Fears and related anxieties across three age groups of Mexican American and White children with disabilities

The authors compared levels and types of fears and anxieties in a sample of Mexican American children and adolescents with disabilities to a group of White children and adolescents with similar disabilities. Students (N = 238), parents, and teachers completed the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (T. H. Ollendick, 1983) and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (C. R. Reynolds & B. O. Richmond, 1997). Levels of fear and anxiety were similar for both groups of students and were similarly underestimated by teachers. The groups of students differed in terms of their specific fears and the degree to which their parents recognized their children's fears (Mexican American parents were less accurate at rating their children's fears). Mexican American girls aged 7-10 and 11-13 years and White girls aged 14-18 years reported the highest scores; White boys aged 14-18 years reported the lowest scores.     

The selfish preen: absence of allopreening in Palaeognathae and its socio-cognitive implications

Animal Cognition - Preening behaviours are widespread in extant birds. While most birds appear to autopreen (self-directed preening), allopreening (preening directed at conspecifics) seems to have...     

Bicultural identities: The interface of cultural, personality, and socio-cognitive processes

This paper presents recent work examining the meaning and impact of individual variations in the way bicultural individuals organize their two cultural identities, a construct that we call Bicultural Identity Integration (BII). While biculturals high on BII describe their two cultural identities as ‘compatible’ (fluid and complementary), biculturals low on BII experience them as largely ‘oppositional’ (i.e., conflicting and disparate). We first report experimental evidence for how variations in BII moderate biculturals’ socio-cognitive behavior, specifically, the way in which bicultural individuals process cultural knowledge and use it to interpret social behavior. We then report structural equation modeling findings that elucidate some important personality, contextual, and performance predictors of BII. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion of how the study of bicultural identities provides an ideal ground for the integration of cultural and personality psychology.     

Individual and institutional defences against primitive anxieties: Counselling in prison

Abstract

This paper describes a counsellor's attempts to understand the unconscious dynamics affecting the process of counselling women in prison. The social system of the prison serves to defend both prisoners and officers against powerful anxieties about the potential for sadistic attack originating from primitive states of mind, that is persecution, helplessness and destructiveness. The implications of the rigid means of defence are considered, and die role of unconscious guilt motivating the need for external punishment is briefly explored. Emphasis is placed on the role of splitting and projection in the management of potentially overwhelming feelings of guilt, and fear of punishment. The author develops the premise that there is in effect an institutional requirement that prisoners remain in the paranoid-schizoid position because of the feared consequences were they to experience depressive anxieties.     

When collaboration leads to regression: Some negative consequences of socio-cognitive conflict

Piagetian scholars have argued that cognitive development is fostered by peer social interaction, brought about by ‘socio-cognitive conflict’ between conserver-non-conserver pairs. The nonconservers often attain conservation after having discussed their different opinions with conserving peers, whereas the conservers do not regress to non conservation. These results are generally taken to indicate the beneficial impact of such peer interaction. In this research, carried out with one sample in the United States and one in the Soviet Union, socio-cognitive conflict was engendered between pairs of 5–7 year-olds who were differentiated by their level of thinking about a mathematical balance beam. Contrary to the results reported by the Piagetians, regression was found to be at least as likely as development. The results are discussed in terms of differences between research in the domain of conservation and research in a related domain in which children's levels of thinking and degree of confidence are not confounded.     

Eye-tracking the own-race bias in face recognition: Revealing the perceptual and socio-cognitive mechanisms

Own-race faces are recognised more accurately than other-race faces and may even be viewed differently as measured by an eye-tracker (Goldinger, Papesh, & He, 2009). Alternatively, observer race might direct eye-movements (Blais, Jack, Scheepers, Fiset, & Caldara, 2008). Observer differences in eye-movements are likely to be based on experience of the physiognomic characteristics that are differentially discriminating for Black and White faces. Two experiments are reported that employed standard old/new recognition paradigms in which Black and White observers viewed Black and White faces with their eye-movements recorded. Experiment 1 showed that there were observer race differences in terms of the features scanned but observers employed the same strategy across different types of faces. Experiment 2 demonstrated that other-race faces could be recognised more accurately if participants had their first fixation directed to more diagnostic features using fixation crosses. These results are entirely consistent with those presented by Blais et al. (2008) and with the perceptual interpretation that the own-race bias is due to inappropriate attention allocated to the facial features ( and ).     

Job satisfaction related to tested congruence and differentiation

Tested personality-environment congruence and differentiation, singly and in combination, as measured by the Vocational Preference Inventory (J. L. Holland, Palo Alto, California, Consulting Psychologists Press, 1977b), were predictive of reported job satisfaction for teachers employed in five subject matter areas. Time-related variables and sex were not significantly related to the job satisfaction measure used in the study.     

The origins of mindreading: how interpretive socio-cognitive practices get off the ground

Synthese - Recent accounts of mindreading—i.e., the human capacity to attribute mental states to interpret, explain, and predict behavior—have suggested that it has evolved through...     

Young adults' knowledge of politics: evaluating the role of socio-cognitive variables using structural equations

The aim of this study was to create an explanatory model that allows analyzing the predictive power of a set of variables related to political knowledge; more specifically, to analyze the relationship between the education level of young adults and the variables, interest in politics and internal political efficacy. We also analyzed the combined relationship between these variables, together with age, and political knowledge. We worked with a sample group of 280 young adults between the ages of 18-30 from the city of Córdoba (Argentina). The data was subjected to a structural equation modelling SEM analysis, which allowed for the corroboration of the following hypotheses: the higher the education level, the more the interest in politics; the higher the education level, the better the perception of internal political efficacy; the higher the education level, the more the political knowledge; the more the interest in politics, the more the political knowledge; and the better the perception of internal political efficacy, the more interest in politics. Moreover, the following hypotheses could not be verified: the older an individual, the more the political knowledge; and the better the perception of internal political efficacy, the more the political knowledge. The model obtained allows for discussion of the explanatory value of these socio-cognitive variables.     

