L’indépendance émotionnelle à la mère et au père en lien avec la détresse psychologique chez les jeunes femmes

Women aged from 18 to 25 years old are a group particularly at risk to experience elevated psychological distress. However, only a few studies have documented developmental factors associated with this variable for this population, especially in regard to emotional independence to mother's and father's individuation. The aim of the study is to explore the association between emotional independence to each parent, referring to the underlying emotional aspect related to the distance toward each parent, and psychological distress. The sample includes 1716 French-Canadian college women aged from 18 to 25 who completed an online survey. Results confirm the high prevalence of psychological distress among this population. Emotional independence to mothers and fathers are found to be moderately correlated. However, the mean emotional independence to mothers is significantly lower than the emotional independence to fathers. The results also suggest that low emotional independence, even to only one of parents is associated with higher levels of distress among young women. In contrast, levels of middle and high emotional independence from both parents are associated with lower levels of distress. The findings support the association between emotional independence to each parent and psychological distress. Empirically, further studies should distinguish between mother's and father's emotional independence. Clinically, these results emphasize the need to works patient's emotional independence to both parents.     

An Empiricist Conception of the Relation Between Metaphysics and Science

It is widely acknowledged that metaphysical assumptions, commitments and presuppositions play an important role in science. Yet according to the empiricist there is no place for metaphysics as traditionally understood in the scientific enterprise. In this paper I aim to take a first step towards reconciling these seemingly irreconcilable claims. In the first part of the paper I outline a conception of metaphysics and its relation to science that should be congenial to empiricists, motivated by van Fraassen’s work on ‘stances’. There has been a considerable about of recent work devoted to van Fraassen’s ‘stance’ view, but it has not on the whole been noticed that the view has the potential to motivate a general empiricist conception of the relation between science and metaphysics. In the second and third sections I discuss two examples from biology to illustrate this conception: metaphysical punctuationism, and its relation to and influence on the thesis of punctuated equilibrium; and dialectical biology as defended by Levins and Lewontin.

     

National personality characteristics: II. Adaption-innovation in Canadian,American, and British samples

On the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory 1,106 Canadians scored as more adaptive than American and British standardization samples. Means for Canadian females and males were congruent with those in national samples from six other countries.     

Asymmetric interference in implicit memory: effects of study-test awareness and stimulus order

This study examined the extent to which fragment completion performance is susceptible to the effects of two different forms of interference (proactive and retroactive) and whether any of these effects depend on participants' awareness of the relationship between study and test. Unaware participants were found to be susceptible to proactive but not retroactive interference. Aware participants did not show evidence of susceptibility to either form of interference. These results contribute to the debate about whether implicit memory is immune to interference effects by demarcating the limits of such an immunity.     

Belief in Foreign Supernatural Agents as an Alternate Source of Control When Personal Control Is Threatened

Across four studies (N = 460), we examined whether foreign supernatural agents (i.e., ones outside one’s own religious tradition) can serve as sources of secondary control (by hearing and responding to requests) and compensatory control (by imbuing the world with order and structure) when personal control is threatened. In Study 1, non-Buddhist control-threat participants believed in the Buddha as a source of secondary control more than nonthreat participants. In Study 2, control-threat participants believed in the Buddha as a source of compensatory control, but this effect was found only among those indicating a religious affiliation. Studies 3 and 4 clarified this finding, demonstrating that religious individuals with a strong quest orientation responded to control threat with greater belief in the Buddha (Study 3) and Shamanic ancestral spirits (Study 4) as sources of both secondary and compensatory control. We discuss discrepancies between our findings and extant research and offer directions for future research.     

Fluid compensation following threats to self-concept clarity

We examined defensive responses to self-clarity threats, finding that self-uncertain participants gave larger rewards to a social hero, but larger punishments to a social transgressor, than self-certain participants (Study 1). To examine whether there are individual differences in defensiveness to meaning threats, we included moderators, showing that high self-esteem individuals (HSE) thinking about self-inconsistencies gave more polarized evaluations of someone criticizing vs. complimenting their ingroup than self-consistent HSEs (Study 2). We found similar responses to a relational self-clarity threat, among individuals for whom relationships are self-defining (Study 3). Results held controlling for the impact of the self-clarity manipulations on self-esteem. This research is compatible with the meaning maintenance model, which stipulates that various meaning threats elicit fluid compensatory efforts designed to restore general feelings of meaningfulness. We discuss limitations and future directions.     

Remembering personal change for better or worse: Retrieval context matters

We investigated how focusing on the details (experience focus) versus self-narrative significance (coherence focus) of valenced transitions informs appraisals and emotions at recall. Participants (N = 302) selected a negative or positive transition and rated their emotion. Two weeks later, they described their event using an experience or coherence focus, then rated emotion, event impact, self-relevance, and memory characteristics. A coherence (vs. experience) focus produced lower negative affect and greater psychological impact, particularly for negative transitions. The negative-coherence group showed the largest decrease in negation emotion over time. A coherence (vs. experience) focus resulted in less perceptual detail, reactivity, and re-experiencing. Positive (vs. negative) events were deemed more central to identity and connected to other events. Mental focus informed psychological impact and negative affect, while event valence influenced self-relevance. These findings remained when event type (interpersonal) was matched across groups. Motives for framing autobiographical memories and implications for adaptive self-reflection are discussed.     

Feedforward and feedback consistency effects for high- and low-frequency words in lexical decision and naming

In three experiments, we examined feedforward and feedback consistency effects in word recognition. Feedforward consistency is the degree to which a word's pronunciation is consistent with that of similarly spelled words, