Psychotherapieplanung bei “schwierigen Patienten”

This article describes a model of comprehensive psychotherapy planning for difficult patients, especially patients with borderline personality disorders and psychotic disorders. Its aim is to develop a psychotherapeutically orientated approach to treatment corresponding to the individual needs of the patient and the people closest to them (e.g. family).Central elements of the planning process are diagnostic/therapeutical family meetings in which psychoanalytic and systemic conceptualisations are applied together. The main features of this context oriented model development are described and illustrated by case studies.The article also presents first results of an analysis of the therapy plannings and discusses the questions arising.     

Developmental path between language and autistic‐like impairments: a twin study

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are diagnosed when individuals show impairments in three behavioural domains: communication, social interactions, and repetitive, restrictive behaviours and interests (RRBIs). Recent data suggest that these three sets of behaviours are genetically heterogeneous. Early language delay is strongly associated with ASD, but the basis for this association and the relationship with individual sub‐domains of ASD has not been systematically investigated. In the present study, data came from a population‐based twin sample with language development data at 2–4 years, measured by the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI), and data at 8 years using the Childhood Asperger Syndrome Test (CAST). For the total CAST and the three subscales at 8 years, approximately 300 same‐sex twin pairs were selected as showing extreme autistic‐like traits (ALTs), defined here as pairs in which at least one member of the twin pair scored in the highest 5% of the distribution. Phenotypic analyses indicated that children showing extreme social and communication ALTs (but not the RRBI subscale) at 8 years were below average in language development at 2–4 years. A regression model for selected twin data suggested that genetic influences account for this overlap, but that these effects are only in part mediated by genes that are shared between language and extreme autistic traits. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Phonological Regularities and Grammatical Gender Retrieval in Spoken Word Recognition and Word Production

Two experiments investigate whether native speakers of French can use a noun’s phonological ending to retrieve its gender and that of a gender-marked element. In Experiment 1, participants performed a gender decision task on the noun’s gender-marked determiner for auditorily presented nouns. Noun endings with high predictive values were selected. The noun stimuli could either belong to the gender class predicted by their ending (congruent) or they could belong to the gender class that was different from the predicted gender (incongruent). Gender decisions were made significantly faster for congruent nouns than for incongruent nouns, relative to a (lexical decision) baseline task. In Experiment 2, participants named pictures of the same materials as used in Experiment 1 with noun phrases consisting of a gender-marked determiner, a gender-marked adjective and a noun. In this Experiment, no effect of congruency, relative to a (bare noun naming) baseline task, was observed. Thus, the results show an effect of phonological information on the retrieval of gender-marked elements in spoken word recognition, but not in word production.     

Does text–picture integration also occur with longer text segments?

Text–picture integration is one of the most important cognitive processes when reading illustrated text. There is empirical evidence that text‐picture integration takes place when learning with pictures combined with single sentences. The present experiment investigated whether text–picture integration also takes place when the single sentences are embedded into longer text segments and hence when materials become more complex. In a within‐subjects design, 43 participants read an illustrated story, in which the different combinations of general and specific sentences and pictures, respectively, were embedded. In line with previous findings, participants were more likely to falsely recognize specific versions of the sentences after having studied their general versions combined with specific pictures. Thus, the experiment shows that text–picture integration also occurs when learners have to read longer text passages combined with pictures.     

Flux and permanence of risk perceptions: Tourists' perception of the relative and absolute risk for various destinations

The present investigation is a cross‐sectional, multi‐national, quantitative, and quasi‐experimental comparison of tourists’ risk perceptions regarding different destinations throughout the past decade. Over 10,000 tourists to Norway from 89 different countries filled in a questionnaire rating the perceived risk for various destinations. Data were collected during 2004, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015 and allow for a comparison of perceived risk across time, place and nationality. Results show that while absolute risk judgments for different destinations fluctuate somewhat over the years, relative risk judgments remain constant. Findings also reveal a “home‐is‐safer‐then‐abroad‐bias” with tourists consistently perceiving their home country among the safest destinations. The current investigation is rare because it looks at more than one destination at a time. Insights gained from the present findings diverge from what would have been concluded from employing case studies, that is, looking at one destination at a time.     

Kulturdynamisches Modell der bikulturellen Identit?t

In intercultural psychotherapeutic treatment, the psychological integration of different cultures within an individual has to be involved as an additional developmental dimension. Individual change during the process of migration considered as desirable adaptation has often been conceptualized in terms of a bicultural identity, which includes aspects of the culture of origin as well as aspects of the host culture. The theoretical foundation of the concept of bicultural identity, however, has remained insufficient. The culture-dynamic model presented here differentiates personal and social identity according to the identity concept proposed by Mead (Geist, Identit?t und Gesellschaft, 1988, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.?M.). Personal identity is essentially formed by an individual??s culture of origin, while influences of the host culture primarily affect the social identity. For healthy coping with the challenges associated with migration and adequate support of this process in intercultural psychotherapy, it can be assumed that a stabilization of personal identity is required to allow for a dynamization of social identity. Implications for identity constitution in second generation immigrants, in different stages of lifespan development and in the process of learning the language of the host culture are discussed.     

Is the Motor or the Garage More Important to the Car? The Difference Between Semantic Associations in Single Word and Sentence Production

The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of part-whole (e.g., car-motor) and functional associations (e.g., car-garage) on single word (Experiment 1) and sentence production (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, a classical picture-word task was used. In Experiment 2, the same stimuli and distractors were embedded into a sentence. The relation between target and distractor was either part-whole, functional or unrelated. At single word level, part-whole and functional relations facilitate naming. Additionally, the facilitation effect was stronger for part-whole in comparison to functional associations. During sentence production, facilitation shifted to interference. The difference between both relations disappeared. The findings of the different effects between functional and part-whole associations depend on the length of utterances and highlight the divergent impact of associations. The differences between part-whole and functional associations in single word production might reflect a differential organization of associative links at the conceptual level. In contrast, during sentence production the syntactic processing at the lexical level seem to be more important than types of semantic associations at the conceptual level.     

Children's and Adults’ Ability to Build Online Emotional Inferences During Comprehension of Audiovisual and Auditory Texts

Two studies examined inferences drawn about the protagonist's emotional state in movies (Study 1) or audiobooks (Study 2). Children aged 5, 8, and 10 years old and adults took part. Participants saw or heard 20 movie scenes or sections of audiobooks taken or adapted from the TV show Lassie. An online measure of emotional inference was designed that assessed the ability of the participants to understand the main protagonist's emotional state. The participants’ emotional knowledge and media literacy were assessed as further variables. The results of the studies provide evidence that children from the age of 5 build emotional inferences when both watching movies and listening to audiobooks. A developmental trend exists with regard to the precision of the emotional inferences. Media literacy and emotional knowledge differed in terms of their influence on the ability to generate inferences, which was dependent on the age of the participant and the presentation mode.