Selfhood and
Consciousness: A Non-Philosopher's Guide to Epistemology, Noemics,
and Semiotics (and Other Important Things Besides)
[Entries Beginning "T" to "Z"]
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First published online 13:00 GMT 28th February 2006,
Copyright Derek J. Smith (Chartered Engineer). This
version [2.0 - copyright] 09:00 BST 5th July 2018.
BUT UNDER CONSTANT EXTENSION AND CORRECTION, SO CHECK AGAIN SOON
G.3 - The
Glossary Proper (Entries T to Z)
TAS: See Toronto Alexithymia Scale.
TAT: See Thematic Apperception Test.
Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale: See anxiety,
manifest.
TCI: See Temperament and Character Inventory.
Teicher, Martin:
[American psychiatrist.] [Academic
homepage] Teicher is noteworthy in the context of
this glossary for his work on abuse-related
brain damage.
Temperament:
One's
temperament is "that aspect of our personalities that is genetically
based, inborn, there from birth or even before" (Boeree,
2006 online).
Test for the Reception of Grammar
(TROG):
[See firstly clinical psychometrics.] This test was devised by Bishop
(1993), and is now in its second edition and code-named TROG-2 (Bishop, 2003) [see publisher's
advertisement]. It is designed to assess language comprehension in children
aged 4 to 13 years with specific language disorder, or adults with acquired
dysphasia. The test consists of a number of blocks of items, each block
addressing a particular aspect of grammar - adjectives, nouns, verbs, prepositions.
Test
of Identity:
This is a 110-item psychometric inventory devised by Molla (1978, 1989, 2007
online), and based on Eriksonian developmental
theory.
Tests of Planning
in Daily Life: [See firstly executive function and dysexecutive
syndrome.] See Activities of Daily Living Test.
Thales: [<Θαλης>] [(properly Thales of Miletus) Greek philosopher (floruit ca. 560 BCE).] [Click for external biography]
Thanatos:
Thanatos was the
"personification of death" in the Greek myths [more on this], and is
noteworthy in the context of this glossary for having inspired the naming of
the psychoanalytic death instinct [see
aggression, psychodynamic theory and].
Thematic
Apperception Test (TAT): See personality, motivation and.
Theory
of Mind (ToM): [See firstly false-belief task.]
This is one of the most intriguing and far-reaching research areas in
modern cognitive science. Although mental philosophers (and dramatists) have
always looked at the way individuals conceptualise (and mis-conceptualise)
the way they are seen by the world at large, it was not until the 20th century
that anthropologists like Mead and
linguistic philosophers like Saussure
started to emphasise the interactive nature not just of communication as overt
behaviour but of the mental
representation necessary to support that communication. Modelling the mind
was therefore one of the priority areas in the "cognitive revolution"
of the last half century. In one of the pivotal studies, Miller, Kessel, and Flavell (1970)
explored "the child's growing understanding of the recursive nature of
thought" (p614) in six boys and six girls from each of the first six years
at school (i.e., 72 children in all). They presented each child with stimulus
drawings depicting various types of thought content using the received cartoon
format (that is to say, thinks
"bubbles" - what the authors call "thinking clouds"), as
follows .....
"[There were] four basic types of items -
contiguity, action (talking), one-loop recursion, and two-loop recursion - which
differ in the type of operation involved. This was the variable of major
interest. In the contiguity group of items the boy in the drawing thinks about
social objects, while in the action group the boy thinks about a social nonrecursive action - talking. The other two item groups
involve thinking, a social recursive action. [.....] Within each basic type of
item, there were three variables of minor interest. First, the boy in the
drawing might think of one, two, or three people. Second, the people being thought
of might include the boy doing the thinking: not at all, once, twice, or three
times. Third, in cases where the same number and types of faces were involved,
the arrangement of these faces within the thinking cloud might vary. [.....] The 18 items chosen allowed the separate assessment of the effects
of these three variables of minor interest as well as the major variable (type
of operation)" (Miller, Kessel, and Flavell,
1970, p615).
Here are some of the specific examples
.....
Item #1
(Contiguity): "The boy is
thinking of the girl." [Here the principal's mind contains a passive image
of the object of the thought.]
Item #7
(Action): "The boy is thinking
that the girl is talking to father." [Here the principal's mind contains a
physically active image of the object of the thought.]
Item #10
(Recursion): "The boy is
thinking that the girl is thinking of father." [Here the principal's mind
contains a mentally active image of the mind of the object of the
thought. This is depicted using the thinking
clouds mentioned above TWICE, once for the principal, and once for the
object.]
Item #15
(Two-Loop Recursion): "The boy
is thinking that the girl is thinking of the father thinking of mother."
[Here the principal's mind contains a mentally active image of the
mind of the object of the thought, which, in turn, contains the same of the
second order object. This is depicted using thinking
clouds THREE TIMES, once for the principal, once for the object, and once for the object's object.]
Miller et al's results
indicated that the contiguity items were correctly understood at all six grade
ages (roughly 6 - 11 years), whilst all other conditions improved with age.
Action improved from around 40% accuracy to around 80% over the age range in
question, one-loop recursion from around 20% to around 50%, and two-loop
recursion from around 0% to around 30%. Now it so happened that comparative
psychologists of that era had been developing exciting new research paradigms
to probe the intellectual capabilities of the great apes. The term "theory
of mind" comes originally from Premack and
Woodruff (1978), who used it to describe the higher mammalian ability to
"impute mental states to himself and others" (p515). What Premack and Woodruff did was to show a then-14-year old
female chimpanzee [specifically, case, Sarah] four 30-second
videotaped problem scenarios involving a human actor, and then to seek her
opinion on what she thought the actor should do to resolve said problems. This
"opinion" was operationalised in the form of a one-from-four choice
of photographs, as now described .....
"To escape the usual definition of animal
problem, we tested Sarah on four cases quite different from the normal variety.
She was shown (a) a (human) actor struggling to escape from a locked cage, (2)
a malfunctioning heater (as witnessed by an actor who glanced wryly at the
heater, even kicked it a little, and at the same time shivered and clasped his
arms to his chest), (3) an actor seeking to play an unplugged phonograph, and
(4) an actor unable to wash down a dirty floor because the hose he held was not
properly attached to the faucet. [.....] Sarah was tested on these cases [.....
by being] given pairs of photographs between which to choose. [.....] On the
first series the alternatives consisted of a key, an attached hose, an electric
cord properly plugged into a socket, and a lit cone of paper (of a kind
normally used as a wick to light the pilot). With alternatives of this kind,
Sarah made no errors whatsoever. She paired the key with the locked-up human
actor, the burning wick with the unlit heater, the plugged-in cord with the
unplugged phonograph, and the attached hose with the disconnected one" (Premack and Woodruff, 1978, p520).
It could, of course, be argued that what Sarah was
really doing was recognising some element - the hose, say - common to both the
scenario footage and the photographs on offer. As is always the case with
research into animal cognition, researchers have to be on their guard against
reading more into an observation than is absolutely necessary [readers
unfamiliar with Lloyd Morgan's canon should check it out before
proceeding]. Thus Bennett (1978, cited in Whiten, 1996) wondered whether
perhaps Sarah was judging "not the individual's purpose, but rather
just what was the next thing to be done" in each scenario. Here are
Premack and Woodruff themselves on this issue .....
"Two of these cases - the nonfunctioning
hose and the disconnected electric cord - could be accounted for by physical
matching and are therefore not interesting as such. But two could not be
accounted for in this uninteresting way: there is no physical match whatever
between a key and an actor struggling to escape from a cage, nor between a
flaming paper cone and an actor shivering and glancing wryly at a heater. In
the next series we presented the same problems, but now with greatly refined
alternatives. Sarah was no longer required simply to choose among such grossly
different alternatives as keys, hoses, cords, and flaming paper. Instead, she
was presented with three versions of each of the four cases. For instance: key
intact, twisted or broken; hose (or electric cord) attached, not attached, or
attached but cut; roll of paper unlit, lit, or burnt out. On this series she
made one error in [the twelve choices], choosing the twisted rather than the
intact key. [.....] None of her answers in this second series
could be attributed to simple physical matching" (Premack
and Woodruff, 1978, p520).
The basic ToM idea was then
developed by Dennett (1978), who popularised the notion of "orders of representation",
again by Wimmer and Perner
(1983), who introduced the "false
belief task" as a practical method of tracking the development of this
skill in children (they found that at three years of age, a typical child would
"fail" a false-belief task, whereas at age five that same child would
"pass" it), and again by Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith (1985), who
took Wimmer and Perner's
method and used it to explore the ToM capabilities of
children with special educational needs such as autism. Baron-Cohen (1992) is typical of this latter genre, and
offers a valuable introductory illustration .....
"[Consider] the following scenario: A man comes out of a shop and walks off down
the street. About half way down the street he suddenly stops, turns around,
runs back to the shop, and goes inside. (We instantly think to ourselves
that the man must have remembered he left something in the shop, that he
wants to retrieve it, and that he believes it will still be in
the shop.) The man then re-emerges from the shop, but this time he walks
along slowly, scanning the ground. (Now we make the assumption that
whatever he thought was in the shop wasn't there, and that he now believes
he may have dropped it on the pavement outside.) If we lacked the ability to
refer to the man's beliefs, desires, etc., his actions would seem most
peculiar" (Baron-Cohen, 1992, pp9-10; all emphasis original).
As to the possible localisation of the associated
processing in the brain, it was not long before the world's functional
neuroimaging centres got on the ToM case. MIT's
Rebecca Saxe is particularly active in this field. Making use of
state-of-the-art fMRI brain imaging technology, Saxe and Wexler (2005 online) have
noted the involvement of a number of cortical areas, including the left and
right "temporo-parietal junction" [roughly Brodmann's Area 39], the posterior cingulate gyrus [roughly
Brodmann's Area 23], and the medial prefrontal cortex
[roughly Brodmann's Areas 25 and 11 (medial aspect)]
[show me these
locations]. To help narrow things down, they took 12 normal adult subjects
and scanned them as they read brief narrative scenarios from a suitably
positioned display screen. Data were accumulated for each subject over two
presentations of each of 12 differently themed narratives (on topics such
monogamy, violence, and arranged marriage). A 2x2x2 design varied the scenario
as familiar or foreign, normal or norm-violating, and successfully resolved or
not. Here is an indication of the findings .....
"[Data] suggest that our subjects were attempting
to form an integrated impression of the protagonist in each story, and to
resolve inconsistencies between expectations based on the protagonist's social
background and her stated belief or desire. One brain region - the RTPJ [=
right temporo-parietal junction] - fulfilled each of
the predictions for the neural substrate of Theory of Mind: (1) the BOLD [=
blood-oxygen-level-dependent] response in the RPTJ was low while subjects read
descriptions of a protagonist's social background, and increased only once the
mental state of the protagonist was described, (2) the low response to
background information was not modulated by the familiarity of the described
background, and (3) once mental state information was available, the BOLD
response in the RTPJ was enhanced when the protagonist's background and mental
state were incongruent" (Saxe and Wexler, 2005, p6)
Saxe (2006 online)
likes to refer to this new discipline as "the neuroscience of person
perception" or "social cognitive neuroscience" (p2).
Theory
of Mind, Artificial Intelligence and:
See false belief test, artificial
intelligence and.
Theory
of Mind Theory of Autism: [See firstly theory of mind.] This is the received name for
applications of theory of mind theory to the interpretation of the underlying
nature of autism. This type of study arose out of work in the early 1970s involving the
nature of the cognitive deficit in autistic children. This work had
established "Wing's triad" of deficits - parallel deficits in
social interaction, communicative behaviour, and imaginative thought - as the
clinical fingerprint of autism. It followed, when comparative psychologists
devised the ToM analytic to help explain the
reasoning abilities of the great apes, that those interested in human
development would follow suit. Leslie (1984) set the ball rolling by drawing
attention to the possibility of a meta-representational deficit in autism, and
this intriguing possibility - the "Leslie model" - was then pursued
by Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith [U.] (1985). These authors tested 20 autistic
children, 14 Down's Syndrome children, and 27 "clinically normal"
children on what has become known as the "Sally Anne" variant of the false-belief
test, as follows .....
"There were two doll
protagonists, Sally and Anne. First, we checked that the children knew which
doll was which (Naming Question). Sally first placed a marble into her basket.
Then she left the scene, and the marble was transferred by Anne and hidden in
her box. Then, when Sally returned, the experimenter asked the critical Belief
Question: 'Where will Sally look for her marble?' If the children point to
the previous location of the marble, then they pass the Belief Question by
appreciating the doll's now false belief. If, however, they point to the marble's current location,
then they fail the question by not taking into account the doll's belief. These conclusions are warranted if two control questions are answered
correctly: 'Where is the marble really?' (Reality Question);
'Where was the marble in the beginning?' (Memory
Question)" (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith [U.], 1985, p41; bold emphasis
added).
Here are the chronological
and mental ages (CA and MA, respectively) of the participants
.....
Group |
n |
CA range (mean) |
MA (Non-Verbal) |
MA (Verbal) |
Autistic |
20 |
6;1-16;6 (11;11) |
5;4-15;9 (9;3) |
2;8-7;5 (5;5) |
Down's |
14 |
6;3-17;0
(10;11) |
4;9-8;6 (5;11) |
1;8-4;0
(2;11) |
Normal |
27 |
3;5-5;9 (4;5) |
n/a |
n/a |
And here are the successful
answers for the Belief Question [all participants passed the Naming Question,
and all but one passed the Reality and Memory Questions]
.....
Group |
n |
Belief Question OK |
Autistic |
20 |
4 (20%) |
Down's |
14 |
12 (86%) |
Normal |
27 |
23 (85%) |
We need to note the pattern
of the results here very carefully, because what the data show is a
selective failure by autistic children on a false belief test, despite intact reality and memory
performance, and in circumstances where Down's Syndrome children with markedly
inferior mental age perform at normal levels! This has turned out to be a very typical and robust pattern of
results. For example, Baron-Cohen (1989) carried out a similar study, this time
with groups of ten subjects. The MA data on this occasion included separate
scores for expressive and receptive language, as well as non-verbal as before,
as follows .....
