Representations Of Self Research Articles

“Partner in Prime”? Effects of repeated mobile security priming on attachment security and perceived stress in daily life

ABSTRACTLacking secure attachment representations is associated with vulnerability to mental and physical health problems, perhaps mediated by increased susceptibility to stress and impaired emotion regulation. Even though cognitive representations of self and others tend to favor confirmation over information, research has shown that adult attachment security can be positively influenced. In a randomized control trial using a mixed between- and within-subjects design, participants (N = 112) were mobile primed with attachment security stimulating visualization tasks, over a 7-day period. Self-reported attachment security was unchanged; however, reduced attachment avoidance and perceived stress and increased resilience and self-compassion scores were obtained up to one week after the last prime. Participants who reported less effort and more pleasure in carrying out the visualization tasks experienced the highest gains. Results highlight the potential of mobile attachment security priming for intervention, but also the differential potential of such intervention for people with different attachment orientations.

Meaning Through Attachment: An Integrative Framework.

We propose an integrative framework, advancing attachment as a vital factor in the development and maintenance of meaning throughout life. First, early attachment experiences provide a foundation for recognizing patterns and acquiring a sense of order and coherence. Furthermore, interactions with sensitive attachment figures stimulate mentalization capacities and exploration of the inner and outer environment, enabling the formation of complex representations of self, others, and the world, ultimately also molding how individuals appraise meaning in their lives. Second, attachment security can serve as an enduring and powerful resource for handling threats to meaning. When confronted with disruptions to meaning, secure attachment provides a coherent set of representations to fall back on and maintain or regain a firm sense of order and meaning under challenging circumstances. Moreover, by promoting cognitive openness and tolerance of ambiguity, secure attachment facilitates flexible and realistic adjustment of meaning representations when encountering discrepant information.

Neural representations of the multidimensional self in the cortical midline structures

Self-concept consists of self-identity that distinguishes self from other people and knowledge that describes one's own attributes in different dimensions. Because self-concept plays a fundamental role in individuals' social functioning and mental health, behavioral studies have examined cognitive processes of self-identity and self-knowledge extensively. Nevertheless, how different dimensions of the self-concept are organized in multi-voxel neural patterns remains elusive. Here, we address this issue by employing representational similarity analyses of behavioral/theoretical models of multidimensional self-representation and blood oxygen level dependent responses, recorded using functional MRI, to judgments of personality traits, physical attributes and social roles of oneself, a close (one's mother) other, and a distant (celebrity) other. The multivoxel patterns of neural activities in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) distinguished representations of the self from both close and distant others, suggesting a specific neural representation of the self-identity; and distinguished different dimensions of person knowledge of oneself, indicating dimension-sensitive neural representation of the self. Moreover, the pattern of PCC activity is more strongly coupled with dimensions of self-knowledge than self-identity. Our findings suggest that multivoxel neural patterns of the cortical midline structures distinguish not only self from others but also discriminate different dimensions of the self.

Intimacy Effects on Action Regulation: Retrieval of Observationally Acquired Stimulus-Response Bindings in Romantically Involved Interaction Partners Versus Strangers.

Previous research has shown that stimulus–response (SR) binding and retrieval processes also occur when responses are only observed in another person (Giesen et al., 2014). Importantly, this effect depends on the two individuals interacting interdependently during the task (e.g., competition or cooperation). Interdependence, however, must not necessarily result from task-related demands, but can also reflect an intrinsic feature of a given relationship. The present study examines whether observing responses of one’s romantic partner also produces stimulus-based retrieval of observed responses even if the task itself does not involve interdependence. Participants performed a task pairwise, either with their romantic partner or with a stranger. In a sequential prime-probe design, both participants of a pair gave color responses themselves (actors) or merely observed these (observers) in alternating fashion. As expected, stimulus-based retrieval of observationally acquired SR-bindings occurred only in romantically involved pairs; participants interacting with a stranger showed no retrieval effects. We conclude that mental representations of self and other are more closely intertwined in romantic couples, which produces automatic retrieval of observationally acquired SR binding effects even independently of the task itself.

