Prominent models of eating disorders tend to focus on cognitive and behavioral features, but tend not to consider important developmental issues related to affect regulation, interpersonal style, ...self concept, and mentalization-all of which are well conceptualized within attachment theory. Higher levels of attachment insecurity across diagnoses are related to greater eating disorder symptoms. Low parental care and early trauma may lead to attachment insecurity that then might lead to greater eating disorder symptoms. The association between insecure attachment and eating disorder severity is likely mediated by affect dysregulation and perfectionism. Recent research using the Adult Attachment Interview highlights the importance of reflective functioning in predicting treatment response and therapeutic processes, and on the utility of therapies that increase mentalization.
Defensive functioning (i.e., unconscious process used to manage real or perceived threats) may play a role in the development of various psychopathologies. It is typically assessed via observer ...rating measures, however, human coding of defensive functioning is resource-intensive and time-consuming. The purpose of this study was to develop a machine learning approach to automate coding of defense mechanisms from interview transcripts.
Participants included a clinical sample of women with binge-eating disorder (n = 92) and a community sample without binge-eating disorder (n = 66). We trained and evaluated five RoBERTa-based models to detect the presence of defenses in 16,785 interviewer-participant talk-turn pairs nested within 192 interviews. A model detected the presence of any defense, while four additional models detected the most common defenses in this sample (repression, intellectualization, reaction formation, undoing).
The models were capable of distinguishing defenses (ROC-AUC .82-.90) but were not proficient enough to warrant replacing human coders (PR-AUC .28-.60). Follow-up analysis was performed to assess other practical uses of these models.
Our machine learning models could be used to assist coders. Future research should conduct a deployment study to determine if human coding of defense mechanisms can be expedited using machine learning models.
Background:
Reflective functioning has roots in developmental-clinical psychology and refers to an individual's capacity to understand one's own and others' social and cooperative behaviors in terms ...of mental states. Team cognition has roots in social-organizational psychology and refers to organized cognitive structures that allow team members who interact with each other to share, store, and retrieve individual and collective knowledge. These theories emerged in separate silos despite the potential conceptual overlap. The goal of this article is to examine if the theories of reflective functioning and team cognition can inform each other's research and practice.
Method:
This article describes the concepts of reflective functioning and team cognition, and also selectively reviews some of the research by focusing on meta-analyses and some key studies in each domain.
Results:
Research indicates that team cognition is related to team processes and team performance. Research also indicates that deficits in reflective functioning are related to psychopathology and to poorer psychological treatment outcomes including in group therapy. Team reflexivity, a team cognition function, may be hampered in the context of prementalizing reflective capacity of team members. And team psychological safety bears a striking resemblance to the reflective functioning concept of epistemic trust.
Conclusion:
Research and theory of reflective functioning, a clinical psychology construct, may be advanced by considering it also as an emergent property of groups and teams. Conversely, research on team cognition, a social/organizational construct, may move forward by considering how it is affected by individuals' capacities for reflective functioning and team composition along this dimension.
Highlights and Implications
*
Reflective functioning, a concept from developmental-clinical psychology, refers to understanding behaviors in terms of mental states (desires, cognitions, intentions, feelings). Team cognition, a concept from social-organizational psychology, refers to organized cognitive structures that allow team members who interact with each other to share, store, and retrieve individual and collective knowledge about tasks and processes.
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Research indicates that team cognition is related to team processes and performance. By the same token, reflective functioning is related to mental health and therapeutic outcomes including in group therapy.
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Reflective functioning and team cognition share a number of qualities, such as social learning, and the role of epistemic trust and team psychological safety that have implications for research and practice that could be advanced by cross disciplinary collaborations.
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Reflective functioning theory and research may benefit from expanding the boundaries of the concept to include emergent group functioning that affect processes and outcomes.
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Team cognition theory and research may benefit from accounting for the composition of teams and the qualities of leadership that vary on level of reflective functioning.
Objective: Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2021. This special issue invited each former and current editor of the journal to reflect on a key topic ...of group dynamics and to provide a roadmap for current and future researchers. Method: The five former and current editors of Group Dynamics selectively reviewed the literature on a particular topic and suggested future research agendas based on the review. Results: Topics reviewed by the editors included: a unified theory of cohesion, actor-partner interdependence models, expert and lay conceptions of cooperation, the social relations model, and the synergy between reflective functioning theory and team cognition. Conclusion: These reviews by five experts in the field provide a way forward for group dynamics researchers. The reviews help define important concepts and methods that will have a scientific, social, and clinical impact for the next 25 years.
