An Egyptian Sufi Interprets His Dreams: ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-Sha‘rânı 1493–1565

This study presents a sampling of dreams as recounted in ‘Abd al-Wahhâb al-Sha‘rânâ's autobiography, Latâ’if al-minan. Examining the methodology employed by the 16th-century Cairene sheikh in interpreting his own dreams, the study places al-Sha‘rânâ within the context of sufi and medieval Islamic traditions of dream interpretation. The examples given by al-Sha‘rânân? demonstrate that he valued dreams not for their alleged ability to portend the future but for their psychological merit as monitors of his spiritual condition.     

Normes d'associations verbales chez des sujets âgés

This study relates the realization of a norm of verbal associations in French starting from 150 words. This norm was established on 130 old people between 56 and 86 years. The proportion of women and men is the same one as in France (55 vs. 45%). Several tables present the alphabetical list of the answers and their associated frequency (for all the sample, the women, the men).     

Confort des élèves et performance du bâtiment scolaire

Schools today are designed above all as educational tools and do not always take sufficient account of the physical parameters that are nevertheless environmental factors that have an impact on the capacity to read and concentrate. The aim of our study is to compare the comfort perceived by children in two schools, one with traditional design, the other with a modern design. Two types of tool were used: (a) an analytical study of the plans of the two schools, and (b) a survey using questionnaires completed by 232 elementary school children (8-10 years old). We discuss the results showing that the children in the school with a modern design had higher scores on the “Disturbance” dimension, and on “Privacy”.     

Le « burn out » de l'aidant familial âgé

This study deals with old significant other who cares of his polyarthritic spouse and has to be faced with his ageing. We assume that caregiver's assessment of his spouse's pain involves psychological consequences (daily life, locus of control, distress). Moreover, we suppose that caregiver's distress influences support given to the patient. These measures are made with the Multidimensional Pain Inventory Significant Other (Sharp et Nicholas, 2000). Thanks to the caregivers' assessment of spouses' pain experience, an average is made in order to form two groups and to yield the assessment's effect on each measure, in comparing the results with statistic tests. A correlation between distress and support is made. The outcomes of a 22 subjects sample show that the anxiest caregivers bring less support than the others (α = –0,5) and chronic pain reinforces caregivers' anxiety and cause meaning changes in their daily life, in so far as chronic pain is perceived by caregivers as very disabled.     

Papier Mâché Problems in Epistemology: A Defense of Strong Internalism*

I attempt to persuade the reader that externalism admits of no plausible interpretation. I argue that reliability is a concept with very different contours from epistemic justification, and that attempts to explicate justification in terms of reliability must fail. I address several other forms of externalism, and also mixed forms of justification. I then argue that externalist theories of justification cannot close the gap between mere true belief and knowledge. I suggest that a fourth condition on knowledge is required, regardless of whether justification is internalist or externalist. I argue that with such a fourth condition a strong internalist theory of justification is adequate to the task that remains in making true belief knowledge. Additionally, strong internalism is more satisfying to our intuitions than externalism and mixed forms of justification. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Multitâche numérique et compréhension : une revue de la littérature

IntroductionIn recent years, many Anglo-Saxon studies in psychology have focused on the effects of digital technologies on learning, when they are used during study time in class or at home. Such uses have been called media multitasking. The purpose of this article is to report on these recent advances.Literature findingsThrough a literature review of 46 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and 2020, we first report information's on learners’ uses demonstrating the prevalence of media multitasking and its effect on academic achievement. We then show that these uses can interfere with the retention of learning content, as well as with comprehension, under certain conditions and in a non-systematic way.Discussion–conclusionFinally, we discuss some recommendations that can be drawn from these studies: considering technologies and including their uses during learning or limiting their uses, depending on educational choices.     

Risques psychosociaux et capacité de travail des travailleurs âgés : validation du VOW/QFT

Work abilities are defined as a balance between worker own characteristics and the job requirements. The VOW/QFT has been developed in Belgium in order to understand older workers work ability by taking account of the risk factors related to the job strains, and in particular the psychosocial risk factors. The validation analysis of the VOW/QFT was carried out following the proposals of Churchill paradigm (Churchill, 1979; Roussel, 2005): exploratory analysis, confirmatory analysis and correlation analysis. The factorial structure of the questionnaire appeared stable; dimensions internal consistency is high. The regression analysis showed that work ability is explained to nearly 30% by the psychosocial risk factors, and mainly by the pleasure felt at work.     

Prévention du suicide de la personne âgée : la place des interventions communautaires

Although elders’ social isolation has been a topic of interest for public policies in the recent years, its prevention, specifically in relation to suicide prevention, has not stimulated the interest of researchers, yet. This paper present the results from a literature review aiming to identify the actions in elders’ suicide prevention. From the 425 initial papers identified on elders’ suicide prevention, only 57 describe “actions” in suicide prevention, 47 of which are actions targeting individuals, with psychological, psychiatric or psychotherapeutic interventions. Only eight researches integrate the social environment as a facilitator for suicide prevention. We discuss the particularity of this field, the limits of an individual-centred approach, and the interests of community, integrative interventions.     

