L4: ATTACHMENT, MENTALIZATION AND EPISTEMIC TRUST Flashcards
What does it mean to be an agent?
to make choices and, as a result of those choices, to move forward in life in a self determined and goal directed manner.
suggests intention, volition, will, purpose, and some modicum of personal control in life
How do we become agents of our own life?
- Obligate collaborative foraging: evolutionaryily we had to develop strong skills for collaborating w each other (seen through joint intentionality in children & intersubjectivity (shared goals & mental states). in this context, shared meanings & stories can develop. from birth, humans are attuned to sharing mental states w other humans: INTENTIONALITY & MENTALIZATION
- EPISTEMIC TRUST: given the strong possiblity of shared intentionality, humans also develop a capability for ¨*conventions: children are thus born into world of pre existing “symbolic order**”: the universe of signs & mearnings typical for human societies. natural pedagogy -> epistemic trust
How does natural pedagogy lead to epistemic trust?
➢ Humans possess a species-specific capacity for the fast
intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge.
➢ Instead of having to work out cultural knowledge oneself, one can rely on the authority and perceived
trustworthiness of the person communicating that info if one has epistemic trust
➢ Epistemic trust thus enables a particular kind of speciesspecific learning
What is the natural pedagogy approach?
alternative to the mentalizing approach; way of explaining how humans are equipped to acquire cultural knowledge through communication
- Humans have species specific cognitive learning mechanism through which we can efficiently transmit knowledge from one generation to next
- ostensive communication: ostensive cues are cues that indicate to the child that the info being is conveyed is meant to be informative & beneficial (like eye contact). these signals trigger a pedagogical stance in the child, making the more recpetive to learning
- Epistemic trust is crucial here! allows learner to accept & integrate the knowledge (this trust established through secure attachment)
What are the limitations of the mentalizing approach?
- tho parental attachment & mentalizing plays a role in passing down mentalizing skills, the effect size is small (other factors play a role like SES)
- caregiver attachment is not that stable, cause its affected by many things
- challenges to traditional attachment theory: weak correlations between childhood attachment & dev outcomes, moderate stability of attachment, influence of historical, sociocultural, enviornment factors on attachment, genetic factors etc.
so mentalizing is not the only key factor in human development
What are the core features of the 3 communication systems & how do they relate to attachment, mentalization, and epistemic trust?
relate to how effective psych interventions can foster social learning:
- Lowering epistemic vigilance to open learning channels
- enabling social learning mechanisms through increased trust & mentalizing
- reengaging patients w the social world, improving adaptation and fostering positive social influences
secure attachment, high epistemic trust, and high mentalization all help with this systems
Define intentionality
- aka aboutness
- mark of mental phenomeno: aka mental states are about something i.e. intended at something
- transition from just action-reaction reasoning (dualities) to interpreting actions as having an intentional meaning and then reaction to it
- requires mentalizing
What is mentalizing?
the human capacity to understand others and oneself in terms of internal mental states
- umbrella concept referring to the movement from a dualistic to a triadic perspective (where you interpret the other persons actions, you dont just reaction), intro of the “intentional stance”, the process of learning and applying a “theory of mind’
- psychologists are professional mentalizers
How do we go from attachment to mentalizing?
- offspring strongly attach to caregives
- human babies are particularly sensitive & attuned to the forms of vitality they can share w others
- in secure attachment parents use “parental reflective funcitoning” (ie mentalizing capacity) to interact w their child giving rise to joint intentionality
- via this process the child learns to distinguish the (joint) intention from the particular acts of the participatns. and from the distinction between self and other (marking) it learns about difference in intentions between self and other
Define epistemic trust
➢ It is simply ‘trust’, but then in particular the trust we need to
learn from others and to give them a certain authority.
➢ We are not inclined to just trust anyone to provide us with
valid information.
➢ A situation of epistemic trust enables a particular kind of
species-specific learning.
➢ Thus the absence of epistemic trust makes learning (about the world, the self, etc.) really problematic.
What is epistemic (hyper) vigilance?
- trait of “do not trust anyone”
- vigilance is important but
- hypervigilance becomes likely if we have repeatedely experienced the untrustworhtiness of trusted authorities like parents
- in this situation, we tend to dismiss info about the world & ourselves from these sources
- if this becomes a central trait it hinders development
What are the 4 dimensions underlying mentalizing?
- automatic–controlled: automatic mentalizing is fast & reflective, while controlled mentalizing is conscious & reflective
- internally–externally focused: based on internal states or external cues
- self–other: involves reflecting on oneself or others
- cognitive–affective: balances cognitive processes w emotional understanding
How does mentalizing explain mental illness? How does it treat it?
explains it by imbalances in the mentalizing dimensions
treats it by addressing the quality of mentalizing as part of psychosocial treatment via multiple methods
What are the 4 main assumptions of the mentalizing approach to psychopathology?
- neuroscience findings strongly suggest that mentalizing is an evolutionary prewired capacity (normatively developing children typically show joint attention and shared intentionality - capacities that reflect mentalizing - from the beginning of life)
- developmental findings suggests that considerable environmental input is needed to develop a fully balanced capacity for mentalizing (role of family, peers, sociocultural factors, epistemic trust etc all play a role in the dev of mentalizing)
- psych impairments & disorders are characterized by temporary or chronic impairments in the mentalizing abiltiy
- mentalizing is common factor associated w recovery in a range of psychotherapies
Define epistemic trust
the evolutionarily prewired capacity to trust others as sources of social information, both facilitated by and facilitating mentalizing, which
in turn fosters resilience to adversity through a health-generating (salutogenic) process of social learning and deriving maximal benefit from the stream of relevant information accessible through the social environment
