Categorical perception of anger is disrupted in alexithymia: Evidence from a visual ERP study

High and low alexithymia scorers were confronted with a modified visual oddball task that allowed the study of categorical perception of emotional expressions on faces. Participants had to quickly detect a deviant (rare) morphed face that shared or did not share the same emotional expression as the frequent one. Expected categorical perception effects, which were also neurophysiologically indexed, showed that rare stimuli were detected faster if they depicted a different emotional expression compared to rare stimuli depicting the same emotional expression than the frequent one. Even if no differences were observed at a behavioural level, high alexithymia scorers evidenced overall delayed neurophysiological responses in components related to the attentional processing of rare emotional faces. Moreover, the categorical perception effects for event-related components associated with the attentional processing were smaller in high alexithymia scorers and were even absent for anger. These results show that high alexithymia scorers present discrimination delays that are already observed at the attentional level.     

Is self-esteem an important outcome in hyperactive children?

Using a prospective design, this study examined (a) whether hyperactive children suffer from low self-esteem as adolescents; (b) whether low self-esteem is associated with poor functioning in adolescence; (c) whether hyperactive children exhibit a positive illusory bias, in which self-esteem is independent of level of functioning; and (d) whether self-esteem in adolescence is associated with poor functioning in adulthood. Subjects were 65 children diagnosed as hyperactive in childhood, and 62 matched controls sampled from a medical clinic. After controlling for current mental disorder, the hyperactive cohort reported lower self-esteem in adolescence, was judged by clinicians to have lower levels of overall adjustment in adolescence, and had lower educational achievement and occupational rank in adulthood, as compared to controls.This study was supported in part by Public Health Service grant MH 18579 and Mental Health Clinic Research Center grant MH 30906. We gratefully acknowledge Dr. Jacob Cohen for his valuable statistical advice, Dr. Richard Rende for helpful comments, and two anonymous reviewers for useful suggestions.     

Test-Retest Reliability of Maternal Reports of Lifetime Mental Disorders in Their Children

This study examined the test-retest reliability of maternal reports of lifetime psychopathology using DSM-III-R criteria in nonreferred offspring. Sixty-three mothers reported on 79 children, ages 6 to 18 years. Retest intervals were between one and 12 months. The results indicated acceptable reliability for all supraordinate categories (any disorder, any anxiety disorder, any disruptive disorder, externalizing disorders, internalizing disorders) as well as for most individual diagnoses (separation anxiety disorder, simple phobias, oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit disorder with and without hyperactivity, simple phobias, and adjustment disorder). Maternal reports for any diagnosis were significantly better for intervals under 6 months than for longer retest intervals. Reliability of maternal reports was not significantly affected by child's age or gender. This study supports the expectation that a history of psychiatric disturbance in children can be obtained reliably from mothers.     

Adjustment, Depression, and Minimal Goal Setting: The Moderating Effect of Performance Feedback

In this study I tested hypotheses about changes in expectancy and minimal goal statements and the relations of these variables to adjustment. Seventy-seven male college students completed the Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank and the Beck Depression Inventory and subsequently received success or failure feedback on tasks for which they provided expectancy and minimal goal statements. Expectancies and minimal goals changed differently, relative to each other, as a function of performance feedback. Modest relations of adjustment and dysphoria with minimal goals were found, but these were moderated by performance feedback: Under failure, poorer adjustment and greater dysphoria were associated with higher minimal goals; under success, poorer adjustment and greater dysphoria were associated with lower minimal goals, contrary to a widely held hypothesis. Moreover, although the effects of adjustment and dysphoria on minimal goal setting were similar in strength and direction, these effects were independent of each other. Thus, adjustment-minimal goal relations must be understood in light of situational parameters and may reflect two processes, only one of which is related to mood.     

Embodying analysis: the body and the therapeutic process

This paper considers the transfer of somatic effects from patient to analyst, which gives rise to embodied countertransference, functioning as an organ of primitive communication. By means of processes of projective identification, the analyst experiences somatic disturbances within himself or herself that are connected to the split‐off complexes of the analysand. The analysty’s own attempt at mind‐body integration ushers the patient towards a progressive understanding and acceptance of his or her inner suffering. Such experiences of psychic contagion between patient and analyst are related to Jung’s ‘psychology of the transference’ and the idea of the ‘subtle body’ as an unconscious shared area. The re‐attribution of meaning to pre‐verbal psychic experiences within the ‘embodied reverie’ of the analyst enables the analytic dyad to reach the archetypal energies and structuring power of the collective unconscious. A detailed case example is presented of how the emergence of the vitalizing connection between the psyche and the soma, severed through traumatic early relations with parents or carers, allows the instinctual impulse of the Self to manifest, thereby reactivating the process of individuation.     

