Will patients accept randomization to psychoanalysis? A feasibility study

The feasibility of using a randomized design in a psychoanalytic outcome study was evaluated. Our hypothesis was that it would be feasible to randomize patients to psychoanalysis three or four times weekly on the couch for five years, supportive expressive therapy once or twice weekly for up to forty sessions, and cognitive behavior therapy once or twice weekly for up to forty sessions. Successful randomization was defined as a 30% recruitment rate among eligible patients. Recruitment began in September 2009 and closed in April 2010. A total of 132 subjects responded to study advertisements, 107 of whom (81%) were triaged out. The remaining 25 were scheduled for the first of two clinical interviews, and 21 of 25 (88%) completed the interview. Eleven of the 25 (44%) were determined to be eligible based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. Eight of the 11 accepted the idea of randomization and completed the diagnostic assessment phase. Calculated on the basis of 8 of 11 eligible patients accepting randomization, the 95% confidence interval was that 39% to 92% of eligible subjects would participate in a larger study of this design. Our findings support the feasibility of implementing an RCT comparing psychoanalysis as defined by the American Psychoanalytic Association (three or four times weekly on the couch for approximately five years) with shorter-term dynamic or cognitive behavioral therapy once or twice a week. Pre-treatment characteristics of these eight patients are presented, as are initial reliability data for the treatment adherence scales used in this trial.     

Instructional effects in the use of the mnemonic keyword method for learning German nouns and their grammatical gender

The use of the mnemonic keyword method involves (a) the formation of an orthographic link between the form of a foreign word and that of a physically similar word in one's mother tongue (i.e. the keyword), and (b) the formation of a semantic link between the referent of the foreign word and that of the keyword. In a variation of this study method, English-speaking learners were asked to study the grammatical gender of German nouns by substituting the concepts of a woman, a man, and an inanimate object for the feminine, masculine, and neuter genders, respectively. This more concrete representation of gender was then to be incorporated to an interactive image along with the referent of the keyword and that of the German noun. The three experiments reported in this paper yielded four main results: (a) instructing learners to recode the gender tag and to include its representation into an interactive mental image along with the referent of the German noun facilitated the recall of genders: (b) the facilitating effect of imagery instructions on the recall of genders was obtained only if the English translation was recalled; (c) the probability of correctly reporting the gender given that the English translation was not recalled was higher than the baseline for guessing if the learners were instructed to encode the gender before the translation, otherwise it was consistently near the baseline: and (d) in contrast with prior studies with French-speaking subjects, the modified keyword method did not always enhance the recall of the familiar translation equivalents. The discussion bears mainly on the factors that might account for the difficulty of detecting a consistent keyword advantage in the recall of the familiar translation.     

The effects of activating a “baby brain” stereotype on pregnant women’s cognitive functioning

Throughout pregnancy and into the immediate postpartum period, women are generally perceived to be incompetent, stressed, and forgetful. However, the neuropsychological “baby brain” literature remains unclear and contradictory. Across two studies, we provide the first experimental tests of whether perceived cognitive impairment in pregnancy can be explained by stereotype threat theory, which proposes that awareness of negative stereotypes about one’s ingroup can harm performance. In Study 1 (N = 364), we tested stereotype threat effects in a 2 (stereotype threat versus no threat) × 3 (pregnant women versus new mothers versus never-pregnant female control) design. We observed a main effect of group on memory performance (pregnant women and new mothers performed worse than controls), but no other main or interactive effects. Study 2 (N = 409) aimed to extend these research questions with mathematics ability, memory, and attention as the dependent variables. Again, we found that a stereotype threat manipulation did not impair pregnant women and new mothers’ cognitive performance, nor was there any interactive effects. Groups also did not differ in their performance. We discuss these results in the context of stereotype threat mechanisms, calling into question whether a stereotype threat paradigm can be applied effectively to pregnancy-related stereotypes. This work has implications for the advancement of stereotype threat as a theory and contributes to the reappraisal of the utility of stereotype threat as a way of understanding how stereotypes affect performance.     

Motivation to hide emotion and children's understanding of the distinction between real and apparent emotions

The authors investigated the extent to which children's understanding of the distinction between real and apparent emotions varied according to the motivation to hide emotions. Children, aged 6-7 and 10-11 years, were read stories designed to elicit either prosocial or self-protective motivated display rules and were asked to predict the facial expressions the protagonists would make to hide felt emotions. Children were found to understand the distinction between real and apparent emotions very well, independently of the type of motivation. Contrary to predictions, boys understood this distinction better than did girls when the motivation to hide positive emotions was prosocial. Children perceived neutralization as the most appropriate strategy to hide felt emotions, followed by masking.