Strengthening Connectedness in Close Relationships: A Model for Applying Contextual Therapy

This article presents a model for conducting contextual therapy with the aim of contributing to the further development of contextual therapy. Its founder, Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, introduced the core of this approach, relational ethics, as a new paradigm for family therapy, which has been received well. The authors presume that the training of (upcoming) contextual therapists and conducting contextual therapy itself can benefit from more concrete guidelines and a phased structure. It can also enhance the further development, research, and accountability of this approach. Therefore, using a design-oriented method, the authors developed a model that helps to shape a contextual therapy process and the applicable contextual interventions. It is based on strengthening connectedness in close relationships, using relational ethics as its compass. The framework of the model consists of three phases: exploring connectedness in close relationships, modifying connectedness in close relationships, and reinforcing connectedness in close relationships, whereby the goals of each of these phases are defined as process elements and expanded into guidelines for 19 interventions. The ingredients for these interventions are derived from two recent studies on the practice of Nagy and on the practice of current contextual therapists. The model is explained and substantiated based on contextual theory and therapy. Final remarks are presented in the conclusion.     

The assistant referees’ activity in refereeing elite football: Preoccupations when not judging offside

ObjectiveThe purpose of this research was to study the preoccupations assistant referees had to participate in decision making about duels during football games.DesignResearch adopted a phenomenological framework to investigate the assistant referees’ lived experiences in order to understand their activity when they judged duels in match.MethodThis study investigated six professional football matches. Researchers conducted a participatory observation of the refereeing team before each match. Twelve self-confrontation interviews with each assistant referee of each match were conducted in order to make him/her describing his/her unfolding lived experience during the match.ResultsIn case of players’ duels, the perception of contextual cues enabled the assistants to appraise the occurring of a decision process with the central referee. For the assistants, the occurring of a decision process with the central referee meant his priority to intervene in the adjudication of duels, while the absence of decision process with the central referee meant for the assistants the possibility to intervene. The assistants adjusted their way of judging duels to how the central referee judged the previous ones.ConclusionsThe participation of assistants in decision making about duels depends on their preoccupations concerning the central referee’s priority. The way assistants perceive the central referee’s contextual judgment shapes the way they adjudicate duels. A latent intention to coordinate with the central referee, in relation with their collaborative tasks, is embedded in their preoccupations. Our results are a platform to develop further research about the referees’ collective activity.     

Sociocultural influences on adolescent boys' body image and body change strategies

Society provides messages about how people should ideally look and previous research has indicated these messages, both the actual messages provided and the perception of the message, influence body image. Research into male body image has shown males are concerned with having a lean and muscular body and as such, may want to decrease fat and increase their muscles. This paper explored the influence of a range of messages from parents, peers, and the media on a number of different measures of 362 adolescent boys’ body image and body change strategies. Specifically, messages about shape, food, exercise, losing weight and increasing muscles were explored in relation to satisfaction with weight and muscles, and the use of strategies to decrease weight and increase muscles. The findings indicated that parental messages were the strongest influence on body image and that parents, the media, and to a lesser extent messages from male friends were the strongest predictors of body change strategies.     

Both exposure to a novel context and associative learning induce an upregulation of AKAP150 protein in mouse hippocampus

A-kinase anchoring protein 150 (AKAP150) is a multi-enzyme signaling complex that coordinates the action of PKA, PKC, and PP2B at neuronal membranes and synapses. We measured levels of AKAP150 protein in the hippocampus 6h after training mice in a contextual fear conditioning paradigm. In contextual fear conditioning mice learn to associate a context with a footshock presentation. Mice were divided in four experimental groups with different training protocols: naive, no footshock exposure, immediate footshock exposure, and footshock 3min after exposure to the context. We found that AKAP150 protein levels were increased upon exposing mice to the novel context independent of the training protocol. However, when the animals were habituated to the experimental context, only mice that learned to associate the context with the footshock showed an upregulation of AKAP150. We suggest that upregulated levels of AKAP150 contribute to processing the exposure to a novel context and associative learning.     

