Coherence Of Mind Research Articles

Activity system, schizotypal personality, and mentalization: A study between halted activity and COVID-19 conducted in Henan, China.

The pandemic-related lifestyle has potentially imposed crucial disturbances on daily and long-term activities, which, in turn, were associated with thought disturbance. This study investigates how the characteristics of the activity system during pandemic-related restrictions are associated with other psychomental aspects. By focusing on PTSD, mentalization, and schizotypal personality, and by inquiring about the main components of the activity system of 852 college students (Zhengzhou, Henan, China)- including the goals orienting their activity, goals' terms and types, the motivation levels and sources, the activity type and engagement time, the flow of the activity, and how due to pandemic lifestyle-results revealed that the activity system's components have significant associations with PTSD, reflective function, and schizotypal traits. Additionally, some of the activity system's elements have a significant predictive role regarding schizotypal traits. The study considered that the life narrative during the pandemic has been disturbed; hence, this may have a crucial effect on mind coherence. Additionally, the outcomes from the pandemic context will support mental health interventions in other similar contexts where the life narrative is severely affected.

Disturbances in the experiences of embodiment related to attachment, mentalization and self-objectification in anorexia nervosa

BackgroundBody image disturbance is central to both the understanding and treatment of anorexia nervosa (AN); however, the underlying psychological processes involved are still not well understood. One way towards a better understanding of these mechanisms may be to explore the sense of embodiment in these patients in an attempt at integrating the role of the body in our understanding of the development of self in AN. It is hypothesized that difficulties in affective experiences of embodiment is related to insecure attachment, deficits in mentalization and self-objectification.MethodsSixteen inpatients with AN were interviewed with the Mirror Interview (MI). In the interview, the individual is asked a set of questions related to thoughts and feelings about the body while standing in front of a full-length mirror. Furthermore, all patients were assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview, which was coded for both attachment and mentalization (operationalized by the Reflective Functioning scale; RF). Self-objectification was measured with the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale (OBCS).ResultsResults from a multiple regression analysis showed that Global MI scores were significantly associated with Coherence of mind as an indicator of attachment, RF and scores on the OBCS.ConclusionsThe study suggests that affective experiences of embodiment in patients with AN are associated with negative attachment representations, mentalizing impairments and objectified body consciousness.Plain English SummaryBody image disturbance is a key diagnostic feature in anorexia nervosa but the underlying psychological processes are poorly understood. Recently, there has been a growing interest in how disturbances in the more psychological experience of the body (embodiment) in anorexia nervosa is related to both attachment, how individuals make sense of both themselves and others and the degree to which they tend to experience ourselves from the outside. In this pilot study, this was assessed with an innovative interview, the Mirror Interview, where the individual is asked a set of question while standing in front of a full length mirror. Results showed that difficulties in embodied experiences in patients with anorexia nervosa were related to more fundamental representations of self and self-objectification. This has potential implications for both the understanding and treatment of anorexia nervosa, as disturbances in body image may be seen as an underlying factor in the development of an eating disorder.

Coherent Mortality Forecasting for Less Developed Countries

This paper proposes a coherent multi-population approach to mortality forecasting for less developed countries. The majority of these countries have witnessed faster mortality declines among the young and the working age populations during the past few decades, whereas in the more developed countries, the contemporary mortality declines have been more substantial among the elders. Along with the socioeconomic developments, the mortality patterns of the less developed countries may become closer to those of the more developed countries. As a consequence, forecasting the long-term mortality of a less developed country by simply extrapolating its historical patterns might lead to implausible results. As an alternative, this paper proposes to incorporate the mortality patterns of a group of more developed countries as the benchmark to improve the forecast for a less developed one. With long-term, between-country coherence in mind, we allow the less developed country’s age-specific mortality improvement rates to gradually converge with those of the benchmark countries during the projection phase. Further, we employ a data-driven, threshold hitting approach to control the speed of this convergence. Our method is applied to China, Brazil, and Nigeria. We conclude that taking into account the gradual convergence of mortality patterns can lead to more reasonable long-term forecasts for less developed countries.

