Studying the process of psychoanalytic parent–infant psychotherapy: Embodied and discursive aspects

This paper presents findings from an intensive, mixed methods case study of one session of psychoanalytic parent–infant psychotherapy (PPIP) addressing early relational trauma, and aims to shed light on the multimodal interactive processes that take place in the moment-to-moment exchanges comprising the therapeutic encounter. Different research methods were used on video material from PPIP sessions, including microanalysis of adult–infant interactions, discourse analysis of talk, and coding systems developed to study parent–infant interaction. These different perspectives were brought together with the clinical narrative to illuminate the complex, dynamic processes of parent–infant–therapist interaction. More specifically, the detailed analysis of one interactive episode revealed brief behavioral manifestations of fearful and disoriented states of mind, reflecting dysregulated interaction between mother and infant, which also powerfully affected the therapist. The processes through which the therapist gradually resolves this rupture are also described in detail. Through this pilot study, we were able to show that it is possible to systematically study the process of PPIP. The study contributes to the growing psychotherapy research literature that takes into account both the verbal domain and implicit, interactional processes in therapeutic practice, and underscores the therapist's comprehensive engagement in the therapeutic process.     

Counting to Infinity: Does Learning the Syntax of the Count List Predict Knowledge That Numbers Are Infinite?

By around the age of 5½, many children in the United States judge that numbers never end, and that it is always possible to add 1 to a set. These same children also generally perform well when asked to label the quantity of a set after one object is added (e.g., judging that a set labeled “five” should now be “six”). These findings suggest that children have implicit knowledge of the “successor function”: Every natural number, n, has a successor, n + 1. Here, we explored how children discover this recursive function, and whether it might be related to discovering productive morphological rules that govern language-specific counting routines (e.g., the rules in English that represent base-10 structure). We tested 4- and 5-year-old children’s knowledge of counting with three tasks, which we then related to (a) children’s belief that 1 can always be added to any number (the successor function) and (b) their belief that numbers never end (infinity). Children who exhibited knowledge of a productive counting rule were significantly more likely to believe that numbers are infinite (i.e., there is no largest number), though such counting knowledge was not directly linked to knowledge of the successor function, per se. Also, our findings suggest that children as young as 4 years of age are able to implement rules defined over their verbal count list to generate number words beyond their spontaneous counting range, an insight which may support reasoning over their acquired verbal count sequence to infer that numbers never end.     

The Utility of Genetic Counseling Prior to Offering First Trimester Screening Options

In order to evaluate the utility of genetic counseling at the time of first trimester screening in patients with no previously identified genetic concerns, we reviewed family history data for 700 women seen for genetic counseling in Utah during 2005-2006. The mean maternal age was 35 years (Range: 16–47 years). The majority of patients seen were non-Jewish Caucasians (90.8%, 634/700). A three-generation pedigree was obtained from each woman by one of two certified genetic counselors and subsequently classified as “negative” (no birth defects/genetic disorders); “positive” (birth defect or genetic condition with a minimal/low risk of recurrence; additional evaluation/genetic testing during pregnancy not indicated); or “significant” (birth defect or genetic condition with an increased risk of recurrence; additional evaluation/genetic testing during the pregnancy indicated). About 72% (501/700) of the histories were negative, 19% (134/700) were positive, and about 9% (65/700) were significant. Among patients with significant family histories, 66% (n = 43) were women less than 35 years of age. We conclude that assessing a patient’s family history at the time of first trimester serum screening is a valuable resource for pregnancy management.     

Information processing in toddlers: Continuity from infancy and persistence of preterm deficits

The present report assesses information processing in the toddler years (24 and 36 months), using a cohort of preterms (< 1750 g) and full-terms initially seen in infancy. The children received a battery of tasks tapping 11 specific abilities from four domains — memory, processing speed, attention, and representational competence. The same battery had been used earlier — at 7 and 12 months. There were four main findings. (1) Preterms showed no ‘catch-up,’ but rather persistent deficits in immediate recognition, recall, encoding speed, and attention. (2) There was significant continuity from infancy through the toddler years for most aspects of information processing. (3) These specific abilities combined additively to account for global cognitive ability, consistent with the componential theory of intelligence. (4) Toddler information processing abilities completely mediated the relative deficits of preterms in general cognitive ability. Thus, although the toddler years have often been characterized as a period of discontinuity and transformation, these results indicate that continuity prevails for information processing abilities over the first three years of life.     

