A SYSTEMS MODEL OF SPIRITUALITY

Within the scientific study of spirituality there are substantial ambiguities and uncertainties about relevant concepts, terms, evidences, methods, and relationships. Different disciplinary approaches reveal or emphasize different aspects of spirituality, such as outcomes, behaviors, skills, ambitions, and beliefs. I argue that these aspects interdepend in a way that constitutes a “systems model of spirituality.” This model enables a more holistic understanding of the nature of spirituality, and suggests a new definition that disambiguates spirituality from related concepts such as religion, cultural sophistication, and prosocial behavior in animals. It also exposes important open questions about the nature of spirituality. To support the emerging scientific approach to the study of spirituality, I propose the development of a “philosophy of spirituality” that can clarify the conceptual terrain, identify important research directions, and facilitate a comprehensive and interdisciplinary investigation into the nature, validity, and implications of spirituality's conceptual and practical entailments.     

SON-R6-40非言语智力测验在中国的适用性

SON-R 6-40非言语智力测验是以非文字形式测量个体推理与空间能力的智力评估工具.研究旨在考查SON-R6-40在中国的适用性.根据全国人口分布,在中国六大行政区6至40岁年龄人群中施测了1721人,通过与荷兰/德国混合样本比较,分析该测验的跨文化等值水平.结果表明：（1）测验信度与结构跨样本一致,说明该测验在两种文化下结构等值;（2）多样本验证性因素分析证明了该测验的测量单位等值性.因此,SON-R 6-40适合在中国推广使用以及用于智力的跨文化比较研究.     

Cerebral blood flow in 5‐ to 8‐month‐olds: Regional tissue maturity is associated with infant affect

Infancy is marked by rapid neural and emotional development. The relation between brain function and emotion in infancy, however, is not well understood. Methods for measuring brain function predominantly rely on the BOLD signal; however, interpretation of the BOLD signal in infancy is challenging because the neuronal‐hemodynamic relation is immature. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) provides a context for the infant BOLD signal and can yield insight into the developmental maturity of brain regions that may support affective behaviors. This study aims to elucidate the relations among rCBF, age, and emotion in infancy. One hundred and seven mothers reported their infants' (infant age M ± SD = 6.14 ± 0.51 months) temperament. A subsample of infants completed MRI scans, 38 of whom produced usable perfusion MRI during natural sleep to quantify rCBF. Mother‐infant dyads completed the repeated Still‐Face Paradigm, from which infant affect reactivity and recovery to stress were quantified. We tested associations of infant age at scan, temperament factor scores, and observed affect reactivity and recovery with voxel‐wise rCBF. Infant age was positively associated with CBF in nearly all voxels, with peaks located in sensory cortices and the ventral prefrontal cortex, supporting the formulation that rCBF is an indicator of tissue maturity. Temperamental Negative Affect and recovery of positive affect following a stressor were positively associated with rCBF in several cortical and subcortical limbic regions, including the orbitofrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus. This finding yields insight into the nature of affective neurodevelopment during infancy. Specifically, infants with relatively increased prefrontal cortex maturity may evidence a disposition toward greater negative affect and negative reactivity in their daily lives yet show better recovery of positive affect following a social stressor.     

First steps toward an understanding of procedural fairness

In four experiments, we tested whether 20‐month‐old infants are sensitive to violations of procedural impartiality. Participants were shown videos in which help was provided in two different ways. A main character provided help to two other agents either impartially, by helping them at the same time, or in a biased way, by helping one agent almost immediately while the other after a longer delay. Infants looked reliably longer at the biased than at the unbiased help scenarios despite the fact that in both scenarios help was provided to each beneficiary. This suggests that human infants can attend to departures from impartiality and, in their second year, they already show an initial understanding of procedural fairness.     

