Mentalisation-based therapy for parental conflict – parenting together; an intervention for parents in entrenched post-separation disputes

High-conflict relationship dissolution has been shown to cause substantial emotional risk and psychological harm to children’s developmental outcomes. Parents in chronic post separation conflict who repeatedly use the courts to address their disputes are by nature difficult to engage in therapeutic services. This paper describes the theoretical and practical key elements of a mentalisation-based therapeutic intervention, Mentalization-Based Therapy for Parental Conflict – Parenting Together (MBT-PT), that has been developed in order to address some of the unique challenges that these parents and the professionals working with them are facing. Specifically, the intervention aims to reduce anger and hostile conflicts between parents and mitigate the damaging effects of inter-parental conflict on children. The implementation procedure of the MBT-PT intervention among parents in entrenched conflict over their children, in the context of a random allocation pilot study, is briefly described. Next, the MBT-PT intervention is exemplified using clinical examples, followed by potential implications concerning practice and policy for professionals working with this population of parents.     

Anthropomorphism and anthropectomy as friendly competitors

Principles help comparative psychologists select from among multiple hypotheses that account for the data. Anthropomorphic principles select hypotheses that have the most human–animal similarities while anthropectic principles select hypotheses that have the most human–animal differences. I argue that there is no way for the comparative psychologist on their own to justify their selection of one principle over the other. However, the comparative psychologist can justify their selection of one principle over the other in virtue of being members of comparative psychology as a community. As it turns out, though, this justifies both competing principles: the community benefits most from competition between the two principles so comparative psychologists are justified in implementing the principles by which they can best contribute to the competition. Thus, I argue that common arguments to unify principle implementation in comparative psychology are defeated by the conservative arguments to preserve and foster competition.     

The mediating role of values between personality and religiosity

The aim of this work was to examine the relationships between Eysenck’s personality traits (psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticism), Schwartz’s values, and religiosity. To this purpose a sample of Italian teenagers (N = 343; mean age 15.43, SD = 1.023) were asked to fill out a battery of questionnaires and, a structural equation model was tested, where the mediating role of Schwartz’s values between personality traits, and religiosity was accurately analysed. Results showed that all personality traits considered had relevant direct and/or indirect effects on religious experience, mediated by values.     

Memory for faces with emotional expressions in Alzheimer’s disease and healthy older participants: positivity effect is not only due to familiarity

Young individuals better memorize initially seen faces with emotional rather than neutral expressions. Healthy older participants and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients show better memory for faces with positive expressions. The socioemotional selectivity theory postulates that this positivity effect in memory reflects a general age-related preference for positive stimuli, subserving emotion regulation. Another explanation might be that older participants use compensatory strategies, often considering happy faces as previously seen. The question about the existence of this effect in tasks not permitting such compensatory strategies is still open. Thus, we compared the performance of healthy participants and AD patients for positive, neutral, and negative faces in such tasks. Healthy older participants and AD patients showed a positivity effect in memory, but there was no difference between emotional and neutral faces in young participants. Our results suggest that the positivity effect in memory is not entirely due to the sense of familiarity for smiling faces.     

Working memory in healthy aging and in Parkinson’s disease: evidence of interference effects

Focusing on relevant information while suppressing the irrelevant one are critical abilities for different cognitive processes. However, their functioning has been scarcely investigated in the working memory (WM) domain, in both healthy and pathological conditions. The present research aimed to study these abilities in aging and Parkinson’s disease (PD), testing three groups of healthy participants (young, older and elderly) and one of PD patients, employing a new experimental paradigm. Results showed that the transient storing of irrelevant information in WM causes substantial interference effects, which were remarkable in elderly individuals on both response latency and accuracy. Interestingly, PD patients responded faster and were equally accurate compared to a matched control group. Taken together, findings confirm the existence of similar mechanisms for orienting attention inwards to WM contents or outwards to perceptual stimuli, and suggest the suitability of our task to assess WM functioning in both healthy aging and PD.     

调节聚焦对期限效果的影响

结合调节聚焦探讨了期限的时长、结果框架及效价对期限效果的影响。结果表明,防御聚焦个体认为期限的阻碍效果更大,且调节聚焦对前述变量与期限效果的关系具有调节作用:4分钟期限中防御聚焦组认为期限的阻碍效果更大,8分钟期限中则相反,12和16分钟期限中均无显著差异;收益框架下促进聚焦组认为期限对任务表现的阻碍作用更大,促进聚焦组在正效价条件下认为收益框架下期限对策略使用的阻碍作用更大,但在负效价条件下则相反。     

Cross-cultural validation of Holland’s interest structure in chinese population

This study evaluated [Holland, 1973], [Holland, 1985] and [Holland, 1997] structural hypotheses—circular order and circumplex—in two populations in China at both the subtest (Activities, Competencies, Occupational Preferences, and Self-ratings on Abilities) and the entire test levels of the Self-Directed Search (SDS; Holland, 1994). Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that the circumplex model was generally not supported for Chinese people. Randomization tests of hypothesized order relations suggested that the circular order model fit both Mainland China and Hong Kong samples at the Activities and Occupational Preferences subtests. Randomization tests of differences in fit indicated that there was generally no cultural or gender differences in terms of model fit. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.     

Compositionality,Relevance, and Peirce’s Logic of Existential Graphs

Charles S. Peirce’s pragmatist theory of logic teaches us to take the context of utterances as an indispensable logical notion without which there is no meaning. This is not a spat against compositionality per se , since it is possible to posit extra arguments to the meaning function that composes complex meaning. However, that method would be inappropriate for a realistic notion of the meaning of assertions. To accomplish a realistic notion of meaning (as opposed e.g. to algebraic meaning), Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory (RT) may be applied in the spirit of Peirce’s Pragmatic Maxim (PM): the weighing of information depends on (i) the practical consequences of accommodating the chosen piece of information introduced in communication, and (ii) what will ensue in actually using that piece in further cycles of discourse. Peirce’s unpublished papers suggest a relevance-like approach to meaning. Contextual features influenced his logic of Existential Graphs (EG). Arguments are presented pro and con the view in which EGs endorse non-compositionality of meaning.     

皮亚杰晚年的“新理论”及其思考

皮亚杰的经典认知发展理论堪称典范,但也并非尽如人意,以致20世纪60、70年代其理论经常遭受抨击。文章以对皮亚杰经典理论的批评和质疑为起点,重点介绍皮亚杰在生命的最后阶段所进行的理论建设,并试图对皮亚杰的新理论做出初步评价。作者认为,皮亚杰晚年的新理论建立在对应性、态射、范畴、转换等新的概念体系之上,并将发展视为从心理内态射到心理间态射,再到超态射的演变过程。由此,新理论强调了“水平”概念和“意义逻辑”,弱化了早期的“阶段”概念和“命题逻辑”。