The subject in transmission: the phantomic origins of (dual) unity and the birth of the self

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - Abraham and Torok’s clinical concept of the phantom can be rethought in extended terms to account for the challenges inherent in giving birth to...     

COVID-19 Impact Battery: Development and Validation

In addition to impacting the physical health of millions of Americans, the novel-coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is a significant psychological stressor due to both the threat of the illness itself and the mitigation strategies used to contain the spread. To facilitate understanding of the impact of COVID-19, validated measures are needed. Using a stepwise procedure in line with best-practice measurement procedures, the current report summarizes the procedures employed to create the COVID-19 Impact Battery (CIB). Two independent samples recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk (N?=?175, N?=?642) and a third community sample (N?=?259) were used for reliability and validity testing. Validation procedures yielded a battery consisting of three scales assessing COVID-19 related behaviors, worry, and disability. The behaviors scale contains three subscales assessing stockpiling, cleaning, and avoidance. The worry subscale also contains three subscales assessing health, financial and catastrophic concerns. In addition, we created a short version of the battery (CIB-S) to allow for more flexibility in data collection. In summary, we have provided reliability and validity information for the CIB and CIB-S, demonstrating that these measures can facilitate evaluation of the broad impact of COVID-19 on mental health functioning.

     

Pink gives girls permission: Exploring the roles of explicit gender labels and gender-typed colors on preschool children's toy preferences

Children engage in gender-typed toy play to a greater extent than in non-gender-typed toy play leading to different developmental trajectories for boys and girls. The present studies examine the characteristics of toys and how they differentially affect boys' and girls' interests, stereotypes, and judgments of the toys. In Study 1, children (N = 73, M_age = 4.01) were presented with masculine and feminine toys that were decorated with masculine and feminine colors. Results indicated that boys were more interested in masculine toys than in feminine toys. Girls were significantly less interested in masculine toys with masculine colors than in all other combinations. Children's perceptions of others' interests also followed a similar pattern. In Study 2, children (N = 42, M_age = 3.84) were presented with novel items labeled as “for boys” and “for girls” and decorated in masculine and feminine colors. Among girls, both explicit labels and color of novel toys impacted interests. Children's predictions of others' interests also reflected this pattern.     

Interactive effects of subjective memory complaints and hypertension on learning and memory performance in the elderly

This study evaluated whether the relation between subjective memory complaints and cognitive performance is influenced by the presence of hypertension in the elderly. One hundred and five healthy older adults, 70–89 years of age, with and without hypertension treatment or diagnosis, completed a scale of subjective memory complaints. Participants were divided into those with mild memory concerns and those with minimal or no complaints. All participants completed a battery of neuropsychological tests including measures of verbal and nonverbal memory. After controlling for differences in age, gender, education, and overall intellectual ability, there were significant main effects for memory concerns and significant interactions for memory complaints and hypertension on several measures of memory performance. There were no main effects for hypertension on memory performance. Simple effects analyses of the interactions showed that the hypertensive complainers demonstrated poorer performance on measures of long-term memory and greater reliance on short-term recall than the hypertensive non-complainers. There were no differences in memory performance for the non-hypertensive groups. Among healthy elderly community-dwelling adults, those with mild subjective memory complaints in the context of hypertension demonstrated greater objective cognitive difficulties than those without hypertension as well as a greater reliance on a less efficient learning strategy. These findings suggest that memory concerns in the presence of hypertension may be important when evaluating treatment efficacy in these individuals and for identifying differences in cognitive aging.     

The Associations of Race/Ethnicity and Suicidal Ideation among College Students: A Latent Class Analysis Examining Precipitating Events and Disclosure Patterns

The aim of this paper was to examine precipitating events for suicidal ideation and how these experiences relate to disclosure in a diverse sample of college students were examined. Among non‐Hispanic White students, relationship/academic problems were most associated with ideation. A romantic break‐up increased the odds of getting help. Among racial/ethnic minority students, family/academic problems were most associated with ideation and students who reported multiple events were less likely to get help compared with those not reporting events. Future research should examine the reasons for interpersonal conflict among this high‐risk group and their attitudes about help‐seeking, and identify cultural norms associated with disclosure.     