Early maternal sensitivity, attachment security in young adulthood, and cardiometabolic risk at midlife

ABSTRACTChildren who experience high-quality early parenting tend to have better physical health, but limited research has tested whether this association extends into adulthood using prospective, observational assessments. Likewise, mechanisms that may explain such links have not yet been illuminated. In this study, we test whether the quality of early maternal sensitivity experienced during the first 3½ years of life predicts cardiometabolic risk at midlife (ages 37 and 39 years) via attachment representations measured in young adulthood (ages 19 and 26 years). We do so by comparing the predictive significance of two different forms of attachment representations coded from the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI): (a) secure base script knowledge and (b) coherence of mind. Using data from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, we find that early maternal sensitivity is negatively associated with cardiometabolic risk at midlife. Secure base script knowledge (but not coherence of mind) partially mediated this link. These findings are consistent with the possibility that early parenting has lasting significance for physical health in part by promoting higher levels of secure base script knowledge.

DRD4 interacts with adverse life events in predicting maternal sensitivity via emotion regulation.

We examined whether and how the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) interacts with adverse life events to predict maternal sensitivity directly and indirectly via emotion regulation. The sample included 209 (106 European American, 103 African American) mothers and their children (52% female). Sensitive maternal behavior was rated and aggregated across five stress-free and stress-inducing tasks when children were about 2 years old, when mothers also retrospectively reported on their adverse life experiences and transitions throughout childhood from birth to age 20. When children were about 1 year old, mothers reported on their difficulties with emotion regulation. Results from path analysis indicated that mothers who carried the long allele of DRD4 and experienced more adverse life events were less sensitive in interactions with their children. These mothers were also more likely to have difficulties with emotion regulation, which in turn predicted lower maternal sensitivity. These effects were significant above and beyond the effects of maternal education, coherence of mind, race, or infants' DRD4 genotype, and did not vary for African American and European American mothers. Results suggest that genetic predispositions modify the effects of maternal experience of adverse life events on maternal sensitivity and that emotion regulation serves as one mechanism by which genetic factors and gene-environment interactions affect maternal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record

Coherent Mortality Forecasting for Less Developed Countries

This paper proposes a multi-population approach to forecasting mortality rates for the less developed countries in a coherent way. The majority of these countries have witnessed faster mortality declines among the young and the working age population, whereas in developed countries, the mortality declined more heavily among the elders over the same period. We argue that the long-term mortality forecasts of a less developed country based solely on its historical mortality pattern might be implausible. As an alternative, we propose to incorporate the mortality data of a group of more developed countries as the benchmark to improve the forecasts for a less developed country. With the long-term coherence in mind, we propose to let a less developed country's age-specific mortality improvement rates to gradually converge to the benchmark values estimated from a group of more developed countries during the projection phase. Moreover, we employ a data-driven and threshold hitting approach to control the speed of this convergence. Empirical applications to China, Brazil, and Nigeria provide more reasonable long-term mortality forecasts than the existing forecasting practice.

Go With the Flow, on Jupiter and Snow. Coherence from Model-Free Video Data Without Trajectories

Viewing a data set such as the clouds of Jupiter, coherence is readily apparent to human observers, especially the Great Red Spot, but also other great storms and persistent structures. There are now many different definitions and perspectives mathematically describing coherent structures, but we will take an image processing perspective here. We describe an image processing perspective inference of coherent sets from a fluidic system directly from image data, without attempting to first model underlying flow fields, related to a concept in image processing called motion tracking. In contrast to standard spectral methods for image processing which are generally related to a symmetric affinity matrix, leading to standard spectral graph theory, we need a not symmetric affinity which arises naturally from the underlying arrow of time. We develop an anisotropic, directed diffusion operator corresponding to flow on a directed graph, from a directed affinity matrix developed with coherence in mind, and corresponding spectral graph theory from the graph Laplacian. Our methodology is not offered as more accurate than other traditional methods of finding coherent sets, but rather our approach works with alternative kinds of data sets, in the absence of vector field. Our examples will include partitioning the weather and cloud structures of Jupiter, and a local to Potsdam, NY, lake effect snow event on Earth, as well as the benchmark test double-gyre system.