Highlights and Implications
*To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice the previous and current editors of the journal each review a key topic in group dynamics research and provide a roadmap for the next 25 years of research in these topics.
*Donelson Forsyth (2021) presents a unified theory of cohesion, an important concept for both group psychology and group psychotherapy. Forsyth argues that a clear and definitive view of cohesion is necessary to move the research forward and he presents a new psychometric scale.
*Dennis Kivlighan (2021) discusses use of actor-partner interdependence models (APIM) and multilevel modeling of grouped data. He points to the need for such data modeling techniques for group researchers to truly estimate complex phenomena that occur in groups.
*Craig Parks (2021) tackles the larger social consequences of cooperation and lack thereof. He highlights that expert and lay views of cooperation can differ. Implications for future research include experts incorporating lay conceptualizations of cooperation when looking to influence social behavior.
*David Marcus (2021) reviews research so the social relations model (SRM), which is a data modeling technique. Like APIM, SRM allows group researchers to address the complex interactions and perceptions that occur in groups. He argues that SRM can be an important source of knowledge about groups.
*Giorgio Tasca (2021) explores synergies between reflective functioning and team cognition, theories originating separately in clinical and social psychology. The two concepts can inform each other's theory and practice, and he offers potential research agendas based on the synergies.
What Is Group Dynamics? Tasca, Giorgio A
Group dynamics,
03/2020, Volume:
24, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Over the past year, the Associate Editors and I have been considering the scope and focus of Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice. In this editorial, I outline some of these issues as they ...affect the types of articles that we consider for review, the presentation of the content of articles, some data analytic considerations, and some new types of articles that the Journal will publish. This editorial is meant to help authors to improve their chances of publishing an article in Group Dynamics, to encourage authors to submit their best work, and also to help prospective readers to get the most of the research published in our Journal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Anorexia nervosa is associated with high mortality, morbidity, and treatment costs. Olanzapine, an atypical antipsychotic, is known to result in weight gain in other patient populations. The ...objective of this trial was to assess the efficacy of olanzapine in promoting weight gain and in reducing obsessive symptoms among adult women with anorexia nervosa.
The study was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, 10-week flexible dose trial in which patients with anorexia nervosa (N=34) were randomly assigned to either olanzapine plus day hospital treatment or placebo plus day hospital treatment.
Compared with placebo, olanzapine resulted in a greater rate of increase in weight, earlier achievement of target body mass index, and a greater rate of decrease in obsessive symptoms. No differences in adverse effects were observed between the two treatment conditions.
These preliminary results suggest that olanzapine may be safely used in achieving more rapid weight gain and improvement in obsessive symptoms among women with anorexia nervosa. Replication, in the form of a large multicenter trial, is recommended.
Previous studies have emphasized the effect of insecurity attachment on youth's Internet and smartphone addiction. In this study, we examine the mediating role of alexithymia, impulsivity, and ...general psychological distress in the relationship between insecure attachment dimensions and technology addiction. Data were collected from 539 adolescents and young adults, mostly women (
= 378; 70.1 percent), aged 19.76 ± 1.99 years. Participants completed self-report measures of attachment insecurity, psychological risk factors (i.e., impulsivity, psychological distress, and alexithymia), and technology addiction (i.e., problematic Internet use, smartphone, and Internet addiction). The gender-related (i.e., multi-group) mediation model was tested through a path analysis with both observed and latent variables. Attachment anxiety had no direct effect on technology addiction, whereas attachment avoidance had a small negative direct effect, but only among women. Insecure attachment dimensions were significantly associated with psychological risk factors, whereas the latter had a significant, direct association with technology addiction. Psychological risk factors significantly mediated the association between insecure attachment dimensions and technology addiction. Finally, the tested model was gender-invariant. Findings suggest that insecure attachment dimensions have an indirect effect on the development of technology addiction mediated almost entirely by higher levels of psychological risk factors. Such findings might have relevant implications to inform any treatment plan for young adults who are overinvolved with technology activities and so to deliver patient-tailored interventions.
