Transference focused psychotherapy: overview and update

This paper describes a specific psychoanalytic psychotherapy for patients with severe personality disorders, its technical approach and specific research projects establishing empirical evidence supporting its efficacy. This treatment derives from the findings of the Menninger Foundation Psychotherapy Research project, and applies a model of contemporary psychoanalytic object relations theory as its theoretical foundation. The paper differentiates this treatment from alternative psychoanalytic approaches, including other types of psychoanalytic psychotherapy as well as standard psychoanalysis, and from three alternative non-analytical treatments prevalent in the treatment of borderline patients, namely, dialectic behavior therapy, supportive psychotherapy based on psychoanalytic theory, and schema focused therapy. It concludes with indications and contraindications to this particular therapeutic approach derived from the clinical experience that evolved in the course of the sequence of research projects leading to the empirical establishment of its efficacy.     

Comparison of decision learning models using the generalization criterion method

It is a hallmark of a good model to make accurate a priori predictions to new conditions ( Busemeyer & Wang, 2000 ). This study compared 8 decision learning models with respect to their generalizability. Participants performed 2 tasks (the Iowa Gambling Task and the Soochow Gambling Task), and each model made a priori predictions by estimating the parameters for each participant from 1 task and using those same parameters to predict on the other task. Three methods were used to evaluate the models at the individual level of analysis. The first method used a post hoc fit criterion, the second method used a generalization criterion for short-term predictions, and the third method again used a generalization criterion for long-term predictions. The results suggest that the models with the prospect utility function can make generalizable predictions to new conditions, and different learning models are needed for making short-versus long-term predictions on simple gambling tasks.     

视觉运动追踪的加工过程

视觉运动追踪是运动知觉研究的一个重要领域。通过构建视觉运动追踪的过程模型和分析每个阶段的认知加工任务, 可以帮助人们认识运动物体识别的本质。视觉运动追踪包括目标获取和运动追踪两个加工过程：目标获取阶段的主要任务是将目标与背景分离, 集中注意力加工追踪目标; 运动追踪阶段的主要任务是启动平滑追踪眼动和追赶性眼跳, 并发挥行为水平、眼动水平和神经活动水平的预测机制。目标获取同时受背景和目标的运动特征和身份特征影响; 运动追踪系统发挥预测机制的基础是客体表征连续性, 而客体表征连续性的建立同时依赖于目标时空属性和身份特征的编码加工。因此, 视觉运动追踪是视觉系统对客体运动信息和身份语义信息整合的结果。其中, 客体运动信息的加工特性已经获得了比较广泛的研究, 而语义信息加工机制还有待进一步加强。     

L’évolution des normes face au développement des objets de santé connectés

A lot of connected objects can be sold on the Internet and in some general stores. These products can be used in a health environment; they can help to promote a healthy lifestyle. But they do not always have a well determined legal status, that is established to protect the patients or the healthcare professionals. The connected objects can support innovation. They can become an essential help for the patients and the healthcare professionals, nevertheless they can be at the origin of physical injuries, if they are badly used.     

A further refinement of procedures addressing food selectivity

Individuals with autism and/or developmental disabilities are more likely than their typically developing peers to be food selective. Evidence‐based treatment packages for food refusal and selectivity include the use of reinforcement, escape extinction, and manipulation of antecedent events . In the current study, the variety of foods consumed by two adolescent males with food selectivity were systematically increased to include a variety of foods across all of the food groups. A changing criterion design was used to systematically increase the expectation of the amount and variety of foods that were consumed.     

Using automated controlled rearing to explore the origins of object permanence

What are the origins of object permanence? Despite widespread interest in this question, methodological barriers have prevented detailed analysis of how experience shapes the development of object permanence in newborn organisms. Here, we introduce an automated controlled‐rearing method for studying the emergence of object permanence in strictly controlled virtual environments. We used newborn chicks as an animal model and recorded their behavior continuously (24/7) from the onset of vision. Across four experiments, we found that object permanence can develop rapidly, within the first few days of life. This ability developed even when chicks were reared in impoverished visual environments containing no object occlusion events. Object permanence failed to develop, however, when chicks were reared in environments containing temporally non‐smooth objects (objects moving on discontinuous spatiotemporal paths). These results suggest that experience with temporally smooth objects facilitates the development of object permanence, confirming a key prediction of temporal learning models in computational neuroscience.     

Children's scale errors: A by‐product of lexical development?

Scale errors occur when young children seriously attempt to perform an action on an object which is impossible due to its size. Children vary substantially in the incidence of scale errors with many factors potentially contributing to these differences, such as age and the type of scale errors. In particular, the evidence for an inverted U‐shaped curve of scale errors involving the child's body (i.e., body scale errors), which would point to a developmental stage, is mixed. Here we re‐examine how body scale errors vary with age and explore the possibility that these errors would be related to the size and properties of children's lexicon. A large sample of children aged 18–30 months (N = 125) was tested in a scale error elicitation situation. Additionally, parental questionnaires were collected to assess children's receptive and expressive lexicon. Our key findings are that scale errors linearly decrease with age in childhood, and are more likely to be found in early talkers rather than in less advanced ones. This suggests that scale errors do not correspond to a developmental stage, and that one determinant of these errors is the speed of development of the linguistic and conceptual system, as a potential explanation for the individual variability in prevalence.     

Self‐generated variability in object images predicts vocabulary growth

Object names are a major component of early vocabularies and learning object names depends on being able to visually recognize objects in the world. However, the fundamental visual challenge of the moment‐to‐moment variations in object appearances that learners must resolve has received little attention in word learning research. Here we provide the first evidence that image‐level object variability matters and may be the link that connects infant object manipulation to vocabulary development. Using head‐mounted eye tracking, the present study objectively measured individual differences in the moment‐to‐moment variability of visual instances of the same object, from infants’ first‐person views. Infants who generated more variable visual object images through manual object manipulation at 15 months of age experienced greater vocabulary growth over the next six months. Elucidating infants’ everyday visual experiences with objects may constitute a crucial missing link in our understanding of the developmental trajectory of object name learning.     

Understanding the weapon focus effect: The role of threat,unusualness, exposure duration,and scene complexity

We examined the role of exposure duration and scene complexity on the weapon focus effect (WFE). Memory for the mock crime was affected more by a weapon than an unusual but nonthreatening object. Threat reduced correct identifications when the event was short but not long; duration of the event did not interact with unusualness. Additionally, we found a WFE for target‐absent lineup decisions, but only for the accomplice lineup, not the object‐wielding perpetrator's lineup. We discuss the implications of these results for illuminating the mechanisms that elicit the WFE.     

多目标追踪中基于运动信息的分组效应

本研究旨在探讨运动信息对多目标追踪的影响, 具体为考察多目标追踪中是否存在基于运动信息的分组效应, 以及不同类型表面特征(颜色和形状)对这一效应的影响。实验1发现多目标追踪中存在基于运动信息的分组效应, 并且这一分组效应是自动化的。实验2和实验3分别在不同颜色和不同形状组合条件下考察了基于运动信息的分组效应的稳定性, 结果都表明不同表面特征的组合不会干扰基于运动信息的分组效应的形成, 但其效应量都因表面特征的出现而缩减。整体而言, 多目标追踪中存在基于运动信息的自动化分组效应, 并且这一效应是格式塔法则中共同命运律的具体表现, 能稳定存在于不同表面特征组合之间。