Carl-Otto Jonsson

How do mothers signal shared feeling‐states to their infants? An investigation of affect attunement and imitation during the first year of life

The present study examined how mothers signal shared feeling-states to their infants. Affect attunement and imitation were investigated cross-culturally in 39 mother-infant dyads from Sweden (N = 22) and the former Yugoslavia (N = 17) during the first year of life. Video-recordings of playful interaction between mothers and their infants were analysed using the Affect Attunement Protocol. A significant negative association between imitation and age was found, while there was a significant positive association between affect attunement and age. Single occurrences of affect attunement appeared already at two or three months of age, and by 6 months of age episodes of affect attunement were more common than imitation. Frequencies of imitation and affect attunement were similar cross-culturally and in terms of gender, although there was a significant interaction between age and gender. The results suggest that the signalling of shared feeling-states is not a static process. Mothers do not signal shared feeling-states in the same manner at different ages. Imitation is the most important process during the earliest months, but is superseded by affect attunement earlier than previously thought. The functional implications of this developmental variation are discussed.

Personality traits in a group of individuals with functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract and their correlation with gastrin, somatostatin and oxytocin levels

The Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP) and some dimensions of the Bergman scale reflecting social dependency and self-confidence were used in 24 individuals with functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract. Patients showed higher scores of somatic anxiety, indirect aggression and irritability and lower scores in socialization when compared with a reference group. The levels of gastrointestinal symptoms as well as the levels of some hormones related to vagal nerve activity in this patient group have been reported in a previous publication. When the scores obtained in personality inventories were related to symptom levels, we found significant correlations with intestinal but not abdominal symptoms. Gastrin levels correlated inversely with socialization. Somatostatin levels on the other hand, correlated negatively with social dependency and positively with self-confidence in the Bergman scale. Interestingly, oxytocin levels correlated positively with social dependency and in addition with indirect aggression and verbal aggression. The correlation between hormone levels and scores of personality dimensions will be interpreted and discussed within a physiological context.

MENTAL AND SEXUAL ADJUSTMENT BEFORE AND AFTER SIX MONTHS’ USE OF AN ORAL CONTRACEPTIVE

171 women randomly selected from family planning clinic patients who chose to begin oral contraception were questioned on medical history attitudes toward contraception mental adjustment contraceptive security sexual interest and orgasmic function as well as social history. Half of the women took the questionaire after and half before and after 6 months on Follinyl (0.5 mg norgestrel and 0.05 mg ethinyl estradiol combined). The goals were to learn: (1) whether mental or sexual adjustment were altered by 6 months of oral contraception; (2) whether initial attitudes toward pills would change; and (3) whether adjustment to the pill would depend on earlier sexual adjustment. Results relative to goal (1) were: signigicant increase in coital frequency decrease in premenstrual irritability and depression and menstrual pain general fulfillment of expectations for sex life but no difference in mental health. Attitudes toward the pill prior to oral contraceptives were generally unchanged (goal 2) except significantly more of those reporting increased negative attitudes after the 6 months trial claimed more mental symptoms. Women who discontinued the pill for mental or sexual reasons tested with lower sexual interest and contraceptive security before the trial (goal 3).

AUDITORY PERCEPTION IN SCHIZOPHRENIA: A SECOND STUDY OF THE INTONATION TEST

Billingberg & Jomson (1965) constructed the Intonation test (to be described under ‘Methods’) in order to study the ability of schizophrenic patients to interpret communication containing emotional meaning. It was found that the combined scores of schizophrenic and nonschizophrenic subjects taking this test tended to form a bimodal distribution. A similar result was obtained in another auditory test which assessed the ability to interpret sound effects. (In a visual test on figureground perception, there was no significant difference between the schizophrenic and the nonpsychotic patients, and in another visual test on the ability to identify pictures as friendly or threatening, the difference between schizophrenic and nonschizophrenics was only slight). Since our interest was in the ability of the schizophrenic patients to interpret communication containing emotional meaning, it was decided to perform a second study where any deficiency in perceiving pure tones could be isolated. An analysis might then reveal the relationship between psychotic symptoms and difficulties in the Intonation test.

Gastrin, somatostatin and oxytocin levels in patients with functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract and their response to feeding and interaction

Twenty-four individuals with functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract participated in the study. Symptoms from the upper and lower gastrointestinal tract were recorded by means of a self-administered questionnaire before, 3 months and 3 yr after participation in group therapy. Blood was sampled from the patients while they were subjected to three different provocations (a friendly greeting, a food stimulus and a stress stimulus). Ten subjects without gastrointestinal symptoms participated in an identical experiment. Gastrin, somatostatin and oxytocin levels were measured with radioimmunoassay. Both gastrin and somatostatin levels were influenced by the provocations and by the greeting and the stress stimulus in particular. In principle, the controls tended to react with a parasympathetic response pattern following the interactive stimuli, whereas the individuals with functional disorders of the gastrointestinal tract reacted with an activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Somatostatin levels were significantly higher and oxytocin levels lower in patients than in controls and gastrin levels tended to be higher in patients than in controls. Most individuals reported both gastric as well as intestinal symptoms. Gastrin levels correlated positively with total symptom level and somatostatin levels with intestinal symptoms scores reported by the patients.

