Thai Norms for Name,Image, and Category Agreement,Object Familiarity,Visual Complexity,Manipulability, and Age of Acquisition for 480 Color Photographic Objects

Normative databases containing psycholinguistic variables are commonly used to aid stimulus selection for investigations into language and other cognitive processes. Norms exist for many languages, but not for Thai. The aim of the present research, therefore, was to obtain Thai normative data for the BOSS, a set of 480 high resolution color photographic images of real objects (Brodeur et al. in PLoS ONE 5(5), 2010.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010773). Norms were provided by 584 Thai university students on eight dimensions: name agreement, object familiarity, visual complexity, category agreement, image agreement, two types of manipulability (graspability and mimeability), and age of acquisition. The results revealed comparatively similar levels of name agreement to Brodeur et al. especially when unfamiliar items were factored out. The pattern of intercorrelations among the Thai psycholinguistic norms was comparable to previous studies and our cross-linguistic correlations were robust for the same set of pictures in English and French. Conjointly, the findings extend the relevancy of the BOSS to Thailand, supporting this photographic resource for investigations of language and other cognitive processes in monolingual, multilingual, and brain-impaired populations.     

Changes Over Time in the Comprehension of <Emphasis Type="Italic">He</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">They</Emphasis> as Epicene Pronouns

An epicene pronoun is a gender-neutral singular pronoun used in sentences when the gender of the subject is unknown or unspecified. In English, he and they are commonly-used epicene pronouns. Until recently, he has been widely accepted as being grammatically correct. However, many have argued that he is sexist because it may bias people to think about males. Two experiments were performed using a lexical decision task in which participants reacted to gendered words (e.g., aunt and uncle) after reading sentences using he, they, or unrelated epicene pronouns. We conducted the experiments 15 years apart in order to explore whether change in pronoun usage and the social significance of pronouns would be associated with different priming effects. Both experiments demonstrated that pronouns influence the processing of gendered nouns. However, in Experiment 1 they facilitated the processing of feminine nouns whereas in Experiment 2, he slowed the processing of feminine nouns. We discuss these results with respect to language change and conclude that they is a more effective epicene.     

Breath Versus Emotions: The Impact of Different Foci of Attention During Mindfulness Meditation on the Experience of Negative and Positive Emotions

Mindfulness meditation yields beneficial effects on the processing of emotions. However, it is still unclear whether the focus of attention during meditation influences these effects. In the present study we aimed at comparing the effects of breathing meditation and emotion-focused meditation on the immediate and delayed processing of negative and positive emotions. The study included 65 adult novice meditators who were exposed to positively and negatively valenced film clips. Participants were randomly assigned to three conditions. While watching the films at t1, they were asked to mindfully focus on their breath (condition 1), on emotions (condition 2), or on nothing in particular (condition 3). Ten minutes later at t2, comparable film clips were shown but all participants watched them without taking up a mindful attitude. Dependent measures were emotional states at t1 and t2. Participants of both meditation conditions particularly showed a more preferable delayed emotional reaction to negative stimuli than participants of the control condition. Breathing meditation and emotion-focused meditation may constitute effective emotion regulation strategies to deal with negatively valenced emotional states.     

The Impact of Chronic Health Conditions as an Underlying Challenge on Couple’s Wellbeing

Chronic health conditions affect over 100 million Americans (Cano and Leonard in J Clin Psychol 62(11):1409–1418, 2006). Many clinicians are not integrating chronic physical health symptoms into psychotherapy. There is a complexity of issues that arise within the context of chronic health conditions. Making more need for couple and family therapists, whose primary focus is on a systemic family perspective, to understand how chronic health conditions are impacting family systems when they present for therapy (Canavarro and Dattilio in Contemp Fam Ther 33:87–90, 2011; Poleshuck et al. in Prof Psychol 41(4):312–318, 2010). The correlation of chronic health conditions on marriages and relationships has received limited attention in clinical research. This secondary data analysis examines the differences in overall well-being and psychological distress of individuals and couples seeking therapy who report a presence of chronic health conditions. Original research on the relationship between chronic health conditions and well-being, as measured by comparison of means, will be presented. Few studies investigate how chronic health conditions, when not the primary reason for seeking therapy, influence wellbeing and distress upon entering therapy. This study included 2742 participants from a clinical sample of individuals and couple seeking therapy in a family therapy clinic at a university training clinic. Independent t-tests, as well as ANOVA, were run to compare well-being and psychological distress of individuals and couples in the sample. Results showed significant differences in both overall wellbeing and psychological distress for both individuals who reported chronic illness for themselves, or their partners, than those that reported no chronic illness. There were also significant differences between groups on both well-being and psychological distress [F (2, 2706)?=?47.55, p?=?.00, F (2, 2697)?=?54.59, p?=?.00]. This results showed significant differences in well-being when no member of the couple has chronic health conditions, one member, or both members, with both members decreasing wellbeing significantly. This study demonstrates that chronic health conditions impact both the individual diagnosed, their partners, and is especially impactful if both members of a couple are diagnosed with chronic health conditions. Study limitations and clinical implications are also discussed.     