On the Innocence and Determinacy of Plural Quantification

Plural logic is widely assumed to have two important virtues: ontological innocence and determinacy. It is claimed to be innocent in the sense that it incurs no ontological commitments beyond those already incurred by the first‐order quantifiers. It is claimed to be determinate in the sense that it is immune to the threat of non‐standard (Henkin) interpretations that confronts higher‐order logics on their more traditional, set‐based semantics. We challenge both claims. Our challenge is based on a Henkin‐style semantics for plural logic that does not resort to sets or set‐like objects to interpret plural variables, but adopts the view that a plural variable has many objects as its values. Using this semantics, we also articulate a generalized notion of ontological commitment which enables us to develop some ideas of earlier critics of the alleged ontological innocence of plural logic.     

Cancer: A Paradoxical Form of Adaptation? Insulin-Cortisol Dominance and Epigenetic Aspects

The information contained in DNA is not definitive, but modifiable. Indeed, the environment has the power to modify the genetic material expression without altering the DNA genes sequence. The principal environmental factors that work in this way, whether in a positive or in a negative way, are diet and stress with their ruling hormones, insulin and cortisol; these hormones are normally antagonists but, when they reach their respective resistances, they become the ubiquitary etiopathogenetic factors in bidirectional convergent relationship, each other causing the disinhibition and development of low grade systemic inflammation that opens the door to a myriad of interconnected sets of problems. Among these problems the greater one is cancer, which represents the extreme junction between hyperinsulinemia and hypercortisolemia, just because cancer cells never become insulin resistant and/or cortisol resistant.     

Same-sex parent families in Italy: Validation of the Coparenting Scale-Revised for lesbian mothers and gay fathers

Even though Italy is still struggling to establish equal rights and access to assisted reproduction techniques for sexual minorities, an increasing number of lesbian women and gay men are now becoming parents. There are only a few studies that have evaluated coparenting in same-sex couples. However, these addressed adoptive couples and not the lesbian and gay parent families through donor insemination or surrogacy, respectively. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Coparenting Scale-Revised and its relationship with dyadic adjustment, discipline management, and internalized sexual stigma in Italian same-sex-planned families. The factor structure showed a satisfactory internal consistency and criterion validity with correlates of coparenting behaviours. While Family Integrity factor was confirmed, Disparagement and Reprimand dimensions collapsed into Conflict factor. Non-genetic parents showed lower levels of conflict than genetic parents. Most importantly, coparenting emerged as a significant function not shaped by gender, but influenced by parental status and internalized sexual stigma.     

Motor imagery in spinal cord injured people is modulated by somatotopic coding,perspective taking,and post‐lesional chronic pain

Motor imagery (MI) allows one to mentally represent an action without necessarily performing it. Importantly, however, MI is profoundly influenced by the ability to actually execute actions, as demonstrated by the impairment of this ability as a consequence of lesions in motor cortices, limb amputations, movement limiting chronic pain, and spinal cord injury. Understanding MI and its deficits in patients with motor limitations is fundamentally important as development of some brain–computer interfaces and daily life strategies for coping with motor disorders are based on this ability. We explored MI in a large sample of patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) using a comprehensive battery of questionnaires to assess the ability to imagine actions from a first‐person or a third‐person perspective and also imagine the proprioceptive components of actions. Moreover, we correlated MI skills with personality measures and clinical variables such as the level and completeness of the lesion and the presence of chronic pain. We found that the MI deficits (1) concerned the body parts affected by deafferentation and deefferentation, (2) were present in first‐ but not in third‐person perspectives, and (3) were more altered in the presence of chronic pain. MI is thus closely related to bodily perceptions and representations. Every attempt to devise tools and trainings aimed at improving autonomy needs to consider the cognitive changes due to the body–brain disconnection.