RESUMEN

During the most recent wave of anti-racism movements in the U.S., Critical Race Theory has gained attention as a key mechanism to identify, deconstruct, and challenge dominant white American ideologies and their associated institutional practices. Given that Critical Race Theory threatens to unmask and destabilize centralized white racialized power in the United States, dominant white cultural and institutional backlash to attack, suppress, and invalidate anti-racist ideologies and practices has reached new levels. This article proposes that the American conservative right-wing uses a core rhetorical strategy known as Institutional DARVO to undermine anti-racism movements and Critical Race Theory. Institutional DARVO is a systems-level extension of DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) which identifies three specific patterns of abuse seen in intimate partner violence. This article will provide an analysis of the document issued by former President Donald J. Trump on September 22, 2020, "Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping," to illustrate the governmental-political use of Institutional DARVO in the backlash against Critical Race Theory. This Executive Order has influenced conservative political ideas and rhetoric that has fueled the growing surge of book bans, anti-DEI governmental practices and policies, anti-education legislation, and the recent supreme court decision to declare affirmative action unlawful. Identifying these core patterns and strategies used by primarily white conservative groups and institutions to challenge anti-racist movements is critically important in addressing both the realities and false narratives around race and inequity in the United States, as these narratives are impacting our current social, political, legal, and educational culture, practices, and policies.

RESUMEN

The current study evaluated processes underlying two common symptoms (i.e., state regulation problems and deficits in auditory processing) associated with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. Although these symptoms have been treated in the literature as unrelated, when informed by the Polyvagal Theory, these symptoms may be viewed as the predictable consequences of depressed neural regulation of an integrated social engagement system, in which there is down regulation of neural influences to the heart (i.e., via the vagus) and to the middle ear muscles (i.e., via the facial and trigeminal cranial nerves). Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and heart period were monitored to evaluate state regulation during a baseline and two auditory processing tasks (i.e., the SCAN tests for Filtered Words and Competing Words), which were used to evaluate auditory processing performance. Children with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were contrasted with aged matched typically developing children. The current study identified three features that distinguished the ASD group from a group of typically developing children: 1) baseline RSA, 2) direction of RSA reactivity, and 3) auditory processing performance. In the ASD group, the pattern of change in RSA during the attention demanding SCAN tests moderated the relation between performance on the Competing Words test and IQ. In addition, in a subset of ASD participants, auditory processing performance improved and RSA increased following an intervention designed to improve auditory processing.

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RESUMEN

StressEraser is a commercially marketed biofeedback device designed to enhance heart rate variability. StressEraser makes its internal calculations on beat-to-beat measures of finger pulse intervals. However, the accuracy and precision of StressEraser in quantifying interbeat intervals using finger pulse intervals has not been evaluated against standard laboratory equipment using R-R intervals. Accuracy was assessed by simultaneously recording interbeat intervals using StressEraser and a standard laboratory ECG system. The interbeat intervals were highly correlated between the systems. The average deviation in interbeat interval recordings between the systems was approximately 6 ms. Moreover, correlations approached unity between the systems on estimates of heart period, heart rate, and heart rate variability. Feedback from StressEraser is based on an interbeat time series that provides sufficient information to provide an excellent estimate of the dynamic changes in heart rate and heart rate variability. The slight variations between StressEraser and the laboratory equipment in quantifying heart rate and heart rate variability are due to features related to monitoring heart rate with finger pulse: (1) a lack in precision in the peak of the finger pulse relative to the clearly defined inflection point in the R-wave, and (2) contribution of variations in pulse transit time.

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