Different origins and meanings of acute acting-out in an inpatient psychotherapeutic setting

In this paper I describe four different sources of acute acting-out behaviour as may be observed in long-term hospitalised patients suffering from severe personality disorders. I hope to demonstrate that acute psychological distress does not happen in a vacuum, but that specific intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics within the hospital setting are at the root of what appears overtly as nonspecific emotional and behavioural disturbance. I argue that the hospital team's correct insight into the factors underlying acute acting-out is crucial to the implementation of therapeutic interventions aimed to decrease the patient's disturbed state of mind.     

Emotion regulation and risk taking: Predicting risky choice in deliberative decision making

Only very recently has research demonstrated that experimentally induced emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) affect risky choice (e.g., Heilman et al., 2010). However, it is unknown whether this effect also operates via habitual use of emotion regulation strategies in risky choice involving deliberative decision making. We investigated the role of habitual use of emotion regulation strategies in risky choice using the “cold” deliberative version of the Columbia Card Task (CCT; Figner et al., 2009). Fifty-three participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003) and—one month later—the CCT and the PANAS. Greater habitual cognitive reappraisal use was related to increased risk taking, accompanied by decreased sensitivity to changes in probability and loss amount. Greater habitual expressive suppression use was related to decreased risk taking. The results show that habitual use of reappraisal and suppression strategies predict risk taking when decisions involve predominantly cognitive-deliberative processes.     

Indirect measures as a signal for evaluative change

Implicit and explicit attitudes can be changed by using evaluative learning procedures. In this contribution we investigated an asymmetric effect of order of administration of indirect and direct measures on the detection of evaluative change: A change in explicit attitudes is more likely detected if they are measured after implicit attitudes, whereas these latter change regardless of the order. This effect was demonstrated in two studies (n=270; n=138) using the self-referencing task whereas it was not found in a third study (n=151) that used a supraliminal sequential evaluative conditioning paradigm. In all studies evaluative change was present only for contingency aware participants. We discuss a potential explanation underlying the order of measure effect entailing that, in some circumstances, an indirect measure is not only a measure but also a signal that can be detected through self-perception processes and further elaborated at the propositional level.     

Meaning is in the beholder’s eye: Morpho-semantic effects in masked priming

A substantial body of literature indicates that, at least at some level of processing, complex words are broken down into their morphemes solely on the basis of their orthographic form (e.g., Rastle, Davis, & New, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 11:1090–1098, 2004). Recent evidence has shown that this process might not be obligatory, as indicated by the fact that morpho-orthographic effects were not found in a cross-case same–different task—that is, when lexical access was not necessarily required (Duñabeitia, Kinoshita, Carreiras, & Norris, Language and Cognitive Processes 26:509–529, 2011). In this study, we employed a task that required understanding a series of words and, thus, implied lexical access. Masked primes were shown very briefly right before the appearance of the target word; prime–target pairs entertained a morpho-semantic (dealer–DEAL), a morpho-orthographic (corner–CORN), or a purely orthographic (brothel–BROTH) relationship. Eye fixation times clearly indicated facilitation for transparent pairs, but not for opaque pairs (or for orthographic pairs, which were used as a baseline). Conversely, the usual morpho-orthographic pattern was found in a control experiment, employing a lexical decision task. These results indicate that the access to a morpho-orthographic level of representation is not always necessary for lexical identification, which challenges models of visual word identification that cannot account for task-induced effects.     

The Semantics of Power Among People With Eating Disorders

The study aimed to empirically test the hypothesis, developed within the systemic-constructionist theory of family semantic polarities, that the semantics of power are particularly meaningful for people with eating disorders. The repertory grid technique was used to elicit constructs from 30 young patients (10 anorexic, 10 bulimic, and 10 obese) and from a matched control group; the two sets of constructs were compared in terms of their semantic content. Overall the results confirmed the hypothesis, although further investigation into the semantic peculiarities of individual eating disorders is required. Methodological limitations and possible clinical applications are discussed.     

Social Cognition,Accuracy, and Physiology

Existing norms for scientific communication are rooted in anachronistic practices of bygone eras making them needlessly inefficient. We outline a path that moves away from the existing model of scientific communication to improve the efficiency in meeting the purpose of public science—knowledge accumulation. We call for six changes: (a) full embrace of digital communication; (b) open access to all published research; (c) disentangling publication from evaluation; (d) breaking the “one article, one journal” model with a grading system for evaluation and diversified dissemination outlets; (e) publishing peer review; and (f) allowing open, continuous peer review. We address conceptual and practical barriers to change and provide examples showing how the suggested practices are being used already. The critical barriers to change are not technical or financial; they are social. Although scientists guard the status quo, they also have the power to change it.     

The Cognitive Effectiveness of Subtitle Processing

In an experimental study, we analyzed the cognitive processing of a subtitled film excerpt by adopting a methodological approach based on the integration of a variety of measures: eye-movement data, word recognition, and visual scene recognition. We tested the hypothesis that the processing of subtitled films is cognitively effective: It leads to a good understanding of film content without requiring a significant tradeoff between image processing and text processing. Following indications in the psycholinguistic literature, we also tested the hypothesis that two-line subtitles whose segmentation is syntactically incoherent can have a disruptive effect on information processing and recognition performance. The results highlighted the effectiveness of subtitle processing: Regardless of the quality of line segmentation, participants had a good understanding of the film content, they achieved good levels of performance in both word and scene recognition, and no tradeoff between text and image processing was detected. Eye-movement analyses enabled a further characterization of cognitive processing during subtitled film viewing. This article discusses the theoretical implications of the findings for both subtitling and multiple-source communication and highlights their methodological and applied implications.     

The standard ontological framework of cognitive neuroscience: Some lessons from Broca’s area

Since cognitive neuroscience aims at giving an integrated account of mind and brain, its ontology should include both neural and cognitive entities and specify their relations. According to what we call the standard ontological framework of cognitive neuroscience (SOFCN), the aim of cognitive neuroscience should be to establish one-to-one mappings between neural and cognitive entities. Where such entities do not yet closely align, this can be achieved by reforming the cognitive ontology, the neural ontology, or both. In order to assess the limits and the possibilities of the SOFCN, we will examine a paradigmatic case study: the concept of Broca’s area, which indicates an alleged mapping between the left inferofrontal gyrus and the production of language. We review evidence showing that such a mapping does not hold, thus calling into question either the status of Broca’s area or the validity of the SOFCN. We then propose some strategies for addressing the issue and suggest that it may be solved within the SOFCN by adopting both of the following strategies: first, more accurately defining the relevant neural structures and second, switching the focus of neural ontology from structures to events, individuated by a where (neural structures) conjoint with a how (oscillatiory frequency).