A Study of Paul’s Identity in Acts

In Acts, Luke describes Paul as a holder of multiple identities—Jew, Greek, and Roman. Paul’s behavior can be described as that of an opportunist by switching his own identity in Philippi and Jerusalem. However, Paul’s behavior can be discussed as a context-dependent representation of self. As the case of Lucian shows, an individual’s identity is fluidly constructed in religious, cultural, and political contexts. According to Luke’s portrayal, Paul also presents himself as a Jew in the Jewish religious context but as a Roman citizen in Roman political situations.

Inhibited symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder: links with working models of significant others and the self

ABSTRACTTo better understand Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), the current study tested whether emotionally and behaviorally disordered children with versus without RAD differ with regard to the quality of their interpersonal behavior during interactions with teachers and with regard to their representations of self and others. Therefore, 77 children were screened for RAD symptoms and 22 likely cases of inhibited RAD were identified. To measure quality of the interactions with teachers, we observed children’s trust and positive affect in dyadic interactions with teachers. For the representations of others, we measured self-reported trust in parents and teachers. For the representations of the self, two self-esteem assessments were individually administered. Results showed that, compared to children with other emotional and behavior disorders, RAD children’s behavior reflected less trust in their teachers. At the level of representations, children reported less trust in teacher care. Instead, no links were found with self-report measures focusing on representations of parents and of self. These findings will be discussed in light of the ongoing discussion about whether or not attachment disorder and insecure attachment are associated concepts.

The Relational and Bodily Experiences Theory of Sexual Desire in Women.

We review the theory and research on women's sexual desire and present a theory that incorporates internalized representations of relational and bodily experiences into our understanding of the full range of desire in women. To this end, we move away from the current tendency to focus on low sexual desire in women and instead consider desire on a spectrum or continuum from absent or diminished to high desire across multiple sexual orientations, including heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian. We review definitions of sexual desire, as well as the epidemiology and etiology of hypoactive sexual desire, the most prevalent sexual complaint in women, including the biological, psychological, and relationship correlates of inhibited sexual desire. Subsequently, we examine the research on highly sexual women, who tend to experience high levels of sexual desire, sexual agency, and sexual esteem, and distinguish between high sexual desire and hypersexuality. We introduce two important constructs that are integrated into the Relational and Bodily Experiences Theory (RBET) of sexual desire in women: attachment and sexual body self-representations, suggesting that women's internalized representations of self and other that stem from childhood and their capacity to embody their sexual bodies are integral to our understanding of the phenomenology of sexual desire in women. RBET calls for further research into the links between attachment, sexual body self-representations, and desire, and suggests that clinical interventions for sexual desire difficulties in women should emphasize internalized working models of relationships (i.e., attachment) and integrate bodily based approaches.

It's Not Me, It's You: Self- and Partner-Schemas, Depressive Symptoms, and Relationship Quality

Depression is associated with a host of interpersonal difficulties, particularly within intimate relationships. Although a significant body of literature has supported the presence of a highly consolidated negative self-representation or self-schema, no studies have examined whether depression is also associated with a highly organized negative “partner-schema”, and whether this represents a risk factor for relationship distress. Given the high degree of similarity between cognitive representations of self and close others, it was predicted that depression would be associated with a partner-schema structure mirroring that of the self-schema: an organized cognitive structure characterized by tightly interconnected negative information, and loosely dispersed positive information. In a sample of 291 undergraduate students, results supported this hypothesis. The findings also revealed that partner-schema structure was associated with relationship quality and attributions about a partner's behaviors over and above self-schema structure. These findings have important implications for understanding the link between cognitive risk factors, relational dysfunction, and depressive symptoms.

