Zwischen Klinik und Politik

Based on the current debate on the traumatisation of soldiers in Afghanistan, the article traces the historical development of trauma concepts from the 19th century to the present day. Thereby, it is shown that without reflecting on the socio-political context on the part of therapists and experts, medical and psychotherapeutic measures are at risk of being exploited by undetected political interests.     

Improving self‐regulated learning of preschool children: Evaluation of training for kindergarten teachers

Background In the context of lifelong learning, self‐regulated learning is an important competence. Children between 4 and 6 years of age are at a crucial step in their life to develop self‐regulatory competence. That is why their kindergarten teachers play an important role as instructors as well as role models. Aim This study tested the effects of self‐regulation training for kindergarten teachers concerning their own self‐regulation and methods to foster self‐regulation in children at preschool age whom they were teaching. Sample In this study, 35 German kindergarten teachers and 97 children participated. All adult participants were graduated kindergarten teachers. Method The kindergarten teachers were tested with a questionnaire 2 weeks before and after the training. At the same time, the preschoolers were interviewed. A waiting control group design was applied. Results and conclusions The results obtained by means of analyses of variance show that the self‐regulation of the kindergarten teachers as well as the self‐regulated learning of preschoolers whose kindergarten teachers took part in the training improved significantly. The results indicate that it is possible to improve self‐regulated learning of preschool children by a training programme for kindergarten teachers.     

Biografiekonstruktionen im Dienste der Abwehr

The material examined comprised videotaped group sessions in which the participating sexual offenders talked about their crimes and biographies. Out of the available texts four types of narrative formats of biography construction were elaborated: the medical case report, the coming-of-age novel, the vita sexualis and the family drama. Each format includes specific subjective theories about deviant behaviour and sheds light on the diverse defense dynamics. These dynamics could be extracted analyzing various narrative levels, such as the structure of the narration, the self-positioning in the story and the interactions of the group. It was shown how the participants either accepted or rejected responsibility and guilt, which is considered highly relevant for the prognosis. The presented study gives important insight into psychotherapy with sexual offenders.     

Ultimate, provisional, and personal meaning of life: differences and common ground

Building on Viktor Frankl's clinical approach of Logotherapy and the works of subsequent theoreticians, three types of meaning of life were theoretically derived and empirically investigated, Ultimate, Provisional, and Personal meaning. These types were characterized, first, by the amount of agreement of subjects, second, by sources of Life Meaning, which were assessed by content analyses, third, by correlations, and fourth by prediction with ratings of important life concepts from the domains of Well-being, Religiosity, and Prosocial Behavior. 192 German adults, 45 men and 147 women, whose M age was 31.6 yr. (SD = 11.9), participated. Analysis indicated different sources for the Ultimate meaning compared with the other meaning types, which seem to display more similarities with each other. Other important life concepts, such as Belief, Harmony, Happiness, and Human Goodness were related to the investigated types of meaning of life. Some implications for clinical applications, research perspectives, and Positive Psychology are discussed.     

Prädiktiver Gentest für Chorea Huntington

The development of predictive tests for genetic diseases such as Huntington’s chorea, not only raises new ethical and psychosocial issues for people at risk for genetic diseases, but also poses a challenge for the professionals treating them. The number of patients facing these issues will grow considerably with future advances of the human genome project. While there is general agreement among geneticists and neurologists that concurrent psychosocial and psychotherapeutic counselling for patients considering getting tested should be a prerequisite for predictive test-ing, much less agreement exists in the field of psychotherapy on the form and content of psychotherapeutic counselling for patients with a genetic risk factor. By their very nature, hereditary genetic conditions are a family affair. Whatever the test result will be in the end, it will have repercussions on other family members. In conse-quence, this article argues in favor of a counselling approach that is family and re-source oriented. From their experience with a collaborative treatment project, the authors present the major topics which psychotherapists need to address when working with patients at risk.     

