The concept of personality in 19th-century French and 20th-century American psychology

Since the 1920s, the road to the acknowledgement of personality psychology as a field of scientific psychology that has individuality as its object began with the founding of the discipline by Gordon W. Allport. Historians of psychology have made serious attempts to reconstruct the cultural, political, institutional, and chronological beginnings of this field in America in the 20th century. In this literature, however, an important European tradition of psychological studies of personality that developed in France in the 2nd half of the 19th century has been overlooked. The aim of this article is to cast some light on this unexplored tradition of psychological personality studies and to discuss its influence on the development of the scientific study of personality in the United States.     

A Clinical Decision Support Tool to Predict Cancer Risk for Commonly Tested Cancer-Related Germline Mutations

The rapid drop in the cost of DNA sequencing led to the availability of multi-gene panels, which test 25 or more cancer susceptibility genes for a low cost. Clinicians and genetic counselors need a tool to interpret results, understand risk of various cancers, and advise on a management strategy. This is challenging as there are multiple studies regarding each gene, and it is not possible for clinicians and genetic counselors to be aware of all publications, nor to appreciate the relative accuracy and importance of each. Through an extensive literature review, we have identified reliable studies and derived estimates of absolute risk. We have also developed a systematic mechanism and informatics tools for (1) data curation, (2) the evaluation of quality of studies, and (3) the statistical analysis necessary to obtain risk. We produced the risk prediction clinical decision support tool ASK2ME (All Syndromes Known to Man Evaluator). It provides absolute cancer risk predictions for various hereditary cancer susceptibility genes. These predictions are specific to patients’ gene carrier status, age, and history of relevant prophylactic surgery. By allowing clinicians to enter patient information and receive patient-specific cancer risks, this tool aims to have a significant impact on the quality of precision cancer prevention and disease management activities relying on panel testing. It is important to note that this tool is dynamic and constantly being updated, and currently, some of its limitations include (1) for many gene-cancer associations risk estimates are based on one study rather than meta-analysis, (2) strong assumptions on prior cancers, (3) lack of uncertainty measures, and (4) risk estimates for a growing set of gene-cancer associations which are not always variant specific. All of these concerns are being addressed on an ongoing basis, aiming to make the tool even more accurate.     

Exploring the Link Between Mind Wandering,Mindfulness, and Creativity: A Multidimensional Approach

Even if mind wandering (MW) and mindfulness have traditionally been intended as separate and antithetical constructs, the roles of these 2 mental states on creative behavior were jointly explored in this article. In particular, MW was analyzed in light of a recent approach suggesting a differentiation between deliberate and spontaneous MW, whereas mindfulness was analyzed by distinguishing its 5 different constitutional dimensions: observing, acting with awareness, describing, nonreactivity, and nonjudging. The influence on creativity of these 2 mental states was analyzed using a sample of 77 undergraduate students both on a performance index (i.e., originality) and on a self-report index (i.e., creative achievement). Results showed that MW and mindfulness dimensions predicted creative behavior both alone and in combination, suggesting a complex interdependence between these 2 mental states within the creative thinking process. In particular, the critical importance of distinguishing between deliberate and spontaneous MW was revealed by a final path analysis, which revealed the opposite effects of these 2 dimensions on originality and creative achievement. That is, deliberate MW positively predicted creative performance, whereas spontaneous MW was negatively associated with such performance. Moreover, the nonreactivity and awareness dimensions of mindfulness, the latter in interaction with deliberate MW, emerged as main predictors of response originality. Finally, the describing facet of mindfulness predicted creative achievement both directly and indirectly through an interaction with deliberate MW. The implications emerging from the adoption of a multi-dimensional approach to the analysis of MW and mindfulness in the study of creativity are discussed herein.     

Patient Autonomy and Quality of Care in Telehealthcare

Telemedicine is a complex field including various applications and target groups. Especially telehealthcare is seen by many as a means to revolutionize medicine. It gives patients the opportunity to take charge of their own health by using self-tracking devices and allows health professionals to treat patients from a distance. To some, this means an empowerment of patient autonomy as well as an improvement in the quality of care. Others state the dangers of depersonalization of medicine and the pathologization of daily life. This paper examines the ethical implications of telehealthcare, focusing on patient autonomy and quality of care by analyzing metareviews, randomized controlled trials and narrative ethical analyses on the topic. As a result, we conclude that the technically enhanced encounter between patients and health professionals may mean an empowerment of patient autonomy when it goes along with a personal relationship based on trust, assistance and support. When it comes to the quality of care, telehealthcare may lead to an improvement as long it is adopted to the patient’s individual needs.     

Do Personal Dispositions Affect the Relationship Between Psychosocial Working Conditions and Workplace Bullying?

There is scarce research on the interaction between psychosocial working conditions and being a target of workplace bullying with individual characteristics as a moderator. We therefore examined 3,363 employees from 60 Danish workplaces to test whether sense of coherence moderates the relationship between the job demand-control model and bullying. This work is exploratory in nature, as no previous study to assess this moderation was found. Hierarchical linear regressions showed that demand-control model was significantly associated with bullying. Sense of coherence displayed a significant though practically negligible moderating effect. This suggests that negative psychosocial working conditions are associated with bullying independently of personal characteristics, at least in terms of sense of coherence.     

