Relational language and the development of relational mapping

We test the claim that learning and using language for spatial relations can influence spatial representation and reasoning. Preschool children were given a mapping task in which they were asked to find a "winner" placed in a three-tiered box after seeing one placed in a virtually identical box. The correct choice was determined by finding the corresponding relative location in the test box, making it a difficult task for preschool children. We found that hearing language for spatial relations facilitated children's mapping performance. We found effects at younger ages on easier tasks (Experiments 1 and 2) and at older ages on harder tasks (Experiment 3). The effects of spatial relational language differed predictably according to the semantics of the terms children heard (Experiment 4). Finally, the effects of spatial language were maintained over time (Experiment 5): children given one initial exposure to the spatial terms maintained their advantage over baseline children when they again carried out the mapping task 2 days later, with no further exposure to the spatial terms. The evidence is consistent with the explanation that language bolsters children's spatial encodings, which in turn supports their mapping performance.     

Relational benefits of relational aggression: adaptive and maladaptive associations with adolescent friendship quality

Two longitudinal studies examined associations between relational aggression and friendship quality during adolescence. In Study 1, 62 adolescents in Grades 6 (25.8%), 7 (32.3%), and 8 (41.9%) completed assessments of friendship affiliations, relational and overt aggression, and friendship quality at 2 time points, 1 year apart. Results using actor partner interdependence modeling indicated that high levels of relational aggression predicted increases in self-reported positive friendship quality 1 year later. In Study 2, 56 adolescents in Grades 9 (66.7%) and 10 (33.3%) attended a laboratory session with a friend in which their conversations were videotaped and coded for relationally aggressive talk. Target adolescents completed measures of positive and negative friendship quality during the laboratory session and during a follow-up phone call 6 months later. Analyses revealed that high levels of relationally aggressive talk at Time 1 predicted increases in negative friendship quality 6 months later. In addition, among adolescents involved in a reciprocal best friendship, high levels of observed relationally aggressive talk predicted increases in positive friendship quality over time. Taken together, these studies provide support for the idea that relational aggression may be associated with adaptive as well as maladaptive outcomes within the dyadic context of adolescent friendship.     

Relational discrepancies and emotion: The moderating roles of relationship type and relational discrepancy valence

Relational discrepancy theory proposes that discrepancies in the extents to which relational partners meet relational standards are associated with emotions and that perceiving relationships in specified ways moderates associations. In a range of relationships, ideal relational discrepancies were associated with dejection and ought relational discrepancies with agitation (Study 1), associations moderated by relationship type. Discrepancy valence also moderated ideal discrepancy associations. Similar associations were found in friendships, moderated by relationship type (Study 2). Finally, relationship type and valence moderated associations in relationships with supervisors but not with colleagues (Study 3). These results support relational discrepancy theory propositions.     

Relational accommodation in negotiation: Effects of egalitarianism and gender on economic efficiency and relational capital

Highly relational contexts can have costs as well as benefits. Researchers theorize that negotiating dyads in which both parties hold highly relational goals or views of themselves are prone to relational accommodation, a dynamic resulting in inefficient economic outcomes yet high levels of relational capital. Previous research has provided only indirect empirical support for this theory. The present study fills this gap by demonstrating the divergent effects of egalitarianism on economic efficiency and relational capital in negotiation. Dyads engaged in a simulated employment negotiation among strangers within a company that was described as either egalitarian or hierarchical. As hypothesized, dyads assigned to the egalitarian condition reached less efficient economic outcomes yet had higher relational capital than dyads assigned to the hierarchical condition. Negotiations occurring between females resulted in lower joint economic outcomes than negotiations occurring between males. Results are consistent with the theory of relational self-construal in negotiation.     

Lover and learner: Exploring relational schema change following relationship dissolution

Romantic relationships are known to be very influential, but less is known about how these relationships, and particularly the breakup of these relationships, may affect individuals’ relational schemas, or their expectations for relationships. Undergraduate students reported on how their views of themselves, romantic partners, and relationships changed after breaking up with a past partner. Results suggest that relational schemas change following relationship dissolution and that there are both positive and negative aspects to this change. There was also some evidence that aspects of the past relationship predicted change and the valence of change, and that change and the valence of change were related to aspects of current relationship quality. These results are an important first step in understanding how past romantic relationships influence people’s expectations about relationships and, by extension, their health and wellbeing.     

Perceptual adjustments on representations of familiar patterns: change over time and relational features

Subjects classified individual stimuli as exact copies or as distortions of previously viewed prototype letters. Perceptual adjustments were induced by the presence of difficult (subtle) distortions within the stimulus set. In Experiment 1, subjects initially made feature-based adjustments, and, with experience, adjustments became identity-based. Decisional adjustments also occurred. A similar change over time was obtained in Experiment 2; in addition, the feature-based adjustments could not be explained by overall similarity between letters. Experiment 3 indicated that feature-based adjustments can be long lasting under appropriate circumstances. Experiment 4 indicated that the relevant features are not functionally independent parts of letters, but rather relations between neighboring parts. The results are consistent with the idea that adjustments can change between levels over time, and that the adjusted features are relational in nature.     

Sensitivity of 4-year-olds to featural and second-order relational changes in face distinctiveness

Sensitivity to adult ratings of facial distinctiveness (how much an individual stands out in a crowd) has been demonstrated previously in children age 5 years or older. Experiment 1 extended this result to 4-year-olds using a "choose the more distinctive face" task. Children's patterns of choice across item pairs also correlated well with those of adults. In Experiment 2, original faces were made more distinctive via local feature changes (e.g., bushier eyebrows) or via relational changes (spacing changes, e.g., eyes closer together). Some previous findings suggest that children's sensitivity develops more slowly to relational changes than to featural changes. However, when we matched featural and relational changes for effects on distinctiveness in adult participants, 4-year-olds were equally sensitive to both. Our results suggest that (a) 4-year-olds' face space has important aspects of structure in common with that of adults and that (b) there is no specific developmental delay for a second-order relational component of configural/holistic processing.     