Group |
n |
CA range (mean) |
MA (Verbal, Expressive) |
MA (Verbal, Receptive) |
MA (Non-Verbal) |
Autistic |
10 |
10;9-18;9 (15;3) |
7;3-17;7 (12;2) |
2;8-17;9 (7;8) |
8;3-18;0
(10;7) |
Down's |
10 |
9;3-17;6 (14;3) |
6;1-9;8 (7;5) |
2;5-6;8 (4;7) |
5;0-8;5 (6;8) |
Normal |
10 |
7;2-7;8 (7;5) |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
A longer and well-controlled
story about John and Mary was used, culminating in a Belief Question of the
form: "Where does Mary think John has gone to [etc.]?" The
performance breakdown on this question was as follows .....
|
Pass |
Fail |
Autistic |
0 |
10 |
Down's |
6 |
4 |
Normal |
9 |
1 |
On this occasion,
Baron-Cohen concluded as follows .....
"[This] experiment
extends the database of our earlier study [i.e., the 1985 one - Ed.] in that
only 29% of all autistic subjects screened passed the inclusion criterion of
being able to attribute beliefs at the simplest level (that is, to one person about an event or object).
Second, [it] found that even these subjects are unable to attribute beliefs at a
more advanced level (that is, to one person about another person's beliefs). In
contrast, non-autistic control children (normal and Down's Syndrome
subjects) with a lower MA are able to attribute beliefs at this more advanced
level (second-order belief attribution). These results support our prediction
that the autistic children who have developed a theory of mind at the lower
level are nevertheless specifically delayed in the acquisition of a more
complex theory of mind" (Baron-Cohen, 1989, p293).
At the same time, Frith [U.]
was warning of the far-reaching effects of just such a deficit
.....
"If there was a fault
in meta-representational ability (the ability to form second-order
representations), then this would be particularly devastating for the development
of a theory of mind. Without a theory of mind such everyday sophistications as
deception and bluff would be incomprehensible. The idea that there is a way of
knowing what 'makes people tick' would be totally alien. There would be no
inquisitiveness about other people's beliefs. Also there would be none of the
joy or embarrassment that can result from believing that one's thoughts about
another have been recognised by that person. [.....] Without a theory of mind
one cannot participate in the ubiquitous psychologising that goes on in real
life ....." (Frith, 1989, pp128-129).
Reflecting as it did on the
long-standing mysteries of the mind, the false-belief research soon generated a
storm of academic debate, and by the mid-1990s Carruthers was able to point to
a major underlying issue .....
"Both Leslie and
Baron-Cohen believe that mindblindness lies at the
very heart of the autistic syndrome. They maintain that autism results from
damage to a specialised theory of mind module, which underlies the mind-reading
abilities of normal subjects. This module is held to contain an implicit theory
of the structure and functioning of the human mind, which is accessed whenever
a normal subject ascribes a mental state to another person, or seeks a mentalistic explanation of their behaviour. It is possible
that this module is organised into a number of distinct sub-systems
[citations], and that it may develop in the normal individual through a number
of different stages [.....]. Others [examples given] take a different view,
arguing, in various different ways and for various different reasons, that the mindblindedness of autistic people is a consequence of some more basic deficit.
[.....] According to this alternative proposal, the fundamental deficit
involved in autism is an inability (or at least a reduced ability) to engage in
imaginative, counterfactual, suppositional thinking. It is for this reason, it
is supposed, that autistic children rarely engage in spontaneous pretend play,
and tend to display behaviours that are stereotyped and rigidly routinised. It is also held that the difficulties autistic
people have in reading the minds of others results from the same underlying
deficit, since mind-reading abilities are claimed to require the ability to
identify oneself imaginatively with the other person" (Carruthers, 1996,
pp257-258).
ASIDE: Note the point about
mind-reading abilities being needed when identifying with other people on any
grounds beyond the directly physical (i.e., attractiveness, strength, and so
on). We pursue this point in the entry for identification.
Carruthers therefore regards
the characteristic autistic deficit as an impairment
in the sense of enjoyment which normal children gain from pretend play.
Autistic children play less because they do not find it rewarding, and fall
behind, in turn, in those areas of social interaction where adult skills are
normally acquired in play. More recently still, Fisher, Happé,
and Dunn (2005) have examined the relationship between various language variables
and ToM. They compared 58 children diagnosed with ASD
with 118 children classified as MLD [= moderate learning difficulty]. They
found firstly that the ASD group was consistently worse than the MLD group at
false belief tasks (the pass rates were in the ranges 49-54% and 63-86%,
respectively). They then tested the children's language skills on the TROG
and BPVS psychometric instruments. Preliminary analysis of the results
indicated a difference of around four years in verbal mental age between those
in the ASD who "passed" the false belief tests and those who failed
them, compared to a one year difference in the MLD group. Follow-up analyses
revealed as follows .....
"[I]n the ASD group no
participant with a TROG VMA of less than 5.75 years (38 individuals) passed FB,
whilst all those with a TROG VMA equal to or above 10 years (10 individuals)
passed. [.....] In the MLD group the relationship was far less clear.
Individuals with TROG VMA scores of 4 years passed FB, and 20 individuals with
scores less than 5.75 passed (the threshold in the ASD group). At the other end
of the ability range [.....] one participant with a TROG VMA of 10.00 still
failed FB" (Fisher, Happé, and Dunn, 2005,
p414).
Fisher et al summarise their
research findings as follows .....
"The specificity of the ToM
deficit in ASD is a topic of debate, and some authors have argued that a
deficit in FB performance can be seen in other groups with learning
difficulties [citations]. This study found some support for that view. Since we
did not have a control group of normally developing children, it was not
possible to directly contrast our non-autistic group with children's normal
development. However, it is striking that 45% of the MLD group failed at least
one FDB question, even though the majority of them had VMA scores of over 4
years [.....], the age at which a normally developing child would be expected
to pass" (Fisher, Happé, and Dunn, 2005, p417).
Coming right up to date, Pellicano (2007) summarises the state of play in this
important research area as follows [embedded citations withheld] .....
"We know from
twin and family studies that autism is largely genetic, though the
identification of specific genes is proving more difficult than originally
anticipated, largely due to the disorder's heterogeneity. Research suggests
that there are multiple, interacting genes involved in its inheritance, and
that the neurobiological abnormalities are pervasive and not confined to any
one particular region of the brain. Psychologists have focused their efforts on
the cognitive level of explanation in order to identify the underlying
processes that might account for the various behavioural manifestations of the
disorder. Historically, and in the interests of parsimony, the emphasis upon
these theories has been to posit a single primary cognitive deficit [.....].
Theories from three cognitive domains have dominated the field: (1) theory of
mind - the ability to reason about the mental states of others; (2) executive
control - a set of abilities important for flexible behaviour in novel
circumstances; and (3) central coherence - the natural propensity to process
information in context. Despite much research in all three areas, these
accounts on their own have fallen short of providing a complete picture of the
disorder. Instead, they explain only part of the triad of symptoms. While
difficulties in theory of mind explains well why children with autism have
difficulty with joint attention, pretend play, and understanding others' emotions,
they fail to provide an adequate account for the presence of repetitive
behaviours and circumscribed interests. These latter behaviours seem to be
captured best by problems in executive control. And those things that
individuals with autism are good at [.....] can be accounted for by 'weak'
central coherence" (Pellicano, 2007, pp216-217).
In her own research, Pellicano had exposed 40 Australian ASD children to a
battery of cognitive tasks designed to tap all three of the cognitive domains
described above. She found as follows .....
"The findings were the
opposite of what traditional single-deficit models predicted. Rather than
children displaying abnormalities in a single domain only, children with ASD,
relative to typically developing children, performed worse on false-belief
tasks, and on tests of higher-order planning, set-shifting, and inhibitory
control; but they
performed better than typically developing children on tasks necessitating a
piecemeal or local processing style" (Pellicano, 2007,
p217; bold emphasis added).
[See now cognitive
deficit, curability of, where autism is one of the disorders whose limits of rehabilitation is
discussed.]
Theory
of Mind and the Schizophrenic Spectrum: [See firstly theory of mind theory of autism
for the general approach, but note also that it had been studies of
schizophrenic thought which had spawned the notion of cognitive deficit
in the first place.] Studies of the type of cognitive deficit found in schizophrenia
have often noted a clinically indicative failure to relate realistically to
other people, at the one extreme not recognising them as other people at all
[see the quotation in the entry for self, Winnicott on],
and at the other extreme recognising them as such when they are not, in fact,
present [see auditory hallucination]. However, as Bannister and
Salmon (1966) noted, progress has always been restricted by the lack of a
basic theory of cognition. Bannister and Salmon noted that many psychiatrists
were happy enough to speak of "thought disorder", but only with
"the unstated implication" that cognition need not be broken down
into its subsystems, and that deficits in cognition were a kind of
"diffuse malaise" rather than a specific componential failure. They
therefore considered how the explanatory constructs put forward by George Kelly
in his personal construct theory might throw light on schizophrenic
thought disorder. They compared the repertory grid performance of 11
thought-disordered schizophrenic subjects with 12 normal control subjects, and
found interesting differences in performance, as follows
.....
"[Results] are clearly
consistent with the view that the area of maximal
damage for thought-disordered schizophrenics as between object- and
people-construing is people-construing. This seems to apply whether we are
considering the stability of construct systems over time and across elements or
considering the degree to which the pattern of negative and positive
relationships between constructs (i.e., the general meaning) approaches an
operational norm. [.....] Personal construct theory might equally account for
the spread of damage to areas like object-construing in terms of the linkages
between subsystems which are implied in predicating a personal construct system for each individual. Core role
constructs (constructs which subsume and predict the self) may form the links
between our conception of the object-world and the people-world, and damage to
these (loss of identity) even though it originated in person-construing, might
well affect object-construing" (Bannister and Salmon, 1966, pp427-428).
ASIDE: For our own part, we blame
the lack of a basic theory of cognition on the sheer interdisciplinarity
required to develop a good one. For example, in Smith (2007/2007 online) we
identify four separate technical disciplines within cognitive modelling, each a professionalism
in its own right, and each with its own characteristic approach to
modelling. These four professionalisms are (1) computer programming
(whose methods are dataflow analysis and functional decomposition and
whose preferred summative models are the program structure diagram and
the program flowchart), (2) cybernetics (whose methods - to the extent that they go beyond
the skills of computer programming just described - are logical and physical
control loop analysis and whose preferred summative model is the real-time
control hierarchy), (3) data modelling (whose method is data
analysis and normalisation and whose preferred summative models are the entity-relationship
diagram (for the logical aspects of the system) and the database schema
(for a specific physical implementation), and (4) electronics (whose methods
are manifold but whose preferred summative model is the ubiquitous circuit
diagram). Small wonder therefore that whilst individual theorists like
Bannister and Salmon are able to talk about damage to "the linkages
between subsystems" of semantic representation, cognitive science in
general is still largely able to relate the underlying structures to other
areas of psychology.
We may comfortably date
modern research to 1979, a year which was graced by Frith [C.]'s (1979) theoretical paper on schizophrenia as a defect in
"information processing". Frith states the essence of his proposal as
follows .....
"The three principal positive
symptoms of schizophrenia, hallucinations, delusions, and thought disorder, are
all disorders that manifest themselves in the consciousness of the patient.
Indeed, two of these symptoms, delusions and hallucinations, can only be
assessed on the basis of the patient's introspections concerning his conscious
experience. The third symptom, thought disorder, is observed in the patient's
speech [but is taken as reflecting] another disorder of consciousness, i.e.,
the stream of thought" (p225).
More recently, Frith [C.]
and Corcoran (1996) have compared the "mentalising
ability" of 55 schizophrenic patients (10 with "behavioural
signs" such as poverty or incoherence of speech and flattening or
incongruity of affect, 24 with "paranoid symptoms", 10 with "passivity
phenomena" such as delusions of control, and 9 who were "in
remission" and asymptomatic under medication) with that of 13
non-schizophrenic patients (depressive or anxious) and 22 normals.
Each participant was read a series of six false belief task and similar
stories. The first three of these are reproduced below [all p528] .....
Story #1 - First Order False Belief: This story runs as follows:
"John has five cigarettes left in his packet. He puts his packet on the
table and goes out of the room. Meanwhile, Janet comes in and takes one of
John's cigarettes and leaves the room without John knowing". The questions
then posed are: "ToM question: When John comes back for his
cigarettes, how many does he think he has left? Memory question: How many cigarettes are really left in John's
packet?"
Story #2 - First Order Deception - Prediction: This story runs as follows:
"Mary has a box of chocolates which she puts in her top drawer for safe
keeping. A few minutes later Burglar Bill comes in and asks Mary, 'Where are
your chocolates, in the top or the bottom drawer?' Mary doesn't want Bill to
find her chocolates". The questions then posed are "ToM question: In which drawer does Mary say
her chocolates are, the bottom or the top? Why? Memory question: Where are the
chocolates really?"
Story #3 - First Order Deception - Explanation: This story runs as follows:
"Sarah has saved £1 which she puts in her piggy bank where she thinks it
will be safe. A little later Sly Sid comes along and asks Sarah, 'Have you put
your £1 in your piggy bank or your money box?' Sarah answers, 'it's in my money
box'." The questions then posed are "ToM question: Why does Sarah say that her £1 is in her money box? Memory question: Where is the £1
really?"
[Stories #4 to #6 involve
longer and more contrived narratives, and interested readers are referred to
the original paper.]
The authors report highly
significant differences in performance on the "reality questions"
[i.e., the factual questions shown as "Memory questions" above], even
in simple first order stories. The behavioural signs subgroup obtained the
lowest score and the paranoid subgroup second lowest. Much the same pattern was
repeated on the first order ToM questions, and again
(although the range of scores was considerably lower in all cases) with the
second order questions. The passivity group answered the ToM
questions "quite well", as did patients in
remission (which latter fact the authors take as evidence that the underlying
impairment is a state variable rather than a trait variable).
Theory of Neuronal Group Selection: See consciousness,
Edelman and Tononi's theory of.
Therapeutic Interventions: See
interventions.
Thetic: The term "thetic" is derived from the more commonly seen
"thesis", and means "characterised by laying
down or setting forth; involving positive statement" (O.E.D.). Husserl's
translators use the term to indicate the quality of certainty which accompanies
some perceptions - the thetic ones - but not
others.
Thing: In
everyday usage, a thing is "an entity
of any kind" (O.E.D.). It has no special significance to the
English-speaking philosophical tradition (where the word object is generally
preferred), but appears in works in German as Ding, Ding-an-sich, and Dinge überhaupt,
etc., and in their translations as thinghood, etc.
Thought
Experiments: A "thought
experiment" is a philosophical poser designed by its author to expose a
major philosophical issue in a readily accessible way. For some of the most popular
thought experiments in mental philosophy, see separately the entries for "Armstrong's fox", "Dretske's
pumpkin", "Leibniz's
Mill", "Leibniz's Two
Clocks", "Little Miss Muffett", "Mary's
Room", "Molyneux Question", "Thinking a Line", the "What's It Like To Be? Test", and the "Zombie Test".
