Predictors of Boys’ ADHD Symptoms from Early to Middle Childhood: The Role of Father–Child and Mother–Child Interactions

This prospective 3 year longitudinal study investigated preschool paternal and maternal parenting predictors of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD) in a community sample of 93 school-age boys. Participants were recruited on the basis of inattention-hyperactivity at age 4 and fathers and mothers were observed interacting with their sons. Teachers, fathers, and mothers reported children's ADHD symptoms and impairment. Results from dimensional analysis showed that less observed paternal sensitivity and maternal positive regard predicted higher levels of inattentiveness in middle childhood, and that intrusive paternal behavior was predictive of hyperactive-impulsive behavior at school. In categorical analysis, less maternal warmth and sensitivity were predictive of later ADHD. These predictions held after statistical adjustment for the effects of preschool ADHD behaviors and conduct problems. At follow-up, parents of boys with ADHD reported more negative child-parent relationship perceptions than comparison parents. Findings highlight the importance of examining responsive parenting behaviors of both fathers and mothers in relation to multi-informant ratings of ADHD symptoms.     

Selective impairment of auditory selective attention under concurrent cognitive load

Load theory predicts that concurrent cognitive load impairs selective attention. For visual stimuli, it has been shown that this impairment can be selective: Distraction was specifically increased when the stimulus material used in the cognitive load task matches that of the selective attention task. Here, we report four experiments that demonstrate such selective load effects for auditory selective attention. The effect of two different cognitive load tasks on two different auditory Stroop tasks was examined, and selective load effects were observed: Interference in a nonverbal-auditory Stroop task was increased under concurrent nonverbal-auditory cognitive load (compared with a no-load condition), but not under concurrent verbal-auditory cognitive load. By contrast, interference in a verbal-auditory Stroop task was increased under concurrent verbal-auditory cognitive load but not under nonverbal-auditory cognitive load. This double-dissociation pattern suggests the existence of different and separable verbal and nonverbal processing resources in the auditory domain.     

Dysphorics can control depressive mood’s informational impact on effort mobilization

Individuals?? level of depression has been shown to systematically determine their amount of effort-related cardiovascular reactivity (see Brinkmann and Gendolla in Motiv Emot, 31:71?C82, 2007; J Pers Soc Psychol, 94:146?C157, 2008). By means of a mood cue manipulation the present study aimed at providing a conclusive test whether this is due to the informational impact of depressed mood. After habituation, students with low versus high depression scores worked on a memory task under ??do-your-best?? instructions. Half of them received a cue before the task, suggesting that their current mood may have an impact during task performance. As expected, dysphoric participants showed higher systolic blood pressure reactivity during task performance than nondysphorics when no cue was given. This pattern was reversed in the cue condition, indicating that dysphorics effectively managed to reduce the depressive mood impact on their task demand appraisals and effort mobilization.     

Anterior cingulate cortex activation is related to learning potential on the WCST in schizophrenia patients

The remediation of executive function in patients with schizophrenia is important in rehabilitation because these skills affect the patient's capacity to function in the community. There is evidence that instructional techniques can improve deficits in the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) in some schizophrenia patients. We used a standard test/training phase/standard test format of the WCST to classify 36 schizophrenia patients as high-achievers, learners or non-retainers. All healthy controls performed as high-achievers. An event-related fMRI design assessed neural activation patterns during post-training WCST performance. Patients showed a linear trend between set-shifting related activation in the anterior cingulate cortex and learning potential, i.e. increased activation in high-achievers, a trend for increased activation in learners, and no activation in non-retainers compared to controls. In addition, activation in the temporoparietal cortex was highest in patients classified as learners, whereas in non-retainers activation was increased in the inferior frontal gyrus compared to controls and high-achieving patients. These results emphasize the relevance of the ACC's neural integrity in learning set-shifting strategies for patients with schizophrenia. Also, our results support the hypothesis that compensatory neural activation in patients with schizophrenia helps them to catch up with healthy controls on cognitive tasks.     

Sándor Ferenczi: From Clinical Turmoil to Theoretical Articulations

The article deals with concepts proposed by Sándor Ferenczi: confusion of tongues, disavowal and progressive trauma, illustrated by a clinical example, in which excessive life experiences deeply determined the psychic construction, compromising the integrity of the self-image and the potentiality of egoic capacities. We attempt to understand the uniqueness of the patient's history, and the ethical practice of deep analytic listening.     

No More Away: Techno-Attachments and the Relational Future

This paper speculates about the impact of techno-connectedness on our children, ourselves, our grandchildren. Triggered by recollections from Victorian novels that describe European summers “away” from home, a concern about loss of opportunity, the “space” for self-discovery in this young generation will be explored in a relational context. Brought about by pervasive dependence upon computer technology, is self-experience fragmented and attachment changed by the ubiquitous technological presence and is the more isolated, reflective experience being eroded?     

Psychosis: A Synthesis of Motivational and Defect Perspectives

Based on the evolution of human intelligence and the tremendous cognitive capacities arising from it, we have an innate tendency for the extreme thought content, thought form, and sensory perceptions of psychosis. During the conscious and awake state, cognitive regulatory control processes block these more extreme variants to facilitate reality congruency necessary for adaptive functioning. While asleep there is no need for reality congruency and the cognitive regulatory control processes are deactivated allowing psychotic equivalents to be expressed in dreams. This paper helps synthesize the two dominant perspectives regarding the etiology of psychosis: the neuroscience defect perspective and the psychoanalytic motivational perspective. Regarding the former, defective cognitive regulation arising from certain conditions, such as the deficit state of schizophrenia, allows extreme cognitive distortions, thought form variants, and sensory perceptual experiences to intrude into the conscious and awake state, thereby producing psychosis. Consistent with the psychoanalytic motivational perspective, defensive processes can motivate extreme cognitive distortions, thought form variants and sensory perceptual experiences, and also facilitate their expression by deactivating the relevant cognitive regulatory control processes.     

Critical Transference in a Case of Severe Epilepsy

In this paper, the author presents a summary of a brief treatment with a young woman, suffering from severe epileptic illness, which describes the mutuality of cross-transferences of deep and intense feelings and the unorthodox way to receive, to take in persons affected with critical phenomena. This treatment was deeply influenced by the traumatic triad, borrowed from Ferenczi: "amnesia, anaesthesia, aboulia," the ways of forgetting (or erasing) the past/the present/the future. The investigation led us to clarify, on the one hand, the incestophilic-or perhaps incestuous-source in the family, and on the other, the burdensome and tragic genealogy and history of each parent. At the end of this short treatment, which took place at a frequency of one session a week (with the patient sitting, standing, lying on the floor; with sometimes severe fits, deliria, threats; bringing of letters, texts, drawings; and a few phone calls), there was an alleviation of the critical phenomena and revival.