Attachment and sensitivity in family context: the roles of parent and infant gender

This study examined the role of child gender in fathers' and mothers' sensitivity to and attachment relationships with their infants from a family systems perspective. Eighty‐seven 1‐year‐olds participated in the Strange Situation with each parent. Parental sensitivity was examined during a competing demands task. Results indicated that fathers and mothers were equally sensitive to sons, but fathers were less sensitive than mothers to daughters, and mothers were more sensitive to daughters than to sons. Although mothers and fathers within the same families were similarly sensitive to daughters and sons, daughters' attachment security with fathers and mothers was similar whereas sons' was not. Further analyses revealed that fathers were more sensitive to sons with an insecure relationship with their mothers. Results of this investigation suggest that child gender is relevant for parent–infant, especially father–infant, attachment relationships. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Priming the holiday spirit: Persistent activation due to extraexperimental experiences

The concept of activation is a critical component of many models of cognition. A key characteristic of activation is that recent experience with a concept or stimulus increases the accessibility of the corresponding representation. The extent to which increases in accessibility occur as a result of experiences outside of laboratory settings has not been extensively explored. In the present study, we presented lexical stimuli associated with different holidays and festivities over the course of a year in a lexical decision task. When stimulus meaning and time of testing were congruent (e.g., leprechaun in March), response times were faster and accuracy greater than when meaning and time of test were incongruent (e.g., leprechaun in November). Congruency also benefited performance on a surprise free recall task of the items presented earlier in the lexical decision task. The discussion focuses on potential theoretical accounts of this heightened accessibility of time-of-the-year-relevant concepts.     

Darwinism and positivism as methodological influences on the development of psychology

The methodological significance of evolutionary theory for psychology may be distinguished from its substantive or theoretical significance. The methodological significance was that evolutionary theory broadened the current conceptions of scientific method and rendered them relatively independent of physics. It thereby made the application of the “scientific method” to psychology much more feasible than it had been previously, and thus established the possibility of a wide-ranging scientific psychology for the first time. The methodological eclecticism that made scientific psychology possible did not, however, remain a feature of psychology for very long. Psychology's methodology rapidly became restricted and codified through the influence of, and in imitation of, the rigorously positivistic orientation of physics around the turn of the twentieth century.     

性别在企业员工成人依恋对工作绩效关系中的调节作用

本研究探讨了依恋关系对员工工作绩效影响,并进一步考察了性别在两者关系中的调节作用。通过采用亲密关系经历量表(ECR)、关系问卷(RQ)和工作绩效问卷三个研究工具,对110名不同职业和岗位员工的依恋模式与工作绩效的关系进行调查,结果发现：1. 倾注型被试在情境绩效上的得分显著得低于安全型被试和害怕型被试。2.依恋焦虑与任务绩效和情境绩效均呈显著正相关。3.依恋焦虑可以正向预测情境绩效。4. 通过进一步分析,发现男性和女性在情境绩效和任务绩效上有所不同,说明性别在依恋关系和工作绩效之间起调节作用。     

Do individual differences in sociosexuality represent genetic or environmentally contingent strategies? Evidence from the Australian twin registry

Although men are substantially more interested than women in casual sex, there is ample variation in this trait (sociosexuality) within both sexes. One theory hypothesizes that within-sex sociosexual variation results from genetic variation maintained by frequency-dependent selection. If so, sociosexuality should be substantially heritable. A competing theory is that children acquire their mating strategy after observing their parents' relationship. By this theory, sociosexuality should reveal a strong shared environmental component. The authors studied genetic and environmental influences on sociosexuality using a large, representative volunteer twin sample. Parental marital instability was modestly associated with sociosexuality, but this could have been due to either genetic or environmental factors. Consistent with genetic theory, familial resemblance appeared primarily due to additive genetic rather than shared environmental factors.     

