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Biomedical subjects

R N Emde

Publications and source records attributed to R N Emde.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1997

Preschoolers face moral dilemmas: a longitudinal study of acknowledging and resolving internal conflict.

Following on from research that indicated significant moral internalisations by age 3, using a play narrative approach in which children were asked to complete story stems describing a range of moral dilemmas, the purpose of this study was to replicate the results, extend them with longitudinal information and assess the child's developing capacities to acknowledge both sides of moral dilemmas and resolve them in a prosocial way. Fifty-one children were presented with three enacted story stems describing moral dilemmas as they might occur in everyday life. Story completions were obtained from children at ages 3, 4, and 5 and were coded for the level of acknowledgement of the dilemmas and the degree of prosocialness involved in story resolution. Results included the following: firstly, some children acknowledged the dilemmas and resolved them prosocially as early as age 3; secondly, the ability to acknowledge dilemmas and resolve them improved with age; and thirdly, children showed a greater capacity to acknowledge dilemmas with support from an examiner. The implications of these findings for our understanding early moral development are discussed, along with questions pointing to new research.

Child Development↗
PubMed1996

Can emotions and themes in children's play predict behavior problems?

OBJECTIVE: To empirically test whether systematic examination of emotions and themes in children's play can provide useful information about childhood problems. METHOD: Using the MacArthur Story-Stem Battery and coding system, distress and destructive themes (aggression, personal injury, and atypical negative responses) were coded from the play of 51 children at ages 3, 4, and 5 years, in a low-risk, nonclinical volunteer sample. To measure behavior problems, both parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist at all ages, and teachers completed the Teacher's Report Form when the children reached 5 years of age. RESULTS: Both distress and destructive themes in the play of 4- and 5-year-olds were found to correlate with externalizing behavior problems as rated by parents and teachers. CONCLUSIONS: Children who display more distress during play at 4 and 5 years of age and who demonstrate destructive themes at 4 and 5 years of age appear to have more externalizing behavior problems, as rated by their parents and teachers. These results provide empirical support for the use of play as an assessment tool in young children. The findings suggest approaches to and limitations of play interpretation.

Child Behavior Disorders↗
PubMed1995

Affective reorganization in the infant, the mother, and the dyad: the role of upright locomotion and its timing.

Clinical theory is replete with rich observations that the onset of walking engenders an enhancement of emotional expression in the infant. Yet, no empirical research exists on this subject. Moreover, the importance of normal timing variations in the onset of developmental transitions has not been a topic of investigation in most developmental research. In this naturalistic home study, "earlier" and "later" walking groups were delineated on the basis of timing of entry into this developmental transition. Age-held constant analyses indicated that earlier walkers and their mothers generally showed a rise in positive exchanges as well as "testing of wills" across the transition to walking. These changes were less clear for the later walkers. Differences were observed also between the two groups even prior to walking. These findings suggest that future studies should take account of timing variations in the onset of a developmental transition.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1994

Individuality, context, and the search for meaning.

A developmental systems approach incorporates clinical perspectives and offers a background for thinking about some of the ways we do research. Recent advances reveal both research opportunities and needs related to fostering child development in a pluralistic, democratic society. 4 topics are addressed that deal with individuality, context, and the search for meaning. First, individuality is discussed wherein our abstract thinking and our quantitative individual differences methods have revealed an urgent need to study the developing person. Second, classification is considered wherein our systematizing efforts reveal a need to understand the interplay among classified features of the person, as well as the particular methods that underlie our classifications. Third, the experiencing of development is discussed, wherein recent advances have revealed new ways of thinking about an individual's nonconscious--procedural and practicing--activities in development, as well as those activities that are conscious. Fourth, the issue of values is considered. Values contribute to our doing research, and we also need to acknowledge their importance as the object of developmental study in 4 children. The appreciation of context, of multiple windows of observation, and of our emotional "centeredness" as human beings who communicate and cooperate with others are crosscutting themes of the essay.

Child↗
PubMed1993

The horror! The horror! Reflections on our culture of violence and its implications for early development and morality.

