War,revolution, and psychoanalysis: Freudian thought begins to grapple with social reality

Psychoanalytic theory and practice have been affected by external events as well as by internal development. Specifically, the period of the Great War and its aftermath was a turning point in the history of psychoanalysis. These experiences emphasized the inadequacy of the libido theory alone, accelerated Freud's impetus toward metapsychology, and encouraged the articulation of theories of innate destructive urges, of ego instincts, of the superego, and of social interaction. Discussionsof war neuroses, of aggression and the death instinct, of the reality principle, and of the mechanisms of social psychology undermined Freud's original biologism in favor of a social-scientific approach. Psychoanalytic theory began to take more account of social experience and was profoundly changed in the process.     

Great expectations: students’ educational attitudes upon the transition to post-secondary vocational education

In this study, we examine students’ educational attitudes upon the transition to Dutch senior vocational education (SVE), a transition associated with high dropout rates in the first year. Prior studies have identified differences in educational attitudes between sociodemographic groups. However, the mechanisms underlying those differences remain topic of debate: some studies point at differences in the school orientation and support in students’ social communities outside school, others focus on differences in educational experiences between sociodemographic groups. Multilevel sequential regression analyses on a diverse sample of 1438 students in urban SVE schools reveal that students have very positive educational attitudes upon their transition to SVE. Ethnic minority students express particularly positive attitudes. School-related encouragement and support at home plays an important role in students’ attitudes, but the attitudes of students from lower educated or ethnic minority communities are less related to this support. Prior school experiences play an essential, but occasionally counterproductive, role in students’ attitudes upon transition, depicting the transition as a fresh new start for some, and an unwelcome threshold for others.     

Predicting emotional concomitants of learned helplessness: The role of motivational orientation

Previous theoretical and empirical analyses indicate that an extrinsic motivational orientation, i.e., performing activities to please others or concern with criticism, predicts the cognitive and behavioral deficits associated with learned helplessness. Conversely, intrinsically motivated students, who perform activities for the inherent pleasure of mastery over challenge, have been shown to be virtually resilient to successive failure experiences and even show a facilitation effect. However, research has not yet addressed the extent to which motivational orientation predicts the emotional deficits associated with helplessness—namely, depression and a maladaptive attributional style. Furthermore, no research has examined the relative predictability of these variables to investigate subjects' feelings after an experimental manipulation of failure. The present research found support for the proposition that an extrinsic motivational orientation predicts depression and the Expanded Attributional Style Questionnaire. More importantly, our findings demonstrated that an extrinsic motivational orientation was a more reliable predictor of subjects' feelings after a failure manipulation than either depression or a maladaptive attributional style. These findings are discussed in light of intervention strategies to attenuate the development of an extrinsic motivational orientation in students.     

Psychometric Evaluation of 5- and 7-Year-Old Children's Self-Reports of Conduct Problems

Past research suggests that young children are incapable of reporting information about their own behavior problems. To test this, we examined the validity and the usefulness of children's self-reports in the E-Risk Study, a nationally representative birth cohort of 2,232 children. We used the Berkeley Puppet Interview to obtain children's self-reports of conduct problems when they were 5-years old and the Dominic-R when they were 7-years old. We also collected information about the children and their families by interviewing mothers, sending questionnaires to teachers, and rating examiners' observations during home visits. Results indicate that when children's self-reports are gathered with structured and developmentally appropriate instruments, they are shown to be valid measures: conduct problems reported by the children themselves were associated with known correlates including individual characteristics (e.g., IQ), related behaviors (e.g., hyperactivity), and family variables (e.g., economic disadvantages). Observed correlations closely matched effect sizes reported in the literature using adults' reports of children's behavioral problems. In addition, children's self-reports can be useful: both measures distinguished children meeting DSM-IV criteria for research diagnoses of conduct disorder. Children's reports also contributed unique information not provided by adults. For research and clinical purposes, young children's self-reports can be viewed as a valuable complement to adults' ratings and observational measures of children's behavior problems.     

Hypothalamic expression of NPY mRNA, vasopressin mRNA and CRF mRNA in response to food restriction and central administration of the orexigenic peptide GHRP-6

In this study, we examined the effects of restricted feeding and of central administration of an orexigenic ghrelin agonist GHRP-6 on peptide mRNA expression in the hypothalamus. We compared rats fed ad libitum with rats that were allowed food for only 2?h every day, and treated with a continuous chronic i.c.v. infusion of GHRP-6 or vehicle. Ad libitum fed rats exposed to GHRP-6 increased their food intake and body weight over 6 days, but, at the end of this period, neuropeptide Y mRNA expression in the arcuate nucleus was not different to that in control rats. By contrast, expression of neuropeptide Y mRNA in the arcuate nucleus was elevated in food-restricted rats, consistent with the interpretation that increased expression reflects increased hunger. However, neuropeptide Y mRNA expression was no greater in food-restricted rats infused with GHRP-6 than in food-restricted rats infused with vehicle; thus if the drive to eat was stronger in rats infused with GHRP-6, this was not reflected by higher levels of neuropeptide Y mRNA expression. Expression of vasopressin mRNA and corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF) mRNA in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) was not changed by food restriction. GHRP-6 infusion increased CRF mRNA expression in ad libitum rats only.     

Facilitated processing of visual stimuli associated with the body

Recent work on tactile perception has revealed enhanced tactile acuity and speeded spatial-choice reaction times (RTs) when viewing the stimulated body site as opposed to viewing a neutral object. Here we examine whether this body-view enhancement effect extends to visual targets. Participants performed a speeded spatial discrimination between two lights attached either to their own left index finger or to a wooden finger-shaped object, making a simple distal--proximal decision. We filmed either the finger-mounted or the object-mounted lights in separate experimental blocks and the live scene was projected onto a screen in front of the participants. Thus, participants responded to identical visual targets varying only in their context: on the body or not. Results revealed a large performance advantage for the finger-mounted stimuli: reaction times were substantially reduced, while discrimination accuracy was unaffected. With this finding we address concerns associated with previous work on the processing of stimuli attributed to the self and extend the finding of a performance advantage for such stimuli to vision.     

Processing of metaphoric and non-metaphoric alternative meanings of words after right- and left-hemispheric lesion

This study examines the specificity of the contribution of the right hemisphere to the processing of metaphoric meaning of words. Ten right- and 10 left-hemisphere-damaged subjects, and 20 normal control subjects were submitted to: (1) a word-triad task where they had to associate alternative metaphoric and non-metaphoric words to a target word, and to (2) a word-dyad task where they had to decide whether or not there was a semantic relationship between two words. The two tasks aimed at differentiating between the subjects' preference for a given semantic meaning versus a genuine semantic deficit for a particular meaning. Results revealed that both right- and left-hemisphere-damaged groups presented a genuine semantic deficit for the processing of metaphoric meaning. The absence of a double dissociation between the two brain-damaged groups does not support the hypothesis of a specific contribution of the right-hemisphere to the processing of metaphoric meaning of words.