Hierarchy of interactive functions in father‐mother‐baby three‐way games

In developmental research, the family has mainly been studied through dyadic interaction. Three‐way interactions have received less attention, partly because of their complexity. This difficulty may be overcome by distinguishing between four hierarchically embedded functions in three‐way interactions: (1) participation (inclusion of all participants), (2) organization (partners keeping to their roles), (3) focalization (sharing a common focus) and (4) affective contact (being in tune). We document this hierarchical model on a sample of 80 families observed in the Lausanne Trilogue Play situation across four different sites. Hierarchy between functions was demonstrated by means of Guttman scalability coefficient. Given the importance of the child's development in a threesome, the pertinence of this model for family assessment is discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mother's marital satisfaction associated with the quality of mother‐father‐child triadic interaction

Low marital satisfaction has been shown to be a risk factor for early parenthood and parent‐child relationship problems (Erel & Burman, 1995 ; McHale, 1995 ). The aim of this study was to assess how parental reports of marital satisfaction related to family alliance and coordination in the observed triadic interaction. The study group included 120 families. Marital satisfaction was evaluated during pregnancy, at 4 months, and at 18 months using the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS; Busby, Christensen, Crane & Larsson, 1995 ) for both parents. Mother‐father‐child interaction was analyzed in the Lausanne Triadic Play setting and coded using the Family Alliance Assessment Scale (Favez, Lavanchy Scaiola, Tissot, Darwiche & Frascarolo, 2011 ) when the child reached 18 months of age. The mother's higher marital satisfaction at every measuring point was associated with a cooperative family alliance and/or higher family coordination at 18 months. The father's experience of marital satisfaction was not related to family interaction at any assessment point. Our study suggests that a mother's experience of lower marital satisfaction during pregnancy may be an early sign of later problems in family relationships.     

Rough‐and‐tumble play and the regulation of aggression: an observational study of father–child play dyads

Rough‐and‐tumble play (RTP) is a common form of play between fathers and children. It has been suggested that RTP can contribute to the development of selfregulation. This study addressed the hypothesis that the frequency of father–child RTP is related to the frequency of physically aggressive behavior in early childhood. This relationship was expected to be moderated by the dominance relationship between father and son during play. Eighty‐five children between the ages of 2 and 6 years were videotaped during a free‐play session with their fathers in their homes and questionnaire data was collected about father–child RTP frequency during the past year. The play dyads were rated for the degree to which the father dominated play interactions. A significant statistical interaction revealed that RTP frequency was associated with higher levels of physical aggression in children whose fathers were less dominant. These results indicate that RTP is indeed related to physical aggression, though this relationship is moderated by the degree to which the father is a dominant playmate. Aggr. Behav. 35:285–295, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

In the shadow of a controversy: Freud and Ferenczi 1925‐331

In recent literature, Freud's relation with pioneers of psychoanalysis has been reevaluated. This paper describes the evolution of the relation between Freud and Ferenczi during their most controversial period‐1925‐33. The consequences of this evolution on psychoanalytic theory and practice are shown. The links between events of the protagonists' lives, their refl ections about them, and the resulting theoretical elaboration (e.g. on homosexuality, female sexuality, problems of separation) are also taken into account. This work is essentially based on their recently published correspondence.     

Five‐ to twelve‐year‐olds' control of movement velocity in a dynamic collision avoidance task

We investigated age‐related differences in a dynamic collision avoidance task that bears a resemblance to pedestrian road crossing. Five‐ to seven‐year‐old children, ten‐ to twelve‐year‐old children and adults were instructed to push a doll across a small‐scale road between two toy vehicles, which approached one after the other. We analysed the number of attempted crossings, the number of collisions, movement onset times and movement velocity control. The youngest children attempted to cross less often, but collided more frequently than the adults. This age effect could be attributed to differences in the way the children and adults controlled movement velocity. The youngest children attained the velocity that was required for safe travel too late, particularly when the gaps between the toy vehicles were small. The age differences in movement onset strategies were less clear‐cut. The findings are discussed within a framework that proposes distinct roles of vision in action planning and action production.     