Sensitivity to speech rhythm explains individual differences in reading ability independently of phonological awareness

This study considered whether sensitivity to speech rhythm can predict concurrent variance in reading attainment after individual differences in age, vocabulary, and phonological awareness have been controlled. Five‐ to six‐year‐old English‐speaking children completed a battery of phonological processing assessments and reading assessments, along with a simple word stress manipulation task. The results showed that performance on the stress manipulation measure predicted a significant amount of variance in reading attainment after age, vocabulary, and phonological processing had been taken into account. These results suggest that stress sensitivity is an important, yet neglected, aspect of English‐speaking children's phonological representations, which needs to be incorporated into theoretical accounts of reading development.     

Working models of attachment shape perceptions of social support: evidence from experimental and observational studies

Two studies examined the association between attachment style and perceptions of social support. Study 1 (N = 95 couples) used an experimental paradigm to manipulate social support in the context of a stressful task. Insecure participants (anxious and avoidant) who received low-support messages appraised these messages more negatively, rated a prior behavioral interaction with their partner as having been less supportive, and performed significantly worse at their task compared with secure participants. Study 2 (N = 153 couples) used a similar paradigm except that partners were allowed to send genuine support messages. Insecure participants (especially fearful) perceived their partners' messages as less supportive, even after controlling for independent ratings of the messages and relationship-specific expectations. These studies provide evidence that individuals are predisposed to appraise their support experiences in ways that are consistent with their chronic working models of attachment, especially when the support message is ambiguous.     

The Spiritual Self‐In‐Relation: Empathy and the Construction of Spirituality Among Modern Descendants of theSpanish Crypto‐Jews

The research that is presented here explores the role that empathic attachment plays in the development of the religious self. Based on an ethnographic study of modern descendants of the Spanish crypto‐Jews, the work applies self‐in‐relation theory to the study of spirituality and religious belief acquisition among a population of individuals who, in adulthood, have modified their religious world view as a result of their crypto‐Jewish heritage. The findings of the research expand the parameters of self‐in‐relation theory in three important ways: 1) through an examination of the role that empathic attachment plays in adult conversion patterns; 2) through the elaboration of a developmental model that considers the significance of empathic attachment for sons as w ll as daughters; and 3) through an investigation into the relationship between ethnicity and spiritual development.     

Resolving the paradox of common, harmful, heritable mental disorders: which evolutionary genetic models work best?

Given that natural selection is so powerful at optimizing complex adaptations, why does it seem unable to eliminate genes (susceptibility alleles) that predispose to common, harmful, heritable mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder? We assess three leading explanations for this apparent paradox from evolutionary genetic theory: (1) ancestral neutrality (susceptibility alleles were not harmful among ancestors), (2) balancing selection (susceptibility alleles sometimes increased fitness), and (3) polygenic mutation-selection balance (mental disorders reflect the inevitable mutational load on the thousands of genes underlying human behavior). The first two explanations are commonly assumed in psychiatric genetics and Darwinian psychiatry, while mutation-selection has often been discounted. All three models can explain persistent genetic variance in some traits under some conditions, but the first two have serious problems in explaining human mental disorders. Ancestral neutrality fails to explain low mental disorder frequencies and requires implausibly small selection coefficients against mental disorders given the data on the reproductive costs and impairment of mental disorders. Balancing selection (including spatio-temporal variation in selection, heterozygote advantage, antagonistic pleiotropy, and frequency-dependent selection) tends to favor environmentally contingent adaptations (which would show no heritability) or high-frequency alleles (which psychiatric genetics would have already found). Only polygenic mutation-selection balance seems consistent with the data on mental disorder prevalence rates, fitness costs, the likely rarity of susceptibility alleles, and the increased risks of mental disorders with brain trauma, inbreeding, and paternal age. This evolutionary genetic framework for mental disorders has wide-ranging implications for psychology, psychiatry, behavior genetics, molecular genetics, and evolutionary approaches to studying human behavior.     