Three Secrets, the: See the Hollins (2000) extract in learning disability, depression and.
Thinking: To
think is "to conceive in the mind, exercise the mind, etc. [.....] to have in the mind as a notion [or] to do in the way of
mental action" (O.E.D.). Now of course the whole purpose of cognitive
science is to determine what "exercising the mind" actually involves,
and the convenient answer goes by the name "higher cognitive functions" (such functions as intelligence,
problem solving, insight, and creativity). Such skills are theoretically
important because they render their owner able to move beyond the merely
instinctual, and into the realms of the rational. There is, however, much
debate as to what rationality actually is, and, indeed, considerable practical
difficulty unraveling it from lesser abilities
masquerading as rationality. Oden (1987) reflects that "thinking, broadly
defined, is nearly all of psychology; narrowly defined it seems to be none of
it" (p203). [See now ratiocination
and induction.]
Thinking Skills: A catch-all term for any of the cognitive processes
involved in thinking and problem solving. [See now higher
cognitive functions.]
Thought, Train of: See train of thought.
3D Object Model: See perception, Marr's theory of.
Thymos: [Greek
<θυμος>
= "soul, life; will, desire; appetite; resolution; thought; mind, heart,
sense; courage, spirit, passion; anger, wrath" (O.C.G.D.); "spirit,
animus" (Peters).] This classical Greek term with a wide variety of usages
across cognition, conation, and emotion, was used in Homer's time to indicate
the soul, although by Plato's time the word psuche
was preferred. The term was then resurrected by Sifneos
(1972), and is now regularly seen in such combinations as alexithymia,
cyclothymia,
dysthymia, euthymia, and hyperthymia, where it indicates emotional intensity.
TMT: See Trail Making
Test.
TNGS: See consciousness,
Edelman and Tononi's theory of.
Tower of Hanoi: [See firstly executive
function and dysexecutive syndrome.]
This test is described in Section 5 of our e-paper
"From Frontal Lobe Syndrome to Dysexecutive
Syndrome".
Tower of London: [See firstly executive
function and dysexecutive syndrome.]
This test is described in Section 6 of our e-paper
"From Frontal Lobe Syndrome to Dysexecutive
Syndrome".
Toxic Caring: Although readers
can be referred to this entry from a number of directions, the common
denominator is likely to be abuse of one sort or another at the hands of a
commercially engaged carer, such as a childminder or
medical professional. We cannot under this
heading direct readers to a helpline, however, since this form of abuse
is always going to be a criminal offence, and the appropriate authority will
always be the nearest police station.
Toxic
Parenting: [See firstly parenting.] A "toxic" parent
is Susan Forward's term for a parent
who, due to wilfulness, negligence, ignorance, or personality or mental health
problems of their own, is at least partly to blame for the disorder(s)
suffered by his or her child(ren).
Here is how she explains this very important notion in Forward (1989) .....
"All parents are deficient from time to time. [Examples of everyday parental lapses]. Do these lapses make
them cruel or unsuitable parents? Of course not.
Parents are only human, and have plenty of problems of their own. And most
children can deal with an occasional outburst of anger as long as they have
plenty of love and understanding to counter it. But there are parents whose
negative patterns of behaviour are consistent and dominant in a child's life.
These are the parents who do the harm. [.....] Like a chemical toxin, the emotional damage inflicted by these parents
spreads throughout a child's being, and as the child grows, so does the pain"
(Forward, 1989, p5; bold emphasis added).
Forward then identifies five basic parental duties and
six main ways of failing at them. The duties are self-explanatory, so all we
need to do is list them. Here they are .....
(1) Providing for the child's physical needs.
(2) Protecting the child from physical harm.
(3) Providing for the child's emotional needs.
(4) Protecting the child from emotional harm.
(5) Providing the child with moral and ethical
standards.
Forward then devotes a compellingly vivid chapter to
each of the six ways in which toxic parents can damage their children. We have
prepared a few words of introduction on each - but basically you should go out
and buy your own copy of the book at once [order
yours here]. The six core chapters
are as follows .....
(1)
"The Inadequate Parents":
Clearly not one to mince her words, Forward begins by
describing toxic parents as "significantly impaired in their own emotional
stability or mental health" (p31). In some cases, indeed, the child is
expected to take care of the carer! Here is an indicative passage
.....
"A child who is
compelled to become his own parent, or even become a parent to his own parent,
has no one to emulate, learn from, and look up to. Without a parental role
model at this critical state of emotional development, a child's personal
identity is set adrift in a hostile sea of confusion" (pp31-32).
She supports her point with
the story of Les, then 34 years old .....
"As a child, Les was
often weighed down with responsibilities that rightfully belonged to his
parents. Because he was forced to grow up too fast and too soon, Les was robbed
of his childhood. While his friends were out playing ball, Les was home
performing his parents' duties. To keep the family together, Les had to become
a miniature adult. [.....] He was there to take care of others. He didn't matter" (pp33-34).
The issue of personal identity
is rightly made paramount, thus .....
"Parents who focus
their energies on their own physical and emotional survival send a very
powerful message to their children: 'Your feelings are not important. I'm the only
one who counts'. Many of these children, deprived of adequate time, attention,
and care, begin to feel invisible - as if they don't even exist. In order for
children to develop a sense of self-worth - a sense that they do more than
occupy space, that they matter and are important - they need their parents to
validate their needs and feelings" (p41).
On the whole, however, the
"toxicity of inadequate or deficient parents can be elusive" (p45),
and even when the defect has been identified the parents concerned are simple
become objects of pity; defended, even, by the very children they had once
persecuted.
(2)
"The Controllers": [See
firstly locus of control.] Forward recognises that protection and
guidance are good things, requiring parents to control what their children
think and do. There is, however, a point beyond which normal control becomes
"overcontrol", thus .....
"Children who are not encouraged to do, to try,
to explore, to master, and to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate.
Overcontrolled by anxious, fearful parents, these
children often become anxious and fearful themselves. This makes it difficult
for them to mature. When they develop through adolescence and adulthood, many
of them never outgrow the need for ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents continue to invade, manipulate, and
frequently dominate their lives" (p48).
We should accordingly be duly cautious whenever we
hear phrases such as "I'm only doing this for your own good" or
"It's because I love you". Overcontrol can
be either "direct", using money, things, and
the supply of love as the means of enforcing the parental will, or
"indirect" and "manipulative. Manipulation, indeed, is every bit
as damaging, even tyrannical. For example .....
"One of the most common types of toxic
manipulators is the 'helper'. Instead of letting go, the helper creates
situations to make him- or herself 'needed' in the adult child's life. This manipulation often comes packaged as well-meaning but unwanted
assistance" (p56).
Another good ploy is to compare you unfavourably to a
preferred sibling, say, using phrases such as "Why can't you be more like
your sister?" (p60). Nor does the power to manipulate
die when the parent concerned had passed away, because the echo of their
censure remains with you from beyond the grave. Eli, for example,
still hears his late father's words of caution and mistrust about women every
time he dated one!
(3)
"The Alcoholics": Forward describes alcoholism in a household as a
source of "tremendous emotional chaos for children" (p70), and as
"the Big Secret" for the family concerned. Her point is that having
to put on an "everything's fine" face all the time actually takes
considerable effort. Everything becomes a superficial facade,
and every family member - the non-alcoholic spouse and the children alike - a
party to the denial. There is little time (or cash) left for adequate
parenting. Again, children become "emotionally invisible", and remain
so throughout their lives, addicts to denial and cover-up in their own
relationships, with predictable effects.
(4)
"The Verbal Abusers":
Forward is not fooled by the saying to the effect that "sticks and
stones" are worse than words. Far from it, she says, for nothing can be
more hurtful than a few well chosen words, and nowhere are these effects more
damaging in the long term than with children, especially if the metaphorical
blows are landed during one of the critical periods of identity development.
Here is how she explains the problem .....
"Like controlling parents, verbal abusers have
two distinct styles. There are those who attack directly, openly, viciously
degrading their children. They may call their children stupid, worthless, or
ugly. They may say that they wish their child had never been born. They are
oblivious to their child's feelings and to the long-term effects of their
constant assaults on their child's developing self-image. Other verbal abusers
are more indirect, assailing the child with a constant barrage of teasing, sarcasm,
insulting nicknames, and subtle put-downs [often hiding] their abuse behind the
facade of humour" (p93).
Here is an example of what is at stake
.....
"My mom always wanted me to be the perfect little
lady. She wanted me to be graceful and elegant, and to speak well
..... when I'd blow it, she'd try to shame me
into doing it right. She meant well, she really did. She'd imitate me if I
mispronounced a word. She'd make fun of how I looked .....
ballet recitals were the worst. Mom had dreams of being
a dancer herself, but got married instead. So
I guess I was supposed to live out her dream for her" (p97; bold
emphasis added).
(5)
"The Physical Abusers": Moving on to the topic of the "battered child", Forward focuses on the issue of "impulse
control". This is the sort of thing
that goes on .....
"We can only speculate why, but physically
abusive parents seem to share certain characteristics. First, they have an
appalling lack of impulse control. Physically abusive parents will assault their
children whenever they have strong negative feelings that they need to
discharge. [.....] It is almost an automatic reaction to stress. [They also]
often come from families in which abuse was the norm. Much of their adult
behaviour is a direct repetition of what they experienced and learned in their
youth. Their role model was an abuser.
Violence was the only tool they learned to use in dealing with problems and
feelings [.....] Emotionally, they are still children" (pp113-114;
bold emphasis added).
Forward notes that abusers of this sort seem to expect
emotional comfort from their children, and lash out when the child in question
is too immature to provide it. Instead of dealing with his own problems, one
father "displaced his fury and sexual frustration" onto his
daughters, and then blamed his wife for the resulting physical violence against
them. As Forward so poignantly puts it, this sort of abuse creates a sort of
"private holocaust" (p114) for the child! As with alcohol abuse, this
pathology includes an element of secrecy, thus .....
"The 'family secret' is a further burden for
abused children. By not talking about the abuse, the battered child cuts off
any hope of emotional help. Here's Kate: 'All my life I felt like I've
been living a lie. It's horrible not being able to talk freely about something
that affected my life so strongly. How do you get over the pain of something if
you can't talk about it? Sure I can talk about it in therapy, but I still can't
talk about it to the people who held all this power over me all those
years" (p125).
(6)
"The Sexual Abusers": Describing
sexual abuse as "the ultimate betrayal", Forward introduces the topic
of incest by dispelling such common myths as that it is restricted to the poor
and the uneducated in society or that it is rare (she goes with the estimate of
one child in ten!). She then tries to tease out the key psychological effects,
pointing firstly to the feelings of shame which the experience typically
engenders, thus .....
"The shame of the incest victim is unique. Even
very young victims know that incest must be kept secret [..... and] the blame
is compounded by the shame. The belief that 'it's all my
fault' is never more intense than with the incest victim." (p141).
The natural response, of course, is to "push it
all down inside", making incest "a form of psychological cancer"
(p152). Worse. If the victim experiences any pleasure
from the incest, his or her shame is magnified accordingly. Her case Tracy
exemplifies .....
"She explained: I knew it was wrong, but it did
feel good. The guy was a real bastard to do it to me, but I'm as guilty as him
because I liked it" (p142).
And worse is yet to come if the incest is between
father and daughter, because here there is the quintessentially Freudian
dynamic of the daughter achieving the forbidden Freudian aim of stealing the
father figure away from the mother, of wanting him for oneself. This just adds
"yet another layer of guilt" (p142). And what if the mother was
herself complicit in some way with the abuse? Consider .....
"There are three types of mothers in incest
families: those who genuinely don't know, those who may
know, and those who do know. [.....]
I am convinced that some mothers truly don't know. The second type of mother is
the classic silent partner. She wears blinders. The incest clues are there, but
she chooses to ignore them [.....]. The final type is the most reprehensible:
the mother who is told of the molestation by her children but does nothing
about it. When this happens, the victim
is doubly betrayed" (p149; bold emphasis added).
Forward presents case Liz to illustrate this
third type of mother.
ASIDE: This raises the spectre of multiple-generation
effects as mother infects daughter (infects daughter (infects daughter)), and
so on, a point which we ourselves take up under the heading toxic parenting
and cognitive deficit.
Forward then looks at why families behave the way they
do, and considers what can be done, either as a society or as an abuse
survivor, to remediate the damage which has been done. Her general conclusion
is that toxic parents are "self-centred and self-serving" (p158), and
habitually deploy a number of pathogenic ego defense
and coping mechanisms [specifically, denial, projection,
sabotage, triangling [= taking sides], and secrecy]
in order to maintain that self-interest. As far as remediation is concerned,
confrontation - of the truth, but preferably of the culprits personally - is
Forward's solution. Where you go next depends upon your personal avenue of
investigation. Here are the main options .....
To follow up the effects of toxic parenting .....
In general, see toxic
parenting and cognitive deficit.
For the effects toxic parenting can have on language
development, see specific language impairment
and parenting.
For the effects toxic parenting can have on basic
identity development, see separation-individuation.
For the effects of incestual
sexual abuse on transference in therapy, see transference.
To check out the antidotes to toxic parenting .....
To build self-esteem in children, see self-esteem.
To build social skills see social skills training.
For ways of promoting general psychological wellbeing,
see meaning of life.
[See now toxic
parenting and cognitive deficit.]
WAS THIS A SENSITIVE TOPIC FOR YOU?:
If for any reason you have been emotionally affected by any of the issues dealt
with in this entry, you will find professionally prepared information packs and
competent helpline staff at the contact points identified below or at a number
of other websites readily accessible over the Internet. UK readers will probably
find it best to start with the information
on parenting skills available from the NSPCC website [take
me there] We also recommend the Royal
College of Psychiatrists website [see
factsheet], the Raising
Kids website, and the Parents
Advice Centre website. Non-UK Readers will need to refer to the healthcare, social, and
educational services in the country concerned, although the UK-based websites
will give a general indication of the issues. All Readers: Should a hyperlink no longer be active, please contact
the author to have it reinstated.
Toxic
Parenting and Cognitive Deficit: In the core entry for toxic parenting, we noted that many forms
of child abuse bring with them the inherent risk of being re-inflicted
upon the abused child's own children. There are many possible reasons for this, thus .....
"A broad set of personality
characteristics is associated with child maltreatment. These include low
self-esteem, poor impulse control, and antisocial behaviour [], growing up in
an abusive home [], disrupted early childhood attachment [], character
disorders in mothers [], maternal depression [], and cognitive deficits [].
