Investigating Hypervigilance for Social Threat of Lonely Children

The hypothesis that lonely children show hypervigilance for social threat was examined in a series of three studies that employed different methods including advanced eye-tracking technology. Hypervigilance for social threat was operationalized as hostility to ambiguously motivated social exclusion in a variation of the hostile attribution paradigm (Study 1), scores on the Children’s Rejection-Sensitivity Questionnaire (Study 2), and visual attention to socially rejecting stimuli (Study 3). The participants were 185 children (11 years-7 months to 12 years-6 months), 248 children (9 years-4 months to 11 years-8 months) and 140 children (8 years-10 months to 12 years-10 months) in the three studies, respectively. Regression analyses showed that, with depressive symptoms covaried, there were quadratic relations between loneliness and these different measures of hypervigilance to social threat. As hypothesized, only children in the upper range of loneliness demonstrated elevated hostility to ambiguously motivated social exclusion, higher scores on the rejection sensitivity questionnaire, and disengagement difficulties when viewing socially rejecting stimuli. We found that very lonely children are hypersensitive to social threat.     

Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok—the inner crypt

This article is an introduction to the central ideas of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. The author locates their work in the history of psychoanalytic thought. The Abraham and Torok thinking on trauma, symbol versus anasemia, introjection versus incorporation, endocryptic identification as well as woman's penis envy, are described as theoretical axes around the focal point constituted by the authors' specific concept of introjection; seen as the human mode of appropriation of the external world, which is crucial to the expansion of the ego through symbolization.     

Self-Determination Skills of Adolescents Enrolled in Special Education: An Analysis of Four Cases

This study provides information about four adolescent students participating in an occupation-based self-determination program drawn from the Model of Self-Determination and the Model of Human Occupation. Students were selected from a Career Lab based on their ability to participate. The analysis of the cases demonstrate that psycho-educational strategies incorporated into a special education curriculum can instill in the students the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors necessary for personal goal setting and attainment.     

Distinguishing youths at risk for anxiety disorders from self‐reported BIS sensitivity and its psychophysiological concomitants

The aim of the study was to explore the psychophysiological concomitants of self‐reported behavioral inhibition system (BIS) sensitivity in adolescents (12 to 17 years old) supposed to be at risk for anxiety disorders. Twenty participants with high scores in self‐reported BIS sensitivity (at‐risk group) were matched in age and sex to 20 participants scoring in the normal range in BIS sensitivity (control group). Negative affect, negative emotion regulation style, and anxiety symptomatology were assessed by means of self‐reported measures. Cardiac and electrodermal response signals were recorded during baseline, paced breathing, exposure to an attentional task with response cost and fear‐relevant slides conditions. The at‐risk group exhibited higher scores on measures of negative affect, negative emotion regulation style, and anxiety symptomatology than their control counterparts. After controlling for negative styles of emotion regulation, groups did not differ in skin conductance reactivity during the attentional task with response cost, but participants at risk exhibited more nonspecific skin conductance responses than the control group during baseline recording. Regarding the cardiac concomitants, participants at risk presented lower vagal tone at resting conditions as compared to participants in the control group. Additionally, at‐risk participants exhibited lower flexibility across experimental conditions in heart rate and cardiac sample entropy measures than participants in the control group. These findings add knowledge on psychophysiological concomitants of BIS sensitivity and are discussed in light of associations between temperament and development of anxiety disorders in youth. They show how psychophysiological patterns observed in resting conditions could be useful endophenotypes to reliably detect individuals at risk before the disorder onset.     

Offering a ‘therapeutic presence’ in schools and education settings

Abstract

In this essay I present the clinical work with a client that I have been working with for 9 months now. The essay is divided into sections, each one indicative of one phase of the counselling relationship. In each of them I present the therapeutic process (my client's and myself) by highlighting some newly-acquired psychodynamic concepts, sharing some difficulties encountered, the learning gained though supervision and the progress of the client.     

Dissociation,the true self and the notion of the frozen baby

Abstract

The widespread ‘trauma talk’ that is prevalent in the social sciences, has, in recent years, become increasingly commonplace in psychoanalytic writings, especially in attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis. This paper examines dissociation, a key concept in ‘trauma theory’, in conjunction with the Winnicottian term ‘true self’, in the context of a particular discursive and theoretical combination of the two. This discursive formation is named ‘the frozen baby discourse’, and it is presented and analysed. A critique is offered of the way ‘true self’, understood as a humanistic concept, is often used together with dissociation, in order to create a theoretical construct that is far removed from Winnicottian theory. This paper begins by exploring definitional issues, both around dissociation and ‘true self’. It is subsequently argued that this contemporary usage of ‘true self’ in combination with dissociation has important implications for psychoanalytic practice.     

Ambiguous emotion recognition in temporal lobe epilepsy: The role of expression intensity

The lateralization of emotion processing is currently debated and may be further explored by examining facial expression recognition (FER) impairments in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Furthermore, there is also debate in the literature whether FER deficits in individuals with TLE are more pronounced in the right than in the left hemisphere. Individuals with TLE were tested with an FER task designed to be more sensitive than those classically used to shed light on this issue. A total of 25 right- and 32 left-TLE patients, candidates for surgery, along with controls, underwent an FER task composed of stimuli shown not only at full-blown intensities (100 %), but also morphed to lower-intensity display levels (35 %, 50 %, and 75 %). The results showed that, as compared to controls, right-TLE patients showed deficits in the recognition of all emotional categories. Furthermore, when considering valence, right-TLE patients were impaired only in negative emotion recognition, but no deficits for positive emotions were highlighted in left-TLE patients. Finally, only the right-TLE patients’ impairment was found to be related to the age of epilepsy onset. Our work demonstrates that the FER deficits in TLE span multiple emotional categories and show manifestations dependent on the laterality of the epileptic focus. Taken together, our findings provide the strongest evidence for the right-hemisphere model, but they also partially support the valence model. We suggest that current models are not exhaustive at explaining emotional-processing cerebral control, and further that multistep models should be developed.