For Better and For Worse: Differential Susceptibility to Environmental Influences

ABSTRACT— Evidence that adverse rearing environments exert negative effects particularly on children presumed "vulnerable" for temperamental or genetic reasons may actually reflect something else: heightened susceptibility to the negative effects of risky environments and to the beneficial effects of supportive environments. Building on Belsky's (1997, 2005) evolutionary-inspired proposition that some children are more affected—both for better and for worse—by their rearing experiences than are others, we consider recent work on child vulnerability, including that involving measured genes, along with evidence showing that putatively vulnerable children are especially susceptible to both positive and negative rearing effects. We also consider methodological issues and unanswered questions in the differential-susceptibility equation.     

Links Between Reactive Attachment Disorder,Caregiving and Temperament: A Differential Susceptibility Perspective

Abstract

The links between Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) and temperament received relatively little research attention, in spite of their clinical and social relevance. Children with RAD sustain disproportionate burdens of early adversity related to their caregiving environment. However, there seem to be important individual differences in susceptibility to adversity, since only a small number of children show signs of RAD. Based on the work of Zeanah and Fox, this review aims to bring new insights to this relevant clinical issue in light of recent research. A differential susceptibility hypothesis will be considered as a promising and innovative approach toward a further understanding of the links between temperament and RAD.     

A Brunswikean Approach to Tratt Continuity: Application to Shyness

A new method of assessing the continuity of traits independent of their stability is proposed that is based on Brunswik's lens model of person perception. The method is applied to the continuity of shyness between preschool age and adulthood. A sample of 108 children (observed at age 4 and again at age 6) and a sample of 70 university students were video-taped in conversations with adult strangers. Detailed coding of 17 different behaviors revealed a highly similar rank order of their validity coefficients for parental reports of children's shyness, self-reports of students' shyness, and observer judgments of both children's and students' shyness, even after controlling for differences in the behaviors' reliability. These findings suggest that the construct of shyness shows a strong continuity from preschool age through adulthood. The proposed methodology can also be applied to the continuity of emotional states or to the cross-situational generality of traits and states.     

Depressive Tendencies and Susceptibility to Anxiety: Differential Personality Correlates

Although the constructs of depression and anxiety are conceptually and clinically separable, they have been difficult to separate psychometrically. The present study is an attempt to statistically disentangle the two constructs and to evaluate their differential correlates. A common factor analysis of the items in a depression and an anxiety inventory was conducted using data collected from two samples—208 college students and eighty-seven 18-year-olds participating in the Block Longitudinal Study. In both samples two factors, interpreted as depressive tendencies and susceptibility to anxiety, were found; the factor loadings on each factor were highly correlated across the two samples. No sex differences were found in these factor structures. Factor-based scores comprised of well-differentiating items were computed for participants in the Block sample. Using partial correlation analyses, observer-measured as well as self-report-based personality correlates of the specific variance associated with depressive tendencies and with susceptibility to anxiety, respectively, were contrasted. The results indicated that a strong interpersonal component discernible in depression was less noticeable in anxiety.     

Dehumanization: A New Perspective

Dehumanization has traditionally been understood as an extreme form of prejudice that enables violence and cruelty. Recent work indicates that it can also take subtle and everyday forms. We give an overview of early contributions to the psychological study of dehumanization before reviewing recent research on the attribution and denial of humanness. We emphasize our own research program, which proceeds from a theoretical analysis of two distinct senses of humanness, which when denied to others yield two forms of dehumanization. In one form, people are denied uniquely human attributes and likened to animals, and in the other, they are denied essentially human attributes and likened to machines. We discuss the ways in which these two forms of dehumanization are manifest in perceptions of individuals and groups, and speculate on the cognitive and motivational processes involved.     

团队断裂带:团队多样性研究的新视角——从单一指标到多重指标

团队断裂带是指团队基于多种团队构成特征而分化为几个具有本身同质、彼此异质的差异性子团队的"虚拟的分割线"。本研究从构成、状态、测量及作用机理方面阐述了团队断裂带最新的研究进程及结果,并在此基础上建构了团队断裂带的研究框架。最后总结未来的研究应当在团队断裂带的调节机制、团队成员退出加入的动态机制、社会分类断裂带和信息相关断裂带的交互作用及团队情境对断裂带的影响等方面做进一步的探索。     

哲学咨询:精神疾病的新视角

哲学咨询旨在通过哲学的理论与方法帮助人们解决日常问题;预防与治疗精神疾病、为疾病的医学治疗提供辅助;并在此基础上启发培养智慧.哲学咨询的方法有非程式化的方法与程式化的方法两类.前者主张开放的多元化方法,后者在实践中形成了模式化的方法.哲学咨询因其超越治疗的视角优势而成为精神医学和心理治疗的补充,甚至是替代性选择.     

