Co-Authoring “We-ness” and Stories of Intimacy

Drawing from narrative ideas and practices, we consider how individuals, couples, and couples with therapists co-author and co-edit stories of “we-ness,” a kind of relational consciousness, and intimacy in the context of research interviews. Adapting the “small story” narrative approach of Michael Bamberg, and recognizing researcher reflexivity, we present details from two separate studies into: (1) how cohabitating couples co-authored stories of “we-ness” in and beyond a research interview; and (2) how young married couples co-authored stories of “we-ness” by describing how they made significant decisions together through difficult yet successful conversations. Inviting such stories of “we-ness” can talk this intimacy into being. We relate the processes and outcomes of these studies to using a narrative approach to help individuals and couples with concerns about intimacy within the context of therapy.     

Assessing moderated mediation in linear models requires fewer confounding assumptions than assessing mediation

It is well known from the mediation analysis literature that the identification of direct and indirect effects relies on strong no unmeasured confounding assumptions of no unmeasured confounding. Even in randomized studies the mediator may still be correlated with unobserved prognostic variables that affect the outcome, in which case the mediator's role in the causal process may not be inferred without bias. In the behavioural and social science literature very little attention has been given so far to the causal assumptions required for moderated mediation analysis. In this paper we focus on the index for moderated mediation, which measures by how much the mediated effect is larger or smaller for varying levels of the moderator. We show that in linear models this index can be estimated without bias in the presence of unmeasured common causes of the moderator, mediator and outcome under certain conditions. Importantly, one can thus use the test for moderated mediation to support evidence for mediation under less stringent confounding conditions. We illustrate our findings with data from a randomized experiment assessing the impact of being primed with social deception upon observer responses to others’ pain, and from an observational study of individuals who ended a romantic relationship assessing the effect of attachment anxiety during the relationship on mental distress 2 years after the break‐up.     

Sleep variability and fatigue in adolescents: Associations with school‐related features

This study aims to evaluate the influences of sleep duration and sleep variability (SleepV), upon adolescents' school‐related situations. The Health Behaviour in School‐Aged Children (HBSC) survey is based on a self‐completed questionnaire. The participants were 3164 pupils (53.7% girls), attending the 8th and 10th grades, 14.9 years old, and were inquired about subjective sleep duration during the week and weekends, SleepV, fatigue, difficulties in sleep initiation, school achievement, feelings towards schools, pressure with school work and skipping classes. Multiple regression models used, as dependent variables: (a) school achievement, (b) disliking school, (c) pressure with school work and (d) skipping classes, using as independent variables, each of the remaining school‐related variables, fatigue, total sleep duration and difficulties in sleep initiation. The average sleep duration in the week and during weekdays was lower than recommended for these age groups, and almost half of students had high SleepV between weekdays and weekends. A logistic model revealed that the absence of SleepV was associated with lower perception of school work pressure, less frequent skipping classes, more infrequent fatigue and more infrequent difficulties in sleep initiation. Poor sleep quality, SleepV and insufficient sleep duration affected negatively school‐related variables.     

The effects of intertrial interval and instructional format on skill acquisition and maintenance for children with autism spectrum disorders

We replicated and extended the study by Koegel, Dunlap, and Dyer (1980) by examining the effects of 3 intertrial‐interval (ITI) durations on skill acquisition in 2 children with autism spectrum disorders. Specifically, we compared the effect of short (2 s), progressive (2 s to 20 s), and long (20 s) ITIs on participants’ mastery of tacts or intraverbals presented in massed‐trial and varied‐trial instructional formats. We also measured (a) stereotypic and problem behavior during the ITI, (b) maintenance of skills, and (c) responding to novel adults and settings. Results showed that short ITIs in a varied‐trial format produced the most efficient acquisition of skills; however, most ITI durations produced more efficient skill acquisition in a varied format compared to a massed format. The trial format and ITI duration associated with the lowest levels of stereotypic and problem behavior during the ITI and responding during maintenance and novel adult and setting probes differed across participants.     

