Arson and (para-) suicide

There have been forensic-psychiatric observations from 1963 to 1983 concerning the offenders responsibility in case of deliberate arson with 12 out of 147 suits being closely related to (para-)suicide. According the variety of relations we distinguish between fire as pure means of suicide, fire used to take along the living space or people, suicide committed in consequence of arson, furthermore arson as a symbolic suicide, and finally acting alternately with both arson as well as parasuicide.     

Electrodermal activity as an indicator of information processing in a nonaversive differential classical conditioning paradigm

Most investigations of information processing in human Pavlovian autonomic conditioning focussed on the role of awareness of the contingency of the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). While in these studies only the qualitative information of the CS (UCS occurring vs not occurring) was varied, the present experiment was designed to vary the quantitative information of the CS. In a differential conditioning paradigm, using a letter reproduction task as nonaversive UCS, electrodermal responses to different degrees of CS information content were investigated. Twenty subjects experienced two different conditions in a within subject design. In one condition only the number of letters used in the following UCS was presented as CS+, while in the other condition the CS already contained the whole UCS information. Both conditions led to significant differences in magnitudes of electrodermal responding.     

An arsonist with a sexual motivation

In the period 1963-1983 expert opinion was given 147 times on the criminal accountability of premeditated arsonists. In 12% of the cases the crime was sexually motivated. We exemplify the transition of the motive from heightened SELBSTWERTERLEBEN through FREUDE UND ALLGEMEINE LUST in fire to (pre)sexual motivation. The individual features of these 18 cases are noted and distinguished, and the conclusions reached in the expert testimony set out.     

Suggested visual hallucination without hypnosis enhances activity in visual areas of the brain

This functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study investigated high and low suggestible people responding to two visual hallucination suggestions with and without a hypnotic induction. Participants in the study were asked to see color while looking at a grey image, and to see shades of grey while looking at a color image. High suggestible participants reported successful alterations in color perception in both tasks, both in and out of hypnosis, and showed a small benefit if hypnosis was induced. Low suggestible people could not perform the tasks successfully with or without the hypnotic induction. The fMRI results supported the self report data, and changes in brain activity were found in a number of visual areas. The results indicate that a hypnotic induction, although having the potential to enhance the ability of high suggestible people, is not necessary for the effective alteration of color perception by suggestion.     

Information processing bias against emotional facial expressions in social anxiety

The present study examined whether information processing bias against emotional facial expressions is present among individuals with social anxiety. College students with high (high social anxiety group; n  = 26) and low social anxiety (low social anxiety group; n  = 26) performed three different types of working memory tasks: (a) ordering positive and negative facial expressions according to the intensity of emotion; (b) ordering pictures of faces according to age; and (c) ordering geometric shapes according to size. The high social anxiety group performed significantly more poorly than the low social anxiety group on the facial expression task, but not on the other two tasks with the nonemotional stimuli. These results suggest that high social anxiety interferes with processing of emotionally charged facial expressions.     

Konzept der Mentalisierung

Mentalization is the fundamental human capacity to relate to each other as minded beings. We mentalize when we are aware of mental states in others or ourselves as persons with feelings, wishes and beliefs. That is what makes the behavior of other people meaningful to us. Fonagy and colleagues based their mentalization concept on the attachment theory and on hypotheses about the development of the self. Mentalization-based treatment relies on this concept and has been manualized and evaluated for the treatment of borderline personality disorders. Psychotherapy research supports this to some extent. The authors claim that all psychotherapeutic treatment will benefit from the understanding of mentalization and its practical applications (Allen et al. 2008). Although the concept of mentalization is not new, the integration of different theories with empirically informed knowledge into a coherent concept is new.     

"Don't know" responding to answerable and unanswerable questions during misleading and hypnotic interviews

"Don't know" (DK) responses to interview questions are conceptually heterogeneous, and may represent uncertainty or clear statements about the contents of memory. A study examined the subjective intent of DK responses in relation to the objective status of information queried, in the context of memory distorting procedures. Participants viewed a video and responded to answerable and unanswerable questions phrased in misleading or nonmisleading formats, while hypnotized or not hypnotized. Subjective meanings of DK responses were queried, and a recognition measure assessed the contents of memory. Lower DK and accuracy rates were consistently associated with unanswerable and misleading questions. One-third of DK responses were statements that the information had no not presented. When these were recoded, accuracy estimates for answerable questions decreased and more so for hypnotized participants. These results demonstrate that DK responses convey different types of information, thus accuracy estimates in studies that permit DK responses may be misestimated. Robust risks associated with asking unanswerable questions and asking questions at all were observed. Implications for working with DK responses during interviews are discussed.     

Toni Wolff-James Kirsch correspondence

This paper draws on the letters between Toni Wolff and James Kirsch from 1929-1933 and from 1949-1953 to highlight some aspects of Toni Wolff's relationship with her superviser and former analysand, James Kirsch. Her personality, her approach to her work as analyst, and her relationship with Jung and with colleagues are illustrated with selected quotes from the correspondence.     

Modelling human problem solving with data from an online game

Since the beginning of cognitive science, researchers have tried to understand human strategies in order to develop efficient and adequate computational methods. In the domain of problem solving, the travelling salesperson problem has been used for the investigation and modelling of human solutions. We propose to extend this effort with an online game, in which instances of the travelling salesperson problem have to be solved in the context of a game experience. We report on our effort to design and run such a game, present the data contained in the resulting openly available data set and provide an outlook on the use of games in general for cognitive science research. In addition, we present three geometrical models mapping the starting point preferences in the problems presented in the game as the result of an evaluation of the data set.