“Shrink Rap” on the Air,Mentalizing in the Last Frontier

This paper highlights the author's approach to expand the process of mentalizing in a rural Alaskan town. Limited resources and a steady flow in cases of trauma, loss, and abuse prompted the question, “What treatment approach would facilitate healing and the promotion of security?” The author illustrates how a unique culture and independent, frontier-minded individuals influenced her use of a systems and psychoeducational approach. Psychoanalytic concepts, attachment research, and mentalization became the guiding principles for weekly broadcasts of Shrink Rap, a radio show including “relational scenarios” acted and analyzed by the author and community participants.     

The effect of mindfulness meditation on time perception

Research has increasingly focussed on the benefits of meditation in everyday life and performance. Mindfulness in particular improves attention, working memory capacity, and reading comprehension. Given its emphasis on moment-to-moment awareness, we hypothesised that mindfulness meditation would alter time perception. Using a within-subjects design, participants carried out a temporal bisection task, where several probe durations are compared to “short” and “long” standards. Following this, participants either listened to an audiobook or a meditation that focussed on the movement of breath in the body. Finally, participants completed the temporal bisection task for a second time. The control group showed no change after the listening task. However, meditation led to a relative overestimation of durations. Within an internal clock framework, a change in attentional resources can produce longer perceived durations. This meditative effect has wider implications for the use of mindfulness as an everyday practice and a basis for clinical treatment.     

Toddlers' Social Behaviors in Dyads and Groups

Although toddlers are clearly capable of interacting with peers, the amount and type of interactions among toddlers is controversial. Objectives of the present study were (a) to determine the effect of dyad versus group settings on the amount and type of social behaviors with peers, (b) to determine preference for interacting with peers versus adults, and (c) to determine differences in the types of behaviors directed to peers and adults. Sixteen children (with a mean age of 27 months) were observed in both a group setting and a dyad setting; their mothers were present in both settings. The children were from three different toddler classes, each meeting once a week. Specific social behaviors were coded, as well as the person to whom the behavior was directed (i.e., peer or adult). Setting affected toddlers' behaviors with adults but not behaviors with peers. Regardless of setting, toddlers preferred interacting with adults. The types of behaviors directed to peers and adults differed. Direct interactions with peers were rare, but interest and awareness of peers was shown by moderately high levels of proximity and parallel play. The use of different criteria to define social play appears to account for differences across studies in the amount of peer interaction.     

A validation of a computerised task of risk-taking and moral decision-making and its association with sensation-seeking,impulsivity and sociomoral reasoning

The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the computer based application of the Secret Agent (SA) task of risk-taking and moral decision-making. The participants were 100 male patients in a maximum security hospital (50 with severe mental illness and 50 with personality disorder) and 50 community based healthy controls. All participants completed the SA task, the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), and measures of IQ, antisocial personality traits, sensation-seeking, impulsivity and sociomoral reasoning. The SA risk-taking and moral decision-making scales had satisfactory levels of reliability (Cronbach’s alpha). Risk-taking correlated significantly with sensation-seeking across all three participant groups. In contrast, risk-taking only correlated with impulsivity among the severe mental illness group. Moral decision-making correlated with sociomoral reasoning among the personality disorder group. No correlation was found between the SA scores and the IGT score and the IGT did not correlate with sensation-seeking or impulsivity. IQ and antisocial personality traits did not correlate with the SA or IGT scales. The study highlights the importance of context, the nature of the risk-taking task, and ‘problem framing’ of the instructions in their relationship with individual differences.     

Neural predictive mechanisms and their role in cognitive incrementalism

Many neuroscientists view prediction as one of the core brain functions, especially on account of its support of fast movements in complex environments. This leads to the natural question whether predictive knowledge forms the cornerstone of our common-sense understanding of the world. However, there is little consensus as to the exact nature of predictive information and processes, or of the neural mechanisms that realize them. This paper compares procedural versus declarative notions of prediction, examines how the brain appears to carry out predictive functions, and discusses to what degree, and at what level, these neural mechanisms support cognitive incrementalism: the notion that high-level cognition stems from sensorimotor behavior.     

A Review of: “A Guide to the Books of James Hollis”

This article provides a small, personal glimpse of what occurs in a barroom subculture, both negative and positive (e.g., the camaraderie of my Friday night “family members”). I look at life in a barroom from different angles and perspectives, ultimately discovering a great deal of sadness as I try to connect barroom life to my own personal background.