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PubMed2001

When dreams become a royal road to confusion: realistic dreams, dissociation, and fantasy proneness.

Scientific discussions about false memories have, so far, mainly focused on external determinants (e.g., therapeutic interventions). However, in some cases, false memories might develop more spontaneously. For example, difficulties in distinguishing between dreams and reality may lead to false memories. The present article discusses two studies (N = 85 and 255, respectively) that examined to what extent such difficulties occur. In both studies, a nontrivial minority of respondents (11.8% and 25.9%, respectively) reported that they had had the experience of not being able to discriminate between dream and reality. As expected, respondents who reported this type of confusion scored higher on fantasy proneness and dissociation measures than respondents who did not report this confusion.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

Low back pain and illness behavior (inappropriate, maladaptive, or abnormal).

Patients with low back pain without a sufficient physical cause attract labels such as "hysteria" and "hypochondriasis," often on the basis of exclusion. The concept of "abnormal illness behavior" was introduced to clarify the classification and diagnosis of these conditions, in which the behavior of the doctor plays a particularly important part. Principles of management are discussed.

Decision Trees↗
PubMed2005

Confidence in errors as a possible basis for delusions in schizophrenia.

In two previous studies, it was observed that schizophrenic patients display increased confidence in memory errors compared with controls. The patient group displayed an increased proportion of errors in their knowledge system, quantified as the percentage of high-confident responses that are errors. The latter phenomenon has been termed knowledge corruption and is put forward as a risk factor for the emergence of delusions. In the present study, knowledge corruption was analyzed separately for different aspects of memory errors. A source-monitoring task was used, for which participants (30 schizophrenic patients with past or current paranoid ideas and 15 healthy controls) were asked to provide associates for each of 20 prime words. Later, participants were required to recognize studied words among distractor words, judge the original source, and provide a confidence rating for the most recent decision. Schizophrenic patients displayed greater confidence in memory errors compared with controls. Knowledge corruption was observed to be significantly greater in schizophrenic patients relative to controls for false-positive and false-negative judgments. It is proposed that reliance on false knowledge represents a candidate mechanism for the emergence of fixed false beliefs (i.e., delusions).

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Where theories of mind meet magic: the development of children's beliefs about wishing.

In two studies, we probed children's beliefs about wishing. In Study 1, we gathered initial data on 50 3- to 6-year-old children's concepts of wishing and beliefs about its efficacy, with both a semistructured interview and a variety of tasks. Results revealed considerable knowledge about wishing in young children, along with an age-related decrease in beliefs about its efficacy. Parents were not found to encourage differently the beliefs of children at different ages, nor were they found to begin actively discouraging such beliefs at any particular age. A moderate relation was found between environmental supports for wishing and children's beliefs in its efficacy. In Study 2, we continued to probe these issues and also address the nature of the broader conceptual context in which children situate their beliefs about wishing. Participants were 92 3- to 6-year-old children. Results of this study suggest that children may reconcile beliefs in the efficacy of wishing with knowledge about everyday mental-physical relations by situating these beliefs more within their emerging beliefs about magic than within their theories of mind.

Chi-Square Distribution↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Individual differences in inhibitory control and children's theory of mind.

This research examined the relation between individual differences in inhibitory control (IC; a central component of executive functioning) and theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in preschool-age children. Across two sessions, 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 107) were given multitask batteries measuring IC and ToM. Inhibitory control was strongly related to ToM, r = .66, p < .001. This relation remained significant controlling for age, gender, verbal ability, motor sequencing, family size, and performance on pretend-action and mental state control tasks. Inhibitory tasks requiring a novel response in the face of a conflicting prepotent response (Conflict scale) and those requiring the delay of a prepotent response (Delay scale) were significantly related to ToM. The Conflict scale, however, significantly predicted ToM performance over and above the Delay scale and control measures, whereas the Delay scale was not significant in a corresponding analysis. These findings suggest that IC may be a crucial enabling factor for ToM development, possibly affecting both the emergence and expression of mental state knowledge. The implications of the findings for a variety of executive accounts of ToM are discussed.

Awareness↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Theory of mind and relational complexity.