Thoughts on the inner conflict within Islamic culture: Their existential anxieties and ours

Abstract

This paper focuses on how Islamic terrorism is primarily part of a larger internal conflict within Islamic culture. Western, liberal (largely Christian) democracies evolved over centuries of their own bloody philosophical and political struggles between religious authority and what came to be defined as a modern, civil society built on individual freedom of belief, secular authority, and law. Now, Western liberal modernity represents a deep existential threat to traditional Islamic societies around gender, family relations, and individual beliefs. A ferocious internal struggle exists between those Muslims who believe Islam can absorb those tensions – creating its own version of an open, tolerant, cultural modernity – versus political Islamists, jihadists, for whom the annihilation anxiety elicited by the threatened social change is directed both internally and in violent rage at the West.     

Irritable bowel syndrome: A behavioral model

Current models for explaining irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), the most common gastrointestinal disorder, are critically reviewed and found wanting. Although inadequate to explain the complex clinical features of IBS. these models now determine treatment and research strategy. A behavioral model is offered as an alternative in the hope that it will lead to effective treatment and a progressive research program. The central features of this model are: (a) that verbal, motoric and physiological behavior characteristitic of IBS are capable of independence or desynchrony; (b) that these aspects of behavior are quantitative variations of normal; and (c) that there is a genetic predisposition to neuroticism which, in turn, predisposes to IBS. Some of the model's implications are discussed.     

Panic disorder and depression: A psychodynamic exploration of comorbidity

Eight of twenty-one patients presenting for treatment in an open trial of brief psychodynamic psychotherapy for panic disorder also carried the diagnosis of major depression. For the patients who completed the study, depression remitted as well as panic disorder. The authors highlight psychodynamic factors that they hypothesize may contribute to the significant overlap between panic disorder and depression, and describe three videotaped cases to illustrate these points.     

Nuanced aesthetic emotions: emotion differentiation is related to knowledge of the arts and curiosity

The ability to distinguish between emotions is considered indicative of well-being, but does emotion differentiation (ED) in an aesthetic context also reflect deeper and more knowledgeable aesthetic experiences? Here we examine whether positive and negative ED in response to artistic stimuli reflects higher fluency in an aesthetic domain. Particularly, we test whether knowledge of the arts and curiosity are associated with more fine-grained positive and negative aesthetic experiences. A sample of 214 people rated their positive and negative feelings in response to various artworks including positive and negative themes. Positive ED was associated with the embracing sub-trait of curiosity that reflects engagement and enjoyment of novelty and complexity, but was unrelated to artistic knowledge and perceived comprehension. Negative ED was associated with higher curiosity and particularly more knowledge of the arts. This relationship was mediated by appraised comprehension suggesting that deeper engagement with art, by those with more art knowledge, is associated with more fine-grained emotional experiences. This finding extends ED beyond well-being research and suggests that more nuanced emotional experiences are more likely for those with expertise in the arts and motivation for exploration.     

A Counselor Classification System: Accountable

The Wisconsin State Employment Security Division has an employment counselor classification scheme which responds to the cry for accountability. This article discusses (a) technical requirements and performance standards for three levels of employment counselors; (b) specific job duties and levels of skill for Manpower counselors 1, 2, and 3; (c) caseload size, counseling outcomes, counseling and assessment skills, community resources, job development activities, and additional performance requirements expected of the master level counselor; (d) the system of reclassifying a Manpower counselor 2 to the Manpower counselor 3 level; and (e) the use of an on-site review by a state counseling supervisor as the method of evaluating a counselor's Performance. Values of the counselor classification scheme are indicated.     

Action-based versus cognitivist perspectives on socio-cognitive development: culture,language and social experience within the two paradigms

Synthese - Contemporary research on mindreading or theory of mind has resulted in three major findings: (1) There is a difference in the age of passing of the elicited-response false belief task...     

Dental phobias and anxieties: evidence for conditioning processes in the acquisition and modulation of a learned fear

The present study investigated some of the factors which differentiate individuals with dental anxieties and phobias from those without such fears. In particular, two questions were addressed: (i) What differentiates subjects who have never been anxious about dental treatment from subjects who at some time have been anxious? and (ii) What factors lead to subjects changing their attitudes either from anxious to relaxed or from relaxed to anxious? The results suggest that the factors which influence the acquisition and modulation of dental anxieties are consistent with the associative and representational processes portrayed in contemporary models of human conditioning. Subjects who reported never having had anxieties about dental treatment were less likely to have had a painful dental treatment than subjects who did report an anxiety. Subjects who did report a painful dental experience but did not acquire anxiety reported a history of dental treatment favourable to the operation of latent inhibition. Subjects who reported that they were good at enduring pain were more likely to report a longer interval between their very first dental treatment and their first painful dental treatment. Under some conditions in which latent inhibition should have precluded the acquisition of a dental fear, an anxiety appeared to be acquired because a very painful experience had attenuated the latent inhibition process. Subjects whose dental anxiety did not remit reported significantly more painful and traumatic dental experiences than subjects whose anxiety did remit.     

Anxiety: the importunate companion. Psychoanalytic theory of castration and separation anxieties and implications for clinical technique

In this article I consider the implications of our differing psychoanalytic theories of anxiety on clinical technique. Drawing on differentiations between the focus on separation or castration anxiety and the relative neglect of the latter in contemporary writing, I look in detail at two clinical examples of psychoanalysis in borderline young adults to exemplify the issue. 1