The Relational aggression scale (RAS): Psychometric properties of a newly developed measure of relational aggression

Introduction

Relational aggression (RA) is a growing and worrisome problem, particularly among adolescents, that can result in negative psychological consequences for those involved. Therefore, it is important to develop instruments to detect these incidents and understand the problem so as to design effective intervention strategies.

Relational and psychological mediators of change in low‐income couples' perceived health

Experimental tests of the association between relationship functioning and physical health are limited. Although associations are hypothesized to be partially mediated through improved psychological functioning, tests are mostly limited to lab‐based studies. The present study evaluated relational and psychological mediators of change in perceived health in a sample of 742 low‐income couples (1,484 individuals) who participated in a randomized controlled trial of two online relationship education programs and a waitlist control group. Results partially supported the Strengths and Strains Model of Relationships and Physical Health. Relationship functioning and some psychological functioning were mediators of change in perceived health. Future research is needed to understand how relationship functioning improved perceived health through mediators other than psychological functioning tested here.     

Going Too Far: Relational Heroines and Relational Excess

I consider the evolution of our relational ideal—its implications for our therapeutic goals, our patients, and for ourselves. Who do we aim to be in the consulting room? How do we view our patient—her potential and her limitations? What are the clinical goals of a relational analysis? What might those goals occlude? In this context I address the historical excesses of our ideal and the ways we may have gone too far.     

Relational Remembering and Oppression

This paper begins by discussing Sue Campbell's account of memory as she first developed it in Relational Remembering: Rethinking the Memory Wars and applied it to the context of the false memory debates. In more recent work, Campbell was working on expanding her account of relational remembering from an analysis of personal rememberings to activities of public rememberings in contexts of historic harms and, specifically, harms to Aboriginals and their communities in Canada. The goal of this paper is to draw out the moral and political implications of Campbell's account of relational remembering and thereby to extend its reach and application. As applied to Aboriginal communities, Campbell's account of relational remembering confirms but also explains the important role that Canada's Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (IRS TRC) is poised to play. It holds this promise and potential, however, only if all Canadians, Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal, engage in a process of remembering that is relational and has the goal of building and rebuilding relationships. The paper ends by drawing attention to what relational remembering can teach us about oppression more generally.     

Sacrifice and Relational Well-Being

ABSTRACT

The well-being account of sacrifice says that sacrifices are gross losses of well-being. This account is attractive because it explains the relationship between sacrifice and moral obligation. However, sacrifices made on behalf of loved ones may cause trouble for the account. Loving sacrifices occur in a context where the agent’s well-being and the beneficiary’s well-being are intertwined. They present a challenge to individualism about well-being. Drawing inspiration from feminist philosophers and bioethicists, I argue that a notion of ‘relational well-being’, analogous to ‘relational autonomy’, can help account for loving sacrifices without either undermining the well-being theory of sacrifice or minimizing the very real sacrifices made in caregiving situations.     

Subjectivism and Relational Good

In this paper, a distinctly subjectivist analysis of the nature of relational goodness or goodness for is proposed. Like the generic subjectivist analysis of value, the proposal is to analyse value in terms of attitudes. Specifically, the proposed analysis of goodness for appeals to a special kind of attitude: namely, so-called for-someone’s-sake attitudes. Unlike other analyses in the literature that have appealed to this kind of attitude, the analysis proposed here is not a fitting-attitude analysis. Rather than appealing to for-someone’s-sake attitudes that it is fitting to have or that there are reasons to have, the proposed analysis takes actually held for-someone’s-sake attitudes to ground or constitute goodness for (relative to the subject who holds the attitude). The analysis should be attractive to those already within the subjectivist camp. One of its appeals is that it is a special case of a general subjectivist approach to values, thus showing that subjectivism provides the resources to analyse relational values.     

Personal values and relational models

In this study, the comprehensive value research by Schwartz (e.g. 1992) was linked to Fiske's relational models theory (RMT, e.g. Fiske, 1991). A sample of 297 people answered the personal values questionnaire (PVQ), the modes of relationship questionnaire (MORQ) and the relationship profile scale (RPS) in a web‐based online survey. As hypothesized, the set of 10 values correlated in a systematic manner—according to the circular structure of personal value systems—with both trait‐like construal of and motivational investment in the relational models communal sharing (CS), authority ranking (AR) and market pricing (MP). Further research concerning a person–environment value congruency approach to predict well‐being is suggested combining the two research traditions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Belief bias and relational reasoning

When people evaluate categorical syllogisms, they tend to reject unbelievable conclusions and accept believable ones irrespective of their validity. Typically, this effect is particularly marked for invalid conclusions that are possible, but do not necessarily follow, given the premises. However, smaller believability effects can also be detected for other types of conclusion. Three experiments are reported here, in which an attempt was made to determine whether belief bias effects can manifest themselves on the relational inference task. Subjects evaluated the validity of conclusions such as William the Conqueror was king after the Pyramids were built (temporal task) or Manchester is north of Bournemouth (spatial task) with respect to their premises. All of the majorfindings for equivalent categorical syllogism tasks were replicated. However, the overall size of the main effect of believability appears to be related to task presentation, a phenomenon not previously identified for categorical syllogisms and which current theories of belief bias have difficulty explaining.     

Relational Primitivism

What kind of property is represented by the moral ought? I defend a relational answer: the moral ought represents a primitive relational property of actions required by the original claims of persons. I argue that the relational answer offers a distinctive and compelling account in its own right that also avoids standard difficulties of familiar theories.