Emotional engagements predict and enhance social cognition in young chimpanzees

Social cognition in infancy is evident in coordinated triadic engagements, that is, infants attending jointly with social partners and objects. Current evolutionary theories of primate social cognition tend to highlight species differences in cognition based on human-unique cooperative motives. We consider a developmental model in which engagement experiences produce differential outcomes. We conducted a 10-year-long study in which two groups of laboratory-raised chimpanzee infants were given quantifiably different engagement experiences. Joint attention, cooperativeness, affect, and different levels of cognition were measured in 5- to 12-month-old chimpanzees, and compared to outcomes derived from a normative human database. We found that joint attention skills significantly improved across development for all infants, but by 12 months, the humans significantly surpassed the chimpanzees. We found that cooperativeness was stable in the humans, but by 12 months, the chimpanzee group given enriched engagement experiences significantly surpassed the humans. Past engagement experiences and concurrent affect were significant unique predictors of both joint attention and cooperativeness in 5- to 12-month-old chimpanzees. When engagement experiences and concurrent affect were statistically controlled, joint attention and cooperation were not associated. We explain differential social cognition outcomes in terms of the significant influences of previous engagement experiences and affect, in addition to cognition. Our study highlights developmental processes that underpin the emergence of social cognition in support of evolutionary continuity

Metodologias utilizadas para detectar distúrbios emocionais em clínicas de assistência primária à saúde: revisão de literatura

A series of studies in the field of Epidemiological Psychiatry have been performed over the last two decades, and these have focused on the ability of primary care physicians to detect emotional disorders in the patients that attend their practices. The scientific methodology utilized in these studies is the subject of this review, which contains a discussion concerning: a) interviewer awareness bias; b) accuracy of the instruments and c) medical and psychological concepts involved in defining minor emotional disorders. Suggestions for change in the methodology are made in each of the sections of the review.Na área de epidemiologia psiquiátrica vêm sendo realizados, nos últimos vinte anos, estudos que têm como finalidade medir a habilidade que clínicos gerais possuem em detectar distúrbios emocionais nos pacientes que procuram atendimento na rede básica de saúde. A metodologia utilizada nesses estudos é o tema central da atual revisão, que contém a) viés do entrevistador; b) acuidade dos instrumentos; e c) conceitos médicos e psicológicos envolvidos na definição de distúrbio psiquiátrico menor. São também apresentadas sugestões para mudanças de metodologia

“Judging a book by its cover”:An experimental study of the negative impact of a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder on clinicians’ judgments of uncomplicated panic disorder

Objectives. Diagnosis is ubiquitous in Psychiatry, and whilst it can bring benefits; adverse effects of “labelling” may also be possible. The present study aimed to evaluate experimentally whether clinicians’ judgements about a patient with panic disorder were influenced by an inappropriately suggested diagnosis of co-morbid borderline personality disorder (BPD).Design. An experimental design was used to evaluate clinician’s judgments when the nature of the information they were given was varied to imply BPD comorbidity. Methods. Two hundred and sixty five clinicians watched a video recorded assessment of a woman describing her experience of uncomplicated “Panic Disorder”, and then rated her present problems and likely prognosis. Prior to watching the video recording, participants were randomly allocated to one of three conditions with written information including; (a) her personal details and general background; (b) the addition of a behavioural description consistent with BPD; (c) the further addition of a “label” (past BPD diagnosis).Results. The BPD label was associated with more negative ratings of the woman’s problems and her prognosis than both information alone and a behavioural description of BPD “symptoms”.Conclusions. Regardless of potential actuarial value of such diagnoses, it is concluded that clinicians can be overly influenced by diagnostic labels in the context of a supposed comorbid problem, although such biases appear to be less likely if a description of the relevant behaviours is used instead. Thus the label, rather than the behaviour it denotes, may be stigmatising in mental health professionals.<br/

The mismeasure of ape social cognition

In his classic analysis, The Mismeasure of Man, Gould (1981) demolished the idea that intelligence was an inherent, genetic trait of different human groups by emphasizing, among other things, (a) its sensitivity to environmental input, (b) the incommensurate pre-test preparation of different human groups, and (c) the inadequacy of the testing contexts, in many cases. According to Gould, the root cause of these oversights was confirmation bias by psychometricians, an unwarranted commitment to the idea that intelligence was a fixed, immutable quality of people. By virtue of a similar, systemic interpretive bias, in the last two decades, numerous contemporary researchers in comparative psychology have claimed human superiority over apes in social intelligence, based on two-group comparisons between postindustrial, Western Europeans and captive apes, where the apes have been isolated from European styles of social interaction, and tested with radically different procedures. Moreover, direct comparisons of humans with apes suffer from pervasive lapses in argumentation: Research designs in wide contemporary use are inherently mute about the underlying psychological causes of overt behavior. Here we analyze these problems and offer a more fruitful approach to the comparative study of social intelligence, which focuses on specific individual learning histories in specific ecological circumstances

Lucy; growing up human : A Chimpanzee daughter in a psychotherapist's family

xxii, 216 p.; 23 cm

Lucy : Growing Up Human

xxii.216 hal.;ill.;22 c