The function of language in parent‐infant psychotherapy

Parent‐infant psychotherapy, a rather new field in psychoanalysis, raises questions of how to conceptualize the clinical process. Previous publications have used semiotic concepts to account for the therapist's non‐verbal communication and investigated the countertransference, including what the baby might grasp of its variations. The present paper focuses on another argument for using verbal interventions to a baby in therapy; they present him with a symbolic order that differs from that of the parent. The qualitative difference between the parent's and the analyst's address is conceptualized by Dolto's term parler vrai. The therapeutic leverage is not the analytic interventions' lexical content but their message that words can be used to expose conflicts. Thereby, one can transform warded‐off desires into demands that can be negotiated with one's objects. The reasons why this address catches the baby's attention are discussed. A prerequisite for such attention is that the infant brain is prewired for perceiving words as a special communicative mode. Relevant neuroscientific research is reviewed in regard to this question. The presentation relies on concepts by Dolto, Lacan and Winnicott and findings from neuroscience and developmental psychology. It also briefly discusses Chomsky's linguistic concepts in relation to these therapies.     

The Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire in Lebanon and the UK: A comparison of the psychometric properties in each country

The aim of this study was to validate the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue v. 1.5) in a Lebanese sample and compare its factorial structure to that of a UK sample. There were similar gender and age distributions in both samples as well as satisfactory structural reliabilities at the global, factor, and facet levels. Results from exploratory factor analysis showed a four-factor structure similar to that originally obtained by the author of the questionnaire. There were strong correlations between the factor scores derived from the two datasets (≥.90). Tucker congruence supported the similarity between the Lebanese and UK factors. Independent-samples t tests showed that Lebanese participants scored higher on the Sociability factor and the facets of self-esteem, social awareness and emotion perception, whereas UK participants scored higher on the facets of stress management, optimism and relationships. Gender differences are also reported, and recommendations for future research discussed.     

La gestion des émotions et ses déficits,chez les personnes atteintes de douleur chronique : une revue systématisée des études relatives à l’alexithymie, à l’intelligence émotionnelle, à la régulation émotionnelle et au coping

The goal of this review is to synthesize the data of scientific literature on emotional management and its deficits in chronic pain. We used terms referenced in databases and MesH terms (of the United States National Library of Medicine) to perform a literature search in a powerful online search engine (EBSCOhost research databases). Four hundred and forty-nine papers, taken from international reviews and published of 1994 (because it is in the middle of the 1990s that this theme begins to be handle) to the end of January, 2015, are identified by a total 5 electronic databases with predefined keywords about emotions and chronic pain. Forty-six of which met the inclusion criteria, according to their title, their summary and their complete text. The findings suggest that some emotional management strategies and its deficits can maintain a vicious circle of negative emotional states with physiological and psychopathological consequences. Several studies show that alexithymia, emotional ambivalence and emotional suppression have a deleterious impact on pain, emotional distress (depression, anxiety) and disability. In spite of some contradictions concerning the nature of this effect (sensory or affective pain intensity or even duration of pain), it seems that alexithymia is a major variable implied in chronic pain. Inversely, experiential acceptance has a beneficial effect on psychological distress (depression, anxiety and stress). Emotional disclosure (of stressful or traumatic events) can decrease pain intensity but not disability and mental health. Likewise, emotional expression in daily life seems beneficial, but when the expression of the positive and negative feelings are distinguished, emotional expression of negative feelings increases pain, disability and distress. The whole of these findings emphasize the need to further research about emotional management in chronic non-cancer pain. It is necessary to identify and control the source of potential bias. Some hypotheses have been proposed to explain these findings. In the future, it would be interesting to use a multifactorial approach to investigate the interactions between various processes of emotional management in chronic pain patients.     

Artificial intelligence for the measurement of vocal stereotypy

Both researchers and practitioners often rely on direct observation to measure and monitor behavior. When these behaviors are too complex or numerous to be measured in vivo, relying on direct observation using human observers increases the amount of resources required to conduct research and to monitor the effects of interventions in practice. To address this issue, we conducted a proof of concept examining whether artificial intelligence could measure vocal stereotypy in individuals with autism. More specifically, we used an artificial neural network with over 1,500 minutes of audio data from 8 different individuals to train and test models to measure vocal stereotypy. Our results showed that the artificial neural network performed adequately (i.e., session-by-session correlation near or above .80 with a human observer) in measuring engagement in vocal stereotypy for 6 of 8 participants. Additional research is needed to further improve the generalizability of the approach.