Mediators of the association between narcissism and compulsive buying: the roles of materialism and impulse control.

Building upon past research about the guiding values and self-regulation difficulties of people with narcissistic personalities, this study tested a model of the association between narcissism and compulsive consumption. In data obtained from a sample of undergraduate consumers (N=238) with varying degrees of spending problems, positive associations emerged between narcissism, materialism, and compulsive buying. Impulse control was negatively correlated with each of these variables. Mediation tests revealed that both impulse control and materialism accounted for significant portions of the shared variance between narcissism and compulsive consumption. These findings highlight the importance of both personal values and impulse control as correlates of addictive buying. They also add to growing evidence that people who are relatively narcissistic are poor self-regulators who may be at risk of developing a variety of addictive behaviors.     

Nonspatial attributes of stimuli can influence spatial limitations of attentional control

A wide variety of psychophysical and neurophysiological research suggests that when stimuli are very close together, they cannot be attended separately. As a consequence, they cannot be represented as individual items with specific feature information associated with them. Here we report evidence that the spatial control of attention can be modulated by nonspatial features of the stimuli (such as color and luminance). Observers shifted attention from item to item within highly dense arrays of stimuli. Performance was extremely poor when all of the items in the array were an identical gray. In contrast, performance improved when items differed in color. This finding indicates that nonspatial features, such as color, can facilitate spatial selection and suggests moreover that features can be reliably associated with particular items even when the items are densely clustered.     

Prospective associations of co-rumination with friendship and emotional adjustment: considering the socioemotional trade-offs of co-rumination

Co-ruminating, or excessively discussing problems, with friends is proposed to have adjustment tradeoffs. Co-rumination is hypothesized to contribute both to positive friendship adjustment and to problematic emotional adjustment. Previous single-assessment research was consistent with this hypothesis, but whether co-rumination is an antecedent of adjustment changes was unknown. A 6-month longitudinal study with middle childhood to midadolescent youths examined whether co-rumination is simultaneously a risk factor (for depression and anxiety) and a protective factor (for friendship problems). For girls, a reciprocal relationship was found in which co-rumination predicted increased depressive and anxiety symptoms and increased positive friendship quality over time, which, in turn, contributed to greater co-rumination. For boys, having depressive and anxiety symptoms and high-quality friendships also predicted increased co-rumination. However, for boys, co-rumination predicted only increasing positive friendship quality and not increasing depression and anxiety. An implication of this research is that some girls at risk for developing internalizing problems may go undetected because they have seemingly supportive friendships.     

Parental monitoring moderates the importance of genetic and environmental influences on adolescent smoking

Although there is a substantial literature on the role of parenting in adolescent substance use, most parenting effects have been small in magnitude and studied outside the context of genetically informative designs, raising debate and controversy about the influence that parents have on their children (D. C. Rowe, 1994). Using a genetically informative twin-family design, the authors studied the role of parental monitoring on adolescent smoking at age 14. Although monitoring had only small main effects, consistent with the literature, there were dramatic moderation effects associated with parental monitoring: At high levels of parental monitoring, environmental influences were predominant in the etiology of adolescent smoking, but at low levels of parental monitoring, genetic influences assumed far greater importance. These analyses demonstrate that the etiology of adolescent smoking varies dramatically as a function of parenting.     

Virtual reality in brain damage rehabilitation: review.

Given the high incidence of brain injury in the population, brain damage rehabilitation is still a relatively undeveloped field. Virtual reality (VR) has the potential to assist current rehabilitation techniques in addressing the impairments, disabilities, and handicaps associated with brain damage. The main focus of much of the exploratory research performed to date has been to investigate the use of VR in the assessment of cognitive abilities, but there is now a trend for more studies to encompass rehabilitation training strategies. This review describes studies that have used VR in the assessment and rehabilitation of specific disabilities resulting from brain injury, including executive dysfunction, memory impairments, spatial ability impairments, attention deficits, and unilateral visual neglect. In addition, it describes studies that have used VR to try to offset some of the handicaps that people experience after brain injury. Finally, a table is included which, although not an exhaustive list of everything that has been published, includes many more studies that are relevant to the use of VR in the assessment and rehabilitation of brain damage. The review concludes that the use of VR in brain damage rehabilitation is expanding dramatically and will become an integral part of cognitive assessment and rehabilitation in the future.