Some research suggests that systemic factors combine with personality variables
to increase the potential for subsequent childhood maltreatment to occur. These
factors include poor living conditions, frequent moves, teenage pregnancy,
unemployment, family conflict, and substance abuse []. Parental rejection [], a
lack of social supports [], poor disciplinary practices in parents abused as
children [], and domestic violence [] have also been identified" (Hurley
et al, 2003/2006
online, p4).
Fortunately, Hurley et al
reassure us, not all abused children go on to become abusing adults, and the key
factor in deciding whether they will or will not seems to be "life course
events". Those authors' own data was drawn from the archives of the
Children Aid Society's in the Greater London area in both 1995 (447 children)
and 2001 (590 children). The caregivers in 26% and 35% of these samples
respectively had themselves been involved with the Society as children.
As might be expected, the children of these cases were significantly more at
risk of being abused a generation down the line, and a number of social
services interventions were known to be partly effective in mitigating that
risk. It is, however, not possible to all at risk parents for the simple reason
that out-and-out abuse - that which transgresses some clear legal ordinance - is not the only aspect
of the toxic parenting nightmare! This is because there are a number of
parent-child pathologies in which an in-some-critical-respect-dysfunctional
parent intends no harm and does nothing explicitly illegal, nor even
reprehensible. They are non-culpable, in other words. They are just being what
they themselves are. There are no laws, for example, against two ADD children
growing up, marrying, and having an ADD child of their own, even though it is
recognised that the environment in which that child will be brought up will be
conversationally dysfunctional (Seay, 1998/2006 online),
and
thus likely to produce a second generation language disorder. Similarly,
in many other forms of disability. The problem, in other words, is that
we all have a right to make the most of our time on this planet, for all our
imperfections, at that includes having children! We offer the following
scenarios to illustrate the risk of intergenerational "re-infection"
for specific types of problem (see the individual captions below) in specific
client groupings such as learning disability, mental health, and socio-familial
adequacy (including incestuous sexual abuse) .....
Scenario #1
- The Intergenerational Attention Deficit Problem: Seay (1998/2006 online)
reminds us that ADHD is not confined to children, being manifested in
adults as impulsivity,
poor financial management, proneness to error, temper, relationship problems, a
"generally disorganised" life, and so on. He warns that some 70% of
ADHD children go on to become ADHD adults, refers to these as "ADDults", and suspects that there are many "ADDers" in the world who are unaware of the underlying
cause of their everyday problems with life. In
this scenario, we are therefore interested in the knock-on effects, good or
bad, of parenting-as-teaching by ADHD
parents, now adults, on children who are themselves at risk. Our
research question, in short, asks how parents can help an ADHD child attend to
a world they might not be able to attend to themselves. As far as intergenerational re-infection is
concerned, Seay then draws attention to the nature of conversation skills in an
ADDult-ADDult family, as follows
.....
"Conversation skills can be a challenge for people who have
AD/HD, but there are some things you can do to make it easier. First, understand that AD/HD – yours and/or
theirs – can make communication more complicated. 'Once you recognize that
interpersonal relationships can and do require 'work' for those with AD/HD, you
may feel less anxious and frustrated,' notes Michele Novotni,
an ADD social skills expert. 'If your expectation is that
listening is hard, you are more likely to gear up to the challenge.
However, if your expectation is that it should be easy, you may often find
yourself frustrated and overwhelmed'" (Seay, 1998/2006 online;
bold emphasis added).
Another commentator points
out as follows .....
"Learning
disabilities can be hard on a family. One parent, often the mother, may
recognize and face the problem sooner or more readily than the other.
Misunderstanding and conflict can result. Brothers and sisters often resent the
amount of attention given to a child with special needs and may proclaim
knowingly that the child is a spoiled brat who is perfectly capable.
Grandparents tend to blame parents for not doing enough, not being disciplined
enough, organized enough, or not giving enough direct help to the child. Neighbors can be intolerant if the child is very
hyperactive or has low frustration tolerance and tends to explode or cry at
each hurdle. On a daily basis, children with special needs typically raise the
irritant factor in family life. They tend to leave everyone on edge because
their behavior is unpredictable, erratic, inconsistent. and full of
ups-and-downs. Children with learning disabilities and ADHD are usually very disorganized. They have trouble dealing with sequences
and order, so they don't plan well. They are distracted easily and often
impulsive. Just getting washed and dressed in the morning can be an arduous
task. sometimes resulting in explosions on the part of
the children, their parents, or both. Clashes frequently emanate from a child's
misunderstanding of instructions or going off on a tangent" Smith (2002/2006 online).
Smith also notes the role of emotional immaturity
across the generations, thus .....
"To complicate the problem, when wrong or
criticized, children with learning disabilities tend to fall apart, withdraw
into day dreaming, or strike out in one form or another. Emotionally this population is very
immature and fragile. These children tend to personalize things that have
nothing to do with them. For example, when family members are laughing at
something, children with special needs are often convinced that they are being
laughed at, and, as a result, they get very upset. Furthermore, their moods
swing widely, and a child may be laughing one moment, crying the next (Smith,
1995). This emotional lability is hard to live with. Children with learning disabilities and ADHD are prone
to depression (Smith, 1991). Their sense of defeat and failure is contagious
and, sometimes, the whole family feels their helplessness and despair. Often
adults, otherwise incredibly competent in their daily lives, feel incredibly
incompetent when with these children. This can take a toll on parents, and
support and education may be necessary to bolster parents' sense of confidence
and competence in effectively parenting the child with learning
disabilities" (Smith, 2002/2006 online).
[BREAKING RESEARCH: For more on the potential
role of "abnormal connectivity" in preventing or degrading the
maximal integration of multi-modular cognitive processing, see functional
connectivity
and its onward links.]
WAS THIS A SENSITIVE TOPIC FOR YOU?:
If for any reason you have been emotionally affected by any of the issues dealt
with in this entry, you will find professionally prepared information packs and
competent helpline staff at the contact points identified below or at a number
of other websites readily accessible over the Internet. UK readers will probably find it best to start with the information on parenting skills available
from the NSPCC website [take
me there] We also recommend the Royal
College of Psychiatrists website [see
factsheet], the Raising
Kids website, and the Parents
Advice Centre website. Non-UK Readers will need to refer to the healthcare, social, and
educational services in the country concerned, although the UK-based websites will
give a general indication of the issues. All
Readers: Should a hyperlink no longer be active, please contact
the author to have it reinstated.
Toxic Parenting and Cognitive
Deficit - Scenario #2: [See firstly
the introductory entry and Scenario #1 above.]
Scenario #2
- The Intergenerational Autistic Spectrum Problem: As explained in the entry for autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), conditions like Asperger's disorder and semantic-pragmatic disorder are (a)
fundamentally disorders of meta-representation,
and (b) at least partly inherited. They are also continuously variable in
severity, which means that individuals at the high end of
"borderline" will either not be detected, or - if they are detected -
will attract little remediation if they fall short of the trigger threshold for
special educational need provision. True
positives at the low end of average are even more likely to go undetected,
with a symptomatology which is compensated for, "lived around", or
just written off as idiosyncrasy (Bauer, 1996/2006 online).
We should be seriously concerned at this state of affairs, given that statistically
some 16% of the entire population fall into the "low average"
category, thus .....
ASIDE: There are a number of systems for formally describing
the relative severity of ability impairments [see the review by De la Jara]. For our present purposes, we have adopted the
100-centred IQ-type scale, sub-banded as follows [percentages rounded to whole
numbers] .....
First 25% below the mean = the lower half of
"average"
Next 16% = "low average" but unimpaired
[this is the 16% referred to above]
Next 7% = "borderline" impairment
Bottom 2% = "moderate" to
"profound" impairment
For the purposes of the present scenario, we are
interested in the knock-on effects of parenting-as-teaching
by borderline or low average ASD children, now grown-up, on
children who are themselves borderline or low average high-functioning autists.
What we want to know in particular is how such parents can teach their ASD child
to model a world they might not have accurately modelled themselves, and, whilst
there are
many possible family structures in which this sort of entirely unwitting
"cognitive abuse" might take place, they each boil down to one or
more dysfunctional (or non-existent) speech acts on the part of
the parent, compounded by a deficiency in social inference on the part of the
child which - cruelly - prevents the parent's shortcomings being compensated
for.
EXAMPLE: If the parent lacks
speech acts in the Requestive
category, then it is possible that the child will "have the same wire
out", and certain that it will not be fully exposed to linguistic
behaviour in that category. Moreover, if the child managed to work out
for itself what Requestives were all about, it would
not, by definition, be properly received by the deficient parent. Aston
(2005/2006 online) is already studying this very scenario,
and offers case Sarah [see case, Sarah] to illustrate what
is at stake. Sarah indicates how Asperger's disorder parents can in all
innocence quite profoundly affect the upbringing of an Asperger's child.
Readers unfamiliar with the topics of speech acts and "mindblindness" may benefit from our
introductory PowerPoint presentation on the topic - click here
to be transferred. For a full list of speech acts, see speech acts, the
Bach and Harnish taxonomy.
As to the prevalence of the condition, estimates vary,
thus .....
"Whereas
autism has traditionally been felt to occur in about 4 out of every 10,000
children, estimates of Asperger syndrome have ranged as high as 20-25 per
10,000. That means that for each case of more typical autism, schools can
expect to encounter several children with a picture of AS (that is even more
true for the mainstream setting, where most children with AS will be found). In
fact, a careful, population-based epidemiological study carried out by Gillberg's group in Sweden, concluded that nearly 0.7% of
the children studied had a clinical picture either diagnostic of or suggestive
of AS to some degree. Particularly if one includes those children who have many
of the features of AS and seem to be milder presentations along the spectrum as
it shades into 'normal', it seems not to be a rare condition at all. All
studies have agreed that Asperger syndrome is much more common in boys than in
girls. The reasons for this are unknown. AS is fairly commonly associated with
other types of diagnoses, again for unknown reasons, including: tic disorders
such as Tourette disorder, attentional problems and mood problems such as
depression and anxiety" (Bauer, 1996/2006 online;
emphasis added).
Bauer
also draws attention to the heritability of the syndrome
.....
"In some cases there is a clear genetic
component, with one parent (most often the father) showing either the full picture
of AS or at least some of the traits associated with AS; genetic factors seem
to be more common in AS compared to more classic autism. Temperamental traits
such as having intense and limited interests, compulsive or rigid style and
social awkwardness or timidity also seem to be more common, alone or in
combination, in relatives of AS children. Sometimes
there will be a positive family history of autism in relatives, further
strengthening the impression that AS and autism are sometimes related
conditions. Other studies have demonstrated a fairly high rate of depression,
both bipolar and unipolar, in relatives of children with AS, suggesting a
genetic link in at least some cases. It seems likely that for AS, as for
autism, the clinical picture we see is probably influenced by many factors,
including genetic ones, so that there is no single identifiable cause in most
cases" (Bauer, 1996/2006 online;
bold emphasis added).
Toxic Parenting and Cognitive
Deficit - Scenario #3: [See firstly
the introductory entry and the earlier scenarios above.]
Scenario #3
- The Intergenerational Sexual Abuse Problem: [See firstly incest and its
onward links.] Prevalence statistics on
the intergenerational transmission of childhood sexual abuse are notoriously difficult to establish with any
degree of precision due to the closed-doors nature of the offence before its
detection, the denial and evasions at the time of its detection, the repressed,
distorted, and otherwise unreliable memory of the principal witness(es), and the need to rebuild the lives of both direct and
collateral victims. For the purposes of the present scenario, we are
interested in the knock-on effects of parenting-as-teaching by
incestuously abused women, now grown up, in promoting that
same risk in their own daughters [they will certainly promote other risks (see, for example, Herman,
1981), but that is not the issue at hand]. Our research question, in short, is
the extent to which once-abused mothers can help their daughters develop a
healthy sense of identity, complete with mature ego defenses and coping strategies, when their own perception of the world has
been perhaps irretrievably damaged and they may themselves employ neurotic,
immature, or even psychotic ego defenses. Hindman (2006) refers to such mothers as "the
non-offending but often offensive spouse in the incestuous family".
Indeed, one of the most damaging factors is that the processes of defense are still very active in these mothers, and act to
blind them to what might be going on with their own daughter(s). Thus .....
"Some women who are married to the perpetrator
are so totally dominated by their husbands that they can't save themselves. [.....]
Many of these mothers are also incest survivors. Some are so crippled by their
own histories that they cannot see what is before them; to acknowledge the
child's incest would be to acknowledge their own" (Blume, 1990, p170;
bold emphasis added).
Another factor is the once-abused mother's very
conceptualisation of womanhood, thus .....
"[An incest survivor's adult sexuality] can
interfere with her relationship with her daughters, because when a woman
hates her womanhood, she can impede her daughters' ability to love themselves
as well" (Blume, 1990, p213; bold emphasis added).
"Many men who were
molested as children go on to molest their own children. Women rarely molest
children. [.....] However, when women are taught through rape and molestation that
they have no rights to their bodies [.....] they sometimes allow men into their
lives who do not respect women or children and, not knowing how to protect
themselves, these women do not know how to protect their daughters either"
(Bass and Thornton, 1983, p45; bold emphasis added)
..... and
another is her inability to create a
healthy family environment, thus ..... [a long
extract, heavily abridged] .....
"In
short, she has learned an entire repertoire of skills that sabotage intimacy.
[.....] In the beginning [post-abuse] relationships progress nicely,
without obvious problems. The joy of the new bond seems pure; the incest
survivor feels great relief and hope. [.....] Then, to her great surprise and
indescribable disappointment, all hell might break loose. When this happens, it
may be her bewildered partner who bears the brunt of the emotion meant for
events of long ago [.....]. In this way, while one may survive incest, one's
relationship might not. [.....] The incest survivor may suddenly lose her
emotional attachment for her partner [..... and] find herself suddenly,
unreasonably angry at her partner, for nothing and for everything. [.....]
Closeness has become distance; the closeness they once shared is now
transformed into steady tension" (Blume, 1990, pp240-256; bold emphasis
added).
For this and similar reasons .....
"..... many studies of
incestuous families do report a high incidence of marital discord and sexual
estrangement between the parents. Herbert Maisch, for
example, in his study of 72 cases reported to the German courts, indicated that
88 percent of the couples had a 'disturbed or disorganised marriage' prior to
the onset of incest, and 41 percent had a disturbed sexual relationship"
(Herman, 1981/2000, p43).