Reflex elicitation thresholds in senile dementia

Forty‐eight female patients with the diagnosis of senile dementia and 20 elderly healthy women were studied concerning thresholds for orienting responses to intermittent light, the eyelid reflex, and hand withdrawal on electrical pain stimulation.

Mental and somatic health in a non-clinical sample 10 years after a diagnosis of encopresis.

The aim of this study was to assess the relation between the diagnosis of encopresis at 8 and 10 years of age, and mental and somatic health 10 years later. The importance of type of encopresis (primary or secondary) at 8 years was also studied. Subjects were a non-clinical encopretic sample (N=73) and control subjects (N=75) [2]. Seven assessment variables from conscription surveys provided information about mental and somatic health status at 18 years of age. Former encopretics (n=66) did not differ significantly from the controls (n=67) at 18 years of age, although there were consistent, small negative differences. The boys who at 10 years of age had still been encopretic did not differ significantly at 18 years of age from the boys who at 10 years had recovered from encopresis, and the signs indicating the small differences varied. For former primary and secondary encopretic boys, there were two significant differences, the men in the secondary group being more often exempted from conscription than the primary group and the control cases. The results indicate that boys with non-clinical encopresis show only small, if any, mental and somatic disturbances at the beginning of adulthood. Comprehensive investigations of encopretic patients are recommended as important clinical problems, in addition to encopresis, might be present.

Abnormalities in the orienting response in senile dementia

Forty‐five female patients with the diagnosis of senile dementia and subdivided according to degree of mental deterioration were paged over a loudspeaker placed directly to the right or to the left of the patient. In the most demented subgroup, motor and/or verbal orienting responses often failed to appear. A turn towards the loudspeaker used was more often evoked in the least deteriorated subgroups. Turing in inadequate directions is tentatively explained in terms of dysfunctions within the auditory system and with reference to the disorientation of the patients.

An exploratory psychological study of the post-traumatic cerebral syndrome

The essential symptoms in the post-traumatic cerebral syndroiiic (PCS) are headache, dizziness, anxiety, fatigue, irritability, difficurty in mental concentration, a subjective iniprcssion of memory impairment, and hypersensitivity to sound and light. The syndrome thus bears a strong resemblance to the clinical picture seen in soine psychoiicurotic states which suggests that the PCS is, a t leaat to soiiie extent, psychogenic. It is of special interest to study whether post-traumatic patients differ in any scmiological respects from neurotic subjects. Such a study may indirectly throw some light on the role of the head injury and concussion in producing these post-concussional symptoms. Thrce groups of subjects, post-traumatic patients, neurotics, and healthy subjects, were studied, and the investigation was aimed at making an analysis of some of the above mentioned symptoms. I t included the following points: 1 ) Clinical picture and incidence of symptoms as reflected in the answers to a questionnaire, 2 ) performance in a conventional test to ascertain mental sequclae of brain dainage, 3) ability, objectively and subjectively assessed, to perform tasks in a test requiring concentration, and 4) ability, as reported hy the subject, to endure intense sound and strong light. Our groups were sinall and thc study mas of an explor:itory nature. An attempt was made to find significant variables in the field situation and to study relations between variables. Our purpose was to pave the way for a later, more detailed and systematic investigation of our research problems concerning the pathogenesis of the PCS.

THE ABILITY OF SCHIZOPHRENIC PATIENTS TO INTERPRET INTONATION

In the study of schizophrenic patients with psychological methods little attention has been paid to the ability to interpret communications of emotional meaning. None the less, this ability is sometimes defective in schizophrenics as deemed from their frequent misinterpretations of the emotional meaning of words, gestures etc. In the clinical observation the tendency of schizophrenics to interpret the surroundings as threatening is conspicuous. For obvious reasons then, we thought that a simple psychological test of the ability to interpret emotional meaning would be of interest for the psychological and psychiatric study of the schizophrenic patients. The aim of the present paper is to outline the construction of such a psychological test and to give some preliminary data from different clinical groups. Unfortunately, we do not so far have data enough to give details of the correlations between psychiatric diagnoses and the direction of the misinterpretations, which may be especially interesting. It has only been possible to study the relationship between diagnoses and the total number of misinterpretations in the test. In the cases of severely disturbed, may be hallucinating, patients, a low result in a psychological test, whichever it is, is of course of a very limited interest. I t is obvious, then, that in studies of the performance levels of schizophrenics the seIection of cases must be very cautious.