Cognitive complexity and control theory and relational complexity theory attribute developmental changes in theory of mind (TOM) to complexity. In 3 studies, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds performed TOM tasks (false belief, appearance-reality), less complex connections (Level 1 perspective-taking) tasks, and transformations tasks (understanding the effects of location changes and colored filters) with content similar to TOM. There were also predictor tasks at binary-relational and ternary-relational complexity levels, with different content. Consistent with complexity theories: (a) connections and transformations were easier and mastered earlier than TOM; (b) predictor tasks accounted for more than 80% of age-related variance in TOM; and (c) ternary-relational items accounted for TOM variance, before and after controlling for age and binary-relational items. Prediction did not require hierarchically structured predictor tasks.

Age Factors↗
PubMed2000

The momentary realist.

Research suggests that people initially take their subjective experience of an object as an accurate reflection of the object's properties, and only subsequently, occasionally, and effortfully consider the possibility that their experience was influenced by extraneous factors. The two studies reported here demonstrate that this is true even when the extraneous factors are the person's own dispositions. Dispositionally happy and unhappy participants were falsely told that they had been subliminally primed with words that might have influenced their moods, and were then asked to identify those words. Dispositionally happy participants were more likely than dispositionally unhappy participants to conclude that they had been primed with positive words, but only when they made these judgments under time pressure. The results are discussed in terms of correction models of human judgment.

Adult↗
PubMed1979

Some aspects of order and symbolism in schizophrenia.

Developing out Rümke's term of "PraecoxGefühl", it is described that the schizophrenic disorder in his way of being is the fundamental underlying reason for dissociation of his thoughts and feelings. This consequently leads to a distortion in his system of sign recognition and the meaning attached to the different semantic and syntactic levels. By means of the "Wahnarbeit" and other mechanisms the schizophrenic tries to build another order in which he can feel more at ease with his overwhelming experiences. The conceptualization of his thoughts is performed by using a "principle of symmetry"--attaching the meaning of one perceived object (I) of reality to another conceptualized object (II). Very often we are unable to understand the individualistic nature of schizophrenic symbolization because of this mechanism.

Anomie↗
PubMed1989

Fictionality of schizophrenic delusions.

A state in which the phenomena of the surrounding world are transformed into a set of symbols that transmit indefinite meanings is thought to provide the circumstances under which delusions arise. The surrounding world is interpreted as a written text, and when the schizophrenic reads this and attempts to construct a coherent fictional account of it, a process of delusion formation takes place, and this process corresponds symptomatologically to a delusional system. If delusions are considered in comparison with fictions, in particular fantastic fictions, areas are found in the paranoid patient's mental processes where contingency is left out, and for that reason it is not possible for the delusional account to be satisfactorily completed.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

The meaning of basic symptoms for the genesis of the schizophrenic nuclear syndrome.

In the Bonn Transition Sequences study, the development of the Schneiderian first rank symptoms in their exact chronological order was studied from the first symptomatological precursors up to the complete forms of the respective psychotic final phenomena. At their onset, subjective experiences of preexisting disorders of perception, thinking, speech and memory, of cognitive control of action and of proprioception were found. These four groups of initial deficiencies developed via certain intermediate phenomena into first rank symptoms. The analysis of these transition sequences revealed three phases with different generating factors each. Altogether, the results showed that and how the gap between the deficiency findings of the biologically oriented research in schizophrenia and the diagnostically relevant changes in experience can be bridged.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Is mythical delusion a factor blocking schizophrenic symptoms?

It has been stated that mythical delusion can block schizophrenic symptoms. However, there are some schizophrenics in whom mythical delusion does not react against schizophrenic symptoms. Three cases are reported of mythical delusion and what conditions are necessary for the mythical delusion to "block" schizophrenic symptoms are considered. Such "blocking' can be found in the mythical delusion which mediates between schizophrenic symptoms and reality. Conversely, when there is no relationship between mythical delusion and schizophrenic symptoms "blocking' cannot be expected.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Stress-reductive effects of information disclosure to medical and psychiatric patients.