This commentary draws on two dimensions of chronic community violence, with thoughts that have been mobilized by the foregoing contributions. One concerns the importance of culture and the other concerns the importance of thinking about early development. Culture permeates all of our actions, and we are in a culture of violence. In other papers in this issue, Richters and Martinez point out that the United States is the most violent country in the industrialized world, and Ciccheti and Lynch state that violence "is becoming a defining characteristic of American society." We are fascinated by violence and in an implicit way we love violence-a fact that we need to acknowledge. Our fascination with violence in American culture is permeating and deep, and, as horrible as it is, I believe we need to face it in order to try to counter it.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Genetic change and continuity from fourteen to twenty months: the MacArthur Longitudinal Twin Study.

Genetic change as well as continuity was investigated within the domains of temperament, emotion, and cognition/language for 200 pairs of twins assessed at 14 and 20 months of age in the laboratory and home. The second year of life is marked by change rather than continuity: correlations from 14 to 20 months averaged about .30 for observational measures of temperament and emotion, about .40 for language measures, and about .50 for mental development. 2 types of genetic change were examined: changes in the magnitude of genetic influence (heritability) and genetic contributions to change from 14 to 20 months. In general, heritability estimates were similar at 14 and 20 months. Evidence for genetic influence on change from 14 to 20 months emerged for several measures, implying that heritability cannot be equated with stability. Analyses of continuity indicated that genetic factors are largely responsible for continuity from 14 to 20 months.

Child Development↗
PubMed1993

An atypical eating disorder in a 2-year-old female.

The case of a 21-month-old girl with an atypical eating disorder helps illustrate the impact that a serious illness and subsequent hospitalization may have on a young child's psychosexual development. The consultant emphasizes how assessing the interaction between the child's development and her environment can help treaters understand the child's self-experience during the hospitalization that led her to develop an eating disorder. Participants in the presentation discuss implications for intervention in a pediatric-liaison setting.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1992

Temperament, emotion, and cognition at fourteen months: the MacArthur Longitudinal Twin Study.

200 pairs of twins were assessed at 14 months of age in the laboratory and home. Measures were obtained of temperament, emotion, and cognition/language. Comparisons between identical and fraternal twin correlations suggest that individual differences are due in part to heritable influences. For temperament, genetic influence was significant for behavioral observations of inhibition to the unfamiliar, tester ratings of activity, and parental ratings of temperament. For emotion, significant genetic influence was found for empathy and parental ratings of negative emotion. The estimate of heritability for parental report of expression of negative emotions was relatively high, whereas that for expression of positive emotions was low, a finding consistent with previous research. For cognition and language, genetic influence was significant for behavioral indices of spatial memory, categorization, and word comprehension. Shared rearing environment appears influential for parental reports of language and for positive emotions, but not for other measures of emotion or for temperament.

Cognition↗
PubMed1991

[The finite and infinite development. II. Recent psychoanalytic theory and therapeutic considerations].

Freud's characterization of the manifest dream is typified by an implicit appreciation and an explicit devaluation of dream images. According to the author, the theoretical-historical motive behind this divergent evaluation is already evident in Freud's prepsychoanalytic writings, where he assigns primacy to the written word. The author holds that the biographic motive derives from an ambivalent internalization of the Mosaic sanction against graven images, conveyed to Freud by his father through the spirit of the Phillipson Bible.

Freudian Theory↗
PubMed1990

Play narratives in 36-month-old children. Early moral development and family relationships.

Whether there is significant moral development prior to the resolution of the oedipal conflict has been a source of debate between classic psychoanalytic and more recent clinical theories. We devised a play narrative technique, using standard story stems, to elicit 36-month-olds' representations of affective themes related to moral conflicts. Since morality is both influenced by interactions with significant others and involves dealing with the roles of others in the midst of conflict, we also explored narrative representations of the family. Results indicate that children as young as 36 months represent a considerable amount of moral development in narrative form. Children were able to articulate coherent stories about rules, reciprocity, empathy, and internalized prohibitions. Most remarkable was their ability to deal with alternative outcomes in order to resolve a moral dilemma. With respect to family relationships, the majority of the children represented a range of family figures who served as reparative agents and who initiated prosocial interventions for conflict. Interestingly, the children portrayed less difficulty with separation from parents when the parents were physically absent than when they were present but not available. We conclude that our narrative story stem technique offers promising opportunities for learning more about early moral development and family relationships in 3-year-olds.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMed1990

Mobilizing fundamental modes of development: empathic availability and therapeutic action.

