Parental burden associated with borderline personality disorder in female offspring

To identify aspects of parental burden associated with borderline personality disorder (BPD), an anonymous internet survey linked to BPD support websites was developed for parents to complete on their BPD offspring and unaffected siblings. The questions cover aspects of the child's life from pregnancy through young adulthood, and query about the impact of the child's BPD on six domains of the parent's life, including physical and emotional health, marriage, job, standard of living, social life, and career trajectory. Additionally, financial burden was assessed with questions pertaining to insurance and out-of pocket costs associated with the BPD disorder. BPD offspring were identified by meeting diagnostic criteria embedded within the survey and having been given a diagnosis of BPD by a professional at some point in their life. We report on 233 female offspring meeting strict criteria for BPD. Parents of daughters with BPD endorsed varying levels of impact on the six domains comprising burden with the largest impact on emotional health which was impacted in over 88% of the respondents. Over 50% of parents endorsed four or greater of the six burden items. Particular aspects of the offspring's BPD symptom profile correlated with intensity of parental burden included including problems in adolescence with acting out behavior (p < .000), property destruction (.003), delusional symptoms (.007), and hallucinatory symptoms (.008). A subgroup of respondents provided data on specific financial expenses. The average and median out-of-pocket expense was $60,087, and $10,000. Insurance costs totaled an average of $108,251 with a mean of $20,000. The average cost per year after diagnosis was $14,606 out-of-pocket and $45,573 billed to insurance. The median cost per year after diagnosis was $3,667 out-of-pocket, and $12,500 billed to insurance. After adjusting for household income, a female proband who had been raped incurred roughly $40,000 more in BPD-related costs, while a diagnosis of conduct disorder led to about $50,000 in additional costs. Parents of female offspring with BPD experience burden in multiple domains of their life and many have incurred substantial financial expense. Increasing awareness of co-morbid conditions in the BPD proband that significantly increase parental burden may be indicators for the provision of increased family support.     

“I didn’t understand their system,and I didn’t know what to do”: Migrant Parents’ Experiences of Mandated Therapy for Their Children

In this phenomenological study, we explored the experiences of migrant parents whose children received mandated therapy in Southern California. Migrants are people who move to a host country either voluntarily as immigrants or involuntarily as refugees. Mandated therapy means that the school or court system required that their children receive services from a mental health provider. Parents often participated by having to take parenting classes and join in some sessions with their children; however, the children were the identified clients. We conducted eight, in-depth interviews with migrant parents. We employed Giorgi and Giorgi’s (Qualitative research in psychology: expanding perspectives in methodology and design. American Psychological Association, Washington, 2003; Qualitative psychology: a practical guide to research methods. Sage, London, 2008) phenomenological psychological research approach to analyze data. Analysis revealed four constituents, which are overarching themes related to the essential structure of the shared phenomenon: (a) migrant parents encountered discrimination and devaluation; (b) migrant parents experienced increased exposure to US culture and the mental health system, which accelerated acculturation; (c) the degree of cultural sensitivity exhibited by providers both positively and negatively influenced participants’ attitudes and perceptions toward mental health services; and (d) migrant parents used their mandated therapy experiences as opportunities to examine their family relationships and to learn new skills and concepts.     

Dismissing-avoidant pattern of attachment and mimicry reactions at different levels of information processing

Individuals with a dismissing-avoidant pattern of attachment are assumed to repress anxiety-related signals, a disposition hypothesized to interfere with facial mimicry and emotional contagion. Further, they are assumed to have one internal working model associated with anxiety, operating out of awareness at early, automatic stages of information processing, and another positive model operating at later, cognitively controlled stages of processing. The main aim of the present investigation was to compare facial mimicry in dismissing-avoidant and non-dismissing subjects at different levels of information processing. Pictures of happy and angry faces were exposed to 61 subjects at three different exposure times (17, 56, and 2,350 ms) in order to elicit facial muscle reactions, first at automatic levels and then at a more controlled levels. Corrugator activity ("frowning muscles") represented negative emotions and zygomaticus activity ("smiling muscles") positive emotions. The dismissing-avoidant subjects scored significantly lower on emotional empathy than the non-dismissing subjects. At the automatic level the dismissing-avoidant subjects showed "normal" corrugator responses (negative emotions) upon exposure to angry faces. At the cognitively controlled level of processing (2,350 ms) a significant interaction effect was shown between Faces x Muscles x Attachment pattern. The dismissing-avoidant subjects showed no corrugator response and an increased zygomaticus response ("smiling reaction") to the angry face, whereas the non-dismissing subjects reacted with a significant mimicking reaction. The dismissing-avoidant subjects' tendency to "smiling" in response to the angry face at the controlled level (2,350 ms) may be interpreted as a repression of their earlier, automatically evoked (56 ms) negative emotional reaction.     

