Relationships between autistic-like and schizotypy traits: An analysis using the Autism Spectrum Quotient and Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences

To further investigate claims of a relationship between autism and schizophrenia, the current study examined the associations between specific dimensions of autistic-like and schizotypy traits. These traits were assessed using the Autism Spectrum Quotient and the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences. After using factor analysis to explore the dimensions of autistic-like and schizotypy traits represented in these measures in two separate groups of students (N₁ = 362, N₂ = 639), the relationships between these dimensions were examined. While the results are consistent with suggestions in the literature of an overlap in the interpersonal deficits associated with autism and schizophrenia, they offer little support for Crespi and Badcock’s (2008) claim that autism and positive schizophrenia are diametrically opposed disorders.     

Predicting substance use behavior among South African adolescents: The role of leisure experiences across time

Using seven waves of data, collected twice a year from the 8th through the 11th grades in a low-resource community in Cape Town, South Africa, we aimed to describe the developmental trends in three specific leisure experiences (leisure boredom, new leisure interests, and healthy leisure) and substance use (cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana) behaviors and to investigate the ways in which changes in leisure experiences predict changes in substance use behaviors over time. Results indicated that adolescents' substance use increased significantly across adolescence, but that leisure experiences remained fairly stable over time. We also found that adolescent leisure experiences predicted baseline substance use and that changes in leisure experiences predicted changes in substance use behaviors over time, with leisure boredom emerging as the most consistent and strongest predictor of alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. Implications for interventions that target time use and leisure experiences are discussed.     

The direct effect of thin ideal focused adult television on young girls' ideal body figure

The present study tested the direct effect of watching thin-ideal focused television aimed at (young) adults on body dissatisfaction in preadolescent girls (9-12 years old). A within-subject design was used in which the girls (N=60) were tested three times. They watched three movie clips in random order that were either focused explicitly (thin-ideal program) or indirectly (soap opera) on the thin ideal or were neutral in content. Afterwards, they filled out questionnaires concerning their body dissatisfaction. Only older preadolescent girls (11-12 years old) showed greater body dissatisfaction after watching the thin-ideal focused television clip than after watching the neutral television clip. After watching thin-ideal focused television, they desired a thinner body figure than after watching neutral television. The findings imply that watching (adult) thin-ideal television directly affects the ideal body figure in older preadolescent girls.     

The effects of funny and serious task content and expectations of fun versus importance on children's cognitive performance

This study investigated how children's performance on a cognitive task was influenced by funny and serious task content, and by fun or important instructions. Eighty‐four children in Grades 1 and 5 performed two versions of a paired‐associates word‐learning task, which paired nonsense words with novel definitions and illustrations. All children completed a version in which the definitions and illustrations were funny, and a version in which they were not, with either fun or important instructions. Results revealed significantly better performance on the funny than on the serious version, but only when the funny version was presented first. There were no significant effects of task instructions. The findings confirm that making children's cognitive tasks funnier can enhance task performance. Although there were no effects of expectations as created by task instructions, the enhancing effect of funny content was influenced by children's expectations as created by their prior experience with the task.     

Interoceptive and exteroceptive attention have opposite effects on subsequent somatosensory perceptual decision making

Evidence suggests that interoceptive and exteroceptive attention might have different perceptual effects. However, the effects of these different types of body-focused attention have never been directly compared. The current research investigated how interoceptive and exteroceptive attention affect subsequent performance on the somatic signal detection task (SSDT). In Experiment 1, 37 participants completed the SSDT under usual testing conditions and after performing an interoceptive heartbeat perception task. This task led to a more liberal response criterion, leading to increased touch reports in the presence and absence of a target vibration. This finding is consistent with suggestions that attending internally contributes to physical symptom reporting in patients with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). In Experiment 2, 40 participants completed the SSDT before and after an exteroceptive grating orientation task. This task led to a more stringent response criterion, leading to decreased touch reports in the presence and absence of the target, possibly via a reduction in sensory noise. This work demonstrates that internal and external body-focused attention can have opposite effects on subsequent somatic perceptual decision making and suggests that attentional training could be useful for patients reporting MUS.     

Beyond the fragments of the two Victoires: A fictionalised and incomplete memoir of the two women murdered by Pierre Rivière – His sister and his mother

This paper focuses on gendered spaces in which Pierre Rivière carried out the murder of his mother, his sister and his brother. The archival work of Foucault et al. provides multiple accounts of these family murders, including the very evocative memoir written by Pierre Rivière himself in prison. The position and perspectives of the women in that text, particularly those in his immediate family, are obscured, being seen very much through the eyes of men in general, and Pierre and his father specifically. Here we attempt to cut through that obscuration with a reflexive feminist excavation of fragments from this parricide case. We borrow from multiple sources including historical literature on women at that time, changing laws relating to equality and freedom, literary ways of coming to know the perspective of another through writing, magical realist strategies fostered in arts-based social research, and therapeutic strategies for remembering traumatic events. From these Victoire and her daughter are brought to life in a womanist reading that makes Victoire's position both imaginable and supportable. Specific historical material is confined to footnotes, so maintaining its coherence whilst allowing the foregrounding of the various narratives (from the research process, from original testimonies, and from attempts to write into the spaces left by those testimonies).     

Pierre Rivière and Victoire Rivière: Two accounts of a definitional ceremony ‘staged’ 200 years after the events that shook their family

In the spring of 2010, at the University of Bristol, in the Graduate School of Education, we revisited the case of Pierre Rivière's parricide. More than thirty years after Foucault's (1975) publication devoted to this case, and almost two hundred years after the parricide, we took part in various research events that enabled us to re-connect with Pierre Rivière's memoir. One of these events was a fictional ‘definitional ceremony’. Definitional ceremony is a technique normally used in narrative therapy, and was used by Michael White who developed a Foucauldian analysis of the socio-cultural constitution of mental health. For the purposes of our fictional ceremony two doctoral research students (the authors of this paper) ‘borrowed’ the identities of two of the main protagonists in the Pierre Rivière story. They dressed in period costumes, and embarked on a staging that instigated a renegotiation/resignification of their relationship with each other in the present, and in conversation with a narrative therapist. Our purpose was to re-engage with a troubled family of the nineteenth century as an experiment in seeing how research modalities affect not only our research, but ourselves as researchers.     

A review of the evidence on the relationship between gender and adolescents' involvement in violent behavior

Adolescents' involvement in violence is a public health concern worldwide, with male adolescents more likely than female adolescents to be involved. A review of the literature published between 1990 and 2011 was conducted to examine the risk and protective factors associated with gender and adolescents' involvement in violent behavior. While research suggests there is an association between gender and involvement in violent behavior, the strength of this association appears to be mediated by gender relationships with other risk and protective factors. Moreover, these relationships appear to vary amongst different communities. Prior to the development and implementation of violence prevention strategies, consideration should be given to collecting longitudinal data specific to the target community. These data would guide the development of effective prevention strategies to ensure they address local needs, influences, and associations between gender and other risk and protective factors.