Envisioning motherhood: Mental-state language in caregiving narratives across the perinatal period

Nancy Suchman's work highlighted the fundamental role of maternal mentalization in maternal addiction, mental health, and caregiving challenges. In this study, we aimed to examine the role of mental-state language (MSL) as a measure of mentalization in prenatal and postnatal narratives and their sentiment in a sample of 91 primarily White mothers from the western United States, followed from the second trimester of pregnancy, through the third trimester, to 4 months postpartum. Specifically, we investigated the use of affective and cognitive MSL in prenatal narratives when mothers visualized caring for their baby and postnatal narratives when mothers compared their prenatal visualization to the current caregiving reality. Results indicated moderate consistency in MSL between the second and third trimesters, but prenatal and postnatal MSL was not significantly correlated. Across all time points, higher use of MSL was related to more positive sentiment, indicating an association between mentalization and positive caregiving representations across the perinatal period. Women used more affective than cognitive MSL in prenatal imagination of caregiving, but this pattern was reversed in their postpartum reflection. Implications on assessing parental mentalization prenatally and considering the relative dominance of affective and cognitive mentalizing are discussed while considering study limitations.     

基于Think/No-think范式的动机性遗忘研究:行为与脑机制

想/不想范式(Think/No-think,TNT)是基于go/no-go范式提出来的用于研究动机性遗忘过程的实验范式,主要过程是指个体对于记忆的提取抑制可以导致随后该记忆的遗忘。近年来TNT范式的大量行为学研究都一致性地发现记忆提取抑制可以产生负性控制效应,验证了在实验室情境下对动机性遗忘进行研究的可行性。其中,负性控制效应指的是压抑条件的项目相对于基线条件的项目的回忆量有显著降低。关于动机性遗忘发生的神经机制的探讨已积累了大量的研究证据,总结脑电(EEG)和功能核磁共振(f MRI)两个模态的研究,我们提出了动机性遗忘发生的多模态功能网络模型。最后,在该模型的基础上,我们展望了TNT范式未来的研究方向,其中特别注意到同步EEG-f MRI技术的应用有望为我们揭示出记忆提取抑制导致的动机性遗忘发生的动态过程。     

Strengthening the Role of Unmarried Fathers: Findings from the Co‐Parent Court Project

While the importance of fathers in unmarried coparent families is a strong area of social and political interest, a dearth of community‐based interventions exists for supporting the role of fathers in at‐risk families. The Co‐Parent Court (CPC) was a 3‐year demonstration project evaluating the effectiveness of a collaborative intervention to support unmarried coparents establishing paternity and improving their coparenting relationships and paternal involvement in their child's life. A randomized‐control experimental design was employed. The paper will explore father involvement and coparent relationship outcomes.     

Helping Parents Cope with Suicide Threats: An Approach Based on Nonviolent Resistance

Parent training in nonviolent resistance was adapted to deal with situations of suicide threat by children, adolescents, and young adults. The approach aims at reducing the risk potential and the mutual distress surrounding the threat‐interaction. Parent training in nonviolent resistance has been shown to help parents move from helplessness to presence, from isolation to connectedness, from submission to resistance, from escalation to self‐control, and from mutual distancing and hostility to care and support. Those emphases can be crucial for the diminution of suicide risk. Parents show good ability to implement the approach and report gains on various areas over and beyond the reduction in suicide threat. A particular advantage is that the method can be used also in cases where the young person threatening suicide is not willing to cooperate.     

Synchronistic mind‐matter correlations in therapeutic practice: a commentary on Connolly (2015)

This commentary adds some ideas and refinements to the inspiring discussion in a recent paper by Connolly ( 2015 ) that makes use of a dual‐aspect framework developed by us earlier. One key point is that exceptional experiences (of which synchronicities are a special case) cannot in general be identified with experiences of non‐categorial or acategorial mental states. In fact, most exceptional experiences reported in the literature are experiences of categorial states. Conversely, there are non‐categorial and acategorial states whose experience is not exceptional. Moreover, the psychodynamics of a synchronistic experience contain a subtle mesh of interacting processes pertaining to categorial, non‐categorial and acategorial domains. We outline how this mesh may be addressed in particular cases of synchronicity described by Connolly.