Empirische Forschung in der Deutschdidaktik. Band 3: Forschungsfelder

Wie und woran wird in der Deutschdidaktik geforscht? Insbesondere Novizen fällt der Überblick über die Disziplin noch schwer. Der vorliegende Band bietet in 19 Beiträgen einen einsteigerfreundlichen Einblick in die verschiedenen Forschungsfelder der Deutschdidaktik und ihre empirische Fachkultur. Hierbei werden historische Entwicklungen und aktuelle Forschungstendenzen betrachtet, Beispiele vorgestellt, Desiderate benannt und Literaturempfehlungen gegeben. Ein Grundlagenwerk für Studierende und Promovierende

Movement Synchrony in the Psychotherapy of Adolescents With Borderline Personality Pathology – A Dyadic Trait Marker for Resilience?

Movement synchrony describes the coordination of body movements. In psychotherapy, higher movement synchrony between therapist and patient has been associated with higher levels of empathy, therapeutic alliance, better therapy outcome, and fewer drop-outs. The current study investigated movement synchrony during the psychotherapeutic treatment of female adolescents with borderline personality disorder. It was hypothesized that there are higher levels of movement synchrony in the analyzed therapy sessions compared to pseudo-interactions. Further, we tested whether higher levels of movement synchrony correlate with stronger patients’ symptom reduction and whether higher movement synchrony predicts higher post-session ratings. A total of 356 sessions from 16 completed psychotherapies of adolescent patients with BPD were analyzed. Movement synchrony was assessed with motion energy analysis and an index of synchrony was calculated by lagged cross-correlation analysis. As hypothesized, the findings support higher levels of movement synchrony in therapy sessions compared to pseudo-interactions (Cohen’s d = 0.85). Additionally, a correlation of movement synchrony with better therapy outcome was found (standardized beta = −0.43 indicating stronger personality functioning impairment reduction). The post-session ratings were negatively associated with higher levels of movement synchrony (standardized beta = −0.1). The relevance of movement synchrony and potential implications for clinical practice are discussed

The Relation between narrative markers of change and psychophysiological measures in the therapeutic process: a case study.

The Innovative Moments Coding System (Gonçalves et al., 2011) is a reliable tool to assess process markers from psychotherapy transcripts. Innovative Moments (IMs) are narrative innovations (e.g., Action, Reflection, Reconceptualization, etc.) that emerge in the therapeutic process. Previous efforts in literature have shown that during the elaboration of high level IMs, patients showed a distinctive pattern of psychophysiological activity, yet no information in regard to therapist’s physiology were provided. Crucially, the study of simultaneous, interpersonal physiology (IP), is being increasingly studied and employed as a tool to assess the quality of clinical relationship, and the dynamics of key clinical processes, such as empathy and alliance. In this study we aimed to replicate and extend current literature by analysing the data from a patient and a therapist involved in a brief psychodynamic therapy of 16 sessions. Each session was audio-video recorded, and simultaneous electrodermal activity was acquired for both participants. IMs were assessed by two reliable coders, while the dyadic physiological data was analysed through moving windows cross-correlations. Across the 16 sessions, 21.4% of the entire narrative discourse was devoted to IMs. Inter-rater agreement on IMs was 85.68% and Cohen’s Kappa for IM categories was .94, with the most complex form of IM, Reconceptualization, being the most common (8.6%). The results of our ideographic single-case design showed only a partial association between IMs and dyadic physiological patterns with an increased physiological synchronization in the Action and Reconceptualization categories. Notably these high-synchrony sequences were also characterized by the patient leading the physiological co-regulation process, with the therapist following. The discussion will regard the implications of using innovative tools, bridging the gap between verbal and nonverbal content in the study of process in psychotherapy research

Enhanced neural empathic responses in patients with Spino-Bulbar Muscular Atrophy: An electrophysiological study

Background: Spino\u2010bulbar muscular atrophy is a rare genetic X\u2010linked disease caused by testosterone insensitivity. An inverse correlation has been described between testosterone levels and empathic responses. The present study explored the profile of neural empathic responding in spinobulbar muscular atrophy patients. Methods: Eighteen patients with spino\u2010bulbar muscular atrophy and eighteen healthy male controls were enrolled in the study. Their event\u2010related potentials were recorded during an \u201cEmpathy Task\u201d designed to distinguish neural responses linked with experience\u2010sharing (early response) and mentalizing (late response) components of empathy. The task involved the presentation of contextual information (painful vs. neutral sentences) and facial expressions (painful vs. neutral). An explicit dispositional empathy\u2010related questionnaire was also administered to all participants, who were screened via neuropsychological battery tests that did not reveal potential cognitive deficits. Due to electrophysiological artefacts, data from 12 patients and 17 controls were finally included in the analyses. Results: Although patients and controls did not differ in terms of dispositional, explicit empathic self\u2010ratings, notably conservative event\u2010related potentials analyses (i.e., spatio\u2010temporal permutation cluster analyses) showed a significantly greater experience\u2010sharing neural response in patients compared to healthy controls in the Empathy\u2010task when both contextual information and facial expressions were painful. Conclusion: The present study contributes to the characterization of the psychological profile of patients with spinobulbar muscular atrophy, highlighting the peculiarities in enhanced neural responses underlying empathic reactions