Perhaps the most devastating
factor in the aforementioned "sabotage of intimacy" is the incest
survivor's skill at projective identification. The risk here is that
"the internal world of torturer and tortured, tyrant and slave" get
"enacted" in significant others (paraphrased from Kernberg,
2006 online).
As we have already noted elsewhere, classic
examples of projection involve the imputation of our own negative
motivations such as sexual desire or covetousness to those around us. With the
incest survivor, however, this can reach new extremes of intensity.
ASIDE: There is a truly vicious irony at work here, because
the sudden and (from their perspective) unprovoked emotional assault on the
person on the receiving end of the identification (often a therapist or
therapist-figure) can often bring about in them for real that
which had not in fact been there prior to the projection, "making it
difficult to clarify who did what to whom first" (Kelly, 2006 online)!!
Ray (1996/2006 online) reviewed the
literature and includes the following on the intergenerational effect .....
"Problems in relating to both women and men, continuing problems with their parents and
difficulty in parenting their own children have been reported by women sexually
victimized as children []. In addition, victims reported difficulty trusting
others that included reactions of fear, hostility and a sense of betrayal [].
The results are supported by findings from Courtois's (1979) sample in which
79% of the incest victims experienced moderate or severe problems in relating
to men and 40% had never married. Another effect of child sexual abuse is the
apparent vulnerability to be victimized (raped, battered) later on in life [].
Another long-term effect concerns the impact of early sexual abuse on later
sexual functioning. Almost all the clinical studies show later sexual problems
(i.e., more sexually anxious, decreased sex drive, more sexual guilt) among
child sexual abuse victims than non-victimized women []."
And Price (1994) adds .....
"Adults with a history
of incest often organise their experience of themselves and their identity
around their role in the trauma or a certain aspect of it. They frequently
maintain this identification rigidly despite conflicting behaviours and more
current feedback from others. This serves the purpose of avoiding inner
conflict, identity confusion, and maintaining an idealisation of themselves
and/or their families. This can often lead to further retraumatisation
and reenactment of their childhood and its traumatic
consequences. It has been documented that many adults with a history of incest
often reenact and repeat their incest history and
incest-related patterns in adult life. [.....] Rigid and narrow
self-identifications obscure these individuals' ability to perceive and
understand their own behaviour and its impact on others, as well as the
behaviour and intentions of others. [.....] Although the
position of victim is not the only role and identity maintained by an adult
with an incest history, it is often the most common and deeply held"
(Price, 1994, pp214-215; bold emphasis added).
So what might the
substantive cognitive deficit actually be? Well as an academic reviewer, we can
only side with the bulk of the literature and blame a corrupted self, as
portrayed so consistently and so powerfully in the extracts set out in the
entry for self, incestuous sexual abuse and.
ASIDE / RESEARCH ISSUE: Nevertheless, as a systems engineer rather than as a psychologist we are
drawn towards some curious discrepancies in "the numbers". Why is it,
for example, that the package of ills which follows non-sexual covert incest
is about as intense as that which follows the fully-fledged version? Was the
act itself not important? And why is it that the prevalence of overt incest
(taking contact and non-contact variants together) is about the same as the
"borderline" and "low average" categories on the IQ-type
scale described in Scenario #2 above? We sorely need to know more about the
personality and self-concept of the victims in
their pre-abused state, not least
this next one .....
We shall give the last word
on this matter to one of Price's (1994) cases, and wish we knew how this young
woman had approached the world prior to - but especially in the immediate
run-up to - her first seduction! Here is her perhaps indicative confession .....
"I control people
with my suffering and with my hysterical outbursts. It's all
about winning, any way that you can" (Price, 1994, p221; bold emphasis added).
[For more on the potential role of defective
pragmatics in predisposing potential victims to abuse, see prohibitives, and in impeding
their subsequent rehabilitation, see advisories.]
Toxic Parenting and Cognitive
Deficit - Scenario #4: [See firstly
the introductory entry and the earlier scenarios above.]
Scenario #4
- The Intergenerational "Learner's Role" Problem: [See firstly learner's
role.] One of the keys to effective learning is for the
would-be learner to adopt the role of "learner", coming to regard
knowledge and skills as worthwhile commodities in their own right and their
acquisition as a worthwhile use of their time. Learners seek out learning
whenever and wherever they can, cathecting
it almost. In this scenario, we are therefore interested in the knock-on
effects of parenting-as-teaching by LD children, now grown up,
on children who are themselves LD. Our research question, in short, asks how
parents are to help their LD child value something they might not genuinely
think much of themselves.
Gross (1997/2006 online) explains the
risks this way .....
"Children who internalize a sense
of being slow or poor learners are at considerable risk for failure. Lowered
expectations have been shown to have a negative impact on how well children
actually learn, and even on how willing they are to attempt tasks. Children
with learning disabilities are vulnerable to paralyzing self-doubt, and often
avoid learning in order to withdraw from further failure. The literature on
learned helplessness is filled with examples of how children try to reduce
their sense of failure and to avoid further experiences of incompetence. Labels
such as 'slow,' 'stupid,' 'lazy,' and 'dumb,' can have a devastating impact on
motivation curiosity and confidence and are unfortunately all too frequently heard
during the impressionable early school years."
Gross (1997/2006 online) then identifies
the mechanism of the intergenerational transmission as follows
.....
"One parent of a
child with significant sequencing and organizational difficulties commented
about his daughter's school report by saying with irritation, "She wasn't
supposed to turn out like me!" This parent had academic difficulties
himself and strongly identified with his child's problems, recalling his own
sense of injury and failure. He therefore had difficulty giving his child the
reassurance and support she needed, and acknowledging that she could be helped
through remediation."
Toxic Parenting and Cognitive
Deficit - Scenario #5: [See firstly
the introductory entry and the earlier scenarios above.]
Scenario #5
- The Intergenerational Physical Abuse Problem: There is little doubt that there is a major risk of
intergenerational infection in violent abuse (Widom,
1989; Egeland, 1993; Gara,
Rosenberg, and Herzog, 1996). Guterman and Lee
(2005/2006 online)
have reviewed the factors predisposing children to physical maltreatment, and
mention unemployment and economic hardship, young fatherhood, and substance
abuse. They conclude .....
"Mounting
evidence underscores that troubled or violent relationships between fathers and
mothers appear particularly linked with physical child abuse and neglect risk,
and, similarly, that coercive interactions between mothers and fathers appear
linked with heightened coercive behaviors toward
children []. For example, Rosenbaum and O’Leary (1981) reported that parents
who use physically aggressive tactics to resolve spousal disputes also tend to
use similar tactics in disciplining their children. Similarly, according to
reports from battered women, violent husbands are less involved in child
rearing and use less induction and physical affection and more negative control
techniques in their child-rearing practices []. In line with
these findings, a number of studies have reported that the presence of domestic
violence between adult partners is closely associated with physical child abuse
and neglect" (p143).
However, not all the studies
they looked at had reported an intergenerational effect, and further research
is needed. Other recent studies also point to the number of risk factors in
deviant behaviour. For example, Sutton, Utting, and
Farrington, (2006) list both "physical/emotional/sexual abuse" and
"hitting/frequent shaking" as risk factors in criminality. Gara, Rosenberg, and Herzog (1996) have compared the
parenting behaviour of 55 mothers who had been physically abused as children
with 46 matched non-abused controls. They found that "clusters of negative attitudes
pervaded the memories and perceptions that abused mothers had of others,
particularly parents", and that their extent discriminated the two groups
"almost perfectly". There was also a clear correlation between the
strength of the positive view of self and others and the security of the
infant-mother attachment. And Haapasalo and Aaltonen (1999) have studied how mother's abusive childhood
is a powerful predictor of next generation child abuse. They compared 25
mothers whose children were known to social services with 25 matched
no-known-risk controls, and found that the treatment group "had
experienced more childhood psychological abuse, especially rejection,
accusations, terrorising, and corrupting". Significantly, "punitiveness was best predicted by maternal childhood
psychological abuse [providing] evidence for the cycle of abuse model".
Toxic Parenting and Cognitive
Deficit - Scenario #6: [See firstly
the introductory entry and the earlier scenarios above.]
Scenario #6
- The Intergenerational Divorce and "Fatherlessness" Problem: For the purposes of the present scenario, we are
interested in the knock-on effects of parenting-as-teaching by children
from broken homes, now grown up, in promoting that same risk
in their own sons and daughters [they will certainly promote other risks, but that is not the issue
at hand]. Our research question, in short, asks how developmentally
disadvantaged parents can hope to help their children grow as healthy selves
capable of relating appropriately to the world when their own habitual analysis
of and reaction to that world has been perhaps irretrievable damaged. Divorce
is consistently reported as producing children who will themselves divorce, and
fatherlessness is consistently identified as one of the key factors in
childhood problems. For example, Pears and Capaldi
(2001) have reported that parents who
had suffered from "harsh or abusive parenting" (Pears and Capaldi, 2001, p1440) as children were "likely to
become harsh and abusive parents in their turn". Pears and Capaldi identified three main vehicles for the transmission
of this effect. Firstly, abused mothers are often young mothers, so there is an
inherent "confound" with their relative immaturity as
parents. Secondly, there was a tendency for abused mothers to have been poorly
parented, thanks, for example, to depression, antisocial personality disorder
(a disorder characterised by impulsivity, irritability, and aggressiveness), or
substance or alcohol abuse. And thirdly, there was a tendency to use "poor
disciplinary skills" (p1442). Pears and Capaldi
found a 23% rate of "intergenerational transmission" with consistency
of discipline being the best protective factor.
ASIDE: This type of effect may
underpin what the forensic child psychologist Melanie Gill has called "the
devaluation of parenthood" (The Daily Mail, 20th July 2006).
Children who have never known genuine unconditional love, she writes, and who
have been brought up in homes "without boundaries or discipline", inevitably
grow up to become "emotionally broken adults" themselves.
Here is a selection of indicative data
.....
- Children
from fatherless homes are more likely to commit suicide (5 times as likely),
more likely to run away (32 times), to have behavioural disorders (20 times),
to commit rape (14 times), to commit substance abuse (10 times), and to end up
in prison (20 times) (US data; by secondary citation, so exercise due caution).
- Whitehead
(1993) reports that daughters of single parents are 53% more likely to marry as
teenagers, 164% more likely to have a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to
dissolve their own marriages.
- McCord (1979) reports that
the strongest predictor of criminal behaviour in adults was for them to have
been poorly supervised by their parents as children.
- Fergusson, Horwood, and Lynskey (1994) have
isolated parental conflict as a key factor in producing disturbed children.
There are, of course, many variables at work. For
example, Levy (1993) points to the simple practicalities of family finance,
informing us that 75% of American children in single-parent families experience
formally defined "poverty", compared to only 20% of those in
two-parent families. And the damage - whatever it turns out to be - is done
very deep and very early .....
"Among teenage and adult populations of females,
parental divorce has been associated with lower self-esteem, precocious sexual
activity, greater delinquent-like behaviour, and more difficulty establishing gratifying
lasting adult heterosexual relationships. It
is especially intriguing to note that, in these studies, the parental divorce
typically occurred years before any difficulties were observed" (Kalter 1987; bold emphasis added)
As to what society ought to do about the problem,
Sanders and Morawska (2006) wonder whether
"large-scale multi-risk-factor" interventions are in practice too
cumbersome to work effectively. They see a lot of value in
"social-learning-based parenting programmes" (p476). They believe the
evidence in favour of such programmes is compelling, thus
.....
"Quality of parenting is the strongest
potentially modifiable risk factor contributing to early-onset conduct
problems. Evidence from behaviour genetics research and
epidemiological, correlational, and experimental studies shows that parenting
practices have a major influence on many different domains of children's
development []. Specifically, the lack of a warm, positive
relationship with parents, insecure attachment and inadequate supervision of
and involvement with children are strongly associated with children's increased
risk for behavioural and emotional problems. [.....] Studies evaluating PMT
[= "parent management training"] interventions often show large
effect sizes [] and have been replicated many times across different studies,
investigators, and countries" (Sanders and Morawska,
2006, p477; bold emphasis added).
ASIDE: It is observations like these which presumably led
Elgar (2004; see
press release) to conclude that the best way to help children with problem
behaviour would be to help their mothers overcome their mood problems! They
also explain why Adams (1991) is so concerned with the corrosive effects "covert
incest" (i.e., oppressive, but not physical, over-parenting) on the
victim's identity structures.
In the same vein, Sutton, Utting,
and Farrington (2006) draw our attention to the relationship between parenting
and juvenile criminality. Noting that the roots of offending, mental health
difficulties, and educational underachievement, are often evident from an early
age, they review the known risk factors. Organised firstly by critical period
of sensitivity and then by point of focus (societal, familial, and personal,
respectively), here they are .....
(1) Pregnancy: The
important societal influences at this developmental stage are low income, poor
housing, and a neglected neighbourhood, the key parenting variables are stress
in pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, and smoking in pregnancy, and the key personal
variables are prematurity of delivery, birth complications, and genetic
predisposition.
(2) Age 0 to 2 Years: The important societal influence at this developmental
stage is "socio-economic stress", the key parenting variables are
postnatal depression, harsh parenting style, rejection, smacking, and a low
level of stimulation, and the key personal variables are temperament and
hyperactivity.
(3) Age 3 to 8 Years: The important societal influences at this
developmental stage are low achievement at school, behaviour problems /
bullying, and school disorganisation, the key parenting variables are
inconsistency of managing the child, mental health problems, and smacking, and
the key personal variables are tantrums, aggression, witnessing domestic
violence, and diet.
(4) Age 9 to 13 Years: The important societal influences at this
developmental stage are low informal social control and truancy, the key
parenting variable is having a convicted parent at age 10 years, and the key
personal variables are behaviour problems, physical / emotional / sexual abuse,
ADHD and aggressive behaviour, antisocial peers, and an early initiation into
offending.
Hutchings and Lane (2006) have studied why major
government interventions such as the Sure Start scheme [details] achieve so
little "particularly for the most disadvantaged families whose children are most at risk" (p480). Their core explanation is
that the resources are neither delivered at the points nor in the fashion
suggested by the available evidence base. They list the following factors as of
proven benefit .....
- new parenting
skills must be actively consolidated through rehearsal, role-play, or other
means
- parenting programs must teach
behavioural principles rather than
just specific techniques
- parents must
implement what they have learned in the home
- programs must
include non-violent sanctions for negative behaviour and foster positive
relationships
- "difficulties in adult relationships and other
family problems must be addressed" (p480)
- Programs need a "collaborative alliance"
(p481) with parents, accepting their goals at face value
Toxic Parenting and Cognitive
Deficit - Scenario #7: [See firstly
the introductory entry and the earlier scenarios above.]
