activation of social and motivational tendencies

Adolescence is a time of dramatic changes including rapid physical growth, the onset of sexual maturation, the activation of new drives and motivations, and a wide array of social and affective changes and challenges. This review focuses on behavioral changes in this interval and is organized by the claim that a key set of these adolescent changes are part of a more general re-orientation of social behavior. More specifically we hypothesize that pubertal maturation is associated with the activation of social and motivational tendencies, which in turn influence behavior and emotion in adolescence depending upon interactions with social context. We focus on evidence for two examples of these motivational changes: (1) increases in sensation-seeking (motivational tendency to want to experience high-intensity, exciting experiences) and (2) stronger natural interest in—and pursuit of—contact with peers and potential romantic partners. We consider how these motivational changes contribute to the broader social re-orientation of adolescence, including exploration of social experiences, development of skills and knowledge relevant to taking on adult social roles, individuation from family, and establishment of an individual identity, all of which represent core developmental tasks during this period in the life span ( 9, 16 and 62). The paper also emphasizes the importance of investigating and understanding the direct influences of puberty on behavior and disentangling these from the broader set of changes during adolescent development.     

Social information in equine movement gestalts

One model of signal evolution is based on the notion that behaviours become increasingly detached from their original biological functions to obtain a communicative value. Selection may not always favour the evolution of such transitions, for instance, if signalling is costly due to predators usurping signal production. Here, we collected inertial movement sensing data recorded from multiple locations in free-ranging horses (Equus caballus), which we subjected to a machine learning algorithm to extract kinematic gestalt profiles. This yielded surprisingly rich and multi-layered sets of information. In particular, we were able to discriminate identity, breed, sex and some personality traits from the overall movement patterns of freely moving subjects. Our study suggests that, by attending to movement gestalts, domestic horses, and probably many other group-living animals, have access to rich social information passively but reliably made available by conspecifics, a finding that we discuss in relation with current signal evolution theories.