Action observation network in childhood: a comparative fMRI study with adults

Very little is known about the action observation network and the mirror neuron system (AON/MNS) in children and its age‐related properties compared with those observed in adults. In the present fMRI study we explored the activation of areas belonging to the AON/MNS in children and adults during observation of complex hand‐grasping actions, as compared to observation of simple grasping acts executed with the left and the right hand, seen from a first person perspective. The results indicate that during the action observation tasks in children there was activation of a cortical network similar to that found in adults, including the premotor cortex, the posterior part of the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal lobe. However, the activation in children was more widespread and showed a higher inter‐subject variability compared with adults. Furthermore, the activated network seems more lateralized to the left hemisphere in adults and more bilateral in children, with a linear growth of lateralization index as a function of age. Finally, in children the activation in the anterior intraparietal cortex (AIP) of each hemisphere was higher during observation of the contralateral hand (hand identity effect) and during the observation of complex actions relative to simple grasping acts, confirming the role of AIP for action‐related hand identity previously described in adults. These results support the assumption that structure and size of action representations are sensitive to mechanisms of development and show physiological plasticity. These properties of the AON/MNS could constitute a powerful tool for spontaneous reorganization and recovery of motor deficits after brain injury in children and in adults, as well as for specific rehabilitation programmes.     

Effects of different training histories upon manufacturing a tool to solve a problem: insight in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.)

Animal Cognition - The emergence of novel behavior is a multilayered phenomenon that comprehends distinct processes. One such process is known as insightful problem solving. “Insight”...     

Spatial attention can be biased towards an expected dimension

A commonly held view in both exogenous and endogenous orienting is that spatial attention is associated with enhanced processing of all stimuli at the attended location. However, we often search for a specific target at a particular location, so an observer should be able to jointly specify the target identity and expected location. Whether attention can bias dimension-specific processes at a particular location is not yet clear. We used a dual task to examine the effects of endogenous spatial cues on the accuracy of perceptual judgments of different dimensions. Participants responded to a motion target and a colour target, presented at the same or different locations. We manipulated a central cue to predict the location of the motion or colour target. While overall performance in the two tasks was comparable, cueing effects were larger for the target whose location was predicted by the cue, implying that when attending a particular location, processing of the likely dimension was preferentially enhanced. Additionally, an asymmetry between the motion and colour tasks was seen; motion was modulated by attention, and colour was not. We conclude that attention has some ability to select a dimension at a particular location, indicating integration of spatial and feature-based attention.     

THE BIRTH OF PSYCHOANALYSIS FROM THE SPIRIT OF TECHNIQUE1

The author aims to demonstrate, through a textual analysis of Freud's work, how the creation of psychoanalysis as a plausible set of understandings of the human mind has a methodological origin that has sometimes been overlooked: in the Greek concept of techne. Freud, an acknowledged pupil of Brentano, was well versed in Aristotelian rhetoric, and selected this instrument of investigation, dependent on language, from the outset of his efforts to describe, understand and treat the world of the unconscious mind. Working in the tradition of techne Freud actually rehabilitated ‘guessing’ (zu erraten) ‐ although it became a largely overlooked concept in Freud's work ‐ and so sought to place conjectural reason as the definitive form of knowledge for the investigation and treatment of the mind. This explains why the 1895 ‘Project’ could not succeed and why technique became irreplaceable as the via regia in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’. Its model is founded in Aristotelian rhetoric, whose conception of language was first rediscovered by Nietzsche and was used therapeutically by Freud. Freud's view is apparent in his 1923 definition of psychoanalysis which is compared to the current IPA definition, a definition which, the author suggests, gives a misleading prominence to ‘theory’ and which shows how far a questionable rationality has removed conjectural reason from the field, to its detriment. From this point of view it is argued that the ‘precious conjunction’ (Freud) between investigation and treatment has been abandoned, and the concept of historical truth and its significance for psychoanalysis obscured.     

The effect of inpatient cognitive-behavioral therapy for eating disorders on temperament and character

Personality traits seem to have an important role in the development, clinical expression, course, and treatment response in eating disorders (EDs). We investigated the effects of an inpatient cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) on the measures of temperament and character (Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI)) in 149 consecutive patients with EDs. Baseline assessment included anthropometry, the Eating Disorder Examination (EDE), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the TCI. Treatment was based on the transdiagnostic cognitive behavior theory and treatment of ED, adapted for an inpatient setting. Treatment effects were tested by paired ANOVA, adjusted for covariates. No effects were found on Novelty Seeking, Reward Dependence, and Cooperativeness. Harm Avoidance (F=18.17, p<0.001), Persistence (F=7.71, p=0.006), Self-Directedness (F=27.55, p<0.001), and Self Transcendence (F=16.38, p<0.001) significantly changed after treatment. Changes in TCI scores were wholly dependent on the changes in BDI and EDE, and independent of ED diagnosis and behavior and of BMI changes. We conclude that in ED, a few scales of both temperament and character are significantly modified by CBT, in relation to changes in psychopathology and depression, independently of nutrition. These results are relevant for future studies based on TCI.