Predicting early emotion knowledge development among children of colour living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods: consideration of child pre-academic abilities,self-regulation,peer relations and parental education

ABSTRACT

Emotion knowledge, the ability to accurately perceive and label emotions, predicts higher quality peer relations, higher social competence, higher academic achievement, and fewer behaviour problems. Less is known, however, about predictors of early development of emotion knowledge. This study examines emotion knowledge development among children attending pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten programmes in high-poverty urban schools. The study considers child pre-academic abilities, self-regulation, peer relations and parental education as predictors of emotion knowledge development over two years. The sample (n?=?1034) of children living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods was primarily Black (85%) and low-income (～61%). The sample was part of a longitudinal follow-up study of a cluster (school) randomised controlled trial in ten public elementary schools. Children’s emotion knowledge was assessed with a series of tasks three times over a two-year period. At baseline, parents and teachers reported on peer relations, children completed a test of pre-academic abilities, independent observers rated child self-regulation, and parents reported on their educational attainment. Results demonstrate that emotion knowledge increases over time, and pre-academic abilities, self-regulation, peer relations, and parent education independently predict children’s emotion knowledge. This study highlights multiple factors that predict emotion knowledge among primarily Black children living in historically disinvested neighbourhoods.     

Seduction,date rape,and aborted surrender

Abstract

This paper clarifies the dual-layered nature of the “demon lover complex,” with its background of both pre-Oedipal trauma and Oedipal-level desire. It draws on an object relations understanding of the unconscious and dissociated addiction to an internal demon object that has derivations in the personalities of the actual parents, and in the internalization of these parents. The dramatic case of early trauma compounded by adult date rape trauma serves to illustrate how a “developmental mourning process” in treatment can resolve such trauma. It also illustrates how reparation with the mother that partially heals pre-Oedipal trauma cannot immunize anyone against Oedipal-level attractions to a “demon lover” father, as represented in a displacement, resulting in victimized behavior, and in an aborted surrender to heterosexual desire. However, this victimization can be resolved, as seen in the clinical illustration, when the psychoanalyst has an understanding of the mourning process in developmental terms, working with a natural interaction between mourning and transference evolutions in treatment. The case also demonstrates the transitional object role of the psychoanalyst who is involved with the healing of pre-Oedipal trauma through mourning.     

Mirroring,imitation, identification: the sense of self in relation to the mother's internal world

The phenomenon of neonatal imitation, and the use of mutual imitation by mother and baby in the service of attunement, are considered in relation to psychoanalytic theories of mirroring, imitation and identification. Material from infant observation and from the treatment of two children on the autistic spectrum is discussed in terms of the suggestion that developmental imitation implies a perceived position of balance between the external baby and the mother's supposed internal occupant. This is seen as making possible introjective identification and assimilation, with the enrichment of the sense of identity, in contrast to the kind of imitation involving mimicry, in which adhesive or projective identification may be operative.     

Frustration and disappointment

The paper describes research on children’s responses to failures of gratification. Although this has always been an important area of consideration in psychoanalytic thinking, arguments are put forward for the child’s actual feelings of disappointment being significant in ways that have yet to be fully realised theoretically and clinically within Kleinian object relations. Since Freud first used the term ‘frustration’, it has been applied in psychoanalysis as a means by which to describe in an undifferentiated way all those responses to failures of gratification that have an aggressive content. It will be argued that, in a context of the historical shift in thinking from drive to relational models, there is now perhaps scope to posit the existence instead of two discrete object relational positions towards such failures of aim – that frustrated responses can be differentiated in important structural and developmental ways from disappointed ones, by suggesting that the former are schizoid, whilst the latter are depressive in quality. To try and begin to test the hypothesis that there might be an object relational distinction between feelings of frustration and feelings of disappointment, selected process notes from two training cases became the subject of a combined piece of clinical and theoretical research. I will outline how this research was undertaken and present the findings that arose from the clinical part of it. With the use of a content analysis, a method for gathering interesting quantitative data about the children’s various responses to the failures of gratification was arrived at.     

Self objects and development: Infant states of mind in an adolescent girl

In the context of Fordham's model of the deintegrating-reintegrating self, the paper discusses the total quality of the baby's earliest deintegrations and the nature of what Fordham terms the self object. The use of the term ‘whole object’ in Klein's and Fordham's terminology is explored and the self object is placed in the context of Jung's construct of the self and the archetypes. The paper illustrates how residues of the self object permeated a rule-making defensive structure in a 14-year-old girl and how the therapy provided an opportunity for the defence to loosen and for elements that had been locked, as potentials, in a ‘bump car’ self object, to unfold and develop. These elements included the possibility of enjoying the feminine qualities of being a girl and exploration of the mother-infant couple and its confusions in her inner world. In addition, they included getting in touch with an infant, vulnerable part of her personality and modifying a habitual defence which was to take refuge in projective identification with an aggressive, omnipotent phantasied brother. Another important element unfolded through the separation of herself from the idealized, precept-daughter in her mother's mind. A fixed projective identification with a self object became more flexible as the object was explored and developed, and its archetypal absoluteness modified, in the therapeutic relationship.     

