Mother–infant synchrony is one of the most important processes in the development of socio‐affective competencies in children. While maternal abilities and psychopathology are related to maladaptive ...mother–infant synchrony, it is as yet unclear how maternal emotion regulation difficulties contribute to it. Based on a panel of behavioral indicators (i.e., gaze, vocal, and motor), the present study examined mother–infant synchrony at 6 months of age in a modified version of Ainsworth's Strange Situation (n = 72 dyads). Mother–infant interaction sequences were characterized by indicators of complexity (LZ complexity of joint behavioral sequences) and of synchronization quality (cross‐recurrence plot quantification). Results showed that mothers’ touch was greater in the reunion condition than in the initial condition. Mothers’ motor behaviors were associated with the global levels of infants’ behavioral involvement in the reunion condition, unlike the symmetrical influence observed between mothers and infants in the initial condition. Results show that maternal anxiety mediates the relationships between mothers’ emotion regulation difficulties and gaze, vocal, and motor synchrony between mothers and infants in the initial and reunion conditions. This study emphasizes the central role of maternal emotion regulation difficulties in the establishment of maladaptive synchrony and in the adjustments of maternal physical contacts with infants.
Aim
This work explores the experiences and meaning attributed by parents who underwent the decision‐making process of withholding and/or withdrawing life‐sustaining treatment for their newborn.
...Methods
Audio‐recorded face‐to‐face interviews were led and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Eight families (seven mothers and five fathers) whose baby underwent withholding and/or withdrawing of life‐sustaining treatment in three neonatal intensive care units from two regions in France were included.
Results
The findings reveal two paradoxes within the meaning‐making process of parents: role ambivalence and choice ambiguity. We contend that these paradoxes, along with the need to mitigate uncertainty, form protective psychological mechanisms that enable parents to cope with the decision, maintain their parental identity and prevent decisional regret.
Conclusion
Role ambivalence and choice ambiguity should be considered when shared decision‐making in the neonatal intensive care unit. Recognising and addressing these paradoxical beliefs is essential for informing parent support practices and professional recommendations, as well as add to ethical discussions pertaining to parental autonomy and physicians' rapport to uncertainty.
Background
Persons with dementia gradually disengage from daily activities, and therefore require increasing daily support. Caregivers face a dilemma as to whether they should encourage the persons ...with dementia in terms of initiative and autonomy, or supervise and take charge of tasks, which may cause distress for both parties. This study seeks to better understand how caregivers manage the disengagement of the persons with dementia and the repercussions on their caregiving experience.
Methods
A total of 217 caregivers participated. Their management behaviours and the characteristics of their caregiving experiences were assessed with questionnaires. A cluster analysis was first performed to identify possible profiles of management behaviours and comparison, which were then compared to identify the caregiving experience associated with each profile.
Results
The first cluster (25.8% of the sample) corresponds to caregivers with high negative control behaviour scores and high positive stimulation behaviour scores; the second cluster (43.8% of the sample) corresponds to caregivers with low positive stimulation behaviour scores and high negative control behaviour scores; and the third cluster (30.4% of the sample) corresponds to caregivers with low negative control behaviour scores and high positive stimulation behaviour scores. Caregivers in Clusters 2 and 3 differ in terms of anxiety, depression, burden, gratification, health and financial problems. Cluster 1 is an intermediate profile with similar characteristics to Cluster 3.
Conclusions
Our results support the idea of considering management behaviours to identify vulnerable caregivers and highlight the deleterious role of negative control behaviours, especially when they are not offset by positive protective stimulation behaviours.
Because emotional exchanges are central in couple interactions, individual competences to manage one’s own emotions and those of others are important to develop a good relational intimacy with a ...romantic partner over time. It is assumed that individual differences in attachment orientation influence the development of emotional competences and intimacy between romantic partners. While emotional competences are important for the proper functioning of romantic relationships, little is known about their mediating role in the relationship between individual’s attachment orientation and relational intimacy. In five hundred and sixty-four heterosexual subjects, the present study aimed to assess the indirect effects of emotional competences (both intrapersonal and interpersonal) on the relationship between insecure attachment orientations (both avoiding and anxious dimensions) and relational intimacy (i.e., engagement, communication and shared friends dimensions). Direct effects between our variables of interest were also explored. The results highlighted a negative association between both insecure avoiding and anxious attachment orientations and intrapersonal emotional competences. However, only the avoiding orientation was negatively related to interpersonal emotional competences. Furthermore, the anxious attachment dimension was negatively related to a feeling of engagement, in contrast to the avoiding attachment dimension that was associated with a low level of engagement, positive communication, and shared friends. Multi-group analysis highlighted gender invariance in the model. The findings suggest that although insecure attachment has a negative effect on the couple relationship, the capacity to manage one’s own emotions appears to be a protective factor for relational intimacy regarding its mediating role in these associations.
Rejection sensitivity (RS), the disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and overreact to rejection, leads to emotional distress and social pain. Difficulties in emotional regulation (ER) ...and mentalizing could have an impact on the levels of RS by weakening the regulation associated with rejection situations and biasing the interpretation of mental states. The present study examines whether ER and mentalizing difficulties might constitute key processes in RS and explain the relationship between RS and potentially psychologically traumatic event (PPTE) exposure in a sample of 443 participants (mean age: 27.66 ± 11.63 years; 345 women).Regarding RS group differences, high RS individuals (based on high A-RSQ score) exhibited more ER difficulties reflected in using more maladaptive and less adaptive ER cognitive strategies and more mentalizing difficulties manifested in hypomentalizing than low RS individuals (based on low A-RSQ score). PLS-SEM results demonstrate that ER and mentalizing difficulties explain RS and mediate the relationship between PPTE exposure and RS. These findings highlight the importance of considering difficulties in developing nuanced and more complex models of the mind of the other and/or the self and difficulties in engaging in adaptive ER processes for understanding RS, particularly in individuals exposed to PPTE.