ADHD and Judgments of Impulsivity in Rule Violations

Abstract

Participants with ADHD (n?=?45) and participants without ADHD (n?=?130, total n?=?175) judged hypothetical moral and conventional rule violations that varied the impulsivity of the act, the ADHD diagnosis, and the gender of the actor in order to examine (1) social reasoning about impulsiveness and (2) whether participants infer impulsiveness from the characteristics of the actor, including gender and ADHD-status. Moral violations were judged more negatively than conventional violations, even when they were impulsive. The characteristics of the actor influenced judgments in that participants judged boys’ behavior as more acceptable, as having less control, and as deserving of less punishment compared to girls. In addition, actors who were described as having ADHD were judged overall more positively. Participants with ADHD judged that all actors should receive similar punishment, regardless of the actor’s ADHD diagnosis, while participants without ADHD judged actors with ADHD should receive less punishment than those without.     

Developing an Occupation-Centred Framework for Trauma Intervention

Abstract

Experiencing work-related trauma can negatively impact coping abilities and daily life participation. Occupational therapists (OTs) often provide health services to workers who have experienced trauma, including military members, veterans, and public safety personnel. The Occupational Therapy Trauma Intervention Framework (OTTIF) is a novel clinical reasoning framework that matches a client’s level of readiness to engage with a spectrum of evidence-based OT approaches. Using surveys at two time points, evaluation of therapist experiences of using the OTTIF elicited positive feedback that suggests the OTTIF provides a useful occupation-centred framework for evidence-informed occupational therapy practice with clients who have experienced trauma.     

Vocabulary and automatic attention: The relation between novel words and gaze dynamics in noun generalization

Words direct visual attention in infants, children, and adults, presumably by activating representations of referents that then direct attention to matching stimuli in the visual scene. Novel, unknown, words have also been shown to direct attention, likely via the activation of more general representations of naming events. To examine the critical issue of how novel words and visual attention interact to support word learning we coded frame-by-frame the gaze of 17- to 31-month-old children (n = 66, 38 females) while generalizing novel nouns. We replicate prior findings of more attention to shape when generalizing novel nouns, and a relation to vocabulary development. However, we also find that following a naming event, children who produce fewer nouns take longer to look at the objects they eventually select and make more transitions between objects before making a generalization decision. Children who produce more nouns look to the objects they eventually select more quickly following the naming event and make fewer looking transitions. We discuss these findings in the context of prior proposals regarding children's few-shot category learning, and a developmental cascade of multiple perceptual, cognitive, and word-learning processes that may operate in cases of both typical development and language delay.

Research Highlights

• Examined how novel words guide visual attention by coding frame-by-frame where children look when asked to generalize novel names.
• Gaze patterns differed with vocabulary size: children with smaller vocabularies attended to generalization targets more slowly and did more comparison than those with larger vocabularies.
• Demonstrates a relationship between vocabulary size and attention to object properties during naming.
• This work has implications for looking-based tests of early cognition, and our understanding of children's few-shot category learning.

     

A Trauma-Informed Call to Action: Culturally-Informed,Multidisciplinary Theoretical and Applied Approaches to Prevention and Healing

ABSTRACT

The prevalence of trauma and its negative impact on humankind has created a burgeoning awareness of the need for systems that are trauma-informed across the lifespan. A collaborative project with the National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence (NPEIV) sought out research as a call-to-action to mitigate the impact of trauma. The following is an introduction to a special double-issue focused on theoretical and applied approaches to using trauma-informed care in multi-disciplinary, mental and physical health, criminal justice, school-based, and community settings. Consideration is given to essential issues such as resilience, self-care, and cultural awareness.