A positive developmental thrust becomes mobilized by virtue of therapeutic action. This thrust is specified in terms of a set of fundamental modes of development that are biologically prepared and have been identified through recent research. The modes are first apparent in infancy and continue throughout life. The setting conditions which allow for the fundamental modes of development to be reactivated are provided by the therapeutic relationship. It is hypothesized that the empathic availability of the therapist enables these modes to operate as powerful background influences. Developmental aspects of empathy and of availability highlight the importance of adult regulatory functions and the construction of shared meaning.

Creativity↗
PubMed1988

Risk, intervention and meaning.

The three prior reports describe separate prevention/intervention studies, carefully carried out by well-trained investigative teams. All of the studies deal with parents and infants, where the latter are considered "at risk" for the later development of a variety of problems (for example, emotional disorder, conduct disorder, and learning difficulties). A common idea was to design interventions through home visits to identified parents; results would then be assessed in terms of differential outcomes in the child and in the child's relationship with the parent. We are fortunate because the separate project investigators used a number of common measures and communicated regularly in an attempt to generate a collaborative approach to understanding their databases. But taken together, the reports illustrate that we are at an early stage in our knowledge for doing this kind of research. What has been learned is not so much from differential outcomes as it is from ways of improving research strategies in the face of complex developmental processes. To put it another way, we might say that these investigators present us with a paradox. Intervention effects (i.e., findings of differences between intervention groups vs. comparison groups) are negligible or nonexistent in the preliminary analyses reported; yet what is learned about doing intervention research may be both significant and generalizable.

Affective Symptoms↗
PubMed1988

Development terminable and interminable. II. Recent psychoanalytic theory and therapeutic considerations.

This is the second part of a paper previously published in the Journal. It reviews how the formulations proposed in Part 1 are not only consistent with interdisciplinary research findings from developmental psychobiology and from infant observations, but are also consistent with a range of clinical theories of psychoanalysis. The basic motives of infancy and the motivational structures arising from early relationship development are the subject of increasing attention in psychoanalytic treatment. Aspects of the working alliance, both in the beginning and termination phases include considerations of emotional availability, the use of positive emotions, as well as the relationship 'match' between patient and analyst. These may determine outcome and are deemed worthy of further inquiry.

Child Development↗
PubMed1988

Development terminable and interminable. I. Innate and motivational factors from infancy.

The problems of continuity and change posed by Freud's essay of fifty years ago are discussed in terms of the development of innate and motivational factors from infancy. Part I of this paper reviews interdisciplinary research and proposes some theoretical formulations. Research points to the centrality of the infant-caregiver relationship experience and of emotional availability for establishing both continuity and the potential for later adaptive change. Basic infant motivations are proposed that consist of activity, self-regulation, social fittedness and affective monitoring. These influences are strongly biologically-prepared, are necessary for development and persist throughout life. Other motivational structures are fuelled by the basic motives and develop in the specific context of the infant-caregiver relationship. These structures include those related to the affective core of self and early moral internalization. Moreover, by the age of three years, an executive sense of 'we' develops in a symbolic affectively-supported, autonomous form in some children.

Affect↗
PubMed1986

Recognition of emotion from vocal cues.

In two studies investigating the recognition of emotion from vocal cues, each of four emotions (joy, sadness, anger, and fear) was posed by an actress speaking the same, semantically neutral sentence. Judgments of emotion expressed in these segments were compared with similar judgments of voice-synthesized (Moog synthesizer) samples (study 1) or with three different alterations of the full-speech mode (study 2). Correct identification of the posed emotion was high in the full-speech samples. Voice-synthesized samples seemed to capture some cues promoting emotion recognition, but correct identification did not approach that of other segments. Recognition of emotion decreased, but not as dramatically as expected in each of the three alterations of the original samples.

Adult↗