Strengthening the Child‐ and Youth‐Serving Workforce: Surveying the Landscape,Overcoming Challenges

This special issue addresses a neglected but important topic in our field: strengthening the child‐ and youth‐serving workforce. Investing in this workforce should be a national priority because considerable evidence has shown that investments in early childhood education and development, particularly in low‐resource contexts, that are reinforced through skills‐based programs in adolescence and adulthood, have beneficial impacts throughout life. Investing in quality child‐ and youth‐serving programs also has the additional benefit of creating a productive and capable future workforce. The editors and authors of the special issue should be commended for producing the first special issue on this topic in our field or in related fields, one that is long overdue. Articles in this issue survey the landscape of an amorphous and complex area of practice and research and describe key challenges for the field. In this commentary, I offer organizing frameworks to characterize the child‐ and youth‐serving workforce, note emerging issues when addressing specific challenges, and identify areas for future research.     

Embracing the Challenges and Opportunities of Mixed‐Media Relationships

Social relationships unfold face‐to‐face and across an increasingly diverse set of mobile, Internet‐based media. Research on these mixed‐media relationships (MMRs) offers a unifying focus for understanding of how media use reflects and drives social relationships. Impediments to research on mixed‐media interaction include an over‐reliance on research focused on a single medium, incomplete and conceptually problematic classifications of media, and limited theoretic approaches. An alternative approach to understand MMRs, grounded in the challenges of managing complex, recurring interpersonal demands, is proposed. These demands include social coordination, impression management, regulating closeness and distance, and managing arousal and anxiety. Implications of MMRs for mediatization and mass communication are briefly examined.     

The copycat solution to the shadow correspondence problem

Cast shadows (henceforth simply 'shadows') depicted in artworks can fulfil some of their perceptual roles, such as helping the retrieval of 3-D structure and of relative positions of objects, without having to be geometrically or physically accurate. The visual system displays a wide tolerance for shadows that are mostly inaccurate, at times making use of the scarce accurate but relevant information that can still be retrieved from them. However, the extent of the tolerable inaccuracy is at present still unexplored. I propose that inaccuracy can be not only totally acceptable but in some cases is even likely to be preferable to accuracy if the main perceptual role of shadows is to help locate in a scene the objects that cast them. I examined a small but effective historical corpus of pictorial endeavours, from which it appears that in some cases painters have used a copycat strategy for drawing the terminator of a shadow, ie they have produced a replica of the visible profile of the caster, which in the norm yields an impossible shadow. The copycat strategy is perceptually effective for solving the correspondence problem of associating a shadow with its caster; copycatting can be more effective than other solutions, including the depiction of the geometrically correct shadow, and is complementary to coarser solutions to the correspondence problem. These phenomena provide insight into the computations effectively used by the brain to deal with space perception. In particular, the brain is not relying on some sort of simplified physical model of the world, for the shadows produced by the copycat effect would correspond to a more complicated physical situation than the one encountered in real life.     

Concurrent variable‐interval variable‐ratio schedules in a dynamic choice environment

Most studies of operant choice have focused on presenting subjects with a fixed pair of schedules across many experimental sessions. Using these methods, studies of concurrent variable‐ interval variable‐ratio schedules helped to evaluate theories of choice. More recently, a growing literature has focused on dynamic choice behavior. Those dynamic choice studies have analyzed behavior on a number of different time scales using concurrent variable‐interval schedules. Following the dynamic choice approach, the present experiment examined performance on concurrent variable‐interval variable‐ratio schedules in a rapidly changing environment. Our objectives were to compare performance on concurrent variable‐interval variable‐ratio schedules with extant data on concurrent variable‐interval variable‐interval schedules using a dynamic choice procedure and to extend earlier work on concurrent variable‐interval variable‐ratio schedules. We analyzed performances at different time scales, finding strong similarities between concurrent variable‐interval variable‐interval and concurrent variable‐interval variable‐ ratio performance within dynamic choice procedures. Time‐based measures revealed almost identical performance in the two procedures compared with response‐based measures, supporting the view that choice is best understood as time allocation. Performance at the smaller time scale of visits accorded with the tendency seen in earlier research toward developing a pattern of strong preference for and long visits to the richer alternative paired with brief “samples” at the leaner alternative (“fix and sample”).     

