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Internal States (internal + states)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Psychology75%

Selected Abstracts

The development of psychopathology from infancy to adulthood: The mysterious unfolding of disturbance in time

INFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Issue 3 2003
Peter Fonagy
A model for the development of this mechanism is offered as well as evidence for it from five areas: (1) the nature of the association of early attachment and later cognitive functioning, (2) accumulating evidence for the association between secure attachment and the facility with which internal states are understood and represented, (3) the limited predictive value of early attachment classification, (4) the studies of the biological functions of attachment in other mammalian species, and (5) factor analytic studies of adult attachment scales that suggest the independence of attachment type and attachment quality. The author tentatively proposes that attachment in infancy has the primary evolutionary function of generating a mind capable of inferring and attributing causal motivational and epistemic mind states, and through these arriving at a representation of the self in terms of a set of stable and generalized intentional attributes thus ensuring social collaboration, whereas attachment in adulthood serves the evolutionary function of protecting the self representation from the impingements that social encounters inevitably create. Severe personality pathology arises when the psychological mechanism of attachment is distorted or dysfunctional and cannot fulfill its biological function of preserving the intactness of self representations. ©2003 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health. [source]

A case illustration of resistance from a gestalt-experiential perspective

JOURNAL OF CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2002
David Engle
The case of Victoria illustrates psychotherapy with a woman faced with a difficult and unexpected divorce. The authors present a summary of typical struggles faced by Victoria through three phases of therapy. The therapy focused initially on coping with the divorce, then moved to work on her career dissatisfaction, and finally to her efforts to develop a new relationship. The case presentation illustrates resistance as it manifested itself in both a behavioral manner and as in-session resistance to awareness of internal states. The behavioral mode of resistance is manifested by her inability to follow through on decisions made in therapy sessions and by her interruptions of ongoing therapy. A transcript of a typical in-session exchange illustrates the resistance to awareness. The authors also describe interventions intended to work with the resistance. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol/In Session 58: 151,156, 2002. [source]

Young Children's Reasoning About the Effects of Emotional and Physiological States on Academic Performance

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2009
Jennifer Amsterlaw
This study assessed young children's understanding of the effects of emotional and physiological states on cognitive performance. Five, 6-, 7-year-olds, and adults (N= 96) predicted and explained how children experiencing a variety of physiological and emotional states would perform on academic tasks. Scenarios included: (a) negative and positive emotions, (b) negative and positive physiological states, and (c) control conditions. All age groups understood the impairing effects of negative emotions and physiological states. Only 7-year-olds, however, showed adult-like reasoning about the potential enhancing effects of positive internal states and routinely cited cognitive mechanisms to explain how internal states affect performance. These results shed light on theory-of-mind development and also have significance for children's everyday school success. [source]

Development of Displaced Speech in Early Mother,Child Conversations

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2006
Lauren B. Adamson
This study documents the development of symbolic, spatial, and temporal displacement of toddler's speech. Fifty-six children and their mothers were observed longitudinally 5 times from 18 to 30 months of age during a staged communication play while they engaged in scenes that encouraged interacting, requesting, and commenting and scenes that explicitly focused on the past and the future. Reliably coded transcripts revealed that toddlers highlighted symbols at a high and stable rate and that over time they became less focused on the here and now and more focused on internal states. The greatest expansion was into the near future. Only in scenes designed to discuss the past and future did conversations turn to the past and expand spatially beyond here. [source]