Emotion regulation theory aims to explain the interactions between individuals and the environment. In this context, Emotion Regulation Difficulties (ERD) disrupt the physiological component of ...emotions through the autonomic nervous system and are involved in several psychopathological states.
We were interested in comparing the influence of a film-elicited emotion procedure on the autonomic nervous system activity of two groups with different levels of emotion regulation difficulties.
A total of 63 women (undergraduate students) ranging from 18 to 27 (20.7 ± 1.99) years old were included. Using the upper and lower quartile of a questionnaire assessing the daily difficulties in regulating emotions, two groups, one with low (LERD) and one with high (HERD) levels of emotion regulation difficulties, were constituted and studied during a film-elicited emotion procedure. Cardiac vagal activity (HF-HRV) was analyzed during three periods: baseline, film-elicited emotion, and recovery.
The cardiovascular results showed a decrease in HF-HRV from baseline to elicitation for both groups. Then, from elicitation to recovery, HF-HRV increased for the LERD group, whereas a low HF-HRV level persisted for the HERD group.
The HERD group exhibited inappropriate cardiac vagal recovery after a negative emotion elicitation had ended. Cardiac vagal tone took longer to return to its initial state in the HERD group than in the LERD group. Prolonged cardiac vagal suppression might constitute an early marker of emotion regulation difficulties leading to lower cardiac vagal tone.
Objective
Attachment insecurity and emotional competences (EC) form a key part of conceptual models of anorexia nervosa (AN). We explored the relationship between attachment dimensions and EC on the ...severity of eating disorders in patients diagnosed with restrictive AN.
Method
Sixty‐three female patients with restrictive AN and 63 healthy participants completed self‐report measures (eating symptoms, EC, attachment, depression, and anxiety).
Result
Patients with restrictive AN used fewer adaptive and more maladaptive regulation strategies and showed low levels of intrapersonal EC. The partial least squares path modeling analysis showed that high levels of attachment anxiety or avoidance lead to a decrease in intrapersonal EC, which in turn contributes to greater severity of eating symptoms in anorexic patients.
Conclusions
Lower intrapersonal EC played an important mediating role in the effects of attachment insecurity on the severity of eating disorders. The joint use of therapeutic programs that target both EC and attachment processes constitutes a promising approach.
Inter-brain synchronization during joint actions is a core question in social neuroscience, and the differential contribution of intra- and inter-brain functional connectivity has yet to be clarified ...along with the role of psychological variables such as perceived self-efficacy. The cognitive performance and the neural activation underlying the execution of joint actions were recorded by functional Near-Infrared imaging during a synchronicity game. An 8-channel array of optodes was positioned over the frontal and prefrontal regions. During the task, the dyads received reinforcing feedback that was experimentally manipulated to induce adoption of common strategies. Intra- and inter-brain connectivity indices were computed along with an inter-brain/intra-brain connectivity index (ConIndex). Finally, correlation analyses were run to assess the relationship between behavioral and physiological levels. The results showed that the external feedback could modulate participant responses in both behavioral and neural components. After the reinforcing manipulation, there were faster response times and increased inter-brain connectivity, and ConIndex emerged primarily over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Additionally, the presence of significant correlations between response times and inter-brain connectivity revealed that only the "two-players connection" may guarantee an efficient performance. The present study provides a significant contribution to the identification of intra- and inter-brain functional connectivity when social reinforcement is provided.
Highlights • Autobiographical memory refers to memory for personal experiences. • Decline of this ability in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) results in an impaired identity. • Autobiographical decline in AD ...also results in a compromised sense of self.
Sexual satisfaction is the most frequently studied sexual component of human sexuality related to its link with relationship satisfaction and stability (S. Sprecher & R. M. Cate, 2004. The handbook ...of sexuality in close relationships, pp. 235–256. Mahwah, NJ: Taylor & Francis). Previous studies have shown that sexual satisfaction is affected by personal, interpersonal, social and cultural variables, but few studies have considered the associations between these variables. The aim of this study was to evaluate a complex model of sexual satisfaction considering these various levels of variables and their associations. The study was conducted online and comprised 457 individuals in the final sample. The French version of the index of sexual satisfaction evaluated the level of sexual dissatisfaction. Personal, interpersonal, social and cultural variables were assessed with questionnaires and their associations were investigated with the partial least squares‐path method. The association between dyadic coping (positive and negative) and sexual dissatisfaction was mediated by relationship satisfaction. The model also showed three sequential mediations through dyadic coping and relationship satisfaction: first between intra‐individual vulnerability and sexual dissatisfaction, second between intra‐individual resources and sexual dissatisfaction, and third between conjugal characteristics and sexual dissatisfaction. The simple and sequential mediations were stronger for positive dyadic coping. The relationship between intra‐individual resources and positive dyadic coping was significantly stronger in women, while the relationship between conjugal characteristics and positive dyadic coping was stronger in men. Dyadic coping plays a key role in sexual dissatisfaction. Clinical interventions should reinforce positive self‐image (particularly in women), support emotional and physical vulnerabilities, and promote more supportive dyadic coping (particularly in men in a long‐term relationship).
PDF
