Maternal meta-emotion philosophy and socialization of adolescent affect: The moderating role of adolescent temperament

This study explored the associations between maternal meta-emotion philosophy (MEP) and maternal socialization of preadolescents' positive and negative affect. It also investigated whether adolescent temperament and gender moderated this association. MEP involves parental awareness and acceptance of their own and their child's emotions and their coaching of child emotions. Event-planning (EPI) and problem-solving (PSI) interactions were observed in 163 mother-adolescent dyads, and maternal behaviors were coded to provide indices of socialization responses to adolescent emotion. In addition, maternal MEP was assessed via interview, and preadolescents provided self-reports of temperament on 2 occasions. Maternal MEP that is higher in awareness and acceptance was associated with reduced likelihood of negative socialization behaviors during the EPI. Moreover, preadolescents' temperamental negative emotionality (NEM) and effortful control (EC) moderated some of these MEP-socialization associations. During the positive EPI task, greater maternal awareness and acceptance is associated with reduced likelihood of negative socialization toward preadolescents with "easy" temperaments, that is, low NEM or high EC. However, during the conflict task, greater maternal awareness is associated with reduced likelihood of negative socialization among preadolescents with "difficult" temperaments. Some male-specific associations were also found.     

Disquiet in the consulting room: everything/nothing that is said here is confidential

Writing from experiences in the consulting room in private practice in Australia, the author refers to the layered complexity of a conflict of ethical duty which has legal and social implications. The paper explores how the ethics that are congruent with creating a safe vas bene claustrum can be diametrically opposed to the social and legal structures and processes on which we all rely. It is suggested that within the vas, analysts and analysands engage in a shared process of emotionally connected, layered, symbolic thinking. Subpoenas directed at analysts are seeking concrete evidence that will stand up in court. The paper argues that this is a category error based on ignorance and misconceptions of what analytic work entails. The intrusion of a subpoena into the vas has the potential to cause havoc in the mental health and the lives of already vulnerable, possibly traumatized and isolated individuals. It can undermine a fundamental human right and undermine the profession of psychotherapy as a whole. The paper proposes that analysts have an ethical obligation to protect the work contained within the vas from these category errors and to educate other professionals as to why we cannot provide the kind of evidence that the courts require.     

Good-bye, Mr. Chips: Male Teacher Shortages and Boys’ Reading Achievement

One hundred seventy-five third- and fourth-grade boys who were identified as struggling readers participated in a 10-week intervention to determine the effect of the reading teachers’ sex on boys’ reading performance, self-perceptions as readers, and view of reading as a masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral activity. Findings indicated no main effects on reading performance, yet main effects of teacher’s sex on two sub-scales of reader self-perception emerged. Evidence of interactions showed that boys responded differentially to the intervention—they responded better to female teachers. Further analysis revealed that the boys’ responses varied as much as a response to individual male teachers as to the teacher’s sex.     

Temporary basolateral amygdala lesions disrupt acquisition of socially transmitted food preferences in rats

Lesions of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) have long been associated with abnormalities of taste-related behaviors and with failure in a variety of taste- and odor-related learning paradigms, including taste-potentiated odor aversion, conditioned taste preference, and conditioned taste aversion. Still, the general role of the amygdala in chemosensory learning remains somewhat controversial. In particular, it has been suggested that the amygdala may not be involved in a form of chemosensory learning that has recently received a substantial amount of study-socially transmitted food preference (STFP). Here, we provide evidence for this involvement by pharmacologically inactivating the basolateral amygdala bilaterally during STFP training. The same inactivation sites that impaired taste aversion learning eliminated the normally conditioned preference for a food smelled on a conspecific's breath. Impairments of learned preference persisted even in testing sessions in which BLA was not inactivated, and learning was normal when the BLA was inactivated only during testing sessions; thus, the impairment was a true acquisition deficit. In conjunction with previous results from other paradigms, therefore, our data suggest that the amygdala is vital for learning procedures involving pairings of potent and arbitrary chemosensory stimuli.     

Mechanisms of same/different abstract-concept learning by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Experiments with 9 rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) showed, for the first time, that abstract-concept learning varied with the training stimulus set size. In a same/different task, monkeys required to touch a top picture before choosing a bottom picture (same) or white rectangle (different) learned rapidly. Monkeys not required to touch the top picture or presented with the top picture for a fixed time learned slowly or not at all. No abstract-concept learning occurred after 8-item training but progressively improved with larger set sizes and was complete following 128-item training. A control monkey with a constant 8-item set ruled out repeated training and testing. Contrary to the unique-species account, it is argued that different species have quantitative, not qualitative, differences in abstract-concept learning.     