Is a Fitbit a Diary? Self-Tracking and Autobiography

Is a Fitbit a Diary? Self-Tracking and Autobiography

Neurofeedback and the Neural Representation of Self: Lessons From Awake State and Sleep.

Neurofeedback has been around for half a century, but despite some promising results it is not yet widely appreciated. Recently, some of the concerns about neurofeedback have been addressed with functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetoencephalography adding their contributions to the long history of neurofeedback with electroencephalography. Attempts to address other concerns related to methodological issues with new experiments and meta-analysis of earlier studies, have opened up new questions about its efficacy. A key concern about neurofeedback is the missing framework to explain how improvements in very different and apparently unrelated conditions are achieved. Recent advances in neuroscience begin to address this concern. A particularly promising approach is the analysis of resting state of fMRI data, which has revealed robust covariations in brain networks that maintain their integrity in sleep and even anesthesia. Aberrant activity in three brain wide networks (i.e., the default mode, central executive and salience networks) has been associated with a number of psychiatric disorders. Recent publications have also suggested that neurofeedback guides the restoration of “normal” activity in these three networks. Using very recent results from our analysis of whole night MEG sleep data together with key concepts from developmental psychology, cloaked in modern neuroscience terms, a theoretical framework is proposed for a neural representation of the self, located at the core of a double onion-like structure of the default mode network. This framework fits a number of old and recent neuroscientific findings, and unites the way attention and memory operate in awake state and during sleep. In the process, safeguards are uncovered, put in place by evolution, before any interference with the core representation of self can proceed. Within this framework, neurofeedback is seen as set of methods for restoration of aberrant activity in large scale networks. The framework also admits quantitative measures of improvements to be made by personalized neurofeedback protocols. Finally, viewed through the framework developed, neurofeedback’s safe nature is revealed while raising some concerns for interventions that attempt to alter the neural self-representation bypassing the safeguards evolution has put in place.

Index de contenu traumatique au Rorschach (TCI) et diagnostic de l’abus sexuel chez l’enfant

ObjectivesThe article has two aims. The first objective is to present to French clinicians working in forensic field a translation of an index built and validated using Rorschach Inkblot method by Armstrong and Loewenstein (1990), called Trauma Content Index (TCI). TCI was codified inside the Comprehensive System and integrated in recent R-PAS. The Rorschach indicators that constitute TCI, namely responses related to blood, anatomy, sex, aggressive movement and morbid content can be easily translated in French Parisian School system. For us, these indicators are highly relevant because they refer, according to our conception, to the attack of the image of the body and the representation of self which are the first indicators to be degraded in case of sexual abuse. The second objective is to study if American validated TCI cutoff to identify sexual abuse has the same usefulness when applied to a cohort of French children suspected of sexual abuse than in American sample and using Parisian School Rorschach codifying system. MethodsWe compared TCI of 50 children aged from 5 to 12 evaluated with Rorschach Inkblot A methodology in double-blinded-scoring where the two experts were both convinced of probability child sexual abuse diagnosis. We have obtained a high fidelity score of interrater agreement (0.92). These data were compared to TCI index of 50 children matched control group with samples stratified according to socio-economic level of parents as well as age. Chi square method was used to compare the two groups. ResultsA TCI cutoff of 0.25 allows us to differentiate statistically the two groups (Chi2: 19.01; P<0.001). Such a cutoff enables us to identify 72 % of the clinical group and only 6 % of the control group as false positives, showing the interest of TCI index applied to children suspected of sexual abuse. We agree with point of view issued from Kamphuis-Kugeares and Finn research (2000) upon adults in their own samples (n=100). That study compared Rorschach records of non-dissociative outpatients with histories of (a) definite sexual abuse, (b) suspected but unconfirmed sexual abuse or (c) non-sexual abuse. They conclude that, although TCI was strongly associated with the presence and severity of sexual abuse, the TCI is one factor among many that can be used to assess the validity of clients’ claims of past sexual abuse. French and South America studies on children with projective tests (Condamin 2006, Mazoyer-Roques, 2014, Scortegagna and de Villemor-Amoral 2012) are more qualitative oriented than Anglo–Saxons researches (Leifer et al., 1991, Kikuchi et al., 2010), but they end up at the same conclusion. That is the reason why we compared our two groups with as second projective tool: the ant's tales test (Royer 1978, de Tychey 2010) used to study child's body image whose usefulness was recently suggested to identify child sexual abuse (Kabuth et al., 2017). Joined use of TCI and indicators issued from that tool allow us to identify 94 % (instead of 72 % with TCI single use) of our clinical group. ConclusionTCI and projective tools are useful in forensic field to undertake child sexual abuse diagnosis. It would be important for future research to make comparative studies to approach TCI cutoff scores derived from subjects confronted to various post-traumatic situations and their psychiatric disorders forms. So it would perhaps possible to highlight specific cutoff values to child sexual abuse diagnosis.

