Psychoanalytic perspectives on paraphilias and perversions

Since Freud’s exposition of the nature of perversion in his seminal work, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality there has been a multitude of rich and varied explorations of human sexual fantasies and behaviours that are considered as perversions within the psychoanalytic literature. However, with more recent societal shifts towards the acceptance of sexual orientations and practices which would previously been categorized as deviant, perversion has become a pejorative term seen as stigmatizing and debasing those whose sexual preferences do not conform to the traditional norm. In this paper I argue that certain psychoanalytic concepts of perversion retain utility in how we might think about and help individuals whose sexual desires and practices cause distress to themselves and/or others, particularly in the realm of intimate relationships. Historical and contemporary theories about the nature and origins of perverse fantasies and behaviour are presented and explored, focusing on how perversion may be conceptualized as a defence against early anxieties and disturbances in the mother–infant relationship. Such ideas inform a psychoanalytic approach to the treatment of perversions, particularly in consideration of transference and countertransference dynamics. The ideas in this paper are based on my work at the Portman Clinic in London, UK.     

Verbal and nonverbal predictors of executive function in early childhood

The study of executive function (EF) has become increasingly popular in multiple areas of research. A wealth of evidence has supported the value of EF in shaping notable outcomes across typical and atypical development; however, little evidence has supported the cognitive contributors to early EF development. The current study used data from a large longitudinal sample of healthy children to investigate the differential influence of verbal and nonverbal cognition on later EF. Participants were assessed at 2 years of age using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning, and Mullen scores were used to calculate nonverbal and verbal developmental quotients. Executive function was measured at 6 years using assessments from the Stanford-Binet, Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery, and the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function. Results suggested that early nonverbal cognition was a better predictor of 6-year EF as measured by task-based laboratory assessments, whereas verbal cognition was a better predictor of parent-reported EF. Findings are discussed in regard to EF development and characteristics of EF measurement.     

Parental Depressive Symptoms as a Predictor of Outcome in the Treatment of Child Depression

Child depression is an impairing condition for which psychotherapies have shown modest effects. Parental depression is a risk factor for development of child depression and might also be negatively associated with child depression treatment outcomes. To explore this possibility, we analyzed data from a study in which children were treated for depression after parental depressive symptoms had been assessed at baseline. Among children treated for depression in a randomized controlled trial, we identified 31 who had child- and parent-report pre- and post-treatment data on child symptoms and parent-report of pre-treatment parental depressive symptoms. Children were aged 8–13, 77% boys, and 52% Caucasian, 13% African-American, 6% Latino, and 29% multi-racial. Analyses focused on differences in trajectories of change (across weekly measurements), and post-treatment symptoms among children whose parents did (n = 12) versus did not (n = 19) have elevated depressive symptoms at baseline. Growth curve analyses showed markedly different trajectories of change for the two groups, by both child-report (p = 0.03) and parent-report (p = 0.03) measures: children of parents with less severe depression showed steep symptom declines, but children of parents with more severe depression showed flat trajectories with little change in symptoms over time. ANCOVAs showed lower post-treatment child symptoms for children of parents with less severe depression versus parents with more severe depression (p = 0.05 by child report, p = 0.01 by parent report). Parental depressive symptoms predict child symptom trajectories and poorer child treatment response, and may need to be addressed in treatment.     

Playing with fire: effects of negative mood induction and working memory on vocabulary acquisition

We investigated the impact of emotions on learning vocabulary in an unfamiliar language to better understand affective influences in foreign language acquisition. Seventy native English speakers learned new vocabulary in either a negative or a neutral emotional state. Participants also completed two sets of working memory tasks to examine the potential mediating role of working memory. Results revealed that participants exposed to negative stimuli exhibited difficulty in retrieving and correctly pairing English words with Indonesian words, as reflected in a lower performance on the prompted recall tests and the free recall measure. Emotional induction did not change working memory scores from pre to post manipulation. This suggests working memory could not explain the reduced vocabulary learning in the negative group. We argue that negative mood can adversely affect language learning by suppressing aspects of native-language processing and impeding form-meaning mapping with second language words.     

