Chasing perception in domestic cats and dogs

Animal Cognition - Chasing motion is often used to study the perception of inanimate objects as animate. When chasing interaction and independent motions between two agents are displayed...     

Contributors

Abstract

This paper studies the interaction of the clinical theories of two major British theorists, Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott. Through three clinical examples, we see how the “Klein-Winnicott dialectic” operates in a significantly developmental fashion to advance and fulfill clinical work. Winnicott’s “object survival” is looked at in developmental conjunction with Klein’s “mourning” as a primary clinical and developmental process. This interaction also captures the essence of working with the aggression of a self that has been traumatically disrupted within its early development. This paper demonstrates how such work leads to the assimilation and grieving of primal object loss, evolving into a “developmental mourning process.” This developmental mourning includes the working-through of an “abandonment depression” in the character-disordered patient. A clinical example in a 1989 essay on “psychic pain” by Betty Joseph is used to set up the clinical challenge of going beyond the symptomatic clinging behavior of developmental arrest, into full psychic birth as a separate other, an Other who can relate to an Other. Conclusively, the subjective visceral affect noted and monitored in its clinical dimensions here is that of human “heartache,” which can also include regret.     

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.     

On patients’ unique self-knowledge

Abstract

Patients contribute to analytic endeavors through a knowledge of their own unique ways of organizing their experience, of building an intersubjective space with significant others, of the type of life that they consider worth living, and primarily of their specific passions and yearnings. The more that therapists allow the patients’ unique self-knowledge to influence their therapeutic perceptions and decisions, the further they will advance patients’ status as co-experts working together with the therapist to create and formulate new, richer knowledge. In the present article, it is suggested that one of the main reasons why patients’ self-knowledge is excluded from the therapeutic dialogue is that the persuasive power of the therapists’ rich and deep knowledge challenges the patients’ self-authority. Through an illustrative vignette, therapists are recommended to use a metacommunication intervention to restore the balance that has been undermined between the therapist’s authority and the patient’s self-authority.     

Sleep-dependent consolidation of procedural motor memories in children and adults: the pre-sleep level of performance matters

In striking contrast to adults, in children sleep following training a motor task did not induce the expected (offline) gain in motor skill performance in previous studies. Children normally perform at distinctly lower levels than adults. Moreover, evidence in adults suggests that sleep dependent offline gains in skill essentially depend on the pre-sleep level of performance. Against this background, we asked whether improving children's performance on a motor sequence learning task by extended training to levels approaching those of adults would enable sleep-associated gains in motor skill in this age group also. Children (4-6 years) and adults (18-35 years) performed on the motor sequence learning task (button-box task) before and after ~2-hour retention intervals including either sleep (midday nap) or wakefulness. Whereas one group of children and adults, respectively, received the standard amount of 10 blocks of training before retention intervals of sleep or wakefulness, a further group of children received an extended training on 30 blocks (distributed across 3 days). A further group of adults received a restricted training on only two blocks before the retention intervals. Children after standard training reached lowest performance levels, whereas in adults performance after standard training was highest. Children with extended training and adults after reduced training reached intermediate performance levels. Only at these intermediate performance levels did sleep induce significant gains in motor sequence skill, whereas performance did not benefit from sleep in the low-performing children or in the high-performing adults. Spindle counts in the post-training nap were correlated with performance gains at retrieval only in the adults benefitting from sleep. We conclude that, across age groups, sleep induces the most robust gain in motor skill at an intermediate pre-sleep performance level. In low-performing children sleep-dependent improvements in skill may be revealed only after enhancing the pre-sleep performance level by extended training.     

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.     

Objecting Vaguely to Pascal's Wager

Philosophical Studies -     

The neonate brain's sensitivity to repetition-based structure: Specific to speech?

Newborns are able to extract and learn repetition-based regularities from the speech input, that is, they show greater brain activation in the bilateral temporal and left inferior frontal regions to trisyllabic pseudowords of the form AAB (e.g., “babamu”) than to random ABC sequences (e.g., “bamuge”). Whether this ability is specific to speech or also applies to other auditory stimuli remains unexplored. To investigate this, we tested whether newborns are sensitive to regularities in musical tones. Neonates listened to AAB and ABC tones sequences, while their brain activity was recorded using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). The paradigm, the frequency of occurrence and the distribution of the tones were identical to those of the syllables used in previous studies with speech. We observed a greater inverted (negative) hemodynamic response to AAB than to ABC sequences in the bilateral temporal and fronto-parietal areas. This inverted response was caused by a decrease in response amplitude, attributed to habituation, over the course of the experiment in the left fronto-temporal region for the ABC condition and in the right fronto-temporal region for both conditions. These findings show that newborns’ ability to discriminate AAB from ABC sequences is not specific to speech. However, the neural response to musical tones and spoken language is markedly different. Tones gave rise to habituation, whereas speech was shown to trigger increasing responses over the time course of the study. Relatedly, the repetition regularity gave rise to an inverted hemodynamic response when carried by tones, while it was canonical for speech. Thus, newborns’ ability to detect repetition is not speech-specific, but it engages distinct brain mechanisms for speech and music.

Research Highlights

• The ability of newborns’ to detect repetition-based regularities is not specific to speech, but also extends to other auditory modalities.
• The brain mechanisms underlying speech and music processing are markedly different.