Informed consent has become a central part of medical decision-making. It is based on disclosure of medical information to support patients' rights for autonomous decision-making from a legal point of view. However, information disclosure may also benefit patients. Research indicates that information disclosure reduces stress among patients and that the more patients desire relevant information, the more stress-reductive information disclosure may be. In psychiatry, too, studies have shown that educating psychiatric patients may not necessarily reduce compliance or increase relapse rate. These findings are in line with patients' desires and their legal right to know their own medical matters. It has long been believed that patients, be they psychiatric or non-psychiatric, should be protected and not given information that would potentially cause distress or harm to them. However, patient's competency may be a function of the physicians' efforts to make patients understand necessary information. Therefore, a patient's right to give informed consent leads to a physician's duty to disclose individually tailored information understandable to patients.

Disclosure↗
PubMed1995

Scylla and Charybdis. Sexual abuse or 'false memory syndrome'? Therapy-induced 'memories' of sexual abuse.

The increasing importance and frequency of so-called 'false memories' of sexual abuse, which in reality never occurred, occasions a theoretical reflection about therapy-induced 'memories' of sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is first seen to involve a serious loss of psychic structure. As such it has much in common with other, endogenous forms of severe psychic disorders. Drawing upon the (Kleinian) categories of projective identification, projective counter-identification and psychotic personality aspects, together with the Jungian conception of the 'mutual unconsciousness' between therapist and patient, the author presents a psychodynamic hypothesis regarding the origins of 'false memories' or 'recovered memories' of sexual abuse. This is exemplified with two therapy cases involving such memories of abuse.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Trauma and symbol. Instinct and reality perception in therapeutic work with victims of incest.

With the help of the conceptualizations of Amati and Bleger, and of Jung, the loss of instinctual experience and reality sense in the victims of incestuous abuse is described as an extreme regression to a primary undifferentiated stage of development: that of 'ambiguity' and 'identity'. At this stage the identity of the victim is taken over by that of the aggressor and becomes petrified in a form of mimicry. Differentiation processes are partially blocked. Through the therapeutic work with a woman who was sexually abused as a child, and whose daughter was also being incestuously traumatized, it is demonstrated how, through the use of fantasy, the instinctive reaction of thanatosis can be given up, together with the attempt to find meaning through self-sacrifice, which continually places the victim in renewed danger. By means of activating the transcendent function, the positive pole of the archetype can be set up as a counterforce in the internal world which was once feared like an abuser, and thus as a balance to the images of actual historical violation. The positive pole of the archetype then allows the inner world to loosen itself from the tangled aggressive and auto-aggressive layers of identity. This leads to a revival of protective instinctual reactions and to an improvement in reality functioning. It is emphasized that it is not the recall of actual abuse that promotes therapeutic progress but the evolving symbolizations. The analysis of the symbolic experience leads to the following conclusion: the hypothesis that, on the grounds of positive feelings, the children 'have also wanted' the incestuous activity, cannot be upheld.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1990

Depression and judgment of control: impact of a contingency on accuracy.

In this study we sought to determine whether mild depressives and nondepressives could respond adaptively and self-correct their judgments of contingency when it was clearly advantageous to do so. Ninety-six undergraduates were given four contingency-learning tasks involving pressing or not pressing a key to turn on a light and to judge the degree of control their responses had over light onset. On the first task, which included a monetary contingency only on light onset, mild depressives were relatively accurate in their judgments of control. Tasks 2 through 4, which also included a monetary contingency and feedback on accuracy of judgment of control, showed a Mood x Task interaction. Mild depressives, but not nondepressives, became more accurate, and by the last task, mild depressives were more accurate than nondepressives. Results were discussed in terms of incentive, feedback, and task exposure.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Positive illusions and coping with adversity.

We review the literature showing that positive illusions (i.e., self-aggrandizement, unrealistic optimism, and exaggerated perceptions of control) are common and associated with successful adjustment to stressful events, including conditions of extreme adversity. Using theory and recent data, we offer a basis for integrating positive illusions with the constraints of reality. We explicitly contrast the social psychological model of positive illusions with a personality viewpoint that addresses the question "Do higher levels of positive illusions predict higher levels of adjustment?" These issues are explored in the context of people coping with an array of normal stressful events, as well as those coping with more extreme stressful events, including cancer, heart disease, and HIV infection.

Adaptation, Psychological↗