Great Men: Psychoanalytic Studies by Edward Hitschmann. Foreword by Ernest Jones

Abstract

This study examined the effectiveness of an integrated model of brief group psychotherapy for treatment of fibromyalgia syndrome, using cognitive behavioral and supportive expressive techniques. In the context of an outpatient, multidisciplinary fibromyalgia treatment program, group psychotherapy was provided to 35 patients with 21 control patients. Pre–post treatment measures of depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia impact, pain, fatigue, and morning tiredness were obtained. Using a quasi–experimental design with validated psychometric instruments, the results showed a significant decrease in pre-versus post treatment measures of depression, fibromyalgia impact, fatigue, and pain for the treatment patients, suggesting that an integrated model of group psychotherapy may have beneficial psychological and functional effects for some patients with fibromyalgia.     

Gender differences in implicit and explicit memory for affective passages

Thirty-two participants were administered 4 verbal tasks, an Implicit Affective Task, an Implicit Neutral Task, an Explicit Affective Task, and an Explicit Neutral Task. For the Implicit Tasks, participants were timed while reading passages aloud as quickly as possible, but not so quickly that they did not understand. A target verbal passage was repeated three times, and alternated with other previously unread passages. The Implicit Affective and Neutral passages had strong affective or neutral content, respectively. The Explicit Tasks were administered at the end of testing, and consisted of multiple choice questions regarding the passages. Priming effects in terms of more rapid reading speed for the target compared to non-target passages were seen for both the Implicit Affective Task and the Implicit Neutral Task. Overall reading speed was faster for the passages with neutral compared to affective content, consistent with studies of the emotional Stroop effect. For the Explicit memory tasks, overall performance was better on the items from the repeated passage, and on the Affective compared to Neutral Task. The male subjects showed greater priming for affective material than female subjects, and a greater gain than female subjects in explicit memory for affective compared to neutral material.     

Emotional experience and facial expression in Alzheimer's disease

Emotional experiences and facial muscle activity of individuals with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) (n = 13) and healthy elderly control subjects (n = 21) were measured while viewing emotion-eliciting images. Alzheimer's disease and control groups rated their emotional experiences similarly and in the expected directions on dimensions of valence and arousal. Change in corrugator activity while viewing images, compared to baseline, was comparable across groups and was greatest while viewing negative images. Change in zygomatic activity, however, was significantly different between AD and control groups, with AD subjects demonstrating an inverted pattern of activity compared to controls. These findings are discussed as possible consequences of frontal cortical system involvement accompanying the disease process.     

Attentional mechanisms linking rejection to hostile reactivity: the role of "hot" versus "cool" focus

Drawing on the hot–cool systems analysis of self–regulation, we examined whether attentional focus mediates the negativity of cognitive–affective reactions to interpersonal rejection. The hypothesis was that whereas a hot, arousing focus to representing rejection experiences should increase anger–hostility, accessing the cool system through distraction and distancing should attenuate such responses. Participants imagined an autobiographical rejection experience, focusing either on their physiological and emotional reactions (hot focus) or on the physical setting of the experience (cool focus). Participants in a third condition received no specific attentional instructions. Both implicit and explicit measures showed that hostile thoughts and feelings were attenuated in the cool–focus compared with the hot–focus condition. The findings support the adaptive value of activating a cooling strategy under hot, arousing conditions that otherwise elicit automatic, hot–system responses.     

Faces retain attention

In the present study, we investigated whether faces have an advantage in retaining attention over other stimulus categories. In three experiments, subjects were asked to focus on a central go/no-go signal before classifying a concurrently presented peripheral line target. In Experiment 1, the go/no-go signal could be superimposed on photographs of upright famous faces, matching inverted faces, or meaningful objects. Experiments 2 and 3 tested upright and inverted unfamiliar faces, printed names, and another class of meaningful objects in an identical design. A fourth experiment provided a replication of Experiment 1, but with a 1,000-msec stimulus onset asynchrony between the onset of the central face/nonface stimuli and the peripheral targets. In all the experiments, the presence of an upright face significantly delayed target response times, in comparison with each of the other stimulus categories. These results suggest a general attentional bias, so that it is particularly difficult to disengage processing resources from faces.     

Concurrent cognitive task modulates coordination dynamics

Does a concurrent cognitive task affect the dynamics of bimanual rhythmic coordination? In‐phase coordination was performed under manipulations of phase detuning and movement frequency and either singly or in combination with an arithmetic task. Predicted direction‐specific shifts in stable relative phase from 0° due to detuning and movement frequency were amplified by the cognitive task. Nonlinear cross‐recurrence analysis suggested that this cognitive influence on the locations of the stable points or attractors of coordination entailed a magnification of attractor noise without a reduction in attractor strength. An approximation to these findings was achieved through parameter changes in a motion equation in relative phase. Results are discussed in terms of dual‐task performance as limited resources, dynamics rather than chronometrics, and reparameterization rather than degradation.     

Face recognition is robust with incongruent image resolution: relationship to security video images

Identifying a criminal captured on conventional security video typically requires matching poor-quality video footage against a high-quality photograph. The authors examined the consequence of such a large discrepancy in image quality. Recognition and matching performance of this incongruent-quality condition was compared with that of a congruent one, in which a high-quality photograph was reduced to a low-quality video. Recognition memory was little affected by this manipulation, whereas matching performance of the incongruent condition enjoyed occasional advantage. The results show that person identification can tolerate a large discrepancy between image qualities of matching stimuli when one of the images is of poor quality.     

Tactical differences in coping with rejection sensitivity: the role of prevention pride

Prevention pride reflects a person's subjective history of success in preventing negative outcomes, leading to a strategic avoidance of errors of commission (e.g., explicit mistakes) in new situations. Two studies examined the impact of prevention pride on the strategies that highly rejection sensitive (HRS) people use to cope with the anxiety of anticipated rejection and the negative feelings elicited by perceived rejection. It was hypothesized that prevention pride orientation would lead HRS people toward covert and passive rather than overt and active forms of negative coping. Results indicated that HRS individuals who were also high in prevention pride reported increased use of self-silencing, presumably to prevent rejection. When rejection was perceived, however, they expressed hostility passively, by reducing positive behavior (e.g., withdrawing love and support) while inhibiting direct, active acts of hostility (e.g., yelling).     

The effect of age on relative timing variability and transfer

The purpose of this study was to investigate potential qualitative differences in relative timing across age both within and across speed conditions. Forty right-handed males performed 48 trials of a five-component coincident-timing task at one speed and then 16 more at a different speed. The independent variables were age (5-7, 8-10, 11-13 years, and adult), speed (slow and fast), and block order (training and transfer). The results indicated that within-speed relative timing consistency improved with increasing age for movement-time and pause-time components, while across-speed transfer improved with age only for pause time. movement velocity emerged as a more stable timing parameter than movement time across speeds for all groups. The last movement-time component correlated highly with the total response times, suggesting that coincident-timing accuracy was controlled to a large degree by a final, fine-tuning correction. These results imply that developmental deficits in relative timing increase the attention demands of a given task, thereby reducing a child's capacity to concurrently control his movements and monitor events in the environment.