Contribution of parents' adult attachment and separation attitudes to parent‐adolescent conflict resolution

This study examined the contribution to parent‐adolescent conflict resolution of parental adult attachment styles and attitudes toward adolescent separation. Questionnaires were completed by 295 couples with early to late adolescent children. Structural equation models were used to test self and partner influences on conflict resolution for three attachment orientations: confidence (model A), anxiety (model B) and avoidance (model C). Model A showed self influences between parents' confidence orientation and negotiation and also via positive attitudes towards separation. Also, the fathers' use of negotiation was facilitated by the mothers' confidence orientation and vice versa, indicating partner influences as well. Model B showed self influences between parents' anxiety orientation and the use of dominance and withdrawal and also via negative attitudes towards separation. Model C showed self influences between parents' avoidance orientation and dominance and withdrawal, and a partner influence between fathers' avoidance and mothers' use of dominance. The results indicated that the parents' adult attachment system and the parenting system were related in the area of conflict resolution, and that self influences were stronger than partner influences.     

Environmental sound recognition by timbre in children with Williams syndrome

Anecdotal reports have described children with Williams syndrome (WS) as presenting outstanding skills for recognizing environmental sounds by their timbre. This has led to suggest that the skills for environmental sound recognition by timbre are highly developed in WS. Furthermore, the term hypertimbria has been proposed to refer to this feature. However, no academic research has assessed these skills in WS. This study therefore aimed to contrast the reports on the highly developed skills for environmental sound recognition by timbre in children with WS. An environmental sound recognition task was administered to children with WS, children with Down syndrome of the same chronological age and cognitive level, and chronological age-matched typically developing children. Participants with WS performed significantly lower than their typically developing peers and no significant differences were found between the WS and Down syndrome groups. Unlike previous reports, this study points out that in WS environmental sound recognition by timbre does not constitute a phenotypic strength either in absolute or relative terms. Results suggest that children with WS do not present hypertimbria or preserved skills for timbre recognition. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of cognitive modularity.     

Multicriteria Classification with Unknown Categories: A Clustering–Sorting Approach and an Application to Conflict Management

This work proposes an approach to cluster and sort a set of alternatives considering multi‐criteria categories with a partial order structure. It can be considered a heuristic approach because it does not attempt to derive an optimal partial order among all conceivable clusters of alternatives. Rather than this, it intends to be a simple approach that is transparent to the Decision Maker (DM) whose assistance is sought to help shaping the results. The approach proposed arises from the conjugation of traditional Clustering analysis and Multi‐criteria sorting tools. At the outset, the number of categories and their characteristics is unknown. First, we need to detect only the clusters themselves on the basis of a similarity measure independent of the preferences of the DM. Next, we detect potential partial order relations that might exist between them, according to the subjective preferences of the DM. Such preferences are elicited only after the DM has examined the clusters detected and deemed that these categories made sense. The new approach performs very well in a real‐world problem of management of intragroup conflicts and conflict handling strategies. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Charcot Effect: The Invention of Mental Illnesses

This article proposes the Charcot effect, in which clinicians describe what they themselves prescribe. It is argued that the Charcot effect can be a critical instrument for exposing how mental illnesses are invented in the process of developing diagnostic systems and conducting psychopharmacological research. We argue that the Charcot effect helps explain the expansion of depression to epidemic proportions, the promotion of social phobia as a pharmaceutical marketing strategy, the profile of panic disorder according to the available medication, and the worse prognosis of schizophrenia in developed countries than in developing countries. Having undertaken this review, we situate the Charcot effect in relation to constructivist psychology.     

Auditory Verbal Hallucinations as Dialogical Experiences

The purpose of this study is to offer a model in which auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) can be conceptualized as dialogical experiences. This model is of interest in that it integrates several different perspectives (phenomenological, cognitive, social, and evolutionary) and the findings of empirical research on the subject. Hallucinations are understood as the product of a state of consciousness in which the self is dissociated into different positions or perspectives. After reviewing the most relevant results of psychological research, dialogical self theory is proposed as the theoretical framework for understanding hallucinatory experiences. It is argued that the voices possess a series of characteristics, pragmatic properties, relationships with the voices similar to their social surroundings, and more dissociative experiences in people who experience voices than in those who do not, with which they may be considered a dialogical experience. Finally, a model attempting to integrate psychological research on AVHs within the framework of dialogical self theory is presented.     

Holistic processing in the composite task depends on face size

Holistic processing is a hallmark of face processing. There is evidence that holistic processing is strongest for faces at identification distance 2–10 metres from the observer. However, this evidence is based on tasks that have been little used in the literature and that are indirect measures of holistic processing. We use the composite task—a well validated and frequently used paradigm—to measure the effect of viewing distance on holistic processing. In line with previous work, we find a congruency x alignment effect that is strongest for faces that are close (2 m equivalent distance) than for faces that are further away (24 m equivalent distance). In contrast, the alignment effect for same trials, used by several authors to measure holistic processing, produced results that are difficult to interpret. We conclude that our results converge with previous findings providing more direct evidence for an effect of size on holistic processing.     

False memories for script actions in a mugging account

Abstract

A number of cross-language priming experiments are reported that evaluate whether word meanings in the first and second language are represented in common or separate systems. A masked priming procedure was used on the assumption that when prime awareness is limited, any priming effects directly reveal the underlying structure of the semantic system. Primes were presented in the subjects' first language, while targets were in their second language. Priming effects were obtained for word pairs that were semantically highly similar but not translation equivalents, for example fence-haie (= hedge in French), suggesting that words in the two languages share common elements of semantic code. Priming was also obtained between translation equivalents which, in conjunction with the results for semantically similar pairs, is most naturally interpreted in terms of partially shared semantic representations. However, no masked priming effects were obtained between associated pairs of relatively low semantic similarity, for example shoe-pied (= foot in French), whereas such pairs did produce an effect when primes were unmasked. The results are discussed in terms of limitations on the semantic activation produced by masked words, and the role of collocational relationships in priming between associated words in the same language.     

Congruence or coherence? Emotional and physiological responses to colours in synaesthesia

Lexical–chromatic synaesthesia is a condition in which letters and/or words elicit percepts of synaesthetic colours, termed photisms. Anecdotal data suggest that synaesthetes are particularly sensitive to inconsistencies between their synaesthetic percepts and the real world, e.g., it can be annoying and unpleasant for them to see a letter printed in a colour different than the respective photism colour. For R, a synaesthete subject who participated in the present study, the photisms possess specific emotional values (a red photism is pleasing and attractive, green is repulsive and unpleasant, etc.). In contrast to the anecdotal data, R does not always find the colour–photism incongruence to be disturbing. More importantly, he states that it is the emotional coherence between the stimulus and the corresponding photism that matters. In a series of experiments, we studied this new concept of emotional coherence on three levels—subjective (self-report), behavioural, and physiological, corroborating R's introspective statements. Besides the implications of the concept of coherence itself, the results presented here suggest that even highly subjective cognitive constructs can be approached and measured experimentally, uncovering the workings of the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms.