Incremental validity of mindfulness-based attention in relation to the concurrent prediction of anxiety and depressive symptomatology and perceptions of health

This investigation evaluated the role of mindfulness-based attention in concurrently predicting anxiety and depressive symptomatology and perceived health functioning in a community sample of 170 young adults (95 females; mean age (Mage) = 22.2 years, SD = 7.6). Partially consistent with prediction, results indicated that, relative to negative and positive affectivity and emotional expression and processing associated with approach-oriented coping, mindfulness-based attention incrementally predicted anhedonic depressive, but not anxious arousal, symptoms. Additionally, consistent with prediction, mindfulness-based attention demonstrated incremental validity in relation to perceived health, and the degree of impairment of health in terms of physical and mental functioning. Results are discussed in relation to the construct development of mindfulness-based attention, and specifically, the role(s) of this factor in emotional and physical health processes.     

Word use of outpatients with a personality disorder and concurrent or previous major depressive disorder

In a recent study, Rude, Gortner, and Pennebaker (2004) found word use to be related to depression and vulnerability to depression in the essays of college students. We sought to replicate and extend these findings in a clinical sample. Written essays of 304 psychiatric outpatients with a personality disorder and a mixed psychiatric profile on DSM-IV axis-I and 108 healthy controls were examined with word count software. Data on the tendency to be discrepant about the current self compared to a more ideal self were also gathered. We found that psychiatric outpatients in general used more words referring to the self and negative emotion words and fewer positive emotion words, compared to healthy controls. However, word-use proved unrelated to depression specifically. Actual-ideal self discrepancies were related to patient status and to current depression. Contrary to our hypothesis, these discrepancies did not correlate with the use of words referring to the self. We conclude that the negative content and self-focus of written essays and high levels of discrepancy reflect a negative thinking style that is common to a range of psychiatric disorders rather than being specific to depression.     

Fluency misattribution and visual hindsight bias

We tested a fluency-misattribution theory of visual hindsight bias, and examined how perceptual and conceptual fluency contribute to the bias. In Experiment 1a observers identified celebrity faces that began blurred and then clarified (Forward baseline), or indicated when faces that began clear and then blurred were no longer recognisable (Backward baseline). In surprise memory tests that followed, observers adjusted the degree of blur of each face to match what the faces looked like when identified in the corresponding baseline condition. Hindsight bias was observed in the Forward condition: During the memory test observers adjusted the faces to be more blurry than when originally identified during baseline. These same observers did not show hindsight bias in the Backward condition: Here, they adjusted faces to the exact blur level at which they identified the faces during baseline. Experiment 1b tested a combined condition in which faces were viewed in a Forward progression at baseline but in a Backward progression at test. Hindsight bias was observed in this condition but was significantly less than the bias observed in the Experiment 1a Forward condition. Experiments 1a and 1b provide support for the fluency-misattribution account of visual hindsight bias: When observers are made aware of why fluency has been enhanced (i.e., in the Backward condition) they are better able to discount it, and as a result show reduced or no hindsight bias. In Experiment 2, observers viewed faces in a Forward progression at baseline and then in a Forward upright or inverted progression at test. Hindsight bias occurred in both conditions, but was greater for upright than inverted faces. We conclude that both conceptual and perceptual fluency contribute to visual hindsight bias.     

Reply to Commentaries by Dodi Goldman and Avgi Saketopoulou

In this newly fashioned dialogue that allows us three respondents to continue our first-round discussions, I treasure the opportunity of learning more about Farhi's and Milner's works through the lenses of Dodi Goldman and Avgi Saketopoulou. Both respondents bring additional important historical information to this virtual roundtable, giving me another chance of re-reading Farhi's text through these new perspectives. I think that Goldman's information about Milner's interest in the natural science contributes a great deal to my understanding of her amazing capacity to tolerate her patient's changing psychotic states. I also learn a lot from Saketopoulou's sensitive discussion of the patient's last phone call to Milner shortly before her death in which the patient informs Milner that she had failed her in similar ways as Winnicott had failed Milner. I suggest a slightly different reading of the word failure and propose that the patient's utterance was a sign of a renewed strength rather than a statement of utter disappointment. A discussion of the place of phantasy in the intra-uterine life of a baby is also included in my response.     

Making a Memorial Place: The Photography of Shimon Attie

Assisting the analysand in making the past a living present held within a bearable yet unpredictable future is what psychoanalysis is so much about. Events of the past can never be redone, or fully repossessed, but they must be reconstructed in the context of the transference–countertransference experience of the analytic relationship. In order to make the past a useful present and presence, we need metaphors to give it shape—metaphors that capture the memorial activity linking the past with the present and future in a meaningful manner. In this paper, I explore the ways in which the work of the American photographer Shimon Attie creates a memorial place in which the past is not simply remembered but instead is actively mourned. In The Writing on the Wall, Attie collects broken fragments from prewar German-Jewish life in Berlin, and, by projecting these found shards of former lives onto the buildings in the Berlin Scheunenviertel, which once housed these people, he creates a potential space in which a present can suddenly come alive by the superimposition of a past that was supposed to have been obliterated. In this transitional realm, the spectator is given a wide realm of to-and-fro movements between past and present that permits the creation of an object world that did not exist before. I suggest that Attie's intricate weavings of past, present, and future serve as instructive models for the psychoanalytic process in which the analyst can find himself in a similar position of opening up a playground where the past can be brought into the present and where the presentness of the past can come alive. The ability to move back and forth between the present and the past suggests a link to the Freudian concept of deferred action, later taken up by Lacan under the notion of après-coup, where the impression (Prägung) of an earlier event, having lain dormant for a long time, breaks through into the present through a retroactive action that then completely reshapes the present impression. I draw comparisons to psychoanalytic practice, in which the superimposition (the stacking on top of one another) of recollections, dreams, and associations pries open in the analysand's mind a psychic space in which memories of a seemingly insignificant past absorb a sudden sense of urgency when revisited through this retroactive process.     

An Exploratory Study of HIV+ Adolescents’ Spirituality: Will You Pray with Me?

The aims of the study were (1) to determine whether adolescents find it acceptable to have physicians explore their spiritual beliefs as part of their medical care, (2) to characterize the role of spirituality and religious beliefs in adolescents with and without HIV, and (3) to examine associations between spirituality/religion and quality of life. Adolescents receiving their medical care at an urban Adolescent Health Clinic completed a study-specific questionnaire about spiritual inquiry by their physician, the Brief Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality, and the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory 4.0. Chi-squared analysis, Fischer’s exact test, and t tests were used to assess associations. A total of 45 participants enrolled: 19 HIV+ (53% vertical transmission) and 26 HIV?; mean age 17.2 years; 80% African American. Four out of 45 (9%) had ever been asked by their doctor about their spiritual/religious beliefs, and only 8 (18%) had ever shared these beliefs with their healthcare provider. Most teens wanted their provider to ask them about their spiritual beliefs during some visits, especially when dealing with death/dying or chronic illness (67%). Those with HIV were more likely to endorse wanting their doctors to pray with them (42% vs. 15%), feeling “God’s presence” (Mean = 3.95 vs. 2.83), being “part of a larger force” (Mean = 2.58 vs. 1.69), and feeling “God had abandoned them” (Mean = 1.63 vs. 1.15). There are certain circumstances in which healthcare providers should include a spiritual history with teenage patients. Few differences emerged in the teens studied with and without HIV.     

The Impact of Race and Inclusionary Status on Memory for Ingroup and Outgroup Faces

We explore how rejection by racial ingroup or outgroup members influences the Other Race Effect (ORE; the tendency to have better memory for same-race [SR] relative to other-race [OR] faces). White and Black participants were rejected or accepted by two racial ingroup or outgroup members during an online game. Participants then completed a face recognition task assessing SR and OR targets. Those playing with ingroup members showed the classic ORE. However, inclusion by outgroup members led to the ORE, while exclusion by outgroup members eliminated this effect by increasing outgroup face memory. We discuss future work on exclusion and the ORE.     

How automatic is “automatic vigilance”? The role of working memory in attentional interference of negative information

Whereas attentional interference of negative information has previously been assumed to be automatic, the present research hypothesised that this effect depends on the availability of working-memory resources. In two experiments, participants judged the gender of angry versus happy faces. Working-memory load was manipulated by the presence or absence of a math task (Study 1) or mental rehearsal of a one- versus 8-digit number (Study 2). The results showed that angry faces interfered more with gender naming than happy faces, but only when working-memory load was low. As such, attentional interference of negative stimulus features can be modulated by top-down attentional control processes.     

Mothers and Daughters from Today's Psychoanalytic Perspective

In this paper, I review and synthesize findings that may help us remodel the way we think about the vicissitudes of the mother-daughter relationship. Although exciting new ideas are burgeoning in the literature, there seems to be a lag between discoveries and their integration into clinical practice. Older theories emphasizing separation and the girl's “change of libidinal object” from mother to father reflect linear models that do not encompass the development we observe and experience. Newer theories depict development as interactive and relational throughout the life cycle—leading not to separation but to autonomy with connectedness. Applying male models to the female superego or speaking of the “female Oedipus complex” is misleading. New myths are being proposed to describe the conflicts integral to the girl's triangular situation. Applying the myth of Persephone and Demeter has been especially instructive. Many analysts tend to pathologize or infantilize the woman's ongoing tie to her mother and tend to misunderstand the intense ambivalence between daughter and mother. Once we recognize that the course of development is not linear, we should expect to see the woman revisiting, reexamining, and resynthesizing representations of self-versus-mother and self-with-mother over her lifetime.     

Validation of Self-Report Measures of Emotional and Physical Distress Tolerance

The Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS) and Discomfort Intolerance Scale (DIS) are self-report measures developed for the assessment of emotional and physical distress tolerance, respectively. However, little evidence exists for their construct and specifically criterion-related validity. The current study examined the associations of these self-report measures with lab-based assessments of perceived emotional tolerance and physical discomfort tolerance. Undergraduate participants (N?=?166) were administered four film clips intended to induce sadness, disgust, fear, and anger, and a handgrip persistence task intended to elicit physical discomfort. The DTS, but not the DIS, was significantly associated with self-reported emotional tolerance and perceived threat associated with each film after controlling for emotional intensity. Among DTS subscales, the absorption subscale was the only subscale incrementally predictive of negative perceptions of the sad film, the appraisal subscale was incrementally predictive of negative perceptions of the other three films, and little support for the incremental validity of the tolerance and regulation subscales was found. The DTS also incrementally predicted tolerance and perceived threat of film-elicited emotions across films after controlling for anxiety sensitivity. The DIS was only marginally predictive of handgrip task persistence and was unrelated to emotional film perceptions. Overall, these findings uniquely add to the empirical literature on the construct and criterion-related validity of the DTS and DIS.