Mind,brain and body. Healing trauma: the way forward

The paper explores an interdisciplinary whole person approach to healing from trauma that conserves our rich inheritance from Jung but also takes on board insights from research in the areas of attachment, trauma and the neurobiology of emotion. It is now over 20 years since insights from neurobiology began to be used to inform clinical practice. The paper reviews key insights which have emerged, along with the ways they enable therapists to help mind, brain and body to heal and the ways in which they clarify why, in clinical practice, we do what we do. Traditionally the emphasis has been on words, interpretations, and meaning‐making. Currently there is greater appreciation of the affective, relational, embodied aspects of therapeutic work and the way in which these relate to traumatic early interactive experience that is held outside of human awareness. The ways in which knowledge of particular systems of connectivity inform understanding of the whole mind‐brain‐body relationship are examined. The way forward for clinical practice to become more focused in order to help clients to heal in mind and body is reviewed.     

Consistency between verbal and non-verbal affective cues: a clue to speaker credibility

Listeners are exposed to inconsistencies in communication; for example, when speakers’ words (i.e. verbal) are discrepant with their demonstrated emotions (i.e. non-verbal). Such inconsistencies introduce ambiguity, which may render a speaker to be a less credible source of information. Two experiments examined whether children make credibility discriminations based on the consistency of speakers’ affect cues. In Experiment 1, school-age children (7- to 8-year-olds) preferred to solicit information from consistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with negative affect), over novel speakers, to a greater extent than they preferred to solicit information from inconsistent speakers (e.g. those who provided a negative statement with positive affect) over novel speakers. Preschoolers (4- to 5-year-olds) did not demonstrate this preference. Experiment 2 showed that school-age children's ratings of speakers were influenced by speakers’ affect consistency when the attribute being judged was related to information acquisition (speakers’ believability, “weird” speech), but not general characteristics (speakers’ friendliness, likeability). Together, findings suggest that school-age children are sensitive to, and use, the congruency of affect cues to determine whether individuals are credible sources of information.     

Affect in the eyes: explicit and implicit evaluations

The present study investigated whether another individual’s gaze direction influences an observer’s affective responses. In Experiment 1, subjective self-ratings and an affective priming paradigm were employed to examine how participants explicitly and implicitly, respectively, evaluated the affective valence of direct gaze, averted gaze, and closed eyes. The explicit self-ratings showed that participants evaluated closed eyes more positively than direct gaze. However, the implicit priming task showed an inverse pattern of results indicating that direct gaze was automatically evaluated more positively than closed eyes were. Experiment 2 confirmed that the opposite patterns of results between the two tasks were not due to differences in presentation times of the gaze stimuli. The results provide evidence for automatic affective reactions to eye gaze and indicate a dissociation between explicit and implicit affective evaluations of eyes and gaze direction.     

Scrutinizing the Emotional Nature of Intuitive Coherence Judgments

Dual‐system models propose that cognitive processing can occur either intuitively or deliberately. Unlike deliberate decision strategies, intuitive ones are assumed to have an emotional component attached to the decision process. We tested if intuitive decisions are indeed accompanied by an emotional response while deliberate decisions are not. Specifically, we conducted a psychophysiological study in which participants were instructed to decide either intuitively or deliberately if three simultaneously presented words were semantically coherent or incoherent (triad task). The degree of emotionality of these two decision strategies (intuitive vs. deliberate) was compared using changes in electrodermal activity (EDA) and the reaction time (RT) effect of an affective priming paradigm as primary measurements. Based on a valence‐arousal model, our results revealed that intuitive and deliberate judgments do not differ as to their emotional valence but that they do differ in emotional arousal. Most notably, sympathetic activation during intuitive judgments was significantly lower compared to sympathetic activation during deliberate judgments. Our results reflect that a relaxed state of mind—manifested in low sympathetic activity—could underlie the holistic processing that is assumed to facilitate the proliferation of semantic associations during coherence judgments. This suggests that coherence judgments made under an (instructed) intuitive decision mode have a specific psychophysiological signature and that arousal is the differentiating component between intuitive and deliberate decision strategies. © 2016 The Authors Journal of Behavioral Decision Making Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.     

组织变革前非正式信息的作用机制

非正式信息是变革前信息沟通的重要组成部分, 对变革决策和执行有潜在的影响。围绕组织变革前非正式信息开展以下研究：(1)探究组织变革前非正式信息的内涵和结构; (2)基于心理因应和认知重构机制, 探索员工获取非正式信息之后, 其变革认知和情感的动态调整过程; (3)研究潜在的组织变革决策→非正式信息反馈→再决策过程, 即变革领导者通过获得员工变革认知和情感的反馈, 进行渐进决策优化的过程。研究结果能丰富变革沟通理论和指导我国变革实践。     

任务与字频对汉字情绪启动反转效应的影响

本研究使用ERP技术对比了效价判断与真假字判断两种任务形式下的汉字情绪启动效应。结果发现,在效价判断任务中高频目标字出现情绪启动的反转效应,效价不一致比一致条件下反应时短,诱发了较大的P200;低频目标字出现情绪启动的一致性效应,效价一致比不一致条件下反应时短,诱发了较大的P200与N400。真假字判断任务中高频和低频目标字均出现情绪启动的一致性效应。情绪启动的反转效应依赖于刺激材料的可通达性与注意导向,启动字与目标字的反应竞争关系导致了情绪启动的反转效应。     

The illusion of courage in social predictions: Underestimating the impact of fear of embarrassment on other people

The results of two experiments support the thesis that emotional perspective taking entails two judgments: a prediction of one’s own preferences and decisions in a different emotional situation, and an adjustment of this prediction to accommodate perceived differences between self and others. Participants overestimated others’ willingness to engage in embarrassing public performances—miming (Experiment 1) and dancing (Experiment 2)—in exchange for money. Consistent with a dual judgment model, this overestimation was greater among participants facing a hypothetical rather than a real decision to perform. Further, participants’ predictions of others’ willingness to perform were more closely correlated with self-predictions than with participants’ estimates of others’ thoughts about the costs and benefits of performing.     

不同SOA条件下的情感启动效应研究

在150ms和250ms两种SOA条件下,以彩色图片为启动刺激,以汉语双字词为目标刺激,通过评价分类任务考察情感启动效应。结果表明在两种SOA条件下均存在显著的情感启动效应;积极启动和消极启动对目标词产生了不同的影响。类似Stroop效应的反应冲突机制可解释本研究所获得的结果。     

Los Degradados: Out,down, dead: Transmitted and inflicted trauma as encountered in the analysis of a 6‐year‐old girl1

The author presents the analysis of a precocious traumatized little girl, which reveals the ways in which historical trauma is transmitted and intrafamilial trauma is both disguised and represented. The play as it evolves is seen to simultaneously communicate what the child struggles with and to resolutely try to hide what has actually happened. Analyst and child together participate in play which utilizes displacement, enactment and interactive enactment, the latter play mode being the very hallmark of profound traumatic experience. Carlotta, the child, helps the analyst to follow her quest for meaning making even as the interaction between them adheres to and departs from the deepening pentimenti of traumatic experience, which needs to be unraveled and reconstructed in order that her own developmental progression can be rejoined. The analysis facilitates Carlotta's capacity to play in a more unfettered fashion and to assist her family's recovery as well.