Narratives About Specific Romantic Conflicts: Gender and Associations With Conflict Beliefs and Strategies

Using a sample of 145 predominantly heterosexual emerging adults, the authors examined constructive and destructive interpretations of romantic conflict via narratives and studied how gender affected conflict interpretations and relationship functioning. Destructive interpretations were related to negative conflict beliefs for women and dating aggression for men. Across gender, constructive interpretations were related to more problem solving but were more strongly related to less aggression for men. Understanding conflict interpretations through narratives may enhance relationships skills training for emerging adults.     

Serial dependence in face attractiveness judgements tolerates rotations around the yaw axis but not the roll axis

Once a face is detected, its retinal image will be continually distorted by changes in eye position, noise, lighting and many other factors. Yet from one moment to the next our perception of a face is stable. Recent advances have indicated there is a mechanism for achieving the continuous perception of a person’s identity that pools across prior and present visual inputs. There is still debate as to whether the perception of face attractiveness is also serially dependent. Here we investigate continuity in the perception of attractiveness using a one back [t?1] effect as a marker of serial dependence. Our results show that face attractiveness is biased towards the attractiveness of the previous face, and that this effect is robust despite changes in viewpoint involving rotations around the yaw axis. However, face attractiveness perception is released from this form of rapid adaption when the previously seen face differed in orientation due to a rotation around the roll axis.     

Intended persistence: comparing academic and creative challenges in high school

How do high school students approach academic and creative challenges? This study compares the content of academic and creative challenges for 190 high school students, and examines students’ intentions to persist. Students reported experiencing academic and creative challenges in different areas: academic challenges were described primarily in math/science and English, with themes related to time management and striving to improve, while creative challenges were described overwhelmingly in art and music and concerned problem solving difficulties. Students reported more interest and intention to persist in the creative than academic challenges. Interest was the strongest predictor of persistence across both academic and creative challenges. The divergent perceptions of creative and academic challenges suggest that capitalizing on the creative elements of academic assignments could boost student interest and subsequent persistence.     

Reasoning by exclusion in the kea (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Nestor notabilis</Emphasis>)

Reasoning by exclusion, i.e. the ability to understand that if there are only two possibilities and if it is not A, it must be B, has been a topic of great interest in recent comparative cognition research. Many studies have investigated this ability, employing different methods, but rarely exploring concurrent decision processes underlying choice behaviour of non-human animals encountering inconsistent or incomplete information. Here, we employed a novel training and test method in order to perform an in-depth analysis of the underlying processes. Importantly, to discourage the explorative behaviour of the kea, a highly neophilic species, the training included a large amount of novel, unrewarded stimuli. The subsequent test consisted of 30 sessions with different sequences of four test trials. In these test trials, we confronted the kea with novel stimuli that were paired with either the rewarded or unrewarded training stimuli or with the novel stimuli of previous test trials. Once habituated to novelty, eight out of fourteen kea tested responded to novel stimuli by inferring their contingency via logical exclusion of the alternative. One individual inferred predominantly in this way, while other response strategies, such as one trial learning, stimulus preferences and avoiding the negative stimulus also guided the responses of the remaining individuals. Interestingly, the difficulty of the task had no influence on the test performance. We discuss the implications of these findings for the current hypotheses about the emergence of inferential reasoning in some avian species, considering causal links to brain size, feeding ecology and social complexity.     

Learning What to Remember: Vocabulary Knowledge and Children's Memory for Object Names and Features

Although young children can map a novel name to a novel object, it remains unclear what they actually remember about objects when they initially make such a name–object association. In the current study we investigated (1) what children remembered after they were initially introduced to name–object associations and (2) how their vocabulary size and vocabulary structure influenced what they remembered. As a group, children had difficulty remembering each of the features of the original novel objects. Further analyses revealed that differences in vocabulary structure predicted children's ability to remember object features. Specifically, children who produced many names for categories organized by similarity in shape (e.g. ball, cup) had the best memory for newly‐learned objects' features—especially their shapes. In addition, the more features children remembered, the more likely they were to retain the newly learned name–object associations. Vocabulary size, however, was not predictive of children's feature memory or retention. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that children's existing vocabulary structure, rather than simply vocabulary size, influences what they attend to when encountering a new object and subsequently their ability to remember new name–object associations. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.