Self and others

ABSTRACTWhat is the relation between self-knowledge and knowledge of others? And how do we develop an understanding of others and ourselves? In this paper, I will argue that our sense of self is thoroughly social even though self-knowledge is not based on the same kind of evidence as knowledge of others. Moreover, I will suggest that we need to distinguish between different kinds of self- and other-understanding: some are based on procedural knowledge or knowing-how and involve an implicit representation of self or other, while others involve conceptual abilities. I will conclude with some considerations regarding the role of the second-person perspective in structuring the development of the concept of ourselves and others as persons.

The Other and Me: Effects of oxytocin on self-other distinction.

Distinguishing self- from other-related representations plays an important role in social interactions. The neuropeptide oxytocin has been shown to modulate social behavior as well as underlying social cognitions and emotions. However, how exactly oxytocin modulates representations of self and other is still unclear. The present study therefore aimed to assess effects of oxytocin on self-other distinction on two different processing levels (i.e., lower-level imitation-inhibition and higher-level perspective taking) in a male sample (n = 56) by performing a double-blind, placebo-controlled oxytocin administration study. Oxytocin improved visual perspective-taking and thus affected self-other distinction on the cognitive level, but had no effects on self-other distinction on the perceptual-motor level nor on a control task measuring attention reorientation. Thus, our findings suggest that oxytocin reduces ambiguity during perspective-taking in social interactions, which in turn may encourage social approach motivation and affiliative behavior.

Reminders of mortality weaken P2 amplitude underlying both self-reflection and mother-reflection

Recent research has repeatedly shown that people usually escape self-related thoughts to behaviorally buffer the anxiety elicited by death, and that reminders of mortality influence the brain activations related to self-related thoughts. Meanwhile, neuroimaging studies have suggested an overlapped neural representation of self and intimate others (e.g., mother) in Chinese individuals. However, whether mortality salience (MS) influences the neural processing of both self and mother in Chinese individuals has not been examined. Therefore, the current study recorded the event-related potentials in response to self-reflection and mother-reflection after MS priming. Our results showed that relative to neutral priming, MS priming significantly decreased the peak of P2 in response to both self-related and mother-related traits. Our work suggested a similar neural mechanism of the avoidance of both self-focus and mother-focus after being reminded of mortality.

Narratives of Transgender People Detained in Prison: The Role Played by the Utterances "Not" (as a Feeling of Hetero- and Auto-rejection) and "Exist" (as a Feeling of Hetero- and Auto-acceptance) for the Construction of a Discursive Self. A Suggestion of Goals and Strategies for Psychological Counseling.

