There is more to life stories than memories

Current theories focus on the role of specific memories in organising the life story. However, temporally extended structures of autobiographical memory, like lifetime periods and mini-narratives (here termed chapters), may also play a central role in the organisation of the life story. Here, 30 elderly participants were asked to tell their life story in a free format. The life stories were divided into components and coded as chapters, specific memories, categoric memories, facts, chapters about other people, and autobiographical reasoning categories, i.e., reflections, evaluations, life lessons, and inferences about personality. The results show that chapters were much more common than specific memories in the life stories, indicating that chapters may play a role in the structuring of life stories. The number of chapters and specific memories in the life stories were unrelated, suggesting that the recounting of chapters versus specific memories does not reflect a preferred recall style.     

Interests and Neonates: There Is More to the Story than We Explicitly Acknowledge

Although there are many different moral arguments concerning the use of Best Interests in neonatal decision-making, there seems in practice a firm commitment to application of the concept. And yet, there is still little reflection given by practitioners about what employing a Best Interest determination means in infant care. The following lays out a comprehensive taxonomy of interest-sources in order to provide for more robust considerations of what constitutes best interests of/for neonates.     

There is more to anger coping than "in" or "out"

There is growing dissatisfaction with a dichotomized "anger-in" versus "anger-out" view of anger coping. Three studies using student and community adultsamples revealed a broader understanding of the nature of anger coping styles and led to the development of the new Behavioral Anger Response Questionnaire (BARQ). The BARQ is empirically derived and factorially validated and has good psychometrics. Results suggest that dichotomizing anger responses as "in" versus "out" is too coarse and that a 6-factor model may be more appropriate. The 6 factors identified here are Direct Anger-Out, Assertion, Support-Seeking, Diffusion, Avoidance, and Rumination. Women reported use of a wider range of anger coping styles, especially more social support-seeking and more use of anger diffusion strategies than men.     

More than One Way to Get There: Pathways of Change in Coparenting Conflict after a Preventive Intervention

This study explored pathways of change in the levels of conflict couples experienced after Supporting Father Involvement, an evidence‐based, prevention‐oriented couples and parenting intervention that included a diverse low‐income and working class group of participants. Pathways of change were examined for couples with baseline conflict scores that were initially low, medium, and high. The growth mixture model analysis found that the best‐fitting model for change in couples' conflict was represented by three distinctly different change patterns. The intervention was most successful for High‐Conflict couples. This finding contributes to a growing literature examining variations in how relationships change over time and the process of change, especially for couples in distress. This study supports further investigation into the impact and costs associated with universal interventions versus those that target specific groups of higher risk families.     

Proof-Theoretic Semantics,a Problem with Negation and Prospects for Modality

This paper discusses proof-theoretic semantics, the project of specifying the meanings of the logical constants in terms of rules of inference governing them. I concentrate on Michael Dummett’s and Dag Prawitz’ philosophical motivations and give precise characterisations of the crucial notions of harmony and stability, placed in the context of proving normalisation results in systems of natural deduction. I point out a problem for defining the meaning of negation in this framework and prospects for an account of the meanings of modal operators in terms of rules of inference.     

Choice Matters More with Others: Choosing to be with Other People is More Consequential to Well-Being than Choosing to be Alone

Stable social relationships are conducive to well-being. However, similar effects are not reported consistently for daily social interactions in affecting episodic (experiential) subjective well-being (ESWB). The present investigation suggests that the choice of being in a social context plays an important moderating role, such that social interactions increase ESWB only if taken place by one's choice. Moreover, it is argued that choice matters more in a social context than in an alone context because experiences with others are amplified. These ideas were tested and supported in two studies: An experiment that manipulated social context and choice status, and a 10-day experience-sampling study, which explored these variables in real-life settings. Results showed that being with others by one’s choice had the strongest positive association with ESWB, sense of meaning, and control, whereas being with others not by one’s choice—the strongest negative association with ESWB. Effects of being alone on ESWB also varied by choice status, but to a lesser extent. The findings offer theoretical and practical insights into the effects of the social environment on well-being.

