Healing the Attachment Injury of Marital Infidelity Using Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy: A Case Illustration

This case illustration is a demonstration of a therapist handling the betrayal of infidelity through the application of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), specifically utilizing the attachment injury resolution model. An actual dialogue from a key couples session is included as it applies to the model, providing clinicians with an example for how EFT can be applied to the common clinical occurrence of infidelity.     

Ethics and Intuitions: A Reply to Singer

In a recent paper, Peter Singer suggests that some interesting new findings in experimental moral psychology support what he has contended all along—namely that intuitions should play little or no role in adequate justifications of normative ethical positions. Not only this but, according to Singer, these findings point to a central flaw in the method (or epistemological theory) of reflective equilibrium used by many contemporary moral philosophers. In this paper, we try to defend reflective equilibrium from Singer’s attack and, in part, we do this by discussing Singer’s own favoured moral methodology as outlined in his Practical Ethics. Although basing ethics solely on (certain kinds of) intuitions certainly is problematic, we argue, basing it solely on ‘reason’ gives rise to similar problems. The best solution would arguably be one which could strike a balance between the two—but, we suggest, this is precisely what reflective equilibrium is all about.     

“Broken Together”: Spirituality and Religion as Coping Strategies for Couples Dealing with the Death of a Child: A Literature Review with Clinical Implications

The death of a child is an event that can fall into the category of uncontrollable life events, testing the limits of the ability to control of bereaved parents. The literature reviewed showed that religious/spiritual coping is a unique way of coping and may be particularly important for couples who have lost a child. When assessing the couples’ coping strategies, marital therapists would be wise to look for religious/spiritual mechanisms that can be employed in the therapeutic process. Furthermore, the reviewers propose Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (Johnson, 2004, The practice of emotionally focused couple therapy: Creating connection, Routledge, New York) as well suited for helping couples grieving the death of their child.     

Measuring consciousness: Is one measure better than the other?

What is the best way of assessing the extent to which people are aware of a stimulus? Here, using a masked visual identification task, we compared three measures of subjective awareness: The Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS), through which participants are asked to rate the clarity of their visual experience; confidence ratings (CR), through which participants express their confidence in their identification decisions, and Post-decision wagering (PDW), in which participants place a monetary wager on their decisions. We conducted detailed explorations of the relationships between awareness and identification performance, looking to determine (1) which scale best correlates with performance, and (2) whether we can detect performance in the absence of awareness and how the scales differ from each other in terms of revealing such unconscious processing. Based on these findings we discuss whether perceptual awareness should be considered graded or dichotomous. Results showed that PAS showed a much stronger performance-awareness correlation than either CR or PDW, particularly for low stimulus intensities. In general, all scales indicated above-chance performance when participants claimed not to have seen anything. However, such above-chance performance only showed when we also observed a correlation between awareness and performance. Thus (1) PAS seems to be the most exhaustive measure of awareness, and (2) we find support for above-chance performance in the absence of subjective awareness, but such unconscious knowledge only contributes to performance when we observe conscious knowledge as well. Similarities and differences between scales are discussed in the light of consciousness theories and response strategies.     

Partial awareness distinguishes between measuring conscious perception and conscious content: Reply to Dienes and Seth

In their comment on Sandberg, Timmermans, Overgaard, and Cleeremans (2010), Dienes and Seth argue that increased sensitivity of the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) is a consequence of the scale being less exclusive rather than more exhaustive. According to Dienes and Seth, this is because PAS may measure some conscious content, though not necessarily relevant conscious content, “If one saw a square but was only aware of seeing a flash of something, then one has not consciously seen a square.” In this reply, we claim that there is a difference between conscious visual experience, which may be partial, and the resulting conscious content, which is conceptual. Whereas PAS measures the first, confidence judgments and post-decision wagering measure the second.     

Severe Life Events and Chronic Adversities as Antecedents to Anxiety in Children: A Matched Control Study

The present study compared the number of severe life events and chronic adversities as reported retrospectively by mothers of children with an anxiety disorder (n = 39) prior to the onset of their most recent episode, with controls (n = 39) matched for age and sex. The parent version of the Psychosocial Assessment of Childhood Experiences (PACE) was used to assess chronic adversities (long-term experiences with negative impact on child) and severe life events (discrete life events with high long-term threat). A significantly greater number of severe life events and chronic adversities were assessed prior to onset for anxious children compared to controls. The finding for severe life events held regardless of whether impact ratings were assigned by mothers or a panel of independent raters, suggesting the findings reflect actual as opposed to perceived differences. Results suggest that both discrete and chronic stressors may constitute risk for future episodes of anxiety in children.

The relationship between binocular brightness matches and luminance difference discriminability of successively presented light flashes1

Measurements of monocular ΔI and PSE as a function of the ISI between two 2-deg foveal fields successively presented to the same retinal area were obtained for two Standard durations, using the method of constant stimuli. Binocular brightness matches of the stimuli revealed that detection of a difference occurred whenever a constant difference (in log mL) in matching luminance existed. The implication of the results was that ΔI is related to the rate of change of brightness with changes in test-field luminance.     

The non-specificity of theory of mind deficits: Evidence from children with communicative disabilities

The aim of the present paper was to investigate the performance on theory of mind tasks of four different clinical groups: children with deficits in attention, motor control and perception (DAMP), children with autism, children with Asperger syndrome, and non-vocal cerebral-palsied children. The children with DAMP performed on the same level as the comparison group on the first and second order theory of mind task. The children with autism and Asperger syndrome performed somewhat lower than the children with DAMP and the comparison group. However, in respect of the specifcity issue, only 6 out of 14 of the non-vocal participants successfully solved the first order theory of mind task, while 13 out of 14 children in a comparison group did. The children were matched for chronological age and IQ. The findings suggest that deficits in theory of mind are not specific to the autistic continuum, but can be found in other groups with communicative disabilities, implying that linguistic and communicative skills are important precursors in the development of theory of mind. The study also shows that severe dysfunction in attention, motor control, and perception is not associated with any theory of mind difficulties.     

The relationship between family‐of‐origin experiences and sexual satisfaction in married couples

This study examined the relationship between perceptions of family‐of‐origin experiences, sexual satisfaction and marital quality. The sample consisted of 3953 married couples who responded to the relationship evaluation. The results showed that more positive overall family‐of‐origin experiences and parent–child relationships were related to higher sexual satisfaction. Overall, family‐of‐origin experiences and parent–child relationships were predictive of higher sexual satisfaction; however, that relationship was significantly mediated by marital quality. There was a strong positive relationship between marital quality and sexual satisfaction. No major gender differences emerged from the findings. The results suggest that family‐of‐origin experiences play a key role in the sexual satisfaction of married couples, especially when mediated by marital quality, and should be considered in treatment, education and research.