The Work of Words: Poetry,Language and the Dawn of Community

Topoi - This essay explores the ontological movement of poetry, its language and words, by establishing a dialogue with the thought of three Japanese thinkers, Ki no Tsurayuki, Motoori Norinaga and...     

Brain potentials to emotional pictures are modulated by alexithymia during emotion regulation

Alexithymia is a personality trait associated with the reduced ability to regulate, identify, and communicate feelings or emotions and is often linked to psychosomatic disorders. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the relationship between individual differences in alexithymia and emotion regulation. Participants classified as scoring either high or low on the revised form of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20; Taylor, Bagby, & Parker Psychother Psychosom 57:34–41, 1992) were asked to view negative and neutral images, adopting three different regulation strategies (expressive suppression, cognitive reappraisal, and attend) while ERPs were recorded. Results revealed an inverse relationship between TAS scores and emotion-related ERP activity during suppression, but not during reappraisal or a control “attend” condition. These results were observed in both early and late ERP latencies. These findings are interpreted according to potential differences between high- and low-TAS individuals regarding the frequency of prior utilization of suppression-based regulation strategies.     

Interaction between the DRD4 VNTR polymorphism and proximal and distal environments in alcohol dependence during emerging and young adulthood

The manifestation of alcohol dependence at different developmental stages may be associated with different genetic and environmental factors. Taking a developmental approach, we characterized interaction between the dopamine receptor 4 variable number tandem repeat (DRD4 VNTR) polymorphism and developmentally specific environmental factors (childhood adversity, college/Greek organization involvement, and delayed adult role transition) on alcohol dependence during emerging and young adulthood. Prospective data were obtained from a cohort of 234 White individuals (56% women, 44% men) who were followed up at ages 18 through 34. A longitudinal hierarchical factor model was estimated to model a traitlike persistent alcohol dependence factor throughout emerging and young adulthood and 2 residual statelike alcohol dependence factors limited to emerging adulthood and young adulthood, respectively. We accounted for those alcohol dependence factors by modeling 3 two-way interaction effects between the DRD4 VNTR polymorphism and the 3 developmentally specific environment factors. Carriers of the DRD4 long allele showed greater susceptibility to environmental effects; they showed more persistent symptoms of alcohol dependence as childhood adversity increased and more alcohol dependence symptoms limited to emerging adulthood as college/Greek organization involvement increased. Alcohol dependence among noncarriers of the long allele, however, did not differ as a function of those environments. Although replication is necessary, these findings highlight the importance of repeated phenotypic assessments across development and modeling both distal and proximal environments and their interaction with genetic susceptibility at specific developmental stages.     

Current developments in the practice of individual psychoanalytic psychodrama in France

The authors present the history of individual psychoanalytic psychodrama and its current developments as practised in France. They put forward the technique, objectives and rules, along with the indications, limits and risks that ensue from the specific nature of this therapeutic approach. Through its technical adjustments, individual psychoanalytic psychodrama provides a therapeutic option that is appropriate to the defences prevalent in many patients that cause classical psychotherapies to fail: massive inhibition, operative functioning far removed from affects or in false self mode; phobias, disavowal or splitting of the internal psychic life and emotions; prevalence of short discharge circuits in acted-out behaviours and bodily or visceral complaints and expressions. Psychodrama utilizes these defences not in order to eliminate them but to 'subvert' them so that they can continue to carry out their protective role, in particular ensuring narcissistic continuity. At the same time, psychodrama relaxes these defences and facilitates a possible filtering through of the repressed material. Through the number of actors and the diffraction of transference that this allows, psychodrama provides a possibility of adjusting the potentially traumatic effect of the encounter with the object and the instigation of the transference in the regressive dimension induced by any psychotherapeutic process.     

How the Bayesians got their beliefs (and what those beliefs actually are): comment on Bowers and Davis (2012)

Bowers and Davis (2012) criticize Bayesian modelers for telling "just so" stories about cognition and neuroscience. Their criticisms are weakened by not giving an accurate characterization of the motivation behind Bayesian modeling or the ways in which Bayesian models are used and by not evaluating this theoretical framework against specific alternatives. We address these points by clarifying our beliefs about the goals and status of Bayesian models and by identifying what we view as the unique merits of the Bayesian approach.     

Visual attention and emotional memory: recall of aversive pictures is partially mediated by concurrent task performance

The emotional enhancement of memory is often thought to be determined by attention. However, recent evidence using divided attention paradigms suggests that attention does not play a significant role in the formation of memories for aversive pictures. We report a study that investigated this question using a paradigm in which participants had to encode lists of randomly intermixed negative and neutral pictures under conditions of full attention and divided attention followed by a free recall test. Attention was divided by a highly demanding concurrent task tapping visual processing resources. Results showed that the advantage in recall for aversive pictures was still present in the DA condition. However, mediation analyses also revealed that concurrent task performance significantly mediated the emotional enhancement of memory under divided attention. This finding suggests that visual attentional processes play a significant role in the formation of emotional memories.     

Physical self-concept and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors in French athlete and non-athlete adolescent girls: direct and indirect relations

This study aims to investigate the direct and indirect associations between physical self-subdomains, physical self-worth, global self-worth, and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors among French non-elite athlete and non-athlete adolescent girls. A sample of adolescent girls including 50 ballet dancers, 41 basketball players, and 47 non-athletes was used in this study. Data obtained from the ballet dancer and basketball player subsamples revealed significant, sample-specific as well as common, direct relations between global and physical self-perceptions and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors, as well as significant indirect relations (via global self-worth and physical self-worth) between specific physical self-perceptions and disturbed eating attitudes and behaviors. In contrast, no association was found between global and physical self-perceptions in the sample of non-athlete adolescent girls.     

Suicide Intervention Skills and Related Factors in Community and Health Professionals

Health and community professionals have considerable exposure to suicidal people and need to be well skilled to deal with them. We assessed suicide intervention skills with a Dutch version of the SIRI in 980 health and community professionals and psychology students. Suicide intervention skills clearly differed among professional groups and were strongly related to experience, especially suicide‐specific experience. Some community professionals scored below acceptable levels on their ability to respond appropriately to suicidal people they encounter, and tended to overestimate their skills level. Training is therefore indicated for these groups, and may be useful to more highly experienced groups too.     

Is it dangerous? The role of an emotional visual search strategy and threat-relevant training in the detection of guns and knives

Counter-terrorism strategies rely on the assumption that it is possible to increase threat detection by providing explicit verbal instructions to orient people's attention to dangerous objects and hostile behaviours in their environment. Nevertheless, whether verbal cues can be used to enhance threat detection performance under laboratory conditions is currently unclear. In Experiment 1, student participants were required to detect a picture of a dangerous or neutral object embedded within a visual search display on the basis of an emotional strategy ‘is it dangerous?’ or a semantic strategy ‘is it an object?’. The results showed a threat superiority effect that was enhanced by the emotional visual search strategy. In Experiment 2, whilst trainee police officers displayed a greater threat superiority effect than student controls, both groups benefitted from performing the task under the emotional than semantic visual search strategy. Manipulating situational threat levels (high vs. low) in the experimental instructions had no effect on visual search performance. The current findings provide new support for the language-as-context hypothesis. They are also consistent with a dual-processing account of threat detection involving a verbally mediated route in working memory and the deployment of a visual template developed as a function of training.