The effects of sex, age, and interval duration on the perception of time

The present experiment examined the interactive effects of sex, age, and interval duration on individual’s time perception accuracy. Participants engaged in the duration production task and subsequently completed questionnaires designed to elicit their temporal attitudes. The overall group of 100 individuals was divided evenly between the sexes. Five groups, each composed of 10 males and 10 females, were divided by decades of age ranging from 20 to 69 years old. The specific time estimation task was an empty interval production procedure composed of 50 trials on each of four different intervals of 1, 3, 7, and 20 s, respectively. The presentation orders of these intervals were randomized across participants but yoked across the sexes within each of the respective age groups. Analysis of the production results indicated significant influences for the sex of the participant while age did not appear to affect estimates of these short durations. Temporal attitudes, as reflected in responses to time questionnaire inquiries, did however exhibit significant differences across age. The contending theoretical accounts of such sex and age differences are considered and explanatory accounts that present a synthesis of endogenous and exogenous causal factors are discussed in light of the present pattern of findings.     

Human Affection Exchange: II. Affectionate Communication in Father-Son Relationships

Abstract

The father-son dyad might be the most socially significant male-male relationship in the life course, yet its negative qualities have been the sole focus in most research on the relationship. One communicative aspect that has received little scholarly attention is the expression of affection between fathers and sons, despite the strong correlation of affectionate communication with positive involvement, closeness, and relational satisfaction for fathers and sons. In 2 studies, the authors tested hypotheses about father-son affection that were derived from affection exchange theory (K. Floyd, in press). Results indicated that U.S. men are more affectionate with biological sons than with stepsons or adopted sons and that they are more affectionate with their biological sons than their biological sons are with them.     

Functional Equivalence of Sleep Loss and Time on Task Effects in Sustained Attention

Research on sleep loss and vigilance both focus on declines in cognitive performance, but theoretical accounts have developed largely in parallel in these two areas. In addition, computational instantiations of theoretical accounts are rare. The current work uses computational modeling to explore whether the same mechanisms can account for the effects of both sleep loss and time on task on performance. A classic task used in the sleep deprivation literature, the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT), was extended from the typical 10‐min duration to 35 min, to make the task similar in duration to traditional vigilance tasks. A computational cognitive model demonstrated that the effects of time on task in the PVT were equivalent to those observed with sleep loss. Subsequently, the same mechanisms were applied to a more traditional vigilance task—the Mackworth Clock Task—providing a good fit to existing data. This supports the hypothesis that these different types of fatigue may produce functionally equivalent declines in performance.     

Attachment and spousal caregiving

A community sample of 362 married couples participated in a study of attachment and spousal caregiving, which combined qualitative and quantitative components. The qualitative component focused on actual experiences of caregiving, assessed by participants' semi‐structured accounts of a situation involving their role as caregiver for their spouse. Attachment styles and their underlying dimensions (comfort with closeness, anxiety over relationships) were related to the type of support provided, the coping strategies used in the situation, caregivers' feelings about the quality of their care, perceived effects on the couple bond, and the emotional tone of the accounts. The quantitative component tested a theoretical model of factors predicting willingness to provide care for the spouse if he or she should become dependent in later life. Measures of attachment and caregiving styles, attachment to spouse, and anticipated burden provided reliable prediction of willingness to care. The results support the conceptualization of attachment and caregiving as interrelated features of marital bonds, and they have important implications for patterns of family caregiving.     

Why do children perseverate when they seem to know better: Graded working memory,or directed inhibition?

Children sometimes have trouble switching from one task to another, despite demonstrating an awareness of current task demands. This behavior could reflect problems either directly inhibiting previously relevant information or sufficiently activating graded working memory representations for the current task. We tested competing predictions from each account, using a computerized card-sorting task in which we assessed children’s task switching abilities and their response speed to simple questions about current task demands. All children answered these questions correctly, but children who successfully switched tasks responded more quickly to questions than did children who perseverated on previous tasks, even after factoring out processing speed and age. This reaction time difference supports graded working memory accounts, with stronger representations of current task demands aiding both task-switching and responses to questions. This result poses a challenge for directed inhibition accounts, because nothing needs to be inhibited to answer simple questions that lack conflicting information.     