Bodies in Dialogue: Empathic Connectedness in the Realm of the Unspeakable

ABSTRACT

This article joins in contemporary psychoanalysis’ ever-expanding conversation about the “something more” than spoken language that has long been privileged in our profession. Specifically, the notion is explored that infant research’s conceptualization of mind as dialogic in origin—that we are prewired from birth to participate in nonverbal, affective communication—is consistent with the position that an embodied, dialogic, co-created, empathic connectedness can evolve with severely traumatized, frozen patients whose experience is not just unformulated but unspeakable. This is illustrated with an in-depth account of a challenging therapeutic journey with a highly intelligent man whose social relatedness hid a world of frozen grief and terror of violation. It was only when the therapist could connect with trauma-generated aspects of herself that had remained frozen, could she find an empathic way of being-with and ultimately understanding her patient’s wordless, frozen world.     

Does Rumination Mediate the Association of Private Prayer,Stress, and Their Interaction with Depression among Christians? A Cross-Sectional Study

Mechanisms underlying significant associations between different types of prayer and depression are unknown. Based on the conceptualization of prayer as stress buffering coping style and the Response Style Theory, we proposed that rumination mediates the association of prayer types and stress with depression. This cross-sectional study (N?=?227 Christians, M_age 41.74, SD 14.82, age range 18–82 years, 76% female) used path modeling to test whether rumination mediated the associations between prayer types and prayer types by stress interactions with depression. Rumination fully mediated the associations of the colloquial and ritual prayer by stress interactions with depressive symptoms, while meditative and petitionary prayer was directly associated with depressive symptoms. Further, petitionary prayer and the ritual prayer by stress interaction were associated with more and not with less rumination and depressive symptoms, respectively. Summarized, first empirical evidence supports an integration of prayer, stress, and rumination into one model of depression. However, the exact nature of their interplay depends on the prayer type. If replicated, our findings allow the integration of prayer into cognitive-behavioral treatment of depression in religious and spiritual clients.     

Introspective disputes deflated: the case for phenomenal variation

Sceptics vis-à-vis introspection often base their scepticism on ‘phenomenological disputes’, ‘introspective disagreement’, or ‘introspective disputes’ (ID) (see Kriegel in Phenomenol CognSci 6(1):115–136, 2007; Bayne and Spener in Philos Issues 20(1):1–22, 2010; Schwitzgebel in Perplexities of consciousness, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2011): introspectors massively diverge in their opinions about experiences, and there seems to be no method to resolve these issues. Sceptics take this to show that introspection lacks any epistemic merit. Here, I provide a list of paradigmatic examples, distill necessary and sufficient conditions for IDs, present the sceptical argument encouraged by IDs, and review the two main strategies (resolution and containment) to reject such a scepticism. However, both types of strategies are unsatisfactory. In order to save introspection from the looming sceptical threat, I advocate a deflationary strategy, based on either an ‘Argument from Perceptual Kinship’ or an ‘Argument from Ownership’. In the end, there cannot be any genuine IDs, for nothing can fulfil the reasonable conditions for IDs. What looks like IDs may instead be indicators of phenomenal variation. Debates that look like IDs may then arise even if introspection were a perfect method to know one’s mind. Thus, scepticism vis-à-vis introspection based on IDs rests on shaky grounds.     

An external review of the conclusions regarding the peak direct training module

Promoting the Emergence of Advanced Knowledge—Direct Training Module (PEAK‐DTM) is a commercially available assessment and curriculum for individuals whose language skills are not developmentally adequate. In their review of PEAK‐DTM, Reed and Luiselli (2016) analyzed the extant literature on PEAK‐DTM and concluded that it has a sound and growing body of empirical support on its efficacy, usability, and psychometric properties. Similar conclusions are mirrored in the PEAK‐DTM literature and promotional material. I review these conclusions and contend that many overrate the research that backs them. Suggestions for a more rigorous research agenda on PEAK‐DTM and its related modules are provided.     

Attention network test: Assessment of cognitive function in chronic fatigue syndrome

Information processing difficulties are common in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). It has been shown that the time it takes to process a complex cognitive task, rather than error rate, may be the critical variable underlying CFS patients' cognitive complaints. The Attention Network Task (ANT) developed by Fan and colleagues may be of clinical utility to assess cognitive function in CFS, because it allows for simultaneous assessment of mental response speed, also called information processing speed, and error rate under three conditions challenging the attention system. Comparison of data from two groups of CFS patients (those with and without comorbid major depressive disorder; n = 19 and 22, respectively) to controls (n = 29) consistently showed that error rates did not differ among groups across conditions, but speed of information processing did. Processing time was prolonged in both CFS groups and most significantly affected in response to the most complex task conditions. For simpler tasks, processing time was only prolonged in CFS participants with depression. The data suggest that the ANT may be a task that could be used clinically to assess information processing deficits in individuals with CFS.