生态学习观:一种审视学习的新视角

学习理论作为教育心理学的重要组成部分,百余年来发展繁盛。然而,无论是行为主义、信息加工、建构主义、还是目前流行的社会文化观,每一种学习理论所能描述和解释的不过是学习现象的某些方面或某一层次,都未能反映出人类学习的完整图景。本文尝试提出生态学习的思想,试图展现学习的整体、适应和多元的面孔。     

A New Perspective on Employee Lateness

In contrast to absence and turnover, the relevant antecedents that would lead an individual to arrive late at work have not yet been clearly presented in one model. This article suggests a two-stage formulation with attitudes triggering one track, and other antecedents including personality, commuting-related variables, culture, and work-family conflict serving to influence a second source of lateness. Furthermore, the model integrates some of the ideas usually included in a progression model by delineating a process that links the various types of withdrawal measures. Finally, the article describes another set of variables, minor withdrawal behaviours, which are hard for management to detect but may serve as a behavioural antecedent of employee lateness.     

Psychological Defense Mechanisms: A New Perspective

Approaching psychological defense mechanisms from the perspective of an evolved strategy, it is proposed that there are two basic templates-dissociation and cognitive distortions. Frequently conceived of as pathological, these psychological phenomena actually constitute overlapping spectrums with milder manifestations being common and highly functional, and more severe variants less common and typically dysfunctional. Dissociation provides the capacity to adaptively detach from disturbing emotional states, and cognitive distortions place a positive ego-enhancing spin on experience. Most of the classical defense mechanisms described in the psychoanalytic literature represent a form of cognitive distortion with some containing strong elements of dissociation.     

Shyness: relationship to social phobia and other psychiatric disorders

The relationship between shyness, social phobia and other psychiatric disorders was examined. The prevalence of social phobia was significantly higher among shy persons (18%) compared with non-shy persons (3%). However, the majority of shy individuals (82%) were not socially phobic. A significant and positive correlation was found between the severity of shyness and the presence of social phobia, but the data suggest that social phobia is not merely severe shyness. Social phobia was also positively and moderately correlated with introversion and neuroticism. Thus, shy persons with social phobia were shyer, more introverted, and more neurotic than other shy people, but none of these factors was sufficient to distinguish shy persons with social phobia from those without social phobia. The proportion of the shy group with psychiatric diagnoses other than social phobia was significantly higher than among the non-shy group, indicating that various diagnostic categories are prominent among the shy. The results are discussed in terms of the overlap in shyness and social phobia and the relationship of shyness to other psychiatric diagnoses and personality dimensions.     

The Body-Machine Interface: A New Perspective on an Old Theme

ABSTRACT

Body-machine interfaces establish a way to interact with a variety of devices, allowing their users to extend the limits of their performance. Recent advances in this field, ranging from computer interfaces to bionic limbs, have had important consequences for people with movement disorders. The authors provide an overview of the basic concepts underlying the body-machine interface with special emphasis on their use for rehabilitation and for operating assistive devices. They outline the steps involved in building such an interface and highlight the critical role of body-machine interfaces in addressing theoretical issues in motor control as well as their utility in movement rehabilitation.     

Proximal and Distal Defense: A New Perspective on Unconscious Motivation

Death-related thoughts produce different effects on thought and behavior when they are in current focal attention and when they are on the fringes of consciousness. When such thoughts are conscious, people attempt to either remove them from consciousness or push death into the distant future by distorting their beliefs to logically imply that they have many remaining years to live. When such thoughts are highly accessible but outside current focal attention, people increase efforts to view themselves as persons of value living in a meaningful universe. In this way, awareness of the inevitability of death produces diverse effects on human thought and behavior that bear little obvious resemblance to the problem of death.     

A New Perspective Concerning Experiments on Semantic Intuitions

Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich [2004; forthcoming] use experimental methods to raise a spectre of doubt about reliance on intuitions in developing theories of reference which are then deployed in philosophical arguments outside the philosophy of language. Machery et al. ran a cross-cultural survey asking Western and East Asian participants about a famous case from the philosophical literature on reference (Kripke's Gödel example). They interpret their results as indicating that there is significant variation in participants' intuitions about semantic reference for that case. We argue that this interpretation is mistaken. We detail a type of ambiguity found in Machery et al.'s probe but not yet noted in the response literature. We argue that this epistemic ambiguity could have affected their results. We do not stop there, however: Rather than rest content with a possibility claim, we ran four studies to test the impact of this ambiguity on participants' responses. We found that this accounts for much of the variation in Machery et al.'s original experiment. We conclude that in the light of our new data, their argument is no longer convincing.     

Shyness Clinic: A Social Development Program for Adolescents and Young Adults

Shyness clinic groups were offered in a university counseling center for adolescents and young adults experiencing discomfort and difficulties in interpersonal relationships. Thirty-four students went through a preassessment and screening procedure. Twenty-three participated fully in the program. The first part of the program focused on anxiety management; the second on assertiveness in social relationships; and the third on development of conversational skills. According to results on preprogram and postprogram self-report inventories, written feedback from participants, and observations of the group leaders, participants improved in social skills and ability to manage anxiety.     

害羞的界定和测量与研究方法述评

从害羞的界定、已有评估工具的性质及研究方法等方面进行综述,并对目前害羞研究的新进展展开讨论,最后探讨当今研究中存在的问题和今后努力的方向.