"I would eagerly leave Neuchâtel ..." A 1912 letter by Jean Piaget with an introduction and notes

A 1912 letter from fifteen-year-old Jean Piaget (1896-1980) to the director of the Museum of Natural History of Geneva illustrates Piaget's precocious integration into a community of professional naturalists, and reveals his hitherto unknown plan to study medicine. It is not certain whether he actually intended to realize that plan. An essential biographical fact, however, is that he finally left natural history by turning to philosophy rather than to medicine.     

Norme francophone de complétion de trigrammes chez des participants âgés de 30 à 93 ans

This paper provides normative data for a 102-item word-stem completion task. Participants are scattered into four age groups (30/40, 40/50, 50/60, 60/70 years and 70 and more). They were asked to complete a series of word-stems by adding two letters to produce a maximum of French words of five letters long. The final database presents various indicators of completion as a function of age and word-stem polarity. In addition, normative data for each age group are included in order to compare each participant’s performance to the score obtained by a sample of the same age. This database should help researchers to construct experimental material by considering altogether, firstly, the production in French language compared to subjective production frequency and secondly, the intergroup and intragroup variability.     

L’âge subjectif en contexte de formation. Étude auprès d’une population estudiantine roumaine

Subjective age is a little-used variable in psychological research, in spite of being considered by numerous authors a more accurate indicator as compared to the chronological age. The current research aims to concentrate on the subjective age of the students while in their formation years and to identify the connections that it establishes with their chronological age and their subjective age in general. Two hundred and twenty-eight students from the university of Brasov, aged between 18 and 56 answered two questionnaires (the Romanian adaptation of the Staitz and McClay (1998) questionnaire and the adaptation of the same questionnaire to the context of academic formation). The questionnaires were separated by another one, administered for relaxation purposes. The results show that there exists a subjective age during the formation years, which is different from, but nonetheless correlated to the chronological age and to the subjective age in general. The results bring forward the impact of the context, in the given situation an academic one, on the age that one gives himself.     

Définition de la qualité de vie par des personnes âgées

Semi structured interviews about Quality of Life were conducted with 19 elder persons in France. After performing text analyses of these interviews, 10 dimensions of Quality of Life from the own elder people perspective were defined. Subsequently, from these dimensions, four profiles of quality of life were obtained using the cluster analyses. These profiles of quality of life were discussed in terms of style of adaptation.     

Différences liées à l’âge dans la reconnaissance visuelle des mots chez l’adulte

The aim of the present research was to investigate whether written word recognition performance varies as a function of age by mean of studying the word frequency effect in French. Three lexical decision experiments were performed by young (range = 18–31 years) and older adults (range = 60–83 years). As a whole, the results showed a decrease of the word frequency effect with aging (Experiments 1, 2 and 3). The data specified that this change was not due to orthographic neighbourhood (Experiment 2), but depended on the congruency between objective and subjective word frequencies (Experiment 3). These findings are discussed in the framework of word recognition models and aging theories. They further highlight the importance of using frequency measures adapted to the populations in the field of aging research.     

L’appropriation de l’espace chez les personnes âgées dépendantes résidants en EHPAD

IntroductionThe present study focuses on space acquisition process in dependant elderly people living in institution.ObjectiveOur aim was to assess the role of the type of space and level of control on the quality of life in dependant elderly people living in institution.MethodThree variables were examined. The type of space (private versus collective, evaluated with two scales), the level of control (Levenson's IPC and EHIPA) and the quality of life (SF-36 and Geriatric Depression Scale). Our sample consisted of 30 elderly people living in institution.ResultsOur results showed that: (1) subjects appropriate more the private space than the collective space; (2) the level of control influences the acquisition process of collective space but not private space; and (3) the more subjects appropriate the collective space, the better is their quality of life.ConclusionThe results propose that potential applications should be developed in institution.     

Profils de routinisation différents chez les personnes âgées : entre adaptation et vulnérabilité

IntroductionThe purpose of the present investigation is to study the routinisation process in elderly persons according to physical, functional, psychological and cognitive resources.MethodsA person-centered approach revealed six profiles of resources in 235 elderly French participants from the 13-year follow-up of PAQUID cohort study.ResultsDifferent functioning profiles were highlighted and were significantly associated with different degrees and functions of routinisation. For the most routinised persons, the routinisation was associated with adaptive functioning. Instead for the less routinised persons, the routinisation was defined as a vulnerability marker. It seems also that this adaptive strategy was less used in persons with dementia.DiscussionThe adaptive attitudes, in particular the routinisation, would be less effective at higher levels of vulnerability.     

Bien-être à la retraite selon le genre et l’âge : lien avec la perception du travail ancien

We focused on the direct relationship between job satisfaction experienced during working life and life-satisfaction after retirement. Also we wonder on differences about aspects of the former work evoked as pleasant. These questions are treated by differentiating women and men perceptions, and the perceptions according to age. Data on 396 French subjects, 182 men and 214 women (age range 66 to 98) were used to examine how life-satisfaction in retirement is linked to the perception of former job satisfaction. Other indications of adaptation are retained, as self-esteem or conversely boredom. Results show a) that job satisfaction is a predictable variable for life-satisfaction after retirement, b) that this impact is weaker for youngest, c) a strong similarity between men and women, whatever is their age. We discuss observed links.