Understanding violence: Does psychoanalytic thinking matter?

A coherent psychoanalytic theory of violence has been hindered by the very few psychoanalysts who have actually worked with violent patients, by political allegiance to certain psychoanalytic schools of thought, a naïve belief that all violence is typically not intentional, but rather a problem of impulse control, and the lack of understanding of recent neurobiological findings concerning aggression. Although intensive psychoanalytic treatment is usually not appropriate for violent individuals, the authors assert that a comprehensive understanding of violent behavior from a psychoanalytic perspective is of relevance for all mental health practitioners interested in the nature of human aggression. Actual violence is informed by bodily enactments and regressions to primitive subjective states; the effects of trauma on representation and symbolic functioning; the demarcation between affective and predatory violence; and understanding how all of our mental processes, including cognitions, wishes, memories, unconscious phantasies, ego-defenses, and object relations, are originally rooted in the body. The authors review the historical psychoanalytic literature on violence and critique contemporary psychoanalytic theorizing regarding the etiology of violent behavior in the light of some neurobiological research findings. They conclude with treatment recommendations for those clinicians whose patients have been violent toward others.     

Maturation of rapid auditory temporal processing and subsequent nonword repetition performance in children

According to the rapid auditory processing theory, the ability to parse incoming auditory information underpins learning of oral and written language. There is wide variation in this low-level perceptual ability, which appears to follow a protracted developmental course. We studied the development of rapid auditory processing using event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by tone pairs presented at varying inter-stimulus intervals (25, 50, 100, 200, and 400 ms) in a sample of children (N = 103) aged 7-9 years initially and again at 9-11 years. We also assessed their ability to repeat nonsense words at both time-points. The amount of difference between the ERP to single tones and paired tones (as assessed by the intra-class correlation coefficient, ICC) provided a measure of the brain's capacity to discriminate auditory information delivered at different presentation rates. Results showed that older children showed greater neural discrimination to tone pairs than younger children at rapid presentation rates, although these differences were reduced at slower presentation rates. The ICC at time 1 significantly predicted nonword repetition scores two years later, providing support for the view that rapid auditory temporal processing ability affects oral language development in typically developing children.     

Severity of Children’s ADHD Symptoms and Parenting Stress: A Multiple Mediation Model of Self-Regulation

The goal of the current study was to determine the extent to which the perceived self-regulation deficits across behavioral, cognitive, and emotional domains seen in children with ADHD explain the association between the severity of ADHD symptoms and parenting stress. Participants for this study included 80 children (mean age = 10 years, 9 months) with a DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD confirmed by a comprehensive clinical diagnostic assessment. Parents reported their own stress levels as well as the severity of their children’s ADHD symptoms, aggression, emotional lability, and executive functioning difficulties. Results indicated that the severity of children’s hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms but not their inattention related to parenting stress. Multiple mediational analyses indicated that the association between hyperactivity/impulsivity and parenting stress was explained by children’s perceived comorbid aggression levels, emotional lability, and executive functioning difficulties. No significant differences in the strength of the mediators were found. The current study provides initial data showing that the perceived impairments in children’s self-regulation across emotional, cognitive, and behavioral domains are what parents report as stressful, not simply the severity of ADHD symptoms. Due to the cross-sectional nature of this study and shared variance from relying solely on parent report, it will be critical for future research to replicate our findings using longitudinal and multi-informant data such as teacher reports and standardized assessments.     

Facial Affect Recognition and Psychopathy: A Signal Detection Theory Perspective

Though emotional processing deficits are often conceptualized as a core feature of psychopathy, the common assessment of these deficits using the percentage correct (or hit rate) on affect recognition tasks may not provide a full or accurate picture of facial affect recognition in psychopathic individuals. Signal detection theory (SDT) provides a more informative statistical approach by providing independent measures of perceptual sensitivity (d’) and willingness to report perceiving a signal or response criterion (c). The current study employed signal detection methods to test the predictions of the integrated emotion systems and hostile attribution bias perspectives, two theoretical perspectives that make specific predictions regarding facial affect recognition. These perspectives were tested in a sample of 280 adult male incarcerated offenders who were assessed for psychopathy using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and who completed a novel test of facial affect recognition presenting 324 digital morphs of faces reflecting systematic combinations of pixels from neutral and affective face images (displaying six different types of emotion) as expressed by four different actors. The findings were generally not consistent with either of these perspectives. Psychopathy was negatively associated with d` for anger. Results also indicated an effect of psychopathy on response criterion for fear and effects of psychopathy on response criterion for anger and surprise that were evident only for some actors. The implications of these findings are considered through the lenses of several theoretical perspectives, and theoretical and methodological limitations of the current study are considered.

     

The effect of self‐identity alongside perceived importance within the theory of planned behaviour

Self‐identity often predicts behavioural intentions after standard theory of planned behaviour (TPB) components are accounted for. However, it has been claimed this is due to conceptual similarity between self‐identity and perceived importance of the behaviour. We examined this claim within the context of recycling food waste. Participants (N = 113) completed questionnaires assessing intentions, attitude, perceived behavioural control, perceived norms, perceived importance, self‐identity, and past behaviour. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that self‐identity and perceived importance were distinct constructs. Further, after accounting for TPB components and perceived importance, self‐identity explained a significant amount of additional variance in intentions. The present findings therefore do not support this particular argument against the predictive utility of self‐identity.     

Meta‐Ethical Realism with Good of a Kind

There is a difference between an object's being good simpliciter and an object's being good of its kind, and the vast majority of philosophers have supposed that it is the former variety of goodness that is relevant to ethics. I argue that one may be a meta‐ethical realist while employing the notion of good of a kind to the exclusion of good simpliciter; I call such a view kindism. I distinguish between two varieties of kindism, explicate the details of one of those varieties, and defend (that variety of) kindism against possible objections.