Predicting romantic relationship satisfaction from life history strategy

Attachment style and communication style have been shown in previous research to predict relationship satisfaction. We hypothesized that the ultimate cause underlying the relationship among attachment style, communication style, and relationship satisfaction is Life History Strategy (LHS). Furthermore, we hypothesized that LHS would not only predict relationship satisfaction indirectly through a couple’s attachment style and communication style, but would also predict relationship satisfaction directly. Two structural equation models were constructed to model and test each of these hypotheses. The first showed that the indirect causal pathways from LHS to attachment style, attachment style to communication style, and communication style to relationship satisfaction predicted 16% of the variance in relationship satisfaction. The second added a causal pathway directly from LHS to relationship satisfaction which reduced the estimate for the influence of communication style on relationship satisfaction and increased the total variance predicted in relationship satisfaction to 60%. These results challenge the notion that it is primarily the communication between two romantic partners which influences their relationship outcome by proposing that their LHS may be influential: (1) indirectly through their attachment style and communication style; and (2) directly upon relationship satisfaction.     

Predicting marital satisfaction: Social absorption and individuation versus attachment anxiety and avoidance

The incremental validity of social absorption and social individuation in predicting relationship satisfaction beyond anxious and avoidant attachment was assessed in a sample of 400 heterosexual couples. Results indicated that the actor’s and partner’s social absorption scores and the absolute difference between the partners’ social individuation scores made significant unique contributions to the actor’s satisfaction in a model that included avoidant and anxious attachment. This model accounted for 49% of the variance in the actors’ satisfaction scores. Satisfaction was high when both partners were predisposed toward behavioral interdependence but suffered when the partners were discrepant in their need to cognitively distinguish self and other. Possible explanations for these findings and their implications for marital satisfaction are discussed.     

‘Oh My Child,What an Inappropriate Spouse for You!’: Asymmetrical Preferences and Parent–Offspring Conflict Over Mating

During human evolutionary time, parents have been influential in controlling the mating decisions of their offspring. As a result, they have evolved preferences that enable them to choose as sons‐in‐law and daughters‐in‐law those individuals who are most beneficial for them. Despite parental control over mating, offspring have been able to exercise their own mate choice, and they have evolved preferences which enable them to choose as mates those individuals who are most beneficial for them. However, parents and offspring are not genetically identical and thus they do not share identical interests with respect to mate choice. As a consequence, in‐law and mate preferences do not always converge, with a number of traits being valued differently in an in‐law and in a spouse. Recent advancements in evolutionary psychology have identified specific in‐law and mate preferences, along with specific areas of disagreement between the two. These findings have important implications for psychology, evolutionary theory and the social sciences, which are further explored.     

Subjective visibility depends on level of processing

Is visual awareness graded or binary? Experimental work has provided support for both possibilities, leading to two coexisting but contradictory theoretical accounts. Here we propose a promising candidate factor through which to integrate both accounts: the depth of stimulus processing required by the task. We compared color identification (a low-level task) with numerical judgements (a high-level task) performed on the very same colored number stimuli. Psychophysical curves were analyzed for both objective discrimination performance and subjective visibility ratings on a trial-by trial basis. We observed a graded relationship between stimulus duration and visibility in the low-level task, but a more non-linear relationship in the high-level task. Both patterns of results have previously been consistently associated with the graded and the dichotomous account, respectively. Follow-up experiments that manipulate the level of processing can further unify previously inconsistent results, thus integrating two major theories of visual awareness.     

List-method directed forgetting can be selective: Evidence from the 3-list and the 2-list tasks

When people are cued to forget previously studied irrelevant information and study new information instead, such cuing typically leads to forgetting of the precue information. But what do people forget if, before the forget cue is provided, both irrelevant and relevant information have been encoded? Using relatively short item lists, we examined in a series of three experiments whether participants are able to selectively forget the irrelevant precue information, when relevant and irrelevant precue items were presented subsequently in two separate lists (3-list task) and when the two types of items were presented alternatingly within a single list (2-list task). Selective forgetting of the irrelevant precue items arose in the 3-list task, independent of modality of item presentation and level of discriminability of the precue lists, and it arose in the 2-list task. The findings suggest that, at least with relatively short precue lists, participants may well be able to selectively forget irrelevant precue information when cued to do so. Implications of the results for theoretical accounts of list-method directed forgetting are discussed.