Coherence and transituational generality in coping: the unity and the diversity

We investigated the transituational coherence of coping strategy use by collecting coping data on multiple occasions, and assessing the effects of aggregation over varying numbers of occasions. Study 1 examined the effects of aggregating daily coping reports over three- and six-day periods. Study 2 extended the results of Study 1 by assessing the extent to which aggregation increased the correlation between a dispositional coping measure and daily coping reports. Both studies strongly supported the hypothesis that aggregation would enhance the consistency of coping preferences, suggesting some degree of coherence within the domain of coping strategy used. Aggregated coping reports correlated with each other at significantly higher levels (ranging from 0.46 to 0.77 in Study 1 and from 0.65 to 0.95 in Study 2), than unaggregated coping reports (ranging from -0.12 to 0.30 in Study 1 and from 0.12 to 0.53 in Study 2). Study 2 also showed that aggregated daily reports were better predictors of subsequent coping than scores derived from a standard dispositional coping survey.     

Sexual Intent Perceptions: The Role of Perceiver Experience and the Real‐Person Reduction1

What factors influence the amount of sexual intention accorded to a person's behavior? A perceiver's gender and personal experiences, and the nature of the relationship with the perceived were investigated. Two findings emerged. First, perceiver sexual and dating experiences predicted perceptions in addition to and independent of perceiver gender, but only for a “self” target. Second, hypothetical targets were perceived more sexually relative to targets that represented real people. These findings extended previous research suggesting that features of targets and perceivers in addition to gender are predictive of sexual perceptions. These target features (e.g., “self” vs. other, “real” vs. hypothetical) have distinct influences on sexual perceptions, suggesting that the choice of a target in research studies should be considered carefully.     

Trauma and processes of separation from parental figures

Abstract

Extreme conditions in some young persons' life-experiences might postpone or even hinder the natural process of mourning of lost childhood omnipotence, ambivalent feelings towards and separation from parental figures. The psychic mechanisms behind these youngsters' flight from the loving grip of their parents to the conflicting situations which later traumatise them are described. The traumatic events following their choice of leaving the parental home were later unconsciously experienced as punishment—a direct consequence of the forbidden separation. Guilt problems otherwise within the normal range of development, here get a special colouring which can be recognised among others in the difficulties to establish a working-alliance with the therapist and problems in establishing intimate relationships later in life.     

The framework of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy with traumatised patients and the institution

Abstract

Lindbom-Jakobson M, Lindgren L. The Framework of Psychoanalytically Oriented Psychotherapy with Traumatised Patients and the Institution. Int Forum Psychoanal 1997;6:217-224. ISSN 0803-706X.

Psychotherapies performed at multidisciplinary institutions will be influenced by the ongoing dynamics and inevitable group processes of the institution. The difficulties of these processes become extremely hard to handle when the patient category is a severely traumatised one. The prerequisite of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, the illusion of the sealed room and fixed framework, gets disturbed by the information flow in an institution. The institutions for these patients tend to become stages on which the patients as well as staff can perform and repeat their intrapsychic and interpersonal conflicts, non-adaptive defences and disturbed object relations. The predominant dynamic that arises around tortured refugees as a patient category is sado-masochistic relating.     

Two forms of group therapy and individual treatment of work-related depression: a one-year follow-up study

Patients on long-term sick-leave (> 90 days) from white collar work, with a diagnosis of work-related depression, dysthymia, or maladaptive stress reaction were randomized either to cognitive group therapy (CGT), focused psychodynamic group therapy (FGT), or to a comparison group. All patients were interviewed and responded to self-report questionnaires before the start of treatment and at 6 and 12 months. At the 12-month follow-up, 70% of the patients met the criteria for reliable change of the target symptom (depression), and the sample as a whole improved significantly on all measures used. However, there were no differences in outcome between the three treatment groups.     

Implicit coping and enhancement motives predict unique variance in drinking in Asian Americans

Automatic cognitive processes have been shown to be unique predictors of drinking behavior and can be assessed using implicit measures. Drinking motives (e.g., enhancement and coping motives), which are also predictive of alcohol use, have not been studied using implicit measures. Moreover, in the US, implicit measures have been studied in samples largely consisting of Caucasian or White Americans. This study adapted the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to examine automatic analogues of enhancement and coping drinking motives and approach/avoid tendencies in 56 Asian American undergraduates. Enhancement and coping IATs were correlated with self-reported drinking motives and predicted unique variance in drinking frequency and heavy drinking when controlling for self-reported motives. Approach IAT scores were neither associated with self-reported approach/avoid tendencies nor predictive of drinking behaviors. These findings provide initial support for the unique predictive utility of drinking motives in Asian Americans, an understudied population.     

Time-driven effects on parsing during reading

The phonological trace of perceived words starts fading away in short-term memory after a few seconds. Spoken utterances are usually 2-3 s long, possibly to allow the listener to parse the words into coherent prosodic phrases while they still have a clear representation. Results from this brain potential study suggest that even during silent reading, words are organized into 2-3 s long ‘implicit’ prosodic phrases. Participants read the same sentences word by word at different presentation rates. Clause-final words occurring at multiples of 2-3 s from sentence onset yielded increased positivity, irrespective of presentation rate. The effect was interpreted as a closure positive shift (CPS), reflecting insertion of implicit prosodic phrase boundaries every 2-3 s. Additionally, in participants with low working memory span, clauses over 3 s long produced a negativity, possibly indicating increased working memory load.     

Right visual field advantage in parafoveal processing: Evidence from eye-fixation-related potentials

Readers acquire information outside the current eye fixation. Previous research indicates that having only the fixated word available slows reading, but when the next word is visible, reading is almost as fast as when the whole line is seen. Parafoveal-on-foveal effects are interpreted to reflect that the characteristics of a parafoveal word can influence fixation on a current word. Prior studies also show that words presented to the right visual field (RVF) are processed faster and more accurately than words in the left visual field (LVF). This asymmetry results either from an attentional bias, reading direction, or the cerebral asymmetry of language processing. We used eye-fixation-related potentials (EFRP), a technique that combines eye-tracking and electroencephalography, to investigate visual field differences in parafoveal-on-foveal effects. After a central fixation, a prime word appeared in the middle of the screen together with a parafoveal target that was presented either to the LVF or to the RVF. Both hemifield presentations included three semantic conditions: the words were either semantically associated, non-associated, or the target was a non-word. The participants began reading from the prime and then made a saccade towards the target, subsequently they judged the semantic association. Between 200 and 280 ms from the fixation onset, an occipital P2 EFRP-component differentiated between parafoveal word and non-word stimuli when the parafoveal word appeared in the RVF. The results suggest that the extraction of parafoveal information is affected by attention, which is oriented as a function of reading direction.