Using Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations to Assess Cognitive Activity in Aggressive and Nonaggressive Adolescents

Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations (ATSS) is a think aloud method for examining a person's thought content as it unfolds in the situation. We used the ATSS to investigate the cognitive activity of aggressive and nonaggressive male and female adolescents as they listened to an audiotaped depiction of an ambiguous but provocative interaction with another student. Eighty-one adolescents participated in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment. The two factors were gender and aggressive vs. nonaggressive background. Students in the aggressive group had a history of aggressive behavior in the past year that was severe enough to warrant their arrest or suspension from school. Students in the nonaggressive group had no such history. As a secondary measure of anger and aggressiveness, we administered the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 (STAXI-2). As predicted, males, compared to females, expressed more aggressive intent on the ATSS. Likewise, aggressive, compared to nonaggressive, adolescents expressed more anger and aggressive intent on the ATSS, as well as more intense feelings of anger, less control over their anger, and a greater tendency to externalize angry feelings on the STAXI-2. As expected, scores on the ATSS were related to scores on the STAXI-2. We concluded that the ATSS is a useful method for assessing cognitive activity that may mediate aggressive behavior in adolescents.     

Biases in Visual Attention in Depressed and Nondepressed Individuals

Abstract

The present study utilised a cognitive paradigm to examine attentional biases in mildly depressed persons. Twelve depressed and 12 nondepressed subjects completed an attentional task similar to that employed by MacLeod, Mathews, and Tata (1986). A tachistiscope was used to present subjects with a series of word pairs, each with one word printed above the other. Three types of word pairs were presented: manic-neutral, depressed-neutral, and manic-depressed. Selective attention to one member of a word pair was assessed using ac perception task. Based on cognitive models of depression, it was hypothesised that the depressed subjects would attend more to depressed-content words than to manic- or neutral-content words, whereas the nondepressed subjects would not exhibit any attentional biases. In contrast to these predictions, analyses indicated that whereas the depressed subjects attended equally to depressed-, manic-, and neutral-content words, the nondepressed subjects attended more to manic-content than they did to neutral- or depressed-content words. These results add support to the documentation of evenhandedness in the cognitive functioning of depressed subjects, and of self-sewing biases in nondepressed subjects. The present findings are discussed in terms of a zoom lens model of attention, in which depressed persons attempt to exhaustively process their sensory world, but with a loss of attentional resolution. In contrast, nondepressed individuals attempt to process a more limited portion of their sensory world, but with an increase in attentional power. Finally, directions for future research in this area are offered.     

When affective cues broaden thought: Evidence from event-related potentials associated with identifying emotionally expressive faces

Divergent theoretical perspectives predict that the valence of affective cues impacts the breadth and flexibility of cognition, but extant data have not clarified whether such effects transpire extemporaneously or only later via processes of evaluation or selection from among thoughts already generated. The present investigation found more prominent electro-cortical event-related-potential (P3) responses among participants focused on identifying a positively valenced social target (an individual with a happy facial expression) than a negatively valenced social target (an individual with a disgusted facial expression). Indeed, even obvious non-targets (scrambled faces) evoked more-prominent P3 responses among participants in the happy-target than the disgusted-target condition, thereby implicating an effect of the valence of affective cues on the extent of cognitive processing as it unfolds.     

Improved motor sequence retention by motionless listening

This study examined the effect of listening to a newly learned musical piece on subsequent motor retention of the piece. Thirty-six non-musicians were trained to play an unfamiliar melody on a piano keyboard. Next, they were randomly assigned to participate in three follow-up listening sessions over 1 week. Subjects who, during their listening sessions, listened to the same initial piece showed significant improvements in motor memory and retention of the piece despite the absence of physical practice. These improvements included increased pitch accuracy, time accuracy, and dynamic intensity of key pressing. Similar improvements, though to a lesser degree, were observed in subjects who, during their listening sessions, were distracted by another task. Control subjects, who after learning the piece had listened to nonmusical sounds, showed impaired motoric retention of the piece at 1 week from the initial acquisition day. These results imply that motor sequences can be established in motor memory without direct access to motor-related information. In addition, the study revealed that the listening-induced improvements did not generalize to the learning of a new musical piece composed of the same notes as the initial piece learned, limiting the effects to musical motor sequences that are already part of the individual’s motor repertoire.