Psychoanalysis is a two‐way street

The paper discusses psychoanalysis as a mutual exchange between the analyst and analysand. A number of questions are raised: What was Ferenczi's and the early psychoanalysts' contribution to the interpersonal relational dynamics of psychoanalytic treatment? Why did countertransference become an indispensable tool in relationship‐based psychoanalysis? Why is the transference‐countertransference dynamic seen as a special dialogue between the analyst and analysand? What was Ferenczi's paradigm shift in the trauma theory? How did he combine the object relation approach with Freud's original trauma theory? The paper illustrates through some case study vignettes the intersubjective and intrapsychic dynamic in the process of traumatization. We can look at countertransference as an indicator of the patient's basic interpersonal experiences and traumas. Finally the paper discusses countertransference in the light of attachment theory, connecting the early initiatives of inter‐relational approaches in psychoanalysis with recent research.     

Victimization and Polyvictimization Among Spanish Adolescent Outpatients

This article aimed to analyze lifetime and past-year victimization and polyvictimization experiences in adolescent outpatients from a southern European country. The sample included 149 adolescents (35.6% boys, 64.4% girls), aged 12 to 17 (M = 14.28, SD = 1.45). Experiences of victimization were assessed using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ; Finkelhor, Hamby, Ormrod, & Turner, 2005). Results showed that 99.3% of those interviewed had experienced at least one type of victimization during their lifetime, and 84.6% reported past-year victimization. Gender and age differences were found. Based on community criteria, the proportion of polyvictims in the sample was 32.2% for lifetime victimization and 20.1% for past-year victimization. When assessing children in the context of outpatient mental health services, it is essential that clinicians explore any history of exposure to violence, as this information is crucial in determining the young person’s therapeutic needs.     

Community psychology values and the culture of graduate training: A self-study

In this self-study of an M.A. program in community psychology, the authors focused on evaluation of training goals related to the values of collaboration, empowerment, and diversity. Employing quantitative and qualitative methods, the evaluator, a thesis student in the program, cooperated with a stakeholder committee and other student, staff, and faculty members of the program to construct the methods and interpret the findings. Although the converging sources of data showed that the program was meeting its process goals to some extent, several key issues in the culture of training, such as the status of women, the psychological sense of community, and a supportive learning environment, needed improvement. The authors interpret the findings in terms of the impact of the university system and patriarchal norms on training in community psychology. This study is based on the first author's M.A. thesis, which the second author supervised. Judit Alcalde works in health promotion with the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Community Health Department. She presented an earlier version of this work at the conference of the Canadian Psychological Association, Calgary, Alberta, June 1991. We are grateful to the thesis committee members for their support and guidance, to our colleagues for their participation, to Paul Davock, and to the reviewers and editor for their helpful comments.     

Learning multiple rules simultaneously: Affixes are more salient than reduplications

Language learners encounter numerous opportunities to learn regularities, but need to decide which of these regularities to learn, because some are not productive in their native language. Here, we present an account of rule learning based on perceptual and memory primitives (Endress, Dehaene-Lambertz, & Mehler, Cognition, 105(3), 577–614, 2007; Endress, Nespor, & Mehler, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(8), 348–353, 2009), suggesting that learners preferentially learn regularities that are more salient to them, and that the pattern of salience reflects the frequency of language features across languages. We contrast this view with previous artificial grammar learning research, which suggests that infants “choose” the regularities they learn based on rational, Bayesian criteria (Frank & Tenenbaum, Cognition, 120(3), 360–371, 2013; Gerken, Cognition, 98(3)B67–B74, 2006, Cognition, 115(2), 362–366, 2010). In our experiments, adult participants listened to syllable strings starting with a syllable reduplication and always ending with the same “affix” syllable, or to syllable strings starting with this “affix” syllable and ending with the “reduplication”. Both affixation and reduplication are frequently used for morphological marking across languages. We find three crucial results. First, participants learned both regularities simultaneously. Second, affixation regularities seemed easier to learn than reduplication regularities. Third, regularities in sequence offsets were easier to learn than regularities at sequence onsets. We show that these results are inconsistent with previous Bayesian rule learning models, but mesh well with the perceptual or memory primitives view. Further, we show that the pattern of salience revealed in our experiments reflects the distribution of regularities across languages. Ease of acquisition might thus be one determinant of the frequency of regularities across languages.     

The Budapest meeting 2005 intensified networking on ethics of science

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6-9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science.     

The crucial role of tense for verb production

The case of an aphasic patient whose spontaneous speech contains very few lexical verbs is reported. Instead of sentences with lexical verbs, the patient produces many (grammatical) copular constructions. He also substitutes lexical verbs with the copula. Although this results in ungrammatical utterances, by doing so, a resemblance of sentence structure and a degree of grammaticality of his utterances are preserved. Although the patient is more impaired in naming action than object pictures, it is unlikely that lexical retrieval difficulties are solely responsible for the paucity of lexical verbs in his speech. A series of tests revealed a profound deficit in producing tense marking inflections and in understanding their significance. We argue that the unavailability of tense features is the primary reason for the lack of lexical verbs in his speech. An alternative possibility, that the tense deficit interacts with the verb retrieval deficit, is also discussed. The patient has a complex lesion and language profile, with features associated with both Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. However, since the study focuses on his verb and tense deficits and the grammaticality of his utterances, issues that are often discussed in relation to agrammatic Broca's aphasia, the literature that is relevant to these topics and to Broca's aphasia is reviewed, despite the different diagnostic profile of the patient.     

