Narrative identity in schizophrenia

This study examined narrative identity in a group of 81 patients with schizophrenia and 50 healthy controls through the recall of self-defining memories. The results indicated that patients’ narratives were less coherent and elaborate than those of controls. Schizophrenia patients were severely impaired in the ability to make connections with the self and extract meaning from their memories, which significantly correlated with illness duration. In agreement with earlier research, patients exhibited an early reminiscence bump. Moreover, the period of the reminiscence bump, which is highly relevant for identity development, was characterized by fewer achievements and more life-threatening event experiences, compared with controls. A negative correlation was found between negative symptoms, number of self-event connections and specificity of narratives. Our results suggest that schizophrenia patients have difficulties to organize and extract meaning from their past experiences in order to create coherent personal narratives.     

Computerised Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for the Prevention and Treatment of Depression and Anxiety in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review

Research has shown that computerised cognitive behaviour therapy (cCBT) can be effective in the treatment of depression and anxiety in adults, although the outcomes with children and adolescents are unclear. The aim of the study is to systematically review the literature on the effectiveness of cCBT for the prevention and treatment of depression and anxiety in children and adolescents. EMBASE, PsychInfo and Pubmed were searched using specific terms and inclusion criteria for cCBT studies involving young people under the age of 18. A hand search was also conducted, and the authors were contacted to identify additional papers. Ten studies met the inclusion criteria. These included case series and randomised controlled trials concerned with both treatment and prevention. Six different software packages were described that varied in length and the nature and extent of professional contact and supervision. All studies reported reductions in clinical symptoms and also improvements in variables such as behaviour, self-esteem and cognitions. Satisfaction with treatment was moderate to high from both children and parents, though levels of drop out and non-completion were often high. Additional randomised controlled trials are required, as the literature is currently limited. However, preliminary evidence suggests that cCBT is an acceptable and effective intervention for this age group.     

Hemispatial neglect and serial order in verbal working memory

Working memory refers to our ability to actively maintain and process a limited amount of information during a brief period of time. Often, not only the information itself but also its serial order is crucial for good task performance. It was recently proposed that serial order is grounded in spatial cognition. Here, we compared performance of a group of right hemisphere-damaged patients with hemispatial neglect to healthy controls in verbal working memory tasks. Participants memorized sequences of consonants at span level and had to judge whether a target consonant belonged to the memorized sequence (item task) or whether a pair of consonants were presented in the same order as in the memorized sequence (order task). In line with this idea that serial order is grounded in spatial cognition, we found that neglect patients made significantly more errors in the order task than in the item task compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, this deficit seemed functionally related to neglect severity and was more frequently observed following right posterior brain damage. Interestingly, this specific impairment for serial order in verbal working memory was not lateralized. We advance the hypotheses of a potential contribution to the deficit of serial order in neglect patients of either or both (1) reduced spatial working memory capacity that enables to keep track of the spatial codes that provide memorized items with a positional context, (2) a spatial compression of these codes in the intact representational space.     

Confabulation and rational obligations for self-knowledge

This paper argues that confabulation is motivated by the desire to have fulfilled a rational obligation to knowledgeably explain our attitudes by reference to motivating reasons. This account better explains confabulation than alternatives. My conclusion impacts two discussions. Primarily, it tells us something about confabulation – how it is brought about, which engenders lively debate in and of itself. A further upshot concerns self-knowledge. Contrary to popular assumption, confabulation cases give us reason to think we have distinctive access to why we have our attitudes.     