Change in Attachment Dimensions and Reflective Functioning Following Emotionally Focused Group Therapy for Binge Eating Disorder

ABSTRACTThe current study examines change in attachment variables from pre- to six months post-emotionally focused group therapy (EFGT) for binge eating disorder (BED). A clinical sample of 118 women and men with BED attended 20 sessions of EFGT and completed the Adult Attachment Interview pre- and six months post-treatment. There was a significant increase in secure attachment style classification, significant increases in Coherence of Mind and Reflective Functioning scores, and significant decreases in both unresolved/disorganized attachment style classification and scale scores from pre- to six months post-treatment. Interventions specific to EFGT, common therapeutic factors and group process interventions may have contributed to changes in these attachment variables. The current study demonstrated that EFGT is a promising treatment for facilitating change in attachment in women and men with BED.

The role of coherence of mind and reflective functioning in understanding binge-eating disorder and co-morbid overweight

ABSTRACTCoherence of mind and reflective functioning may impact negative affect and interpersonal functioning over and above the effects of symptoms of depression and interpersonal problems that contribute to symptoms of binge-eating disorder (BED) and overweight/obesity. Matched samples of overweight women with BED and overweight and normal weight women without BED completed the Adult Attachment Interview, a measure of depressive symptoms, and a measure of interpersonal problems. Greater symptoms of depression distinguished women with BED from the matched comparison samples. Greater interpersonal problems differentiated women with BED from overweight women without BED. Coherence of Mind scores did not differentiate the samples. However, lower Reflective Functioning scores did distinguish both women with BED and overweight women without BED from normal weight women. Lower reflective functioning may lead to binge eating independent of depressive symptoms and interpersonal problems.

Structure of reflective functioning and adult attachment scales: overlap and distinctions

ABSTRACTThis investigation examined the structure of reflective functioning (RF) – an understanding of the links between mental states and behaviors – and adult attachment scales. Both RF and traditional adult attachment scales were coded based on 194 prebirth Adult Attachment Interviews (AAI). Correlational and factor analyses indicated considerable overlap between RF and traditional AAI coding. Exploratory factor analyses of RF and AAI state-of-mind scales indicated that RF loaded, along with coherence of mind, on the primary factor distinguishing between individuals categorized as secure and dismissing. These findings indicate substantial overlap between RF and AAI scales; however, the magnitude of the correlations between these scales indicates that they are not redundant.

Genetic moderation of stability in attachment security from early childhood to age 18 years: A replication study.

A longstanding question for attachment theory and research is whether genetically based characteristics of the child influence the development of attachment security and its stability over time. This study attempted to replicate and extend recent findings indicating that the developmental stability of attachment security is moderated by oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genetic variants. Using longitudinal data from over 550 individuals, there was no evidence that OXTR rs53576 moderated the association between attachment security during early childhood and overall coherence of mind ("security") during the Adult Attachment Interview at age 18 years. Additional analyses involving a second commonly investigated OXTR variant (rs2254298) and indices of individuals' dismissing and preoccupied attachment states of mind also failed to provide robust evidence for oxytonergic moderation of the stability in attachment security across development. The discussion focuses on research strategies for investigating genetic contributions to attachment security across the life span.

Difficulties with computational coreference tracking: How to achieve ‘coherence in mind’ without a mind?

