Early temperamental and psychophysiological precursors of adult psychopathic personality

Emerging research on psychopathy in children and adolescents raises the question of whether indicators, such as temperament or psychophysiology, exist very early in life in those with a psychopathic-like personality in adulthood. This study tests the hypothesis that individuals who are more psychopathic in adulthood would be less fearful and inhibited and more stimulation seeking/sociable at age 3 and that they would also show reduced age 3 skin-conductance (SC) responsivity. In a community sample of 335 3-year-olds, behavioral measures of temperament were taken and electrodermal activity was recorded in response to both orienting and aversive tones. R. D. Hare's (1985) Self-Report Psychopathy scale (SRP-II) was administered at follow-up at age 28. Individuals scoring higher on the measure were significantly less fearful and inhibited, were more sociable, and displayed longer SC half-recovery times to aversive stimuli compared with controls at age 3. Contrary to predictions, they also showed increased autonomic arousal and SC orienting. Findings appear to be the first to suggest that a prospective link may exist between temperament and psychophysiology in very young children and psychopathic personality in adulthood.     

Working memory for language is not special: Evidence for an articulatory loop for novel stimuli

The “articulatory loop” for rehearsal of verbal materials in working memory has been shown not to be a unique hard-wired structure associated with spoken language. Specifically, a parallel rehearsal process for sign language occurs in fluent signers. Here we show that the same rehearsal process can occur for unfamiliar, nonmeaningful body movements. We conclude that working memory maintenance does not rely on a dedicated architecture, but instead involves the strategic recruitment of resources as needed for the task demands.     

Training Genetic Counsellors to Deliver an Innovative Therapeutic Intervention: their Views and Experience of Facilitating Multi-Family Discussion Groups

Innovations in clinical genetics have increased diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of inherited genetic conditions (IGCs). This has led to an increased number of families seeking genetic testing and / or genetic counselling and increased the clinical load for genetic counsellors (GCs). Keeping pace with biomedical discoveries, interventions are required to support families to understand, communicate and cope with their Inherited Genetic Condition. The Socio-Psychological Research in Genomics (SPRinG) collaborative have developed a new intervention, based on multi-family discussion groups (MFDGs), to support families affected by IGCs and train GCs in its delivery. A potential challenge to implementing the intervention was whether GCs were willing and able to undergo the training to deliver the MFDG. In analysing three multi-perspective interviews with GCs, this paper evaluates the training received. Findings suggests that MFDGs are a potential valuable resource in supporting families to communicate genetic risk information and can enhance family function and emotional well-being. Furthermore, we demonstrate that it is feasible to train GCs in the delivery of the intervention and that it has the potential to be integrated into clinical practice. Its longer term implementation into routine clinical practice however relies on changes in both organisation of clinical genetics services and genetic counsellors’ professional development.     

Musical competence and phoneme perception in a foreign language

We investigated whether musical competence was associated with the perception of foreign-language phonemes. The sample comprised adult native-speakers of English who varied in music training. The measures included tests of general cognitive abilities, melody and rhythm perception, and the perception of consonantal contrasts that were phonemic in Zulu but not in English. Music training was associated positively with performance on the tests of melody and rhythm perception, but not with performance on the phoneme-perception task. In other words, we found no evidence for transfer of music training to foreign-language speech perception. Rhythm perception was not associated with the perception of Zulu clicks, but such an association was evident when the phonemes sounded more similar to English consonants. Moreover, it persisted after controlling for general cognitive abilities and music training. By contrast, there was no association between melody perception and phoneme perception. The findings are consistent with proposals that music- and speech-perception rely on similar mechanisms of auditory temporal processing, and that this overlap is independent of general cognitive functioning. They provide no support, however, for the idea that music training improves speech perception.     

The emotional integration of childhood experience: physiological, facial expressive, and self-reported emotional response during the adult attachment interview

Attachment researchers claim that individual differences in how adults talk about their early memories reflect qualitatively distinct organizations of emotion regarding childhood experiences with caregivers. Testing this assumption, the present study examined the relationship between attachment dimensions and physiological, facial expressive, as well as self-reported emotional responses during the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Consistent with theoretical predictions, more prototypically secure adults behaviorally expressed and reported experiencing emotion consistent with the valence of the childhood events they described. Insecure adults also showed distinctive and theoretically anticipated forms of emotional response: Dismissing participants evidenced increased electrodermal activity during the interview, a sign of emotional suppression, whereas preoccupied adults showed reliable discrepancies between the valence of their inferred childhood experiences and their facial expressive as well as reported emotion during the AAI. Results substantiate a case that the AAI reflects individual differences in emotion regulation that conceptually parallel observations of attachment relationships in infancy.     

Is cognitive therapy consistent with what we know about emotions?

The cognitive perspective has been a dominant force in psychology and psychotherapy since the 1970s. Cognitive therapies share an emphasis on the priority of changing cognition as the key to bringing about changes in patterns of dysfunctional emotional reactions and symptomatic behaviors. In this article, the author examined the basis for the assumptions of cognitive therapy in the context of recent evidence of the long-term effects of stressful experiences. This evidence contradicts the assumption of many cognitive therapists that changing cognition is prior to and necessary to changing emotional reactions. Neurobiological evidence indicates that emotions can be experienced without cortical interpretations of stimuli, and clinical evidence indicates that experiences can be stored as isolated affective fragments that function later to distort cognition. This suggests that cognitive therapies are based on a limited model of mental functions that sometimes must be supplemented by broader psychodynamic concepts if lasting changes are to occur.