Mothers' representations of their 13-month-old twins and child-raising attitudes

The purpose of this study was to describe maternal representations of the twin sibling relationship and of the children's differences and similarities. Mothers' mental representations were also analyzed with regard to two aspects of their child-raising attitudes: individualization of childcare routines, and the question of differentiation by “external signs of twinship” (dress, toys, and first names). Data from interviews with 44 mothers of twins conducted 13 months after the birth were analyzed in terms of 8 categories—complicity, rivalry/jealousy, agonistic relations, dominance, imitation, physical appearance, development, and personality. A multiple correspondence analysis of the data pointed out that the first dimension describing the mothers' representations concerns the contrast between the “unalike” representation of dizygotic twins and the “alike” representation of monozygotic twins. The second dimension corresponds to the casual, twinship-minimizing representations generated by the twin condition. Two other dimensions express the issues of aggression and dominance. The relationship between the child-raising behavior of the mothers and their representations of the twin couple turned out to be more complex than expected. The results are discussed in terms of the specificity of the psychological issues facing mothers of twins. Defense mechanisms used by some mothers to cope with the exceptional nature of the twin phenomenon are also suggested. © 1998 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

A comparison of noncontingent reinforcement,other competing stimulation,and liquid rescheduling for the treatment of rumination

Modified versions of three popular nonaversive treatments for rumination in a person with profound developmental delay were evaluated using an alternating treatments design (ATD) as a component of an ABAB design. Results showed that the most effective intervention involved noncontingent feeding every 20 s for the 30 min immediately following a meal. Further analysis demonstrated that no significant increase in rumination occurred during the 60 min after the treatment procedure had expired, thus indicating that rumination was not merely postponed. Results are discussed in terms of their relation to currently popular (satiation) interventions for the treatment of rumination in individuals with developmental disability. Future research needs are proposed from an analysis of known behavioral and physiological variables and their possible interactions. ©1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Poetic Confluence: A Sociological Analysis of an Enigmatic Moment

This paper examines a form of interpersonal relationality that takes the form of a speech event in which one participant produces a spoken turn that exhibits a poetic relationship to a co-participant’s unspoken thoughts or unarticulated mental imagery. This examined in relation to an earlier analysis of a speech error during therapy which appeared to reflect some form of telepathic communication between patient and analyst. Drawing from sociological studies of the organization of everyday social interaction, I sketch some ways in which a sociological approach can contribute to psychoanalytic reflections on telepathic experiences between patient and analysts.     

Caregivers’ Positive Emotional Expression and Children’s Psychological Functioning after Parental Loss

The death of a loved one, particularly a parent, has been identified as not only the most common, but also the most distressing form of adversity youth may experience in their lifetime. Surviving caregivers’ communication with their children may play a critical role in shaping bereaved children’s psychological functioning. However, few studies have examined the specific content (e.g., word usage) of caregivers’ verbal communication as a predictor of psychological functioning in bereaved youth. In a sample of 39 parentally-bereaved children and their surviving caregivers, we investigated whether the frequency of caregivers’ use of positive emotion words (e.g., “love”, “happy”, “hope”) during a reminiscing task about the deceased was associated with children’s psychological functioning and coping. In a cross-sectional analysis, we specifically examined whether these associations were moderated by the amount of time passed since children lost their parents. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Program (LIWC) was used to code and evaluate the percentage of positive emotion words caregivers used during the discussion. When caregivers used more positive emotion words, children were less likely to experience depression, anxiety, and avoidant coping. Those associations were present for children who had experienced parental loss at least 105 days prior to the study.     

InterFace: A software package for face image warping,averaging, and principal components analysis

We describe InterFace, a software package for research in face recognition. The package supports image warping, reshaping, averaging of multiple face images, and morphing between faces. It also supports principal components analysis (PCA) of face images, along with tools for exploring the “face space” produced by PCA. The package uses a simple graphical user interface, allowing users to perform these sophisticated image manipulations without any need for programming knowledge. The program is available for download in the form of an app, which requires that users also have access to the (freely available) MATLAB Runtime environment.     

Teaching mands for information using ‘when’ to children with autism

Previous research has evaluated contrived motivating operations to teach mands for information. However, literature evaluating acquisition of the mand when? is comparatively limited. As an extension of Shillingsburg, Bowen, Valentino, & Pierce (2014), we taught three children with autism to engage in mands for information using when under alternating conditions in which a contrived establishing operation was present (EOP ) or absent (EOA ). Following training with a constant prompt delay, all participants acquired the mand for information and demonstrated correct use of the provided information and a decrease in inappropriate attempts to access restricted items.     

Causal grounds for negative truths

Among truthmaker theorists it is generally thought that we are not able to use the entailment principle (i.e. the principle according to which truthmaking distributes across entailment) to ground negative truths. But these theorists usually only discuss truthmakers for truth-functional complexes, thereby overlooking the fact that there are non-truth-functional complexes whose truth values are not solely determined by the truth or falsity of their atomic propositions. And once we expand the class of truths that require their own bespoke truthmakers to also include these, there is no reason to exempt negative truths from grounding. For given that truthmaking is closed under entailment and every negative truths is entailed by some non-truth-functional complex or other, any resources rich enough to ground the truth of the latter will do the same job for the former.     

Strategy and Misdirection in Forced Choice Memory Performance Testing in Deception Detection

We examined forced choice memory performance testing in deception detection from a theoretical perspective. Evidence suggests that participants form different strategies to defeat this test. We attempted to describe these strategies within the framework of Cognitive Hierarchy Theory, a theory that distinguishes strategies based on their degree of anticipation of opponents' strategies. Additionally, we explored whether the strategy selection process is malleable. Truth tellers and liars were subjected to a forced choice memory test about a mock crime. Additionally, half of the sample was subjected to a misdirection changing the appearance of the test to that of a polygraph examination. We found detection accuracies and strategies similar to previous experiments and our misdirection manipulation elicited new strategies and behaviour. Theoretical and practical applications are discussed.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.