The Emergence of Human Altruism:Preschool Children Develop a Norm for Empathy-based Comforting

ABSTRACT

The study examined whether preschool children conceive of empathy-based comforting as being an obligatory reaction toward others in emotional need. We presented 3- and 5-year-old children with three scenarios in which protagonists showed different reactions toward an agent who has hurt herself. One protagonist reacted antisocially by laughing at the agent, one ignored the agent, and one demonstrated empathy-based comforting. The 3-year-olds only protested against the antisocial protagonist. In contrast, the 5-year-olds protested against the protagonists who either acted antisocially or ignored the needy other while they selectively affirmed the protagonist who showed empathy-based comforting. The findings indicate that a norm for empathy-based comforting develops in the preschool years. Overall, our study demonstrates the emergence of a normative concern with the well-being of others, a central aspect of human altruism.     

Mentalization-Based Interventions in Child Psychiatry and Youth Protection Services I: Objectives,Setting, General Principles and Strategies

ABSTRACT

Many of the children who receive services in child psychiatry or are in the care of Youth Protection Services present with complex, multiple and often severe problems. Classic psychodynamic psychotherapy seems to be of little benefit to them. The majority of these children tend to not use symbolic play as a means of expressing their intrapsychic conflicts or relational difficulties and they do not verbally communicate much with clinicians. They are more likely to display an imaginative poverty that translates into boredom, motor discharge, and an inability to use the material put at their disposal for therapeutic purposes. The systematic and rigorous observations of these children in Quebec revealed that the majority of them present with severe mentalizing difficulties. They often show attitudes and behaviors linked to the prementalizing modes of psychic functioning. This article presents a mentalization-based intervention adapted to these children’s difficulties. The objectives, adaptation of the work setting, and general principles underlying this intervention are discussed. In addition, general intervention strategies are also covered. These interventions are considered as preparatory work whose principal purpose is to enable children to benefit later on from psychodynamic psychotherapy. The authors also recommend specific intervention strategies adapted to children’s predominant mode of psychic functioning. The details of these strategies will be shared in a separate article.     

What Changes in Therapy? Who Changes?

SUMMARY

A central component of therapeutic change involves facilitating the capacity to move and be moved by the other. Another way of saying this might be that change entails experiencing a greater freedom of relational movement. The question of who and what actually changes in the process of therapy is the focus of the three vignettes that follow. They highlight, among other things, the recognition and acknowledgment of mutuality as an essential force within the relational matrix and the ever-changing landscape that this creates. Each of these examples of a change process bears, as well, a particular stamp of its own, and thus speaks to the unique personality of every therapeutic dyad.     

Effects of noradrenergic activity on temporal information processing in humans

Temporal processing of durations in the range of seconds or more is mediated by working-memory mechanisms whereas processing of brief durations in the range of milliseconds appears to be beyond cognitive control and modulated by dopaminergic activity in the basal ganglia. In the present study, the effects of the selective noradrenaline reuptake inhibitor reboxetine on temporal information processing were evaluated. In a double-blind crossover design, either placebo or 2 or 4 mg of reboxetine were administered to 24 healthy male volunteers. Performance on temporal discrimination of longer durations, as indicated by 75%-difference thresholds in relation to a 1,000-ms standard interval, was significantly improved by 2 mg of reboxetine as compared to placebo, whereas the improvement observed with the 4-mg dose just failed to reach statistical significance. There was, however, no effect of reboxetine on temporal discrimination of extremely brief durations, as indicated by threshold values in relation to a 50-ms standard interval. Findings provided additional evidence for the notion that temporal processing of durations in the range of seconds is based on working-memory processes including aspects of directed attention. In timing of brief durations in the range of milliseconds, however, noradrenergic activity didnot seem to play a critical role.     

