Comments on “Shame and Shame Dynamics” Special Issue,Edited by Benjamin Kilborne

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Amygdala and hippocampal activity during acquisition and extinction of human fear conditioning

Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have characterized brain systems involved in conditional response acquisition during Pavlovian fear conditioning. However, the functional neuroanatomy underlying the extinction of human conditional fear remains largely undetermined. The present study used fMRI to examine brain activity during acquisition and extinction of fear conditioning. During the acquisition phase, participants were either exposed to light (CS) presentations that signaled a brief electrical stimulation (paired group) or received light presentations that did not serve as a warning signal (control group). During the extinction phase, half of the paired group subjects continued to receive the same treatment, whereas the remainder received light alone. Control subjects also received light alone during the extinction phase. Changes in metabolic activity within the amygdala and hippocampus support the involvement of these regions in each of the procedural phases of fear conditioning. Hippocampal activity developed during acquisition of the fear response. Amygdala activity increased whenever experimental contingencies were altered, suggesting that this region is involved in processing changes in environmental relationships. The present data show learning-related amygdala and hippocampal activity during human Pavlovian fear conditioning and suggest that the amygdala is particularly important for forming new associations as relationships between stimuli change.     

A cross-culturally standardized set of pictures for younger and older adults: American and Chinese norms for name agreement,concept agreement,and familiarity

The present study presents normative measures for 260 line drawings of everyday objects, found in Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980), viewed by individuals in China and the United States. Within each cultural group, name agreement, concept agreement, and familiarity measures were obtained separately for younger adults and older adults. For a subset of 57 pictures (22%), there was equivalence in both name agreement and concept agreement, and for an additional subset of 29 pictures (11%), there was nonequivalent name agreement but equivalent concept agreement, across all culture-by-age groups. The data indicate substantial differences across culture-by-age groups in name agreement percentages and number of distinct name responses provided. We discovered significant differences between older and younger American adults in both name agreement percentages (67 pictures, or 26%) and concept agreement percentages (44 pictures, or 17%). Written naming responses collected for the entire set of Snodgrass and Vanderwart pictures showed shifts in both naming and concept agreement percentages over the intervening decades: Although correlations in name agreement were strong (r = .71,p < .001) between our younger American samples and those of Snodgrass and Vanderwart, name agreement percentages have changed for a substantial proportion (33%) of the 260 pictures; moreover, 63% of the stimuli for which Snodgrass and Vanderwart reported concept agreement now appear to differ. We provide comprehensive comparison statistics and tests for both the present study and prior ones, finding differences across numerous item-level measures. The corpus of data suggests that substantial differences in all measures can be found across age as well as culture, so that unequivocal conclusions with respect to cross-cultural or age-related differences in cognition can be made only when appropriate stimuli are selected for studies. Data for all 260 pictures, for each of the four groups, and all supporting materials and tests are freely archived athttp://agingmind.cns.uiuc.edu/Pict Norms. The full set of these norms may be downloaded fromwwwpsychonomic.org/archive/.     

Countertransference in defense enactments

A clinical term is introduced to capture a defense that develops with the patient's deepening but fleeting awareness of painful transference feelings. The analyst's attention to countertransference in such situations is central to the analysis of these defenses. An attempt is made to distinguish defense enactments from other types of defenses, and to differentiate the analyst's countertransference reaction to this type of defense from countertransference reactions that might appear similar. The reasons for this dynamic in the interpersonal space are explored, and a clinical example that describes this phenomenon in the analytic moment is given.     

Modeling the behavior of the 4/5ths rule for determining adverse impact: reasons for caution

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's 4/5ths rule has been used for over 20 years in applied psychology and employment law. The rule signals that there is adverse impact when the protected group selection ratio is less than 80% of the highest scoring group's selection ratio. We conducted several simulations and found, consistent with some previous management science literature, that the 4/5ths rule often resulted in false-positive readings of adverse impact even when there were no underlying (population) standardized group differences between subgroups. We then incorporated tests of statistical significance and found that adding such tests to the 4/5ths rule eliminated many false-positive indications of adverse impact. We also examined simulated selection systems based on meta-analytic values from the selection literature. The frequency of adverse impact signals from the 4/5ths rule increased markedly relative to simulations with no subgroup population differences. Adding statistical tests mitigated the number of indications of adverse impact to some extent.     

Forced-choice assessments of personality for selection: evaluating issues of normative assessment and faking resistance

Recent research suggests multidimensional forced-choice (MFC) response formats may provide resistance to purposeful response distortion on personality assessments. It remains unclear, however, whether these formats provide normative trait information required for selection contexts. The current research evaluated score correspondences between an MFC format measure and 2 Likert-type measures in honest and instructed-faking conditions. In honest response conditions, scores from the MFC measure appeared valid indicators of normative trait standing. Under faking conditions, the MFC measure showed less score inflation than the Likert measure at the group level of analysis. In the individual-level analyses, however, the MFC measure was as affected by faking as was the Likert measure. Results suggest the MFC format is not a viable method to control faking.     

Children's development of analogical reasoning: insights from scene analogy problems

We explored how relational complexity and featural distraction, as varied in scene analogy problems, affect children's analogical reasoning performance. Results with 3- and 4-year-olds, 6- and 7-year-olds, 9- to 11-year-olds, and 13- and 14-year-olds indicate that when children can identify the critical structural relations in a scene analogy problem, development of their ability to reason analogically interacts with both relational complexity and featural distraction. Error patterns suggest that children are more likely to select a distracting object than to make a relational error for problems that present both possibilities. This tendency decreases with age, and older children make fewer errors overall. The results suggest that changes in analogical reasoning with age depend on the interplay among increases in relational knowledge, the capacity to integrate multiple relations, and inhibitory control over featural distraction.     

Telling stories

Patients need to tell their stories. One of our primary tasks as analysts is to help patients tell their stories and own them. The freedom of mind to think, to feel, and to know are dependent on the ongoing capacity for storytelling. The analyst's stance plays a major role in the development of the analysand's storytelling capacities.