The introduction and maintenance of reference in discourse is subject to a number of language-universal constraints on NP form and selection that allow speakers to maintain reference co-referentially (i.e. from mention to mention) with minimal processing effort across large spans of discourse. Automated approaches to co-reference resolution (i.e. the successful tracking of discourse referents across texts) use a variety of models to account for how a referent may be tracked co-referentially, yet automated co-reference resolution is still considered an incredibly difficult task for those working in natural language processing and generation, even when using ‘gold-standard’ manually-annotated discourse texts as a source of comparison. Less research has been conducted on the performance of automated co-reference resolution on narrative data, which is rich with multiple referents interacting with each other, with long sequences of continuous and non-continuous reference to be maintained. Five freely-available co-reference resolvers were trialled for accuracy on oral narrative data produced by English native speakers using a picture sequence as an elicitation device. However, accuracy levels of under 50% for each resolver tested suggest large differences between human and computational methods of co-reference resolution. In particular, zero anaphora, NPs with modifiers and errors in coding first-mentioned referents appear particularly problematic. This suggests that automated approaches to coreference resolution need a vast range of lexical knowledge, inferential capabilities based on situational and world knowledge, and the ability to track reference over extended discourse if they are to succeed in modelling human-like coreference resolution.

Adult Attachment Interview differentiates adolescents with Childhood Sexual Abuse from those with clinical depression and non-clinical controls

Although attachment representation is considered to be disturbed in traumatized adolescents, it is not known whether this is specific for trauma, as comparative studies with other clinical groups are lacking. Therefore, attachment representation was studied by means of the Adult Attachment Interview in adolescents with Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) (N = 21), clinical depression (N = 28) and non-clinical controls (N = 28). Coherence of mind and unresolved loss or trauma, as well as the disorganized attachment classification differentiated the CSA group from the clinical depression group and controls, over and above age, IQ, and psychiatric symptomatology. In the current era of sustained criticism on criteria-based classification, this may well carry substantial clinical relevance. If attachment is a general risk or vulnerability factor underlying specific psychopathology, this may guide diagnostic assessment as well as treatment.

Eating Disorders and Attachment: A Contemporary Psychodynamic Perspective

A contemporary psychodynamic framework can add much to our understanding of eating disorders. Eating disorders are associated with complex comorbidities, high levels of mortality, and therapist countertransferences that can complicate psychological treatments. Mainstream models currently focus on cognitive, biological, or cultural factors to the near exclusion of attachment functioning, and the individual’s dynamics. As such, standard models appear to exclude person-centred and developmental considerations when providing treatments. In this article, we describe a contemporary psychodynamic model that understands eating disorder symptoms as a consequence of vulnerability to social pressures to be thin and biological predispositions to body weight. Individual vulnerabilities are rooted in unmet attachment needs causing negative affect, and subsequent maladaptive defenses and eating disorder symptoms as a means of coping. We describe how this model can inform transdiagnostic eating disorder treatment that focuses on symptoms as well as specific attachment functions including: interpersonal style, affect regulation, reflective functioning, and coherence of mind. Two clinical examples are presented to illustrate case formulations and psychological treatments informed by these conceptualizations.

“Eat This Cookie and Call Me in the Morning”: Perspectives on the Magic of Metaphor

This discussion reviews the subjective experience of analysts encountering enactment in clinical practice and the various attempts which have been made to maintain therapist coherence under the destabilizing effects of their own unconscious intersubjective process. The discussion includes descriptions of the phenomenal experience of enactment and a variety of responses to that experience. Also, the issue of how the subjective experience might be reported and conveyed in sharable language is examined, especially with reference to the use of metaphor as a potential bridge between subjects. Questions are raised as to whether process or content variables contribute more to coherence of mind and which relationship variables are more salient.

Attachment representations in late-adopted children: the use of narrative in the assessment of disorganisation, mentalising and coherence of mind

Late-adopted children have often suffered a wide range of deprivations in their pre-adoption lives. These early adverse experiences can have a negative effect on children’s attachment representations even after they have been adopted. This study assesses the attachment representations of 61 late-adopted children over the first year of placement, exploring the risk and protective factors of age at placement, length of adoption and gender. The attachment representations were captured using the Manchester Completion Attachment Story Task (MCAST), a doll-play narrative that provides four different attachment classifications – secure, avoidant, ambivalent and disorganised – and three global scorings for disorganisation, mentalising and coherence of mind.The age of adoption was negatively associated with disorganisation, while length of placement was positively correlated with mentalising. Males seemed to be more vulnerable to insecurity and disorganisation than females. The data also suggested that for children placed after the attachment-sensitive phase, the longer the time spent in the adoptive families and being female were protective factors. Moreover, attachment narratives seemed to be a useful tool to explore the inner world of late-adopted children from the first year of placement.