Scenario #7
- The Intergenerational Locus Of Control Problem: [See firstly locus of control] [We begin by
declaring our personal belief that it is a good thing to have an internal locus
of control; that it is better to be "master of one's own destiny"
than a "slave to convention".] For the purposes of the present
scenario, we are interested in the knock-on effects of parenting-as-teaching
by external locus of control children, now grown up, on their own
children, such that the parents' low expectations of personal influence affect
the assertiveness and self-confidence of the child. This message can even be
transmitted unwittingly! For example, Bugental, Henker,
and Whalen (1976) found that expressions of assertiveness differed between
internally and externally controlled people. They proposed the "voice
leakage hypothesis", the notion that externals would "leak" -
unintentionally transmit - their low expectations of their own influence
through "nonassertive vocal behaviour"
(p406).
ASIDE: The key technical concepts here are intonation
and prosody, but the everyday term "voice quality" will
suffice for those not immediately interested in the technicalities.
Hall, Mroz, and Braunwald (1983) have studied "vocal
assertiveness" in a teaching scenario. They taped subjects delivering a
short factual presentation then analysed the recordings for speed, rhythm,
intensity, and pitch. Their results were as follows .....
"[We] found more dominant and relaxed affect
among internal subjects in the verbal channel, and more dominant and relaxed
affect among external subjects in the nonverbal (voice quality) channel. [..... The] more competent presentations were
marked by dominant and relaxed words and nondominant
voice quality [.....].Our task was neutral and task oriented, and externals
also used more dominant (and relaxed) voice quality than internals while
simultaneously using less dominant (and relaxed) words. [..... We therefore
suggest] that internals and externals meet the challenge of a task situation in
different ways. People who feel that other people or circumstances determine
their outcomes may find it difficult to be convincing [..... This] suggests
that leakage need not always occur through nonverbal channels, as has often
been assumed. [..... I]n our task situation, externals leaked their
sense of lack of control through submissive and anxious verbal performance"
(pp160-161; bold emphasis added).
The authors interpreted their findings by linking
verbal and nonverbal communication style to personality, thus
.....
"It appears that locus of control, far from being
simply an attributional tendency, is a state of mind and feeling that has
observable correlates in the expression of affect" (p161).
Tracy: See case, Tracy.
Trail Making Test
(TMT): [See firstly executive function and dysexecutive
syndrome.] This test was devised by Reitan and
Wolfson (1985), and requires patients to join up specified sequences of letters
and/or numbers printed randomly across a test page. The test comes in two
parts. Part A requires only that patients connect a sequence of numbers, say in
ascending order. Part B, however, requires that numbers and letters be
connected alternately in ascending order, and provides the better test of
frontal performance (Stern and Prohaska, 1996, p252).
The TMT is one of the Halstead-Reitan
subscales, and is good measure of attention maintenance.
Train of Thought: This is Hobbes' (1651) anticipation of James' (1890) stream of consciousness metaphor.
Transactional
Analysis:
This is Eric Berne's (1961, 1964) clever blending together of the Freudian
mental architecture and the Shannonian theory of the communication
channel. Using terminology of his own devising such as
"transaction stimulus", "agent", and
"respondent", Berne analyses the basic communication networks of
human experience. The roles of parent, adult, and child are central to
this analysis, because they each contribute an "alter ego" to our
overall mental make-up. The specific contributions are as follows
.....
Parent: [See firstly internalisation, and note all its attendant
theoretical problems.] Our Parent
alter ego gives us an internalised version of the parent-caregiver(s) we had
for real, complete with all the rules and restrictions by which they insisted
that we ran our lives. Our Parent ego
state thus corresponds to the Freudian superego. It is the "taught" side of our
existence.
Adult: Our Adult
alter ego gives us our everyday conscious, well-informed, rational, willing
self. "It processes data and computes the probabilities which are
essential for dealing effectively with the outside world" (Berne, 1964,
p26). Our Adult ego state thus
corresponds to the Freudian ego. It is the "thought" side of our existence.
Child: Our Child
alter ego gives us our affective, emotional, and generally unconstrained and
irrational self. It is what you would be still, had you never grown up, and -
properly handled - it still brings "charm, pleasure, and creativity"
(p25) to your adult life. Our Child
ego state thus corresponds to the Freudian id. It is the "felt" side of our
existence.
Given this basic structural
framework, Berne then introduces us to the "transaction". This is
"the unit of social intercourse" (1964, p28), and Berne's fundamental
thesis is that social
intercourse - and the transactions themselves - takes place between ego states.
Transcendence
/ Transcendental: In erudite standard
English "to transcend" is "to pass over or go beyond", and
in theology it is "to be above and independent of" (O.E.D.). In
mental philosophy, "transcendence"
was one of Kant's favourite notions, and means "going beyond (surpassing)
the boundary of (all) (possible) experience" (Pluhar
and Ellington, 1996), or of "being above and independent of the
universe", and can be contrasted with "immanent". To be
"transcendental", therefore, is "(2) Philos. a. Orig. in Aristotelian philosophy: Transcending or extending
beyond the bounds of any single category [.....] b. In the philosophy of
Kant: Not derived from experience, but concerned with the presuppositions of
experience; pertaining to the general theory of the nature of experience or
knowledge, a priori [.....] c. Used of any philosophy which resembles
Kant's in being based upon the recognition of an a priori element in
experience" (O.E.D.). [See now all entries beginning transcendental-.]
Transcendental
Aesthetics: This is Kant's term for the ability of our
perceptual systems (i.e. the end-to-end system described in the entry for aesthesis, phenomenal awareness, and
ideation in A.2) to go beyond the concrete givens of that system. [For a
fuller account, see and integrate the separate entries for intuition and analytical
versus synthetic judgments.]
Transcendental Apperception: See
apperception, transcendental.
Transcendental Idea of Freedom: See free will.
Transcendental Perception: See perception,
transcendental.
Transcendental
Unity of Apperception: [See firstly consciousness, Kant's theory of.] This
is Kant's (1787) term for the tendency of many different perceptual input
streams to be recoded in some mysterious way as indicating the presence of a discrete
external object, and therefore of entering phenomenal awareness as such. Here
is how he introduces the topic .....
"The transcendental unity of apperception is the
unity whereby everything manifold given in an intuition is united in a concept of
the object. Hence this unity is called objective,
and must be distinguished from subjective unity of consciousness ....." (Kant, 1787, Critique; Pluhar translation, p182).
[Compare the Gestalt
School's notion of figure.]
Transcoding: [See firstly encoding.]
This term was popularised by McCarthy and
Warrington (1984) to describe the act of changing from one basis of
encoding to another during information processing, a process which is clearly
seen in the Ellis
(1982) flow diagram. [See now transcoding model.]
Transcoding Model: [See firstly transcoding.] "Transcoding"
models are box-and-arrow models of the longitudinal cognitive system, which
attempt to identify (a) the processing modules involved, and (b) the points
where transcoding takes place. If restricted to the language processing system,
the models in question necessarily have to show inputs separate from outputs
and spoken language separate from written, giving it a characteristic X-shape.
The classic example of a language transcoding model is Ellis and Young
(1988), although much the same layout can be seen in the mental modularity
proposed for mathematical cognition. [For a longer history of this particular
cognitive modelling genre, see companion
resource.]
Transducer:
The
process of transforming external physical stimuli into nerve impulses is known
as transduction, and is carried out
in all the body's various sensory systems by the combined effect of
"transducers", that is to say, receptor cells and sensory neurons. Transduction results in the encoding of the physical stimulus in
the appropriate pathway. Thus touch is
encoded into neural activity in the pathway for touch,
vision is encoded into neural activity in the visual pathway, and so on. Encoding reflects the discernible properties
of the external stimulus, that is to say, the intensity of a touch, the
brightness of a light source, the saltiness of a taste, the loudness of a
noise, and so on. Nevertheless, the
basis of this encoding is one of biology's most enduring mysteries, because it
remains to be explained how we manage to create for ourselves such a rich
variety of perceptual experiences out of more or less identical volleys of
action potentials. Where, in other words,
does "stimulus quality" come from? [See now quale.] The Fodorian view of cognitive modularity proposes that the existence
of a dedicated transducer system (the rods and cones of the retina, for
example) is one of the main characteristics of a cognitive module.
Transference: This is the technical name for a commonly recorded
phenomenon affecting the therapist-patient relationship during psychoanalytic
therapy. Specifically, it describes the situation where the patient starts
subconsciously to confuse the therapist with one of the key person-objects in
their emotional past, and the associated dynamics are fundamental to Freud's
method of psychoanalysis, thus .....
"We are unmistakeably confronted by a formidable resistance. But
what has happened to account for it? If we are able once more to clarify the
position, we find that the cause of the
disturbance is that the patient has transferred on to the doctor intense
feelings of affection which are justified neither by the doctor's behaviour nor by the situation that has developed during the
treatment. The form in which this affection is expressed and what its aims
are depend of course on the personal relation between the two people concerned.
If those concerned are a young girl and a youngish man, we shall get the
impression of a normal case of falling in love; we shall find it understandable
that a girl should fall in love with a man whom she can be much alone and talk
of intimate things [etc.]. The further the personal relations between doctor
and patient diverge from this supposed case, the more we shall be surprised to
find nevertheless the same emotional relationship constantly recurring. [.....]
But when a similar affectionate
attachment by the patient to the doctor is repeated regularly in every new
case, when it comes to light again and again, under the most unfavourable conditions and where there are positively
grotesque incongruities, even in elderly women [etc.] then we must abandon the
idea of a chance disturbance and recognise that we
are dealing with a phenomenon which is intimately bound up with the nature of
the illness itself. This new fact, which
we thus recognise so unwillingly, is known by us as transference" (Freud,
1917/1963, Introductory Lectures
(Lecture #27), pp492-494; bold emphasis added).
"The decisive
part of [psychoanalytical therapy] is achieved by creating in the patient's
relation to the doctor - in the 'transference' - new editions of the old
conflicts; in these the patient would like to behave in the same way as he did
in the past, while we, by summoning up every available mental force [in the
patient] compel him to come to a fresh decision. Thus the transference becomes
the battlefield on which all the mutually struggling forces should meet one
another. All the libido, as well as everything
opposing it, is made to converge solely on the relation with the doctor"
(Freud, 1917/1963, Introductory Lectures
(Lecture #28), p507).
However, the process is not necessarily restricted to
a therapist-patient relationship, being quite capable of invading family or
friendship relationships as well. It is thus "any distortion of a present
relationship because of unresolved (and mostly unconscious) issues left over
from early relationships, especially with the parents in childhood"
(Davis, 1994-1998/2006 online).
Since transference involves making the unconscious past visible (albeit
symbolically) in the conscious present, it is regarded as a centrally important
process within the object relations
school of psychoanalysis. It is also a cornerstone of Rogers' (1951) client-centred
therapy, although, rather problematically, it is not "strong" in
every case. Consider .....
"With many clients the attitudes toward the counsellor
are mild, and of a reality, rather than a transference, nature. Thus such a
client may feel somewhat apprehensive about first meeting the counsellor; may
feel annoyed in early interviews that he does not receive the guidance he
expected [etc.]. If one's definition of transference includes all affect toward
others, then this is transference; if the definition being used is the transfer
of infantile attitudes to a present relationship in which they are
inappropriate, then very little if any transference is present. There are many
cases, however, in which clients have much stronger emotionalised attitudes
directed toward the counsellor. [.....] In general, then, we may say that
transference attitudes exist in varying degrees ....." (Rogers,
1951, Client-Centred Therapy, pp199-200).
By the mid-1950s, Winnicott
had come to regard transference with even greater respect, thanks to the sheer
devastation caused by some parental environments [see the extended quotation
from Winnicott (1956) in the entry for holding
environment], and a more recent commentator has explained the dynamics of
transference this way .....
"During transference, people turn into a
'biological time machine'. A nerve is
struck when someone says or does something that reminds you of your past. This
creates an 'emotional time warp' that transfers your emotional past and your
psychological needs into the present. In less poetic terms, a transference
reaction means that you are reacting to someone in terms of what you need to
see [.....] Transference reactions
are caused by unmet emotional needs, neglect, seductions, and other abuses that
transpired when you were a child. In some forms of psychotherapy, a therapist
will intentionally create or allow transference to form. When done properly,
this helps a therapist to understand and find a connection between the
patient's past and how the patient misreads the present and may react
ineffectively. [.....] People who don't recognise the difference between past
and present can end up in the same messed-up relationships over and over
....." (Conner, 2001/2006 online;
bold emphasis added).
Price (1994) has analysed
the transference and countertransference implications of conducting
psychotherapy with victims of incest. She suspects that the projective
identification ego defense allows the patient to
re-enact the abuse, but that properly handled it can also be used as a
"vehicle for empathy and change". Indeed, "the development of a
realistic intimacy with the analyst that takes into account and respects each
other's boundaries is a therapeutic goal in the treatment of adults who have
been sexually abused". Consider .....
"Despite the various roles and related affects
that are being enacted, the patient maintains the identity of the 'abused
victim'. As one patient stated with a high degree of insight and astuteness, 'I
control people with my suffering and with my hysterical outbursts. It's all
about winning, any way that you can'. This was related to a beginning
awareness of how her victim stance was used in the service of maintaining
control and mastery over others.
[.....] The analyst will be expected to be the all-empathic mother
who neither neglects, abandons, or is envious of the
patient. The analyst can also be perceived as the idealised father with whom
the patient had a 'special' relationship. As one patient stated in a romantic
tone of voice 'my father was my first lover, I'll never forget him'. [.....] I
refer to the idyllic state in the analysis as a state of 'symbiotic bliss' that
can be experienced by analyst and analysand with
accompanying feelings of love, closeness, and joy that can be intoxicating for
both" (Price, 1994, pp221-223; bold emphasis added).
Kernberg makes the same point rather more bluntly
.....
"Let us now explore some clinical manifestations
of patients dominated by hatred and the related desire to destroy the origin of
their suffering as they perceive it, that is, the hated and hateful persecutory
object. The most important clinical
manifestation of the dominance of hatred in the transference is the patient's
attributing to the therapist an intense, relentless degree of hatred. By
means of projective identification, the internal world of torturer and
tortured, tyrant and slave, are enacted in the form of attributing to the
therapist the role of sadistic tyrant"
(Kernberg, 2006 online;
bold emphasis added).
[Compare counter-transference
and see then transference, extreme, transference melt-down, and transference neurosis. Lucente (1988) cites problems with the transference
relation as underlying the problem known as "adolescent dual unity".]