Purpose: Understanding how transgender people, who committed criminal offenses and are detained in prison, produce a narrative representation of self within different prison contexts. More specifically, this study has been based on two sub-aims: On a paradigmatic level, it has been aimed at critically investigating how the discursive positioning among the Self and the Other might promote the internalization of positive and/or negative attitudes toward the self. On a pragmatic level, it intends to offer some suggestions for goals and strategies of psychological counseling with these inmates inside such highly institutionalized contexts.Method and Materials: In total, 23 in-depth interviews were conducted with transgender women detained in either female or male prison contexts in Italy and Brazil. The lexical, semantic, and semiotic structure of the transcribed interviews has been investigated by adopting the quali-quantitative software Iramuteq for performing statistical text-mining analysis. Frequency, correspondences, and distribution of the most representative utterances across the corpus of data have been accessed and critically analyzed.Results: The findings showed that transgender inmates in Brazil made repeated use of the adverb “not,” while the verb “exist” became the most representative word for the Italian sample. In Brazil, indeed, transgender women assumed masculine-driven behavior due to a common imprisonment with cis-gender men. On the contrary, transgender women in Italy are detained in protected sections, where they are allowed to wear female clothing and continue hormonal treatments. Surprisingly, transgender inmates in Italy suffered more violence in a female sector when compared to exclusively male jails.Conclusions: Transgender people represent a challenge for prison administration because it is not clear in which penitentiary context they should be detained. They should receive special attentions in order to face their special needs, which are radically different when compared to other typologies of inmates. Within penitentiary contexts, psychological counseling with transgender women should pay a special attention to the several psycho-social dimensions of this existential condition. In particular, psychological counselors should consider its inner complex articulation within different social, cultural and normative contexts.

Spatial representations of self and other in the hippocampus.

An animal's awareness of its location in space depends on the activity of place cells in the hippocampus. How the brain encodes the spatial position of others has not yet been identified. We investigated neuronal representations of other animals' locations in the dorsal CA1 region of the hippocampus with an observational T-maze task in which one rat was required to observe another rat's trajectory to successfully retrieve a reward. Information reflecting the spatial location of both the self and the other was jointly and discretely encoded by CA1 pyramidal cells in the observer rat. A subset of CA1 pyramidal cells exhibited spatial receptive fields that were identical for the self and the other. These findings demonstrate that hippocampal spatial representations include dimensions for both self and nonself.

Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies: History, Pedagogy, Theory ed. by Lynn Marie Kutch

