Communicative interactions in point-light displays: Choosing among multiple response alternatives

Vision scientists are increasingly relying on the point-light technique as a way to investigate the perception of human motion. Unfortunately, the lack of standardized stimulus sets has so far limited the use of this technique for studying social interaction. Here, we describe a new tool to study the interaction between two agents starting from point-light displays: the Communicative Interaction Database -5AFC format (CID-5). The CID-5 consists of 14 communicative and seven non-communicative individual actions performed by two agents. Stimuli were constructed by combining motion capture techniques and 3-D animation software to provide precise control over the computer-generated actions. For each action stimulus, we provide coordinate files and movie files depicting the action as seen from four different perspectives. Furthermore, the archive contains a text file with a list of five alternative action descriptions to construct forced-choice paradigms. In order to validate the CID-5 format, we provide normative data collected to assess action identification within a 5AFC tasks. The CID-5 archive is freely downloadable from http://bsb-lab.org/research/ and from the supplementary materials of this article

Understanding and breaking the intergenerational cycle of abuse in families enrolled in routine mental health services: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial and two non-interventional trials investigating mechanisms of change within the UBICA II consortium

Background!#!Parents' mental illness (MI) and parental history of early life maltreatment (ELM) are known to be significant risk factors for poor parenting while poor parenting is a crucial mediator of the intergenerational continuity of child maltreatment. Hence, maltreatment prevention programs for families with an MI parent, which pay particular attention to experiences of ELM in the parent, are urgently needed. Parental mentalizing was previously found to mediate successful parenting. Interventions aimed at improving the parental mentalizing capacity reduced maltreatment risk in parents. The aim of the present study is to investigate the effectiveness of a mentalization-based parenting-counseling in acutely mentally ill parents currently treated at a psychiatric hospital.!##!Methods!#!Mentalization-based parenting-counseling (MB-PC) vs. enhanced standard clinical care (SCC+) will be administered in a cluster-randomized-controlled trial (RCT). Patients treated at psychiatric hospitals with children between 1.5 and 15 years will be included in the trial. MB-PC will be administered as a 12-h combined individual and group program enriched by social counseling (over a course of 5 weeks) as add-on to standard clinical care, while the control condition will be standard clinical care plus a 90-min psychoeducation workshop on positive parenting. Primary efficacy endpoint is self-reported parenting practices at follow-up. Embedded within the RCT will be two sub-studies investigating social cognition and dyadic synchrony as biobehavioral mechanisms of change.!##!Discussion!#!The main goal of the present study is to investigate ways to break the intergenerational continuity of maltreatment by assessing the benefits of a prevention program which aims at improving parenting in vulnerable mothers and fathers. MB-PC is a short, low-cost intervention which can be delivered by nurses and social workers and is applicable to MI patients with children with a broad range of diagnoses. If it is shown to be effective, it can be directly implemented into standard psychiatric hospital care thereby providing help to prevent child maltreatment.!##!Trial registration!#!German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00017398 . Registered on 5 July 2019