     

More than one pathway to action understanding

Many believe that the ability to understand the actions of others is made possible by mirror neurons and a network of brain areas known as the action-observation network (AON). Despite nearly two decades of research into mirror neurons and the AON, however, there is little evidence that they enable the inference of the intention of observed actions. Instead, theories of action selection during action execution indicate that a ventral pathway, linking middle temporal gyrus with the anterior inferior frontal gyrus, might encode these abstract features during action observation. Here I propose that action understanding requires more than merely the AON, and might be achieved through interactions between a ventral pathway and the dorsal AON.     

Modality effects in delayed free recall and recognition: Visual is better than auditory

During presentation of auditory and visual lists of words, different groups of subjects generated words that either rhymed with the presented words or that were associates. Immediately after list presentation, subjects recalled either the presented or the generated words. After presentation and test of all lists, a final free recall test and a recognition test were given. Visual presentation generally produced higher recall and recognition than did auditory presentation for both encoding conditions. The results are not consistent with explanations of modality effects in terms of echoic memory or greater temporal distinctiveness of auditory items. The results are more in line with the separate-streams hypothesis, which argues for different kinds of input processing for auditory and visual items.     

There is Room for Even More Doublethink: The Perilous Status of Psychoanalytic Research

The opposition between psychoanalysis and systematic interdisciplinary research is to be regretted. The target article attempts to bridge the intellectual divide and for this aim as well as the intellectual adroitness shown it is to be celebrated. Much harder to understand is the high level of affect generated by the debate. Accusations of “doublethink” are helpful. The present paper, like the target paper it follows, attempts to develop an understanding of the position of those who are categorically opposed to interdisciplinary systematic research linked to psychoanalysis. Appreciating the perspective of those deeply opposed to such work could help to create a shared agenda from which our troubled discipline could benefit. This is predicated on the possibility of an open collegial dialogue which this journal was founded to create.     

More than a feeling

According to rationalist conceptions of moral agency, the constitutive capacities of moral agency are rational capacities. So understood, rationalists are often thought to have a problem with feeling. For example, many believe that rationalists must reject the attractive Aristotelian thought that moral activity is by nature pleasant. I disagree. It is easy to go wrong here because it is easy to assume that pleasure is empirical rather than rational and so extrinsic rather than intrinsic to moral agency, rationalistically conceived. Drawing on underappreciated elements of Kant's moral psychology, I sketch an alternative form of rationalism, according to which moral activity is by nature pleasant because at least some pleasures are by nature rational.     

More than One Flaw: Reply to Millican

Millican (Mind 113(451):437–476, 2004) claims to have detected ‘the one fatal flaw in Anselm’s ontological argument.’ I argue that there is more than one important flaw in the position defended in Millican (Mind 113(451):437–476, 2004). First, Millican’s reconstruction of Anselm’s argument does serious violence to the original text. Second, Millican’s generalised objection fails to diagnose any flaw in a vast range of ontological arguments. Third, there are independent reasons for thinking that Millican’s generalised objection is unpersuasive.     

A Research Note: Happiness by Age is More Complex than U-Shaped

Happiness varies with age, but there is no general agreement regarding the feature of the variation. Many studies have found that it is U-shaped such that there is a minimum between approximately 40 and 50 years of age. The result largely depends on the control variables used in the happiness modeling. Some authors do not even allow the use of any control variables, but the conventional theory of U-shaped studies stipulates the inclusion of such controls that essentially influence the basic living conditions of people. In this study, we do not strictly follow earlier findings but estimate our age-shape with different versions of them, using the data of 28 or 30 European countries. We also estimate a model without proper controls. This does not give any minimum age and thus supports some studies. Moreover, using any or all of our three controls some type of U-shape is found in most countries. Our U-shapes are not as simple as conventional research suggests. Minimum happiness can occur either below 40 years, or much above 50 years. A special feature is that the U-shape phenomenon holds better for males than for females. We also estimated models to see what happens after the minimum age happiness. In the case of gender models, the turning points for males are substantially lower than for females. This means that the old-age happiness of males stops to increase approximately at 70 years but more than 10 years later for females.     

More to 3-D vision than meets the eye

Does self-motion affect object recognition? Researchers have long studied how 3-D objects are recognized from different points of view, but have disregarded the observers' own movement by keeping them motionless. A recent study by Simons et al. shows that self-motion cannot be ignored, as it changes the way that objects are recognized.