Antecedents of maternal sensitivity during distressing tasks: integrating attachment, social information processing, and psychobiological perspectives.

Predictors of maternal sensitivity to infant distress were examined among 259 primiparous mothers. The Adult Attachment Interview, self-reports of personality and emotional functioning, and measures of physiological, emotional, and cognitive responses to videotapes of crying infants were administered prenatally. Maternal sensitivity was observed during three distress-eliciting tasks when infants were 6 months old. Coherence of mind was directly associated with higher maternal sensitivity to distress. Mothers' heightened emotional risk was indirectly associated with lower sensitivity via mothers' self-focused and negative processing of infant cry cues. Likewise, high physiological arousal accompanied by poor physiological regulation in response to infant crying was indirectly associated with lower maternal sensitivity to distress through mothers' self-focused and negative processing of infant cry cues.

Attachment and eating disorders: a review of current research.

Attachment insecurity may confer risk for developing an eating disorder. We describe domains of attachment functioning that are relevant to eating disorders including: affect regulation, interpersonal style, coherence of mind, and reflective functioning. Research since 2000 on attachment and eating disorders related to these domains is reviewed. We searched MedLine/Pubmed and PsycINFO from January 2000 to February 2014 and kept articles that: were empirical, included adults with a diagnosed eating disorder, and used a standard attachment measure. We retained 50 relevant studies. Compared to controls, those with eating disorders had higher levels of attachment insecurity and disorganized mental states. Lower reflective functioning was specifically associated with anorexia nervosa. Attachment anxiety was associated with eating disorder symptom severity, and this relationship may be mediated by perfectionism and affect regulation strategies. Type of attachment insecurity had specific negative impacts on psychotherapy processes and outcomes, such that higher attachment avoidance may lead to dropping out and higher attachment anxiety may lead to poorer treatment outcomes. Research to date suggests a possible relationship between attachment insecurity and risk for an eating disorder. More research is needed that uses attachment interviews, and longitudinal and case control designs. Clinicians can assess attachment insecurity to help inform therapeutic stances and interventions.

Constancy and Coherence in 1.4.2 of Hume’s Treatise: The Root of “Indirect” Causation and Hume’s Position on Objects

This article shows that in 1.4.2.15-24 of the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume presents his own position on objects, which is to be distinguished from both the vulgar and philosophical conception of objects. Here, Hume argues that objects that are effectively imagined to have a “perfect identity” are imagined due to the constancy and coherence of our perceptions (what we may call ‘level 1 constancy and coherence’). In particular, we imagine that objects cause such perceptions, via what I call ‘indirect causation.’ In virtue of imagining ideas of objects that have a perfect identity, our perceptions seem to be even more constant and coherent (what we may call ‘level 2 constancy and coherence’). Thus, in addition to seeing that Hume is presenting his own position on objects in this section of the Treatise, we see that he is working with a previously unrecognized kind of causation, i.e., indirect causation, and that he has two kinds of constancy and coherence in mind: level 1 and level 2.

Implications of attachment theory and research for the assessment and treatment of eating disorders.

In this paper, we review the research literature on attachment and eating disorders and suggest a framework for assessing and treating attachment functioning in patients with an eating disorder. Treatment outcomes for individuals with eating disorders tend to be moderate. Those with attachment-associated insecurities are likely to be the least to benefit from current symptom-focused therapies. We describe the common attachment categories (secure, avoidant, anxious), and then describe domains of attachment functioning within each category: affect regulation, interpersonal style, coherence of mind, and reflective functioning. We also note the impact of disorganized mental states related to loss or trauma. Assessing these domains of attachment functioning can guide focused interventions in the psychotherapy of eating disorders. Case examples are presented to illustrate assessment, case formulation, and group psychotherapy of eating disorders that are informed by attachment theory. Tailoring treatments to improve attachment functioning for patients with an eating disorder will likely result in better outcomes for those suffering from these particularly burdensome disorders.