Comorbidity of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and major depression in primary school children

The study investigated comorbid Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and depression in a sample of rural primary school children in Limpopo Province, South Africa. A total of 320 learners participated in this study of whom 160 learners had teacher and parent identified ADHD symptoms (females?=?50%; age range 6–14 years). All the learners took the Beck Depression Youth Inventory, second edition. Data were analysed applying ANOVA to investigate the possible differences between and within age, gender, and ADHD subtype group differences in depression symptomatology. Results indicated no statistically significant differences in the scores on the depression scale between the children with ADHD as identified by parents and teachers and the comparison group peers.     

Predictors of superstitious beliefs

This study investigated whether relationships exist among personal control, coping mechanism, primary control, secondary control and superstitious beliefs. The participants were 375 Ghanaian student athletes (females = 44%). They completed measures of self-reported superstitious beliefs, personal control, coping mechanisms, primary and secondary control strategies. The data were analysed to evaluate the correlates of both positive and negative superstitious beliefs and how constructs of personal control, coping mechanisms and control strategies, predict positive and negative superstitious beliefs. The results indicated that personal control, coping mechanisms and control strategies were predictors of negative and positive superstitious beliefs. In the final model exaggerated internal control, God-mediated control, emotional support, and substance use were predictors of negative superstitions. Exaggerated internal control, substance use, emotional support and acceptance were predictors of positive superstitions. Athletes may activate different types of superstitious beliefs to cope and gain control in situations of uncertainty.     

Neural substrates of the ‘low‐level’ system for speech articulation: Evidence from primary opercular syndrome

We describe a patient with progressive disorder of speech, without language impairment (opercular syndrome). Morphometric analysis confirmed asymmetric volume reduction of the precentral areas (>left). Diffusion imaging showed significant white matter changes in the left frontal lobe, with specific involvement of the left corticobulbar tract and connections between supplementary/pre‐supplementary motor areas and the frontal operculum (frontal aslant tract). We suggest that the organization of expressive language includes a ‘low level’ motor system principally distributed in the left hemisphere that shows specific susceptibility to neurodegeneration, distinct from neural systems subtending praxic, and cognitive aspects of language.     

Impact of induced joy on literacy in children: does the nature of the task make a difference?

This research examined whether induced joy influences fifth graders’ performance in literacy tasks. Children were asked to recall a joyful experience, used as a joy induction, before completing either a grammar (Study 1) or textual comprehension task (Study 2). The grammar task involved understanding at the surface level and retrieval of appropriate declarative and procedural knowledge, but limited elaboration unlike the textual comprehension task, which tackled inference generation. By differentiating tasks based on depth of processing required for completion we aimed at testing the validity of two concurrent hypotheses: that of a facilitating effect and that of a detrimental effect of induced joy. Compared to controls, joy induced children showed better performance on the grammar task – specifically children with lower language ability. No differences across groups emerged as a function of joy induction on the text comprehension task. Results are discussed with respect to emotion effects on cognition.     

学思维网络活动对小学生创造性的影响:认知风格的调节作用

以89名小学生为被试,采用实验组对照组前后测实验设计,考察学思维网络活动对培养小学生创造性思维和创造性倾向的影响,以及认知风格的调节作用。结果发现：（1）学思维网络活动能有效促进小学生创造性思维以及创造性倾向的想象力和好奇心的发展;（2）学思维课堂活动和学思维网络活动对于培养小学生的创造性思维和创造性倾向具有一致的效果;（3）认知风格在学思维网络活动和学思维课堂活动对小学生创造性思维的影响中起调节作用：对于场依存学生,学思维网络活动能更大程度地提高其流畅性和独创性的表现。     

师生关系对小学生创造性的作用:一个有调节的中介模型

以658名儿童为被试,采用测验法和问卷法考察师生关系与小学生创造性思维的关系,同时探析创新自我效能感的中介作用,以及该作用是否受到开放性人格的调节。结果发现:(1)师生关系对小学生创造性思维、创新效能感均有显著的正向预测作用;(2)创新效能感在师生关系与小学生创造性思维总分、流畅性和独特性得分之间起完全中介作用;(3)开放性可以调节创新效能感对小学生创造性思维的作用,开放性高时效能感的中介效应显著,而开放性低时该效应不显著。这些结果对于综合解释教育过程中环境与个体因素对创造性的作用路径与机制具有重要意义。     

