Machiavellianism and Theory of Mind in people affected by schizophrenia

CONTEXT: People affected by schizophrenia show deficits in social interaction (Cramer, Bowen, & O'Neill, 1992); such a deficit may stem from an alteration in the representation of mental states. OBJECT: In this study we have examined 42 people affected by schizophrenia, diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria, by testing them with an instrument (the Mach IV scale, Christie & Geis, 1970) assessing "Machiavellian Intelligence" according to Niccolò Machiavelli's assertions. Schizophrenic subjects were compared to a sample of normal controls, matched for age, sex, and education. OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study was to evaluate if there were correlations between the ability to understand other people's mental states and the capacity for interpreting "Machiavellian expressions." RESULTS: Results show that people affected by schizophrenia are less able to use Machiavellian-style "tactical" abilities than controls. CONCLUSION: Such a disability seems to be correlated to poor mentalising abilities.     

Productivity of lexical categories in French-speaking children with cochlear implants

The productivity of lexical categories was studied longitudinally in a sample of 17 young hearing-impaired French-speaking children with cochlear implants. Age of implantation ranged from 22 months to 76 months. Spontaneous speech samples were collected at six-month intervals over a period of 36 months, starting at the one-word stage. Four general measures of their linguistic production (number of utterances, verbal fluency, vocabulary, and grammatical production) as well as 36 specific lexical categories, according to the CHILDES codes, were computed in terms of tokens, i.e., total number of words. Cochlear-implanted children (CI) were compared to a French database of normally hearing children aged 2-4 compiled by the first author. Follow-up results indicate that, at the two-year post-implantation follow-up, noun, and verb morphology was significantly impaired. At the three-year follow-up, the cochlear-implanted group had recovered on adjectives, determiners and nouns, main verbs, and auxiliaries. The two groups differed significantly in processing locative adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs (infinitive verb, modal, and modal lexical), but individual variability within the cochlear-implanted group was substantial. Results are discussed in terms of recovery and developmental trends and variability in the acquisition of lexical categories by French children two years and three years post-implantation.     

The interaction between phonological processing, syntactic awareness, and naming speed in the reading and spelling performance of first-grade children

The performance of 267 first-grade children was examined on tasks assessing phonological processing, syntactic awareness, and naming speed. The children were also given several measures of word and pseudoword reading, reading comprehension, and pseudoword and dictation spelling. A series of hierarchical analyses indicated that three variables (phonological awareness, syntactic awareness, and naming speed) were still predictors of reading and spelling performance after variance in the others had been controlled for. The results, which confirm that syntactic awareness can account for variance in written language after phonological ability had been controlled for, support the hypothesis concerning the relationships between naming-speed processes and written language, and challenge the unitary phonological theory of reading difficulty.     

"I couldn't have seen it coming": the impact of negative self-relevant outcomes on retrospections about foreseeability

We examined a phenomenon related to hindsight bias, specifically, retrospective judgements about the foreseeability of an outcome. We predicted that negative, self-relevant outcomes would be judged as less foreseeable by the recipient of the outcome than by others, unlike either positive outcomes or outcomes that are not self-relevant. In the context of a "stock market decision-making game", the hypothetical stock selected by one of two players showed an extreme increase or decrease. As predicted, the player who received an extreme negative outcome reported that this outcome was less foreseeable than did the opponent and an observer, for whom the outcome was less self-relevant. For no other kind of outcome was there a difference between the recipient of an outcome, the opponent, and the observer. The findings have several implications, including the possibility that hindsight bias should be considered as a special case of retrospective foreseeability.     

Increased semantic and repetition priming in schizophrenic patients

Positive and negative priming (PP and NP) in schizophrenia were studied with a lexical-decision task. Probe words, presented 800 ms after the response to the prime (containing a word and a nonword), were either identical to, semantically related to, or unrelated to the prime target word (PP) or to the prime distractor word (NP). Schizophrenic patients displayed stronger semantic and repetition PP than controls after controlling for their slower responses. Significant NP was observed in both groups for word repetition only. The PP findings contrast with results from studies with similar prime-probe intervals but without prime responses. It is proposed that schizophrenic patients, because of impaired (controlled) processes of response selection, strongly benefit from (or rely on) the automatic retrieval of processing episodes containing response information. Related findings indicating automatic response facilitation in schizophrenia are discussed.     

The practice of Modern Group Psychotherapy: working with past trauma in the present

Modern Group Psychotherapy offers specific techniques for aiding the pre-oedipal patient to speak, connect, and achieve emotional growth. This article illustrates the use of such therapeutic group tools as joining, mirroring, bridging, contact functioning, the object-oriented question, the insulation barrier, and transient identification, through case vignettes. It demonstrates how such techniques protect fragile egos and assist them on their journey to maturity. Emphasis is placed on the creative components of countertransference as a valuable supplement in patient treatment. The power of the group as an agent for change is portrayed.     

Effects of gravitational and optical stimulation on the perception of target elevation

To examine the combined effects of gravitational and optical stimulation on perceived target elevation, we independently altered gravitational-inertial force and both the orientation and the structure of a background visual array. While being exposed to 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 Gz in the human centrifuge at NASA Ames Research Center, observers attempted to set a target to the apparent horizon. The target was viewed against the far wall of a box that was pitched at various angles. The box was brightly illuminated, had only its interior edges dimly illuminated, or was kept dark. Observers lowered their target settings as Gz was increased; this effect was weakened when the box was illuminated. Also, when the box was visible, settings were displaced in the same direction as that in which the box was pitched. We attribute our results to the combined influence of otolith-oculomotor mechanisms that underlie the elevator illusion and visual-oculomotor mechanisms (optostatic responses) that underlie the perceptual effects of viewing pitched visual arrays.     

Relationship Between Specific Adverse Life Events and Psychiatric Disorders

This study examines whether certain psychiatric disorders are associated more closely with adverse life events than other disorders are, and whether some adverse life events are associated with a specific group of disorders (e.g., depressive disorders), but not with other disorders (e.g., anxiety disorders). A probability sample of youth aged 9–17 at 4 sites is used (N = 1,285). Univariate and multivariate logistic regressions identify specific relationships between 25 adverse life events and 9 common child and adolescent psychiatric disorders, measured by the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children. Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and Dysthymia are significantly associated with many of the adverse life events examined, whereas Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Agoraphobia, and Social Phobia are related to very few. This study suggests that certain psychiatric disorders may be more closely associated with adverse life events than other psychiatric disorders are, and that some adverse life events seem to be related to specific types of disorders.