RICOEUR'S PHILOSOPHY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS

In differentiation of early and mature shame, the phenomenological content of shame changes with the development of a stable self-state. In this hypothesis, early shame refers to a person's dependence upon mirroring himself and in being mirrored by an outer object, while mature shame refers to introspection and self-reflection. From a developmental psychological point of view, the connection between self-development and mirroring is expounded. Mirroring is defined as a psychic dialectic process between the inner psychic reality and the outer reality. Early shame is connected to dyadic mirroring, which refers to attachment and empathy. Mature shame is connected to triadic mirroring, which refers to separation and reflection. Early shame emerges from discrepancies between the infant's expectations of a complementary affective response and the mother's response, and is defined as an early marker of differences in the mother/infant unit. It is argued that early shame in smaller ‘doses’ has a regulating function on self-development by maintaining the psychic dialectic process, while in larger ‘doses’, it has a disturbing effect on the self-development, resulting in pathological shame. In the therapeutic process, early shame appears as shame scenarios illustrated in the text by a clinical vignette.     

The present and absent object—on thinking and the capacity to symbolize

In this paper, Bion's different theories on the development of thinking will be introduced: on the one hand, his theory of thoughts as resulting from tolerance for the absence of the object, and on the other hand, dream thoughts and thoughts as resulting from the presence of the object, originally through the mother's containing function. The effects of failures in this development will be discussed; among other things, a hypertrophy of the apparatus of projective identification at the expense of thinking capacities. Briefly, a comparison will be made between a facilitating relation between container and contained and the oscillation between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive position, which Bion describes as a prerequisite for open symbolizing processes. Bion's theories and concepts will be supplemented by Winnicott's theories on the “creative illusion” and the breast/the mother as a “subjective object” as a precondition for the symbolizing capacity that later develops in the “potential space”. Very briefly, a comparison is made between Winnicott's term “the subjective object” and Segal's term “symbolic equation”. Clinical vignettes are interpolated.     

Value Differentiation Between Enemies and Allies: Value Projection in National Images

The current study aimed to investigate value projection between Palestinians, Israelis, Americans, and Swiss as a function of their group's stance toward the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict. Drawing on image theory, we assumed that images—operationalized by value projection—would be a function not just of features of the target group, but of the rater group's relationship with the target group. Value projection can be seen as an indicator of (de)humanization as values represent goals and desirable behaviors of a person. We therefore expected higher projection to ally than to enemy groups, whereas we expected no difference in projection to out‐groups with neutral relations. Results show that allies did indeed project Security and Power to a higher degree to each other than to enemies, and enemies showed no, or even negative, projection onto each other. The ally of the enemy (Americans) was projected less negatively by Palestinians than vice versa, pointing to the higher complexity of third‐party images as opposed to the more classical ally and enemy images. As expected, Swiss students showed almost no difference in projection to the different out‐groups. These results confirm that the relationship between groups (e.g., alliance, enmity) rather than a consensual view of particular nations determines images.     

两种时空线索条件下表面颜色特征线索对客体保持的作用*

采用客体回溯范式,以客体预览利化效应(object specific previewing benefit, OSPB)作为指标,考察表面特征线索对客体保持的作用。实验1使用双向隧道创建时空线索不明确的条件,研究表面颜色特征线索的作用。实验2使用单向隧道使时空线索明确,研究表面颜色特征线索与时空线索一致、冲突情境下的客体保持。实验1和实验2均出现了OSPB效应,且实验2冲突情境的OSPB效应低于一致情境。研究结果表明在时空线索不明确的条件下,仅凭表面颜色特征线索就能实现客体保持;在时空线索明确的条件下,时空线索是客体保持的主要线索,同时表面颜色特征线索也起一定的作用。     

客体工作记忆对注意的导向作用：抑制动机的影响

通过两个实验验证了客体工作记忆内容对注意的导向过程是灵活可控的; 与客体工作记忆内容匹配的刺激既可以捕获注意, 也可以被抑制。实验1通过操作匹配试验概率来诱发不同水平的抑制动机, 考察在客体工作记忆内容对注意的导向作用中抑制动机的影响。匹配试验中有分心物与客体工作记忆内容相同。控制试验中所有搜索项目均与客体工作记忆内容不同。实验2保持实际匹配试验概率恒定, 仅通过改变指导语来调节抑制动机水平, 以排除练习的干扰。两实验结果均表明, 当抑制动机水平较低时, 匹配分心物会捕获注意; 而当抑制动机水平足够高时, 匹配分心物会被抑制。并且, 抑制动机水平的高低还会影响认知控制的效应量和时程。