Getting groups to develop good strategies: Effects of reflexivity interventions on team process,team performance,and shared mental models

This study examines the effect of guided reflection on team processes and performance, based on West’s (1996, 2000) concept of reflexivity. Communicating via e-mail, 49 hierarchically structured teams (one commander and two specialists) performed seven 15 min shifts of a simulated team-based military air-surveillance task (TAST) in two meetings, a week apart. At the beginning of the second meeting, teams were assigned either to a reflexivity (individual or group) or to a control condition. Results show that reflexivity enhanced performance, the link between reflexivity and team performance being mediated by communication and implementation of strategies as well as by similarity of mental models. Contrary to expectations, individual reflexivity was superior to group reflexivity. Additional analyses suggested that group reflexivity decreased the commanders’ active behavior and increased discussion of strategies that were too general to be helpful. Results point to the usefulness of reflexivity as a generic intervention but underscore the importance of focusing on strategies that are task-specific.     

Nichtspezifische,funktionelle und somatoforme Körperbeschwerden

In the S3 guidelines on non-specific, functional and somatoform bodily complaints, a broad group of medical and psychological societies as well as patient representatives have for the first time achieved an evidence-based consensus on terminology and care of these patients. This paper summarizes the main background information and recommendations for psychotherapists. For mild courses treatment by the general practitioner with establishment of a biopsychosocial explanatory model and physical as well as social activation is usually sufficient. More severe courses call for cooperative, coordinated management, including regular appointments with the general practitioner, graded activation and psychotherapy, especially cognitive behavioral, in addition to psychodynamic interpersonal or hypnotherapeutic imaginative psychotherapy. In particularly severe courses multimodal and if necessary day clinic or inpatient treatment is needed. Additionally the patient guidelines for affected people and their relatives are presented.     

Trauma exposure is associated with increased context-dependent adjustments of cognitive control in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder and healthy controls

Recent evidence has suggested that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with alterations in prefrontal-cortex-dependent cognitive processes (e.g., working memory, cognitive control). However, it remains unclear whether these cognitive dysfunctions are related to PTSD symptomatology or trauma exposure. Furthermore, regarding cognitive control, research has only focused on the integrity of selected control functions, but not their dynamic regulation in response to changing environmental demands. Therefore, the present study investigated dynamic variations in interference control, in addition to overall interference susceptibility and working memory (WM) performance in matched groups of 24 PTSD patients and 26 traumatized and 30 nontraumatized healthy controls. The Simon task was used to measure overall interference susceptibility and the flexible adjustment of cognitive control, on the basis of the occurrence of response conflicts (conflict adaptation effect). WM performance was assessed with the forward and backward digit span tasks. Since we have previously shown that trauma exposure per se is associated with reduced hair cortisol concentrations (HCC), we further explored whether PTSD/trauma-related cognitive alterations are related to HCC in proximal 3-cm hair segments. The results revealed that PTSD patients and traumatized controls showed significantly more pronounced conflict adaptation effects than nontraumatized controls. Moreover, the conflict adaptation effect was positively related to the number of lifetime traumatic events and the frequency of traumatization. The groups did not differ in overall interference susceptibility or WM performance. Exploratory analyses revealed no association between HCC and the observed cognitive differences. These results suggest that context-driven control adjustments constitute a sensitive correlate of trauma exposure, irrespective of PTSD.     

‘Who's the Thief?’ The Influence of Knowledge and Experience on Early Detection of Criminal Intentions

Our study investigates if people are able to recognize thieves based on their nonverbal behavior prior to committing the crime. We implemented authentic closed‐circuit television footage from thefts committed at an international airport into a computer‐based test. Five groups of participants (students, police recruits, inexperienced police officers, experienced police officers, and criminal investigators) were studied. The results show that criminals display nonverbal behavior that can be used by observers for early recognition of criminal intentions. In addition, early recognition seems to benefit from knowledge about the criminals' modi operandi (criminal investigators performed best), which renders early recognition teachable and trainable. Further, all participants seem to be biased towards innocence, but this bias was less pronounced in police officers than in students. These findings are discussed in relation to the well‐documented truth‐bias and investigator‐bias in lie detection research as well as taking our measurement method into account.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.