Reviewed by: Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies: History, Pedagogy, Theory ed. by Lynn Marie Kutch Sean Eedy Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies: History, Pedagogy, Theory. Edited by Lynn Marie Kutch. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2016. Pp. x + 289. Cloth $95.00. ISBN 978-1498526227. The scholarship on comic books as an object of study has exploded in recent years with volumes such as Bart Beaty's Unpopular Culture: Transforming the European Comic in the 1990s (2007), Bradford Wright's Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (2001), and Joseph Witek's Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Jack Jackson, Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar (1989). In Germany, [End Page 673] the drive to legitimize comics, demanding they be taken seriously as a medium, was rendered most visible by the Comic-Manifesto issued by comic creators and publishers at the Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin in 2013. And while the study of German-language comics languishes in their own countries, editor Lynn Marie Kutch's volume Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies: History, Pedagogy, Theory attempts to fill a void in the English-language study of these comics. As Brett Sterling rightly asserts in his own chapter, this dearth of academic literature stems from lingering perceptions of comics being solely for children or the unsophisticated (241). Kutch concurs, suggesting in her introduction that this notion emerged as popular American comic genres appeared to Germans little more than "fast food for readers" (3). Kutch goes on to argue that, since that early postwar experience, not only has the medium grown up, but also that German comics are themselves art alongside the canonical works of literature, painting, and film (5). Though chapters in this volume address the themes of pedagogy, scholarship, or sometimes both, the book is still necessarily divided under more specific headings. Each of the book's five parts contain essays paired for reasons of approach, content, or of the graphic novels under discussion. In "Contexts and Histories," Matt Hambro and Eckhard Kuhn-Osius offer essays on the trajectories of German-language comics and relationships with the debate surrounding high and low art. "German Cultural Education" features an essay by Jens Kußmann that discusses the use, or lack, of comics as educational material in textbooks used in Bavarian secondary education. Meanwhile, Jan van Nahl addresses adaptation of canonical works and their ability to reach new audiences with the 2012 graphic novel The Book of Revelation. Julia Ludewig and Antje Krueger take the title of the third part of the book, "Graphic Novels: Hands-On," quite literally in their respective discussions of German-language, cultural, and historical education through comics. Part 4, "Generations of German History," then leans on the theme of scholarship, as Bernadette Raedler analyzes tensions within relationships and across generations that can be expressed uniquely through the correlation and the interplay of words and images distinctive to comics. Likewise, in his discussion of the Bundeswehr in German graphic novels, Joshua Kavaloski suggests that the structure of comics manipulates perspective and narrative voice, affecting the perception of "truth" in journalistic representation. Finally, "Austrian Voices" presents essays by Vance Byrd, Brett Sterling, and Lynn Marie Kutch reflecting on the legitimacy and imperfection inherent to the representation of self in the autobiographies and adaptions by Nicolas Mahler and Gerald Hartwig. Though this may indeed be the first English-language volume dedicated to German-language comics, it should not be considered without fault. Arguing for comics as art, numerous authors discuss a narrow range of genres with an equally limited scope defining which comics qualify as art. As such, most of the comics scrutinized are closely related to the independent comics of 1960s–1970s America with a number, [End Page 674] including those discussed by van Nahl (115n29), Byrd (216), and Kutch (260), drawing inspiration from the works of Robert Crumb. Though Kutch suggests the cultural interchangeability of "comics" and "graphic novels," (12n1) despite critical assertions of qualitative differences between the two (4), the authors here broadly support this distinction to varying degrees. In any case, most of these graphic novels fall into categories of autobiography (11, 158, 217, 264–265), adaptation (26, 95, 238...

Unplugged

This article serves as an explorative piece attempting to investigate social networking norms and their contribution towards increased levels of disengagement and disconnection. After recognizing superficial online trends of interaction within her own social network, the author discloses experiencing feelings of hopelessness. In attempt to explore these feelings and unmask the factors underlying these trends, elements of motivation, privacy, and an individual’s relationship with control are discussed. Themes of expectant accessibility and communication within the realm of technology are explored and compared to real life interactions and experiences, with emphasis on an observed dissonance occurring between them. Notions of social networking's contribution to unrealistic expectations of self-image and worth are addressed to caution the reader against over-embellishment and the risks associated with distorted representations of self. Concluding remarks credit the positive influence of social networking’s impact on society while warranting further investigation from the reader. Readers are encouraged to reflect on the topics in attempt to establish their own healthy, balanced relationship with technology and social media.

関係文脈内の自己と他者の特性表象の重複：石井（2009）の再現研究

関係文脈内の自己と他者の特性表象の重複：石井（2009）の再現研究

An anterior-posterior axis within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex separates self and reward.

Although theoretical discourse and experimental studies on the self- and reward-biases have a long tradition, currently we have only a limited understanding of how the biases are represented in the brain and, more importantly, how they relate to each other. We used multi-voxel pattern analysis to test for common representations of self and reward in perceptual matching in healthy human subjects. Voxels across an anterior–posterior axis in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) distinguished (i) self–others and (ii) high–low reward, but cross-generalization between these dimensions decreased from anterior to posterior vmPFC. The vmPFC is characterized by a shift from a common currency for value to independent, distributed representations of self and reward across an anterior–posterior axis. This shift reflected changes in functional connectivity between the posterior part of the vmPFC and the frontal pole when processing self-associated stimuli, and the middle frontal gyrus when processing stimuli associated with high reward. The changes in functional connectivity were correlated with behavioral biases, respectively, to the self and reward. The distinct representations of self and reward in the posterior vmPFC are associated with self- and reward-biases in behavior.