Infantile Sexuality, Primary Object-Love and the Anthropological Signifi Cance of the Oedipus Complex: Re-Reading Freud's 'Female Sexuality'

The author attempts to show why and in what respect Freud's famous article 'Female sexuality' can still be a source of inspiration for a contemporary metapsychology. In this text, Freud acknowledges the importance of the child's tie to its mother for the fi rst time. Both Balint and Bowlby consider this text to be a distant forerunner of their own theories on primary object-love and attachment respectively. At the same time, Freud's text contains some elements of a 'theory of generalized seduction' as it was developed in the last decades by Jean Laplanche. 'Female sexuality' therefore presents itself as the perfect point of departure for a discussion of the relation between primary object-love (and attachment) and sexuality. Based on his reading of Freud's text, the author argues that human subjectivity is characterized by the lack of attunement between the world of the adult and the world of the child. This insight allows for a reformulation of the anthropological signifi cance of the Oedipus and castration complexes. They are no longer interpreted as universal problems that every child has to face, but as historical and contingent solutions to the lack of attunement between the child and the adult that is essential to human subjectivity.     

The analyst: His professional novel1

The psychoanalyst needs to be in touch with a community of colleagues; he needs to feel part of a group with which he can share cognitive tension and therapeutic knowledge. Yet group ties are an aspect we analysts seldom discuss. The author defi nes the analyst's ‘professional novel’ as the emotional vicissitudes with the group that have marked the professional itinerary of every analyst; his relationship with institutions and with theories, and the emotional nuance of these relationships. The analyst's professional novel is the narrative elaboration of his professional autobiography. It is capable of transforming the individual's need to belong and the paths of identifi cation and deidentifi cation. Experience of the oedipal confi guration allows the analyst to begin psychic work aimed at gaining spaces of separateness in his relationship with the group. This passage is marked by the work on mourning that separation involves, but also of mourning implicit in the awareness of the representative limits of our theories. Right from the start of analysis, the patient observes the emotional nuance of the analyst's connection to his group and theories; the patient notices how much this connection is governed by rigid needs to belong, and how much freedom of thought and exploration it allows the analyst. The author uses clinical examples to illustrate these hypotheses.     

Variations on the concept of traumatism: Traumatism,traumatic, trauma1

In this paper, the author outlines Freud's fundamental hypotheses concerning the concept of traumatism, then goes on to differentiate three notions (French being a particularly apposite language for such a venture): ‘traumatism’, ‘traumatic’ (in a substantive sense) and ‘trauma’. These three terms correspond to the three turning points in Freud's theory with respect to the concept of traumatism (1895‐97, 1920, 1938). The author evokes also the developments that are due to Ferenczi, particularly in his later writings (1928‐33), where he defi ned and discussed the question of ‘trauma’ in contemporary clinical practice; the author goes on to explore the different variations on this theme as regards mental functioning. He then defi nes, from a metapsychological point of view, the differences between ‘traumatisms’ that have been ‘worked over by secondary processes’, organised and governed by the pleasure‐unpleasure principle (‘traumatism’) and ‘early’ or ‘primary traumatisms’, which interfere with the process of binding the instinctual drives (‘trauma’); states of mind infl uenced by a traumatic imprint (‘traumatic’) are looked upon as belonging to both categories of the above mentioned traumatisms. The author illustrates his hypotheses with a clinical example.     

The Implications of Prospect Theory for Human Nature and Values

Central to prospect theory are far-reaching claims about what people fear and what gratifies them. Subjective well-being is a topic that social science has been reluctant to discuss in recent years, but it is central to much of our lives. A loss inflicts more harm than a comparable gain produces pleasure; this fact and the related endowment effect are important parts of our psychological makeup. The importance of change rather than absolute value position, and the related significance of the reference point and how it can be altered, can be seen as integral to human nature.