Instance‐based learning in dynamic decision making

This paper presents a learning theory pertinent to dynamic decision making (DDM) called instancebased learning theory (IBLT). IBLT proposes five learning mechanisms in the context of a decision‐making process: instance‐based knowledge, recognition‐based retrieval, adaptive strategies, necessity‐based choice, and feedback updates. IBLT suggests in DDM people learn with the accumulation and refinement of instances, containing the decision‐making situation, action, and utility of decisions. As decision makers interact with a dynamic task, they recognize a situation according to its similarity to past instances, adapt their judgment strategies from heuristic‐based to instance‐based, and refine the accumulated knowledge according to feedback on the result of their actions. The IBLT's learning mechanisms have been implemented in an ACT‐R cognitive model. Through a series of experiments, this paper shows how the IBLT's learning mechanisms closely approximate the relative trend magnitude and performance of human data. Although the cognitive model is bounded within the context of a dynamic task, the IBLT is a general theory of decision making applicable to other dynamic environments.     

A Non‐Muslim Teaching Islam: Pedagogical and Ethical Challenges

Abstract. This paper is a reflection on the two most significant challenges that I have faced teaching the introductory course in Islam. The first is the challenge of teaching Islam after September 11, 2001, the events of which gave rise to such pedagogical questions as how much and in what ways the course syllabus should change, and in particular how we should address issues such as extremism and terrorism. The second is the challenge of being a non‐Muslim teaching Islam, which raises issues of authority (particularly when there are Muslim students in the classroom). The limitations and advantages of teaching a tradition as an outsider are explored, and strategies for compensating for the limitations are suggested. The final section of the essay explores the following question: When, if ever, can (or should) we as teachers move from explaining and analyzing the positions taken by members of a tradition to criticizing them?     

A short note on the maximal point‐biserial correlation under non‐normality

The aim of this paper is to derive the maximal point‐biserial correlation under non‐normality. Several widely used non‐normal distributions are considered, namely the uniform distribution, t‐distribution, exponential distribution, and a mixture of two normal distributions. Results show that the maximal point‐biserial correlation, depending on the non‐normal continuous variable underlying the binary manifest variable, may not be a function of p (the probability that the dichotomous variable takes the value 1), can be symmetric or non‐symmetric around p = .5, and may still lie in the range from ?1.0 to 1.0. Therefore researchers should exercise caution when they interpret their sample point‐biserial correlation coefficients based on popular beliefs that the maximal point‐biserial correlation is always smaller than 1, and that the size of the correlation is always further restricted as p deviates from .5.     

Highlighting the Challenges When Conducting Cross‐National Studies: Use of Transcultural Theory

Insufficient exploration of multicultural social justice competence in research methodology and procedures may contribute to lingering clinical problems for diverse populations. Using transcultural theory to evaluate the effectiveness of cross‐national research, the authors examined the various cross‐national methodological challenges during the research design, analysis, and interpretation stages. Recommendations focus on expanding the Multicultural Social Justice Counseling Competencies (Ratts, Singh, Nassar‐McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015 ) to prepare researchers with enhanced skills to explore issues involving diverse populations.     

Invited Response to Commentaries: Self‐Practice/Self‐Reflection (SP/SR): Contexts,Challenges and Ways Forward

McGinn (2015) and Fernández‐Álvarez, Castañeiras, and Wyss (2015) make valuable suggestions in their commentaries on the three self‐practice/self‐reflection (SP/SR) articles in this issue of the Australian Psychologist. In our response, we use their commentaries as a springboard to highlight contextual influences and challenges for future SP/SR research, and suggest potential ways forward.     

Psychology in sub‐Saharan Africa: Challenges,prospects and promises

The experiences of African communities are significantly underrepresented in the current psychological literature as compared to those of Western European and North American communities. Professional psychology in sub‐Saharan African is either nonexistent or strongly modeled after practices in North America and Western Europe. The modeling of psychology in sub‐Saharan Africa on the North American and Western European experience is a result of the more extensive marketing of the Western cultural heritage around the globe by national governments, education institutions and international aid agencies vis a vis the marketing of alternative cultural heritages. It is also reflective of the historically unequal intercultural exchanges between Western and African cultural heritages and in favour of the former. A greater representation of the African experience in the psychological literature could add to the richness and global relevance of psychology.