The Three‐Component Model of Organisational Commitment: An Application to South Korea

We conducted two studies to determine whether the three‐component model of organisational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991) is generalisable to a non‐Western culture using data from South Korea. In Study 1, we found that when the 6‐item versions of the scales (Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993) were translated into Korean, the psychometric properties of the Affective Commitment Scale were similar to those found in North America, but problems were identified in the Continuance and Normative Commitment Scales. In Study 2, we found that these problems could be overcome by adopting a revised set of items written in North America. The new scales demonstrated good psychometric properties in terms of factorial validity, internal consistency, and criterion‐related validity with respect to turnover intention. We concluded that the three commitment constructs are likely to generalise to non‐Western cultures, but that there might be a need to refine the measures for cross‐cultural research.     

Troubling Troubled Waters in Elementary Science Education: Politics,Ethics & Black Children’s Conceptions of Water [Justice] in the Era of Flint

Abstract

The study of water as a K–12 science idea often divorces its properties from its deeply politicized history as a resource that has been limited, compromised, and intentionally withheld from nondominant communities. Although a robust body of scholarship has aptly critiqued decontextualized and depoliticized pedagogies and called for critical science-learning environments designed through the lens of equity, historicity, and power, more insight is needed into how children develop in relation to these design imperatives and within sociopolitical contexts where environmental issues pose a direct threat. We report select findings from a 2-year ethnographic project that investigated Black student agency in a school with a place-based design. Specifically, we hone in on the themes of water and water justice, which inspired the development of a socio-scientific unit enacted in two 4th-/5th-grade classrooms. This unit coincided with the initial spike in public awareness around the still unresolved water crisis in Flint, MI. For this article, we situate the “Flint” module as an illustrative case of justice-centered science pedagogy and analyze Black students’ disciplinary, affective, and sociopolitical understandings. We found that children’s meaning-making shifted from individualized accounts to critical, systemic explanations of environmental justice issues. The saliency of children's affective understandings throughout the unit was also captured. We expound on these findings and conclude with a discussion of implications, particularly as it relates to the ethics and politics of developing critical scientific capacity in young children to confront lived environmental human rights issues.     

Childhood sexual and physical abuse and the 1-year prevalence of medical problems in the National Comorbidity Survey.

In a population sample (N=5,877; ages 15 to 54), the authors found childhood sexual and physical abuse to be associated with the 1-year prevalence of serious health problems for both men and women. The authors also found that participants' psychiatric disorders partially mediated the effects of physical and sexual abuse on adult health. However, childhood abuse continued to independently influence health status after the authors controlled for psychiatric disorders. Contrary to expectations, individuals who experienced a combination of sexual and physical abuse did not have a higher frequency of health problems than those who experienced either type of abuse alone. Implications for these findings are discussed, including possible mechanisms that may account for the association between childhood abuse and adult health problems.     

Mentalization-based Interventions in Child Psychiatry and Youth Protection Services II: A Model Founded on the Child’s Prementalizing Mode of Psychic Functioning

ABSTRACT

The systematic and rigorous observations of children in child psychiatry and Youth Protection Services in Quebec revealed that most of these children presented multiple, complex and often severe problems, and did not seem to benefit much from classic psychodynamic psychotherapy. Owing to a poorly developed mentalizing capacity, many of these children did not use symbolic play as a means of expressing their intrapsychic conflicts and relational difficulties and did not communicate much verbally with clinicians. It was noted also that these children’s inner world was dominated by prementalizing modes of thinking, namely, the teleological mode, the psychic equivalence mode, and the pretend mode. This article is the last in a series of three. The first concerns the clinical assessment of prementalizing modes of psychic functioning in children and their parents. The second lays out the general objectives, principles and interventions of a mentalization-based treatment for children. This third article presents specific intervention strategies adapted to children’s predominant mode of thinking. The objectives and techniques regarding each mode are discussed. Three clinical examples serve to illustrate the interventions. The authors suggest that these children must develop a certain degree of mentalizing capacity before they can benefit from classic psychodynamic psychotherapy.