Practicing Clinical Supervision in Chile: Lessons from 28 Years of Training

Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy - This article describes a model of supervision developed by Centro MIP in Santiago, Chile. This model is situated in the cultural history and legal context of...     

How sublexical association strength modulates updating: Cognitive and strategic effects

In the current study, we investigated updating of long-term memory (LTM) associations. Specifically, we examined sublexical associations by manipulating preexisting LTM relations between consonant couplets (in encoding and updating phases), and explicitly instructed participants to engage with a specific strategy for approaching the task (item disjunction, grouping, or none). In two experiments, we used a multistep subject-based memory updating task in which we measured processing response times (RTs; Exp. 1, Exp. 2) and recognition RTs (Exp. 2). For the first time, in both experiments, we found costs in dismantling strong pre-existing associations from LTM and benefits in recreating strong preexisting associations. In addition, we found that control of irrelevant information was more difficult when this belonged to a strong association. Regarding task strategies, we showed that inducing a disjunction strategy enhanced updating, no matter the strength of the association. Results were discussed in the light of updating as a process of dismantling and recreating associations. The role of a specific strategic approach in enhancing the updating was also discussed.     

Attentional biases for threat after fear-related autobiographical recall

Background : Previous studies suggested that affective state could enhance stimulus salience and modulate attention allocation for mood-congruent information, but contrasting data have been reported on the effects of mood induction on attentional biases for threat (ABTs) in non-clinical individuals.

Objective : We aimed to assess whether laboratory-induced negative mood can increase individuals’ tendency to allocate attention on threatening stimuli, thus determining a difficulty in attentional disengagement from threat. We also aimed at assessing whether level of trait anxiety could modulate the effect of mood induction on attentional biases.

Methods : We used an autobiographical episode recall procedure for mood induction (fear, happiness and neutral episode recall), and an exogenous cueing task with threatening and non-threatening images to assess attentional biases in 120 undergraduate students.

Results: Participants showed a significant difficulty in disengaging attention from threat after recalling fear-related episodes, independently from their trait anxiety level.

Conclusions: These findings clarify that the ABTs are not exclusive to anxiety disorders or high trait anxiety individuals, and could also arise in non-clinical individuals in a fearful context.     

Infantile sexuality and Freud's legacy

The topic of sexuality and infantile sexuality, though less frequently discussed by psychoanalysis in recent decades, has received renewed attention for some years. The intention of this paper is to share some reflections around the role of infantile sexuality in our thinking, how we encounter it in our work with patients and in clinical material. Through reference to questions put forward by Freud (1905) in Three Essays, this paper takes into consideration some areas of the debate that has developed on the subject of infantile sexuality, starting from Freud's original intuition, including various hypotheses on the genesis of the sexual drive. The author will concentrate on two specific points. Firstly, how infantile sexuality – as a permanent dimension of the subject's existence – unfolds in the relationship and is deeply influenced by it. And that is how in childhood and adolescence, infantile sexuality ushers in parental sexuality – just as, in the case of our patients, infantile sexuality ushers in the analyst's sexuality. The second point pertains to the temporal dimension within which infantile sexuality is inscribed. The hypothesis that the author proposes is that infantile sexuality may be understood in the specific time of psychoanalysis [Nachträglichkeit], distinct and different with respect to the linear, evolutionary dimension.     

Exemptions for Whom? On the Relevant Focus of Egalitarian Concern

Granting differential treatment is often considered a way of placing some groups in a better position in order to maintain or improve their cultural, economic, health-related or other conditions, and to address persistent inequalities. Critics of multiculturalism have pointed out the tension between protection for groups and protection for group members. The ‘rule-and-exemption’ approach has generally been conceived as more resistant to such criticism insofar as exemptions are not conceded to minorities or ethical and religious groups as such, but to individuals who are part of those groups. However, I show that when a government grants an exemption, it inevitably provides a definition of the relevant group in question, and the tendency is to take cultural membership as ‘given’ or as defined by group spokespersons. I discuss some problems related to these definitions and defend instead a definition based on shared group interests.     

Layer and regional effects of environmental enrichment on the pyramidal neuron morphology of the rat

The environmental enrichment (EE) paradigm is widely used to study experience-dependent brain plasticity. Several studies have investigated functional and anatomical EE effects. However, as EE effects are different according to cerebral region, cortical layer, dendritic field and morphological index considered, a univocal characterization of neuronal morphological changes following rearing in enriched environments is lacking.Aim of the present study was to characterize in the rat the effects of EE on the neuronal morphology of frontal and parietal cortical regions, the main target areas of the stimulation provided by the paradigm. Male Wistar rats were housed in an enriched environment for 3.5 months from the 21st postnatal day. For the morphological analysis, biotinylated dextran amine (BDA)-labeled pyramidal neurons were selected from frontal (M1–M2) and parietal (S1–S2) cortical layers III and V. Apical and basal dendritic branching and spines were analyzed using the Sholl method.Results showed that EE increased branching and spines in both layers of frontal cortex, but had a greater effect on apical arborization. In parietal cortex, EE significantly affected branching and spines in layer III but not layer V neurons, in which only a tendency to be influenced by the rearing conditions was observed in basal arborization.It is hypothesized that these multifaceted morphological EE effects are connected to the heavy involvement of a sensory-motor circuit engaged in the guidance of voluntary action and in motor learning activated by EE stimulation.     

What makes a word so attractive? Disclosing the urge to read while bisecting

Expert readers have been repeatedly reported to misperceive the centre of visual stimuli, shifting systematically to the left the bisection of any lines (pseudoneglect) while showing a cross-over effect while bisecting different types of orthographic strings (Arduino et al., 2010, Neuropsychologia, 48, 2140). This difference has been attributed to asymmetrical allocation of attention that visuo-verbal material receives when lexical access occurs (e.g., Fischer, 2004, Cognitive Brain Research, 4, 163). The aim of this study was to further examine which visual features guide recognition of potentially orthographic materials. To disentangle the role of orthography, heterogeneity, and visuo-perceptual discreteness, we presented Italian unimpaired adults with four experiments exploiting the bisection paradigm. The results showed that a cross-over effect emerges in most discrete strings, especially when their internal structure, that is being composed of heterogeneous elements, is suggestive of orthographically relevant material. Interestingly, the cross-over effect systematically characterized the processing of letter strings (Experiment 2) and words (Experiments 3 and 4), whether visually discrete or not. Overall, this pattern of results suggests that neither discreteness nor heterogeneity per se are responsible for activating visual scanning mechanisms implied in text exploration, although both contribute to increasing the chance of a visual stimulus undergoing a perceptual analysis dedicated to pre-lexical processing.