Valuing thoughts, ignoring behavior: The introspection illusion as a source of the bias blind spot

People see themselves as less susceptible to bias than others. We show that a source of this bias blind spot involves the value that people place, and believe they should place, on introspective information (relative to behavioral information) when assessing bias in themselves versus others. Participants considered introspective information more than behavioral information for assessing bias in themselves, but not others. This divergence did not arise simply from differences in introspective access. The blind spot persisted when observers had access to the introspections of the actor whose bias they judged. And, participants claimed that they, but not their peers, should rely on introspections when making self-assessments of bias. Only after being educated about the importance of nonconscious processes in guiding judgment and action—and thereby about the fallibility of introspection—did participants cease denying their relative susceptibility to bias.     

Defending or relinquishing belief in occurrence for remembered events that are challenged: A social-cognitive model

We describe a social-cognitive model explaining processing of cognitive dissonance resulting from being told by someone that a vividly remembered event did not actually occur. The model proposes that receiving challenges to one's recollection of events results in both intrapersonal and interpersonal cognitive dissonance. Rememberers process intrapersonal dissonance by weighing features of memory representations against the qualities of the feedback, and they process interpersonal elements by weighing the potential costs of agreeing or disagreeing with the challenger within the social dynamics of the relationship. To resolve the dissonance, people will either maintain or reduce belief in occurrence for the event, and will agree or disagree with the challenger. We explore factors that can influence dissonance and how they impact the rememberers' beliefs in occurrence of the event and their interaction with challengers in terms of defending or relinquishing their memory, and we discuss preliminary data confirming some of these factors.     

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR! THE SURRENDER OF GENDER

Close examination of Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905a) reveals an ambiguity in Freud's language as he simultaneously tries to escape 19th‐century psychiatric paradigms concerning sexuality and perversion while also retaining a normative approach to adult sexuality that created new categories of pathology. The result is an ambivalent legacy that has both hampered and helped contemporary clinicians as they deal with a diverse array of presentations of gender and sexual orientation in today's world.     

Incongruent object/context relationships in visual scenes: Where are they processed in the brain?

Rapid object visual categorization in briefly flashed natural scenes is influenced by the surrounding context. The neural correlates underlying reduced categorization performance in response to incongruent object/context associations remain unclear and were investigated in the present study using fMRI. Participants were instructed to categorize objects in briefly presented scenes (exposure duration = 100 ms). Half of the scenes consisted of objects pasted in an expected (congruent) context, whereas for the other half, objects were embedded in incongruent contexts. Object categorization was more accurate and faster in congruent relative to incongruent scenes. Moreover, we found that the two types of scenes elicited different patterns of cerebral activation. In particular, the processing of incongruent scenes induced increased activations in the parahippocampal cortex, as well as in the right frontal cortex. This higher activity may indicate additional neural processing of the novel (non experienced) contextual associations that were inherent to the incongruent scenes. Moreover, our results suggest that the locus of object categorization impairment due to contextual incongruence is in the right anterior parahippocampal cortex. Indeed in this region activity was correlated with the reaction time increase observed with incongruent scenes. Representations for associations between objects and their usual context of appearance might be encoded in the right anterior parahippocampal cortex.     

Varieties of cognitive penetration in visual perception

Is our perceptual experience a veridical representation of the world or is it a product of our beliefs and past experiences? Cognitive penetration describes the influence of higher level cognitive factors on perceptual experience and has been a debated topic in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Here, we focus on visual perception, particularly early vision, and how it is affected by contextual expectations and memorized cognitive contents. We argue for cognitive penetration based on recent empirical evidence demonstrating contextual and top-down influences on early visual processes. On the basis of a perceptual model, we propose different types of cognitive penetration depending on the processing level on which the penetration happens and depending on where the penetrating influence comes from. Our proposal has two consequences: (1) the traditional controversy on whether cognitive penetration occurs or not is ill posed, and (2) a clear-cut perception–cognition boundary cannot be maintained.     

An Intriguing Third Way: Mapping Contextual Education for Curricular Integration

This article emerges from the experience of incorporating doctoral students into our Contextual Education (CXE) Program at Emmanuel College (Toronto). This change, I argue, helped us to distinguish more clearly among and thus distinctly orient the different kinds of relationships and theological practices that make up our program towards the often‐elusive goal of curricular integration. After outlining a definition of integration, I contextualize that definition in our particular practices at Emmanuel College using Kathryn Tanner's (1997) understanding of theology as a cultural practice as my guide. I then offer a brief overview of our CXE Programs to demonstrate how nurturing strategic partnerships within them has made certain forms of integration possible for our students. I close with some activities for practical application in other CXE contexts.