Change in perceptual form attenuates the use of the fluency heuristic in recognition

Four experiments (total N=295) were conducted to determine whether within-modality changes in perceptual form between the study and the test phases of an experiment would moderate the role of the fluency heuristic in recognition memory. Experiment 1 showed that a change from pictures to words reduced the role of fluency in recognition memory. In Experiment 2, the same result was found using counterfeit study lists that supposedly consisted of pictures or words. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that changes in the font used to present the study and test words also attenuated the contribution of fluency to the recognition decision when font change was manipulated between subjects, but not within subjects. Results suggest that the fluency heuristic is subject to metacognitive control, since participants' attributions of perceptual fluency depend on the perceived usefulness of fluency as a cue to recognition.     

Impact forces cannot explain the one-target advantage in rapid aimed hand movements

A pointing movement is executed faster when a subject is allowed to stop at the first target than when the subject has to proceed to a second target ("one-target advantage"). Our hypothesis was that this is because the impact at the target helps to stop the finger when the finger does not have to proceed to a second target. This hypothesis would predict that the horizontal force at contact with the first target should be larger when there is only one-target. Modelling smooth movements with larger forces at contact using a minimum-jerk model, shows that the peak velocity is slightly higher and it occurs later during the movement when there is only one target. Although the one-target advantage was present in our experiment, the horizontal force at contact in the one-target condition was not larger than in the two-target condition. The time of the maximum velocity did not differ, but the maximum velocity was higher in the one-target condition. Thus our hypothesis is rejected, favouring a non-mechanical explanation of the one-target advantage.     

Responsiveness to terrestrial optic flow in infancy: does locomotor experience play a role?

Human infants show a peak in postural compensation to optic flow at approximately nine months of age. The current experiment tested whether the magnitude of visual-postural coupling in 9-month-olds increases when terrestrial optic flow is added to a moving room. A secondary objective was to explore whether locomotor experience plays any role in enhancing responsiveness to the additional terrestrial information. Ninety-one infants (experienced creepers, nascent creepers, and prelocomotors) were exposed to two conditions of optic flow: global optic flow (G) and global optic flow minus terrestrial optic flow (G-T). The additional terrestrial optic flow led to significantly higher visual-postural coupling. Consistent with previous findings, locomotor experience had no effect on responsiveness to the G-T condition, though there was weak evidence that the nascent creepers were more strongly influenced by the difference between flow conditions than the other infants. Unexpectedly, the prelocomotor females showed significantly lower visual-postural coupling than the prelocomotor males. These findings support the notion that the ground provides an important source of information for the control of posture and locomotion. The findings also suggest that locomotor experience most likely helps to functionalize smaller (partial), rather than larger (global), optic flow fields for postural control.     

Are preschoolers sensitive to configural information in faces?

Several researchers have proposed that developmental improvements in children's face recognition abilities might reflect an increasing reliance on configural information (i.e. spatial relations between features) in faces (Carey & Diamond, 1994; Mondloch, Le Grand & Maurer, 2002). We investigated 4- and 5-year-olds' use of configural information for upright and inverted faces using Tanaka and Sengco's (1997) configural change paradigm. Participants saw a photograph of a child's face (e.g. Luke). Memory for features (e.g. Luke's mouth) was then tested in a face with the same configuration as the study face (e.g. Luke's face), in a face with a novel spatial configuration (e.g. Luke's face with the eyes shifted further apart), and presented on their own (e.g. Luke's mouth alone). We found that preschoolers and adults recognized target features from upright faces better when tested in the context of a face with the same configuration as the study face, than when they were embedded in a face with a new spatial configuration or when they were presented in isolation. This effect was lost when faces were inverted. The results suggest that adult-like styles of face processing are present from 4 years of age.