Self-reported reflective functioning and father–child interactions in a sample of fathers who have used intimate partner violence

Reflective functioning (RF) has been found to be associated with mother–child interactions, but less is known about the association of fathers’ self and child-focused RF and father–child relationships.  Fathers who have histories of intimate partner violence (IPV) are known to have poor RF, which may impact their father–child interactions.  The current study was designed to examine how types of RF are associated with father–child relationships.  Pretreatment assessments and recorded, coded father–child play interactions were used to examine associations among fathers’ history of adverse childhood experiences (ACES), RF and coded father-child play interactions in a sample of 47 fathers with a history of IPV use in the last 6 months with their coparent.  Fathers’ ACES and their child's mental states (CM) were associated with father-child dyadic play interactions.  Fathers with greater ACES and higher scores on CM had the most dyadic tension and constriction during play interactions.  Those with high ACES but low CM had scores similar to those with low ACES and low CM.  These results indicate that fathers who have used IPV and have a history of significant adversity may benefit from interventions to increase their child-focused RF and further improve their interactions with their children.     

Processing interactions and lexical access during word recognition in continuous speech

The interactions, during word-recognition in continuous speech, between the bottom-up analyses of the input and different forms of internally generated top-down constraint, were investigated using a shadowing task and a mispronunciation detection task (in the detection task the subject saw a text of the original passage as he listened to it). The listener's dependence on bottom-up analyses in the shadowing task, as measured by the number of fluent restorations of mispronounced words, was found to vary as a function of the syllable position of the mispronunciation within the word and of the contextual constraints on the word as a whole. In the detection task only syllable position effects were obtained. The results, discussed in conjunction with earlier research, were found to be inconsistent with either the logogen model of word-recognition or an autonomous search model. Instead, an active direct access model is proposed, in which top-down processing constraints interact directly with bottom-up information to produce the primary lexical interpretation of the acoustic-phonetic input.     

Monitoring and self-repair in speech

Making a self-repair in speech typically proceeds in three phases. The first phase involves the monitoring of one's own speech and the interruption of the flow of speech when trouble is detected. From an analysis of 959 spontaneous self-repairs it appears that interrupting follows detection promptly, with the exception that correct words tend to be completed. Another finding is that detection of trouble improves towards the end of constituents. The second phase is characterized by hesitation, pausing, but especially the use of so-called editing terms. Which editing term is used depends on the nature of the speech trouble in a rather regular fashion: Speech errors induce other editing terms than words that are merely inappropriate, and trouble which is detected quickly by the speaker is preferably signalled by the use of ‘uh’. The third phase consists of making the repair proper. The linguistic well-formedness of a repair is not dependent on the speaker's respecting the integrity of constituents, but on the structural relation between original utterance and repair. A bi-conditional well-formedness rule links this relation to a corresponding relation between the conjuncts of a coordination. It is suggested that a similar relation holds also between question and answer. In all three cases the speaker respects certain structural commitments derived from an original utterance. It was finally shown that the editing term plus the first word of the repair proper almost always contain sufficient information for the listener to decide how the repair should be related to the original utterance. Speakers almost never produce misleading information in this respect.It is argued that speakers have little or no access to their speech production process; self-monitoring is probably based on parsing one's own inner or overt speech.     

On children's interpretations of negation

French children between 4 and 10 years old were asked to draw representations of French negative sentences. The results indicated that in most cases only the verb is negated when the noun phrase to the right of the negation is introduced by a definite article, but when the noun phrase is introduced by an indefinite article, it is most often the noun phrase itself that is negated. This effect is clear even in 4-year-olds, and it serves to demonstrate that the interpretation of negative sentences depends on phenomena of surface structure as well as of deep structure.     

Reflections on a wounded and bleeding temenos

COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, and financial and political turmoil have uprooted our sense of personal and collective safety and predictability. Analysts are faced with professional and personal challenges, as well as a charge to help make sense of this new normal. This reflective piece focuses on the author’s thoughts on a wounded and bleeding temenos. She grapples with the new reality of analysis carried out via technology (e.g. Zoom or telehealth). The article interweaves personal experiences with theoretical and professional reflections on two Jewish myths that relate to creating temenos or sacred space in the face of ancient disasters. Specifically, she discusses Choni HaMagel, a first-century BCE Jewish scholar and miracle-maker who prays for relief from a drought from inside a sacred circle. She also tells the tale of four Chassidic Rebbes who face crisis from a sacred space in the forest. The author frames this piece with two personal and numinous dreams dreamt during the pandemic; one offering scenes of destruction and one offering hope for a future transformation.