Early Termination from Couple Therapy in a Naturalistic Setting: The Role of Therapeutic Mandates and Romantic Attachment

Drawing on a series of 141 couple therapy cases, the main goal of the present study was to determine whether romantic attachment, pre-treatment relationship distress and therapeutic mandates (i.e., reduction of couple distress or ambivalence resolution) are prognostic indicators of early termination. Couples completed the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier 1976) and the Experiences in Close Relationships Questionnaire (Brennan et al. 1998) at intake, whereas therapists filled in the Classification of Therapeutic Mandates (Poitras-Wright and St-Père 2004) after the 4th session. Results showed that an ambivalence resolution mandate, elevated couple distress and higher levels of attachment anxiety were associated with early termination. The implications of these findings to further understand early termination in couple therapy are discussed.     

Motor, Emotional, and Cognitive Empathy in Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Conduct Disorder

It is unclear which aspects of empathy are shared and which are uniquely affected in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and conduct disorder (CD) as are the neurobiological correlates of these empathy impairments. The aim of this systematic review is to describe the overlap and specificity of motor, emotional, and cognitive aspects of empathy in children and adolescents with ASD or CD. Motor and cognitive empathy impairments are found in both ASD and CD, yet the specificity seems to differ. In ASD facial mimicry and emotion recognition may be impaired for all basic emotions, whereas in CD this is only the case for negative emotions. Emotional empathy and the role of attention to the eyes therein need further investigation. We hypothesize that impaired motor and cognitive empathy in both disorders are a consequence of lack of attention to the eyes. However, we hypothesize major differences in emotional empathy deficits between ASD and CD, probably due to emotional autonomic and amygdala hyper-responsivity in ASD versus hypo-responsivity in CD, both resulting in lack of attention to the eyes.     

Finding a place for elimination in inter-level reductionist activities: Reply to Wimsatt

According to Wimsatt, a proper treatment of reduction must distinguish between two types of reductionist activities scientists engage in. One of the benefits of better understanding the nature of reduction, he believes, is that it shows that eliminativism, that is, the elimination of concepts and theories from science, is a rather circumscribed and limited affair, especially in the case of inter-level reductionist activities. While I agree with Wimsatt that it is important to distinguish the two types of reductionisms, I show that elimination in inter-level reductionist activities can be a powerful heuristic in science, driving both inter-level and successional reduction.     

An examination of the effects of axis foreshortening, monocular depth cues, and visual field on object identification

Four experiments are reported on the identification of line drawings of common objects. In each experiment, performance on “unconventional” views of the objects, in which the major axis of the object was foreshortened, was compared to performance on more “conventional” views without appreciable foreshortening. In each experiment, except Experiment 2, where performance on the two views was experimentally equated, the foreshortened views were more difficult to identify than were the conventional views. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that if the foreshortened views were presented on a background with strong monocular depth cues, object identification was improved. This result suggests that part of the difficulty in identifying objects depicted from such a view stems from an improper depth interpretation of the object depictions. Experiments 3 and 4 examined visual field differences in the identification of the two types of object view. Results reported in the neuropsychological literature have shown that people with right-hemisphere damage have particular difficulty with the identification of unconventional views of objects that foreshorten major axes. Accordingly, it was expected that there would be a left visual field advantage for the foreshortened views. Neither experiment yielded any visual field effects consistent with this expectation. Possible reasons for the lack of a field effect are discussed.     

Sleep imaging and the neuro-psychological assessment of dreams

Recent neuroimaging studies show that human rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep is characterized by a specific pattern of regional brain activity. Although this is usually interpreted in relation to physiological and cellular mechanisms, the specific regional distribution of brain activity during REM sleep might also be linked to specific dream features. Remarkably, several bizarre features of normal dreams have similarities with well-known neuropsychological syndromes after brain damage, such as delusional misidentifications for faces and places. We propose that neuropsychological analysis of dream content might offer new ways of interpreting neuroimaging maps of sleep, and make specific predictions for future neuroimaging studies.     

Children's number processing is context dependent

The aim of this paper was to test the hypothesis of a context dependence of number processing in children. Fifth-graders were given two numbers presented successively on screen through a self-presentation procedure after being asked either to add or subtract or compare them. We considered the self-presentation time of the first number as reflecting the complexity of the encoding for a given planned processing. In line with Dehaene's triple-code model, self-presentation times were longer for additions and subtractions than for comparisons with two-digit numbers. Alternative interpretations of these results in terms of more cognitive effort or more mental preparation in the case of addition and subtraction than comparison are discussed and ruled out.     

A Psycho-Phenomenological Approach to Sport Psychology: The Presence of the Opponents in Hurdle Races

The purpose of this article was to discuss a psycho-phenomenological approach in applied sport psychology research. The main aim was to report data detailing the practitioner's own experience in a lived situation and produce some valuable information that could only be obtained in this unique way. So, we present an example of an investigation of the hurdler's experience, to understand how the felt presence of the co-competitors influence the actions. The methods involve explicitation interviews. The basic tenet is to ask the athletes to recall their experience about where their attentional focus was and what they were aware of during the race. We can notice that the opponents are located by the hurdlers in a particular position in their consciousness. This position is used to get maximum speed and to conduct the race.