Transference,
Extreme: [See firstly transference.] Conner (2001/2006 online)
describes extreme transference as follows .....
"In an extreme form of transference, you may
conclude that someone is an awful or evil person when in fact that person’s favorite food and television show reminds you of an
emotionally abusive mother and a sexually abusive brother you have been trying
to forget since childhood. That’s an example of negative transference. A warm,
supportive and kind person could remind you of what you are missing and wanting
in their life. You might then idealize that person and begin to see him or her
as wonderful beyond belief. The idea is that you will react to your therapist
based on your experience with another person. This is usually a parent that the
patient has an unresolved conflict with. In extreme cases a patient will become
overly attached to their therapist or they will enter into and create conflicts
without realizing how."
Transference Melt-Down: [See firstly transference.]
Conner (2001/2006
online) describes transference melt-down as follows .....
"Extreme forms of transference can turn into a
full-blown obsession if it is not dealt with. Transference 'meltdowns' can
result in accidents, dangerous choices, nightmares, fantasies, stalking
someone, psychotic reactions and sometimes violence. While it does not happen
frequently in therapy, it can happen in the patient's personal life. How Can
You Tell? How do you know you are having a 'transference reaction'? It’s
not always easy, but you probably are if you know very little about a therapist
(or anyone) and you are having a powerful reaction that is not justifiable to a
reasonable person. It can be difficult if the patient can rationalize their
reactions. Having a strong sexual
attraction to your therapist is almost always a transference reaction [as is]
becoming angry at your therapist as if they were a parent ....."
(Conner, 2001/2006 online; bold emphasis added).
Transference
Neurosis: [See firstly transference.] In classical Freudian
theory, a transference neurosis is the standard and expected outcome of the
"itself a fundamentally neurotic" relationship between patient and
doctor (Robertson 1998/2006 online).
Transformational Object: See object,
transformational.
Transitive Consciousness: See
consciousness, Rosenthal's theory of.
Trauma(tic)
Bonding: See Stockholm
syndrome.
Trendelenburg, Adolf: [German philosopher (1802-1872).] [Click for
external biography] See Trendelenburg-Fischer
debate.
Trendelenburg-Fischer Debate: [Click for
external source]
Triplex Model of
Memory: [See firstly consolidation and Duplex Model of Memory] This classification can be applied to any
"three-box" model of memory which separates sensory memory,
STM, and LTM. Better known as the Modal Model of Memory.
TROG: See Test for the Reception of
Grammar.
True Negative: See the entry for diagnostic
tests and screening procedures, and any relevant onward links, in the companion
glossary on "Research Methods and Psychometrics". [Compare true
positive.]
True Positive: See the entry for diagnostic
tests and screening procedures, and any relevant onward links, in the companion
glossary on "Research Methods and Psychometrics". [Compare true
negative.]
True
Self versus False Self: [See firstly self, Winnicott
on.] The "true self - false
self" dichotomy is Winnicott's (e.g., 1956)
basic explanation for many of the behavioural abnormalities seen in childhood
(and, if allowed to fester, many of the psychological abnormalities seen in
adults). The true self component reflects that which we really are, in and of
ourselves (in the traditional sense of "soul", "self",
"ego", etc.). The false self, on the other hand, is an adjunct to the
true self, a persona, perhaps, only
more so. Here are two extracts from Winnicott himself
on the distinction .....
"[In my experience] there has been what I call a
true self hidden, protected by a false self. This false self is no doubt an
aspect of the true self. It hides and protects it, and it reacts to the
adaptation failures and develops a pattern corresponding to the pattern of
environmental failure. In this way the true self is not involved in the
reacting, and so preserves a continuity of being. This hidden true self suffers
an impoverishment, however, that results from lack of experience. The false
self may achieve a deceptive false integrity, that is to say, a false ego
strength, [.....] for it by no means follows that early maternal failure must
lead to a general failure of child-care. The false self cannot, however,
experience life, and feel real" " (Winnicott, 1956, p387).
"Another phenomenon that needs consideration at
this phase is the hiding of the core of the personality. Let us examine the
concept of a central or true self. The
central self could be said to be the inherited potential which is experiencing
a continuity of being, and acquiring in its own way and at its own speed a
personal psychic reality and a personal body scheme. It seems necessary to
allow for the concept of the isolation of this central self as a characteristic
of health. Any threat to this isolation of the true self constitutes a major
anxiety at this early stage, and defenses of earliest
infancy appear in relation to failures on the part of the mother (or in
maternal care) to ward off impingements which might disturb this isolation. [On
occasions, impingements] get through this defense in
spite of the ego support which maternal care provides. Then the central core of
the ego is affected, and this is the very nature of psychotic anxiety" (Winnicott, 1960, p590; bold emphasis added).
More recently, Bollas
(1987) has incorporated Winnicott's scheme into his
own theory of the "transformational object" [see object, transformational]
Turing,
Alan: [British mathematician, wartime
cryptanalyst, computing theorist, and philosopher (1912-1954).] [Click for external biography] See consciousness, Johnson-Laird's theory of,
machine consciousness, and Turing test.
Turing
Machine: See Turing, Alan.
Turing
Test: The mathematician and
founding-father computer scientist Alan Turing [biography] was "really quite obsessed
with knowing how the human brain worked and the possible correspondence with
what he was doing on computers" (Newman, 1994/2003 online, p12). In a paper entitled
"Computing machinery and intelligence", he argued that the mind would
not only prove one day to be "programmable", but that the eventual
program would be "implementable" on a machine. The problem would then
be how to know you had been successful, because the question "can machines
think?" was philosophically unsafe, due to problems agreeing the meaning
of the word "think" (Turing, 1950/2003
online).
ASIDE: Bayle and Leibniz had argued over much the same issue
two and a half centuries previously - see consciousness,
Leibniz's theory of.
Turing therefore proposed objectively establishing
whether the machine, so programmed, could perform as successfully as a human in
fooling an interrogator in an "imitation game", in which a man (A)
and a woman (B) have to fool (C) as to which is the man and which is the woman.
The knowledge pertaining to (A) and (B) is accumulated in the mind of (C) by
asking questions, the only restriction being that the
answers to those questions should be typewritten so as to prevent vocal clues
being given. Turing's imitation game evolved somewhat over the years, and in
its later form became popularly known as the "Turing Test". This runs as follows: if a human in room A were to communicate via
keyboard and screen with an entity in room B which might be a human but which
might also be a computer trying to appear human, then the definition of
"humanness" would rest on whether the real human could tell the
difference or not after five minutes of questioning. Computer programmers
now compete annually [check
out the Loebner Prize] for the honour of producing
the software which will first pass the Turing Test. [For a recent addition to
the debate see Smyth (2005) in the entry for smart thing.]
2.5D Sketch: See perception, Marr's theory of.
Tyler, Ralph W.: [American educational theorist (1902-1994).]
[Click for external biography]
See Tyler rationale.
Tyler
Rationale: This
is the name now given to a system of basic rules of education prepared by the American educational theorist Ralph W. Tyler,
and set down in "Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction"
(Tyler, 1949). Tyler summarised his arguments into four principles of
curriculum development, now referred to as "the Tyler Rationale" .....
Tyler's
First Principle: The curriculum
development process should begin by defining appropriate objectives.
Tyler's
Second Principle: Corresponding
educational experiences should be developed.
Tyler's
Third Principle: These experiences
would then need organising into a programme.
Tyler's
Fourth Principle: The programme would
need to be complemented by systems to evaluate and improve upon the end result.
Tyler's approach, and especially its emphasis on
objectives, went on to become the backbone of the modern educational model,
onto which all subsequent modifications up to and including the 1997 Dearing
Report [detail] have been
grafted, and it earns the epithet "experiential" from the explicit
emphasis provided by the second and third principles, and from the fact that
three out of Tyler's five chapters directly concern learning experiences. We
illustrate what is at stake when parents fail as teachers qua teachers in the
various scenarios in the entry for toxic parenting and cognitive deficit.
"Type A" Personality: See personality, type A.
Überbesetzung: [German =
"over-filling".] [See firstly Freud's Project.] This everyday German word was adopted by Freud (1895)
to complement his use of the word Besetzung to
signify the underlying mechanism of cathexis. Where Besetzung signifies the normal
attachment of instinctive energy to the neural representations in question, Überbesetzung signifies
an element of overreaction.
Unbewusstsein: This
is the third from the bottom of the five levels of perceptual content
identified by Freud
(1896) (the others being Bewusstsein, Vorbewusstsein, Wahrnehmungen, and Wahrnehumungszeichen). Specifically, it is the stage of
unconscious conceptual memory.
Unconscious,
the:
"Great is this force of memory, excessive great, O my
God; a large and boundless chamber! who
ever sounded the bottom thereof?" (St. Augustine, Confessions,
Chapter 8).
In his 2002 monograph on the history of the notion of
the unconscious mind, the London-based psychiatrist Frank Tallis
identifies a number of pertinent early references to the problems of phenomenal
consciousness. To start with, there is St. Augustine's comment on the true
extent extent of one's self [see header quotation]. Then there is Leibniz's
(1704/1765, New Essays Concerning Human
Understanding) proposed continuum of consciousness, from apperception at
the top, above perception, above a lesser breed of perceptions known as "minute perceptions", above totally
unconscious early registration. Later in the 18th century, Kant covered the
subject in his analysis of a priori knowledge .....
To retain
historical continuity, read consciousness,
Kant's theory of before proceeding.
Even clearer expositions [but still in German] are to
be found at the beginning of the 19th century. Tallis
gives the credit to Herbart (1816), while Margetts (1953) ensures that
Schopenhauer (1819) is not overlooked. Here is Tallis ....
"As the concept of the unconscious became
consolidated, attention settled on the theoretical line dividing the mind into
upper and lower chambers - the limen or threshold of consciousness. One of the first to consider the exact nature of
this horizontal partition was the German philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart
[.....]. For Herbart, the threshold of awareness was not a smooth surface,
disturbed only by the graceful ascent of memories. The limen was a plane of
perceptual conflict - seething with activity. Thoughts and perceptions jostled
each other, vying for a place in awareness [compare Leibniz's minute perceptions above - Ed.].
Stronger thoughts and impressions pushed the weaker ones below the threshold,
from where they immediately fought to recover their former position. This
account is peculiarly Darwinian. Animated cognitions and percepts
compete with each other for a limited resource - consciousness - and only the
'fittest' survive in awareness" (Tallis,
2002, p13; bold emphasis added).
..... and here is Margetts [note
Schopenhauer's views on the "suppression" of material from the
intellect, and the likely effects on mental health] .....
"'The exposition of the origin of madness [] will
become more comprehensible if it is remembered how unwillingly we think of things
which powerfully injure our interests, wound our pride, or interfere with our
wishes; with what difficulty do we determine to lay such things before our own
intellect for careful and serious investigation; how easily, on the other hand,
we unconsciously break away or sneak off from them again; how, on the
contrary, agreeable events come into our minds of their own accord, and, if
driven away, constantly creep in again, so that we dwell on them for hours
together. In that resistance of the will to allowing what is contrary
to it to come under the examination of the intellect lies
the place at which madness can break in upon the mind. Each new adverse event must be assimilated by the
intellect, i.e., it must receive a place in the system of truths connected with
our will and its interests [.....]. Whenever this has taken place, it already
pains us much less [.....]. However, the
health of the mind can only continue so long as this is in each case properly
carried out. If, on the contrary, in some particular case, the resistance and
struggles of the will against the apprehension of some knowledge reaches such a
degree that that operation is not performed in its integrity, then certain
events or circumstances become for the intellect completely
suppressed, because the will cannot endure the sight of them,
and then, for the sake of the necessary connection, the gaps that thus arise
are filled up at pleasure; thus madness appears" (Schopenhauer, 1819; cited in Margetts, 1953,
pp125-126; italics Margetts'; bold emphasis added).
Schopenhauer also provided a physical metaphor to
rival Herbart's upper and lower "chambers" of consciousness, namely a
body of water, thus .....
"Let us
compare our consciousness to a sheet of water of some depth. Then
the distinctly conscious thoughts are merely the surface; while, on
the other hand, the indistinct thoughts, the feelings, the after sensation of
perceptions and of experience generally, mingled with the special disposition
of our own will, which is the kernel of our being, is the mass of the water" (Schopenhauer, 1819/1883; cited in Margetts,
1953, p126; bold emphasis added).
..... which went on, Margetts
reminds us, to become the "iceberg theory of the unconscious" .....
"The analogy of mind to a body of water, the thin
surface being conscious and the vast deep being unconscious,
is interesting, because in many theories of the unconscious the same general
theme of stratification has been applied. Probably the most common one is the
'iceberg theory', conscious mind activity being the one-ninth
of the iceberg above water level, and unconscious being the eight-ninths below
the surface. The idea has been
ingeniously reapplied lately by J.L.S. Browne ....." (Margetts,
1953, p127; bold emphasis added; irritatingly, Margetts fails to reference his
citation of Browne).
TO BE EXTENDED .....
Understanding: [See firstly knowledge.]
Understanding is "the faculty of comprehending and reasoning; the
intellect" (O.E.D.). To see the logic whereby separate subprocesses
can be integrated into a system. The word has no formal definition within
cognitive science, but is generally regarded as the higher variants of knowledge, but falling short of wisdom.
Undoing: This is one of the defense mechanisms postulated by psychoanalytic theory, and
recognised by the DSM-IV as
belonging to the "compromise formation" defense level. It involves dealing with emotional conflict "by words
or behaviour designed to negate or to make amends symbolically for unacceptable
thoughts, feelings, or actions" (DSM-IV, 2000, p813).
Unifying Theories: See perspectives and schools of
psychology.
Universals: As used within philosophy, a universal is "that
which is predicated or asserted of all the individuals or species of a class or
genus, or of many things which are regarded as forming a class; an abstract or
general concept regarded either as having an absolute, mental, or nominal
existence; a universal proposition; a general term, notion, or idea. Chiefly in
pl[ural] and opposed to particulars and singulars"
(O.E.D.). Plato raises the problem of universals in his Euthyphro dialogue by referring to "the general form" of
a number of lesser things (Plato, Euthyphro, §6d; Jowett translation,
p42). In the Phaedrus dialogue he then goes into more detail,
having Socrates argue that it was important on some occasions to be able to
bring "things which are scattered all over the place" together into a
single class, and on other occasions to be able to "cut things up again,
class by class, according to
their natural joints"
(Plato, Phaedrus, §265d-265e; Waterfield translation,
p55; we have emphasised the closing phrase because it is often quoted).