Family Relationships among Immigrants and Majority Members in the Netherlands: The Role of Acculturation

This study examined the nature and size of differences in family relationships in five cultural groups in the Netherlands (Dutch mainstreamers, and Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, and Antillean immigrants). In order to get a better insight into the differences in family relationships, a distinction was made between family values and family ties. Family values refer to obligations and beliefs about family relationships whereas family ties involve more behavior‐related relational aspects. Results confirmed that the cultural differences in mean scores between immigrants and majority members were larger for family values than for family ties. Individual background variables had a much stronger association with family values than with family ties. In addition, first‐generation immigrants had more traditional family values and reported stronger family ties than did Dutch mainstreamers. Second‐generation immigrants had more traditional family values than Dutch mainstreamers but they did not report stronger family ties. In conclusion, the distinction between family values and family ties as different expressions of family relationships is highly relevant in an acculturation context, because cultural differences between the various immigrant groups and the mainstream group are not the same for values and ties, and acculturative changes are different for both. On se penche dans cette étude sur les relations familiales, leur nature et leurs différences dans cinq groupes culturels des Pays‐Bas (Hollandais de souche et immigrants turcs, marocains, surinamiens et antillais). Pour accéder à une meilleure appréhension des différences dans les relations familiales, on a opéré une distinction entre les valeurs et les liens familiaux. Les valeurs familiales font référence aux obligations et aux croyances concernant les relations familiales alors que les liens familiaux touchent des aspects relationnels plus comportementaux. Les résultats confirment que les différences culturelles (estimées au niveau des moyennes) entre les immigrants et les membres de la majorité de la population sont plus nettes pour les valeurs que pour les liens familiaux. Le fond culturel des individus est plus fortement associé aux valeurs qu’aux liens familiaux. De plus, les migrants de première génération présentent davantage de valeurs familiales traditionnelles et témoignent de liens familiaux plus forts que ceux des Hollandais de souche. Les migrants de seconde génération ont également plus de valeurs familiales traditionnelles que les Hollandais de souche, mais pas de liens familiaux plus étroits. Disons pour conclure que distinguer valeurs et liens familiaux comme étant des expressions différentes des relations en famille est tout à fait pertinent dans un contexte d’acculturation puisque les différences culturelles entre les divers groupes de migrants et les autochtones ne sont pas identiques pour les valeurs et les liens et que l’impact dûà l’acculturation n’est pas le même dans les deux cas.     

Newborns modulate their crawling in response to their native language but not another language

Human newborns can propel themselves to their mother's breast when positioned skin to skin on her abdomen just after birth. For decades, researchers have considered this primitive crawling behavior a spinal reflex, immune to supra spinal control. However, recent research suggests that neonatal crawling is already responsive to visual and olfactory stimuli processed at a supra spinal level. Here we report that a few hours post birth, French newborns can also modulate their crawling in response to their native language – a source of information that is processed supra-spinally. The crawling patterns of 23 French-born newborns were recorded on video and via an infrared motion capture system during two randomly ordered 2-min trials. The newborns were secured on a mini skateboard to facilitate arm and leg movements during their crawling propulsion. They heard a repetitive sequence of the same sentences either in French, their native language, or in English, a rhythmically different and hence discriminable unfamiliar language, on each trial. In French, compared to English, crawling was enhanced, with significantly more arm and leg steps and significantly more and larger trunk rotations in the cephalo-caudal axis. Moreover, newborns rotated their heads and trunk toward the appropriate loud speaker when hearing French but not English. These preliminary findings suggest that newborn crawling is not a simple stereotyped reflex under spinal control, but a complex pattern that can be modulated in response to higher-order, supra-spinally processed stimuli. The findings open fascinating questions about the range of stimuli to which newborn crawling is responsive.     

Newborns discriminate utterance-level prosodic contours

Prosody is the fundamental organizing principle of spoken language, carrying lexical, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic information. It, therefore, provides highly relevant input for language development. Are infants sensitive to this important aspect of spoken language early on? In this study, we asked whether infants are able to discriminate well-formed utterance-level prosodic contours from ill-formed, backward prosodic contours at birth. This deviant prosodic contour was obtained by time-reversing the original one, and super-imposing it on the otherwise intact segmental information. The resulting backward prosodic contour was thus unfamiliar to the infants and ill-formed in French. We used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in 1-3-day-old French newborns (n = 25) to measure their brain responses to well-formed contours as standards and their backward prosody counterparts as deviants in the frontal, temporal, and parietal areas bilaterally. A cluster-based permutation test revealed greater responses to the Deviant than to the Standard condition in right temporal areas. These results suggest that newborns are already capable of detecting utterance-level prosodic violations at birth, a key ability for breaking into the native language, and that this ability is supported by brain areas similar to those in adults.

Research Highlights

• At birth, infants have sophisticated speech perception abilities.
• Prosody may be particularly important for early language development.
• We show that newborns are already capable of discriminating utterance-level prosodic contours.
• This discrimination can be localized to the right hemisphere of the neonate brain.