Why ‘believes’ is not a vague predicate

According to what I call the ‘Vagueness Thesis’ (‘VT’) about belief, ‘believes’ is a vague predicate. On this view, our concept of belief admits of borderline cases: one can ‘half-believe’ something (Price in Belief, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1969) or be ‘in-between believing’ it (Schwitzgebel in Philos Q 51:76–82, 2001, Noûs 36:249–275, 2002, Pac Philos Q 91:531–553, 2010). In this article, I argue that VT is false and present an alternative picture of belief. I begin by considering a case—held up as a central example of vague belief—in which someone sincerely claims something to be true and yet behaves in a variety of other ways as if she believes that it is not. I argue that, even from the third-person perspective prioritised by proponents of VT, the case does not motivate VT. I present an alternative understanding of the case according to which the person in question believes as they say they do yet also has a belief-discordant implicit attitude otherwise. Moreover, I argue that, independently of the interpretation of any particular case, VT fails to accommodate the first-person perspective on belief. Belief is not only an item of one’s psychology that helps explain one’s behaviour; it is what one takes to be true. This fact about belief manifests itself in the nature of deliberation concerning whether to believe something and that of introspection regarding whether one believes something. Attending to these phenomena reveals that VT is not merely unmotivated, but untenable.     

Auditory attention switching and judgment switching: Exploring multicomponent task representations

An auditory attention-switching paradigm was combined with a judgment-switching paradigm to examine the interaction of a varying auditory attention component and a varying judgment component. Participants heard two dichotically presented stimuli—one spoken by a female speaker and one spoken by a male speaker. In each trial, the stimuli were a spoken letter and a spoken number. A visual explicit cue at the beginning of each trial indicated the auditory attention criterion (speaker sex/ear) to identify the target stimulus (Experiment 1) or the judgment that had to be executed (Experiment 2). Hence, the attentional selection criterion switched independently between speaker sexes (or between ears), while the judgment alternated between letter categorization and number categorization. The data indicate that auditory attention criterion and judgment were not processed independently, regardless of whether the attention criterion or the judgment was cued. The partial repetition benefits of the explicitly cued component suggested a hierarchical organization of the auditory attention component and the judgment component within the task set. We suggest that the hierarchy arises due to the explicit cuing of one component rather than due to a “natural” hierarchy of auditory attention component and judgment component.     

Between cultural relativism and liberal ethnocentrism: What does Saudi Arabia tell us about cultural variation in moral identity and prejudice?

Cultural conceptions of morality are grounded in diverse moral foundations, but moral identity research often assumes that individualizing concerns are the universal basis for morality. Moral identity scales grounded only in individualizing foundations risk liberal ethnocentrism, to the extent that binding foundations emphasized in collectivist cultures are overlooked. Three hundred and ninety-five Saudi Arabian and UK participants completed prejudice and moral identity measures, which either narrowly measured only individualizing foundations or broadly measured both binding and individualizing foundations. The broader measure had greater power to predict prejudice scores in both countries, particularly in Saudi Arabia. Generally, moral identities grounded in individualizing foundations predicted less prejudice, while moral identities grounded in binding foundations predicted higher prejudice in both countries. Individualizing measures of moral identity may assess ethnocentric concepts, but recognizing morality grounded in binding considerations may taint the category of moral identity with self-concepts that are associated with greater—not less—ethnocentrism.     

Adjustment to Acute Leukemia: The Impact of Social Support and Marital Satisfaction on Distress and Quality of Life Among Newly Diagnosed Patients and Their Caregivers

Little is known about the specific patterns of adjustment among newly diagnosed acute leukemia patients and their caregivers. This study examined the trajectories of patient and caregiver distress over time as well as the extent to which marital satisfaction and social support moderated these trajectories among those with significant-other caregivers. Forty six patient-caregiver dyads provided ratings at four time points: within 1 week of diagnosis (T1), 2 week follow-up (T2), 6 week follow-up (T3) and 12 week follow-up (T4). As anticipated, patients and caregivers reported higher levels of distress around the time of diagnosis than they did during subsequent time points. Marital satisfaction was a significant predictor of distress among patients, whereas among caregivers, social support predicted distress and quality of life. Results support the inclusion of relational variables such as social support and relationship satisfaction in the assessment of newly diagnosed patients and families in order to best identify those at risk for distress over time.