Unthought Known: [See firstly unconscious.] This is Bollas's (1987) notion of a psychodynamically important form of propositional knowledge laid down in an infant's near-empty and
unstructured mind during its early experience of being fed and cared for. As in
all object relations theories, this
new notion is immediately theoretically challenging, because it proposes
knowledge at such a primitive level and in such an undeveloped system that it
is impossible for mental philosophers to re-experience it when gazing into
their own early histories in search of the roots of the adult psyche.
RESEARCH
ISSUE: For our
own part we see artificial intelligence simulation, as one of the few sources
of objective data in this fundamental area of psychological and philosophical
enquiry. We are ourselves working on a rudimentary semantic network simulation
of early object structuring with a view to demonstrating the plausibility (or
otherwise) of this or that psychodynamic construct. Readers are welcome to e-mail
the author for progress reports.
Bollas sees it as one of the tasks of the therapeutic
process to move said unthought known into
consciousness, thus .....
"The concept of primary repression does not
address early intersubjective contributions to the infant's knowledge of being
and relating. It is because we must give room to the infant's
internalisation of the parent's paradigmatic operational logic that I think a
new term, such as the unthought known, is called for [emphasis added]. We need a term to
stand for that which is known but has not yet been thought [.....]. Phantasy
does give some mental representation to the unthought
known, but it is insufficient to process the unthought
known .....
[emphasis original]" (Bollas,
1987, p280).
Nor is it just the patient who is affected
.....
"Through the patient's idiomatic uses of me (both
as his internal object and as the other to whom he speaks and from whom he
expects), I am instructed in the logic of his intersubjectivity,
and gradually I have a sense of the nature of this person's being. Becoming the
cumulative recipient, for example, of the analysand's
varied projective identifications means that I know something 'about' the
patient without it having yet been sufficiently mentally processed through my
own internal cognitions, reflections, and eventual interpretations. thus a psychoanalysis constitutes a time-consuming effort,
as both the analyst and analysand need to being to
think the unthought known. Much of my work in the countertransference will be a struggle to put
into imagery and language the experience of being the analysand's
object [..... and I] struggle to move the unthought
known into the thought known. The role of projective identification in this
procedure cannot be underestimated, particularly if we bear in mind that
infants and children contain unwanted or treasured parts of the parents. How
does [s/he] think about this? If the mother or father projectively
identifies the element of grief into the child by isolating any sign of sadness
as a major psychic occasion, biasing the child to be the family bearer of loss,
how will the child know this? Will he know it analytically? Of
course not. Will he know it through [.....] fantasy? Try as he might
this will not process the content of the known. Then how will he know what he
knows? He knows because he bears a projective identification that will seem to
him to be part of the nature of his being or of life itself. Containing the
other's projective identification seems life defining; grief, in this last
example, feels like the essence of his person; it is not to be thought - it
cannot be: it is lived" (Bollas, 1987, pp280-281;
bold emphasis added).
[See now projective
identification.]
Utilisation Behaviour: A clinical sign of
impulsivity deficit in dysexecutive
syndrome. Attempting to pick up and use lure objects, despite instructions
not to. Indicates that perceptual stimulation is being routed
to, and capable of activating, motor schema selection processes WITHOUT going
through any higher control process.
Vaillant, George Eman: [American psychiatrist (1934-).]
[Click for external
biography] Vaillant is noteworthy in the context of
the present glossary for his work on alcoholism,
schizophrenia, and personality disorder.
Validity: See this entry in the
companion glossary on "Research
Methods and Psychometrics".
Value
System: [See firstly Dynamic Core Theory.] See consciousness, Edelman and Tononi's theory of.
Varendonck, Juliaan: [Belgian psychoanalyst (1879-1924).] [No serviceable
external biography available] Varendonck is noteworthy
in the context of the present glossary for his work on the psychodynamics of
daydreaming, as mentioned in the entry for ego
autonomy.
Vaucanson, Jacques de: [French engineer (1709-1782).] [Click for external
biography] See automata.
Vernunft: [German =
"reason; understanding; judgment; common or good sense" (C.G.D.).]
See consciousness, Kant's theory of.
Very Short-Term
Memory: Same as sensory memory.
VHQ: See Violence History
Questionnaire.
Visual Input
Lexicon: Term popularised by Ellis and Young
(1988) for the mental storehouse for whole textual word forms. [For further
details see the longer entry under the same heading in our Psycholinguistics
Glossary.]
Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad Subsystem: This is Baddeley
and Hitch's (1974) second proposed slave system [the first being the articulatory
loop]. It is the hypothetical structure which allows you to "rehearse
pictures", as it were, and its key emphasis is accordingly upon the role
of imagery in memory. Now the point about imagery is that word referents
are not equally "imageable" - when
considering how they might be encoded, you need to know their position along
the concrete-abstract continuum. Thus "nudist" (a concrete
noun) is easier to visualise than
"intellect" (an abstract noun). It is not surprising, therefore, to
find that imagery is an important memory variable. Atwood (1971), for example,
tested memory for highly imageable phrases against
memory for low imageable phrases, and found that
interpolated visual activity interfered with the former whilst interpolated
auditory activity interfered with the latter. Similarly, Baddeley (1986) found
that performance on a pursuit rotor was degraded more by a visual memory task
than by a verbal memory task. He also reported that if eye movements were
controlled during memory tasks by forcing subjects to attend to stimuli moving
on a TV screen it would disrupt a spatial memory task requiring imaging. He
concluded that the imaging system - the "visuo-spatial
sketchpad" - can hold spatial and patterned information for a short time,
but fails quickly when time and sequence are introduced, or when eye movements
are otherwise directed.
Volkan, Vamik D.: [American psychoanalyst (1932-).] [Click for external biography]
Volkan is noteworthy in the context of the present
glossary for his work on identity, large group.
Voltage-Dependant
Gating: This is the sensitivity of a neuron's sodium pumps to the
membrane potential surrounding them, the point being that the pumping
(or "gating") only carries on while said potential is within pre-set
limits. When the local potential reaches the action potential threshold,
the metabolic pumping suddenly shuts down, and an action potential
immediately develops.
Von Haller, Albrecht: [Swiss physiologist (1708-1777).] [Click for external
biography]
Vorbewusstsein: This
is the fourth from the bottom of the five levels of perceptual content
identified by Freud
(1896) (the others being Bewusstsein, Unbewusstsein, Wahrnehmungen, and Wahrnehumungszeichen). Specifically, it is the stage of nearly
conscious memory.
Vous: You
are probably here by mistake, having misread the Greek letter "n" as
a "v". The Greek "n" is <ν>, so the word <νους>
should take you to nous, q.v.
Vygotsky, Lev Semenovich:
[Russian linguistic philosopher-psychologist (1896-1934).] [Click for external biography]
Vygotsky is noteworthy in the context of the present glossary for his position on
the importance of inner speech.
Wahrnehmung[en]: [German
= "perception, observation" (C.G.D.).] This is the lowest of the five levels of perceptual content identified
by Freud (1896)
(the others being Bewusstsein,
Unbewusstsein, Vorbewusstsein, and Wahrnehumungszeichen). Specifically, it is the stage of initial
sensory response.
Wahrnehumungszeichen: This
is the second from the bottom of the five levels of perceptual content
identified by Freud
(1896) (the others being Bewusstsein, Unbewusstsein,
Vorbewusstsein, and Wahrnehmungen). Specifically, it is the stage of sensory
registration.
WCST: See Wisconsin
Card Sorting Test.
Weaver: The Weaver is/was one of the "troops", the
alter personalities in case, Truddi
Chase.
Weaver,
Warren:
See Section 4.1 of the companion resource.
Weigl Colour-Form Sorting Task
(CFST): [See firstly executive function and dysexecutive
syndrome.] This test is described in Section 5 of our e-paper
"From Frontal Lobe Syndrome to Dysexecutive
Syndrome".
WFT: See Word Fluency
Test.
Wing's Triad: In a review of what was then
known about autistic disorder, Wing (1988) noted that the many
individual clinical impairments could be clustered together under three
superordinate headings, thus .....
"The characteristic
constellation has now become known as Wing's triad and is the strongest
candidate yet for the core features of autism. The triad refers to three kinds
of impairment: social impairment, communicative impairment, and impairment of
imaginative activity with substitution of repetitive activity" (Frith,
1989, p126).
This is why the differential diagnosis of ASDs now looks
for this same pattern of clinical indicators, including indifference to other
people, insensitivity to the meaning of gestures, empty facial expressions and
tone of voice, and rigidity and ideosyncracy of play.
WAS THIS A SENSITIVE TOPIC FOR YOU?:
If for any reason you have been emotionally affected by any of the issues dealt
with in this entry, you will find suitable helpline details in the entry for autistic
spectrum disorders.
Wisconsin Card
Sorting Test (WCST): [See firstly executive function and dysexecutive syndrome.] This test was
developed in 1948 (Berg, 1948; Grant and Berg, 1948), and became popular after
a positive review by Milner (1963), which pinpointed the dorsolateral frontal
cortex. The patient is presented with a shuffled pack of 128 cards, two for
each permutation of four simple shapes (triangles, stars, plus-signs, and
circles), four numbers (one to four), and four colours
(red, green, yellow, and blue) [thus 2 x 4 x 4 x 4 = 128]. The patient is then
asked to sort the cards into piles from left to right across a table top,
according to four further column markers, namely a single red triangle, a
double green star, a triple yellow plus-sign, and a quad blue circle. Any one
draw card can therefore be placed in three out of four positions, depending on
whether the sort criterion is shape, number, or colour
[thus the two-yellow-triangles card belongs in pile #1 by shape, pile #2 by
number, and pile #3 by colour]. The examiner then
informs the subject whether s/he was right or wrong (no other instruction is
allowed), and the subject then has had to guess at the secret rule. In a
typical application, colour matches are called right
to start with, and that rule maintained until ten consecutive correct responses
have been made. This is a single test stage. Without warning, the sorting rule
is then switched to shape rather than colour. Again
the rule is maintained until ten consecutive right responses have been made,
whereupon the sorting rule is switched to number. If the error count is low,
there will then be enough cards left to go through the three rules a second
time, making six test stages in all. Perseverations are scored for every
old-rule error after the first call of wrong. Three basic scores are then
calculated, namely SN, the number of stages completed, TE, the total number of
errors during the task, and PE, a perseveration score. A Modified Card
Sorting Test (MCST) was introduced by Nelson (1976), who was concerned that
the originasl WCST was not always capable of
informing on the "strategies (if any) the patient is employing"
(p314). Nelson pointed out that over hald the WCST
cards shared two or more attributes with the column markers, so that the
examiner does not know what a correct card placement actually means. He
therefore removed the ambiguous stimulus cards, thus reducing the basic set
size to 24 cards. Again, however, a double set pack of 48 cards is used in
practice. [If interested in this test's place in the more general history of
frontal lobe testing, see the theoretical evaluation in Section 5 of our e-paper
"From Frontal Lobe Syndrome to Dysexecutive
Syndrome".]
Wisdom: "Knowledge (esp. of a high or abstruse kind);
enlightenment, learning, erudition" (O.E.D.). The ability to apply one's
knowledge and understanding to further a higher-level mission of some sort,
such as justice, peace, happiness, etc., usually accompanied by an element of
popular approval. In the world of knowledge
management, McQuay (2005) has recently noted an ascending progression from
data to information to knowledge to understanding to wisdom, and predicts
soaring commercial demand for wisdom as a tool of competitive advantage, given
that earlier injections of knowledge and understanding per se have not always
borne fruit.
Winnicott, Donald W.: [British paediatrician-psychoanalyst (1896-1971).] [Click for external
biography] Winnicott is noteworthy in the context
of the present glossary for his work on object
relations theory in general, and for the notions of "transitional objects", the "holding environment", and true self versus false self, in particular.
WMG: See working
memory, general.
Wolf Man: See case, Wolf Man.
Word Length Effect: See articulatory
loop.
Word Fluency Test
(WFT): This test is described in Section 5 of our e-paper
"From Frontal Lobe Syndrome to Dysexecutive
Syndrome".
Working Memory,
General (WMG): [See firstly Working Memory Theory.] This is Baddeley and
Hitch's (1974) general purpose STM resource. It is the hypothetical structure
which sits alongside the two slave systems in the service of the central
executive. Unlike those slave systems, however, it is not possible to
predict in advance the nature of the stored information, and so WMG is a close
approximation to the use of working storage in electronic digital computers [as
fully reviewed in our e-paper on
"Short-Term Memory Subtypes in Computing and Artificial Intelligence",
Part 6 (Section 3.3)]
Working Memory
Theory (WMT): Term/theory introduced by Baddeley and Hitch (1974), inspired
metaphorically by the working storage facility provided in electronic digital
computers [as fully reviewed in our e-paper on
"Short-Term Memory Subtypes in Computing and Artificial
Intelligence", Part 6 (Section 3.3)]. WMT was proposed as an
alternative to the then extant Modal Model of Memory, because it dealt more
effectively with STM phenomena. The theory proposed two fixed-purpose and one
general-purpose STM resources (the slave systems and the working
memory, general) and a control structure called the central executive.
WMT has been popular ever since, although it has recently been getting stiff
competition from the Norman-Shallice Model of Supervisory Attentional
Function. One particularly fascinating application of WMT is Calvin's (1983)
study of aimed throwing behaviour, wherein it is
argued that the precise timing of motor activity is a major consumer of scarce
neural resources. Another is its use in the minds of Air Traffic Controllers [reading],
and another is Gathercole's (1990) research linking working memory
skills to the development of literacy skills in children.
ZDS: See Zung
Depression Scale.
Zombie Test:
Not that everyone will be equally surprised, but because they have no conscious
experience zombies actually have a lot to teach philosophers. The fact that
they are zombies makes them useful in thought experiments aimed at analysing
consciousness. For one thing, they totally fail Nagel's (1979) what's
it like to be test. Zombies were first used in this way by Kirk (1974)
[*], but current interest dates from Chalmers (1993, 1996), who concludes that
"there is nothing like it is like to be a zombie". Similar thought
experiments were offered in Ryle (1949), in his consideration of the human
ability for role play pretence. "A person pretending to be a corpse,"
he argued at one point, "is, unlike the corpse, trying to be
motionless" (p205). Smyth (2005) has spotted a flaw in the logic of the
zombie test, as outlined in the entry for smart thing.
Zwangsneurose: [German Zwang
= "compulsion" + Neurose =
"neurosis".] This is Freud's original term for obsessional neurosis.
See the
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