Developing critical awareness: the consequences of action and reflection for perceptions of group injustices

Individuals often cannot address (objective) group injustices until they develop a (subjective) critical awareness of them. In three studies, we tested two potential psychological pathways toward critical awareness: Reflection (deductive, knowledge driven) and action (inductive, action driven) mindsets. Across studies, participants were exposed to an objectively unjust event, enacted by the experimenter. Based on a pilot study (N = 31) and first experiment (N = 28), we developed the hypothesis that action (vs. reflection) mindsets increase group entitativity (due to their reliance on expectancy effects), but not necessarily (subjective) critical awareness of (objective) group injustice. Study 2 (N = 121) confirmed this hypothesis. We discuss the difficulties of developing (subjective) critical awareness of (objective) group injustices.     

The subject in transmission: the phantomic origins of (dual) unity and the birth of the self

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - Abraham and Torok’s clinical concept of the phantom can be rethought in extended terms to account for the challenges inherent in giving birth to...     

Maturation of EEG power spectra in early adolescence: a longitudinal study

This study investigated the fine-grained development of the EEG power spectra in early adolescence, and the extent to which it is reflected in changes in peak frequency. It also sought to determine whether sex differences in the EEG power spectra reflect differential patterns of maturation. A group of 56 adolescents were tested at age 10 years and then at two further time-points approximately 18 months apart. The EEG was recorded during both eyes-closed and eyes-open conditions and Fourier transformed to provide estimates of absolute and relative spectral power at 0.5 Hz intervals from 0.5 to 40 Hz. The peak alpha frequency for each individual at each time-point was also determined for relative spectral power. Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis was used to determine the combination of electrodes and frequencies that showed developmental change, or differed between the sexes. As a function of age, absolute delta and theta frequencies power decreased, and relative alpha2 and beta frequencies increased, replicating the standard findings of a decrease in lower, and increase in higher, frequencies with age. A small but significant increase in peak alpha frequency with age was detected. Moreover PLS analysis performed with individual alpha frequencies aligned to 10 Hz suggested that the age-related increase seen in alpha2 relative power was driven by changes in the peak frequency. Although males demonstrated higher alpha power than females, there were no sex differences in peak frequency, suggesting that there may be more to sex differences in EEG power than simply different rates of maturation between the two sexes.     

The hide-and-seek of retrospective revaluation: recovery from blocking is context dependent in human causal learning

In a typical blocking procedure, pairings of a compound consisting of 2 stimuli, A and X, with the outcome are preceded by pairings of only A with the outcome (i.e., A+ then AX+). This procedure is known to diminish responding to the target cue (X) relative to a control group that does not receive the preceding training with blocking cue A. We report 2 experiments that investigated the effect of extinguishing a blocking cue on responding to the target cue in a human causal learning paradigm (i.e., A+ and AX+ training followed by A- training). The results indicate that extinguishing a blocking cue increases conditioned responding to the target cue. Moreover, this increase appears to be context dependent, such that increased responding to the target is limited to the context in which extinction of the blocking cue took place. We discuss these findings in the light of associative and propositional learning theories.     

The induction of shared identity: the positive role of individual distinctiveness for groups

This article examines inductive processes of social identity formation, the bottom-up processes by which individual group members influence a social identity, integrating it with work on entitativity. Three studies tested the prediction that feelings of individual distinctiveness mediate the relation between inductive social identity formation and entitativity and that entitativity in turn predicts identification. The studies provided consistent support for this theoretical model over alternative models, using a range of different social groups and methods. Study 1 found support for the model in self-selected small groups. Study 2 supported it with a much broader set of groups that were not self-selected. Finally, Study 3 varied levels of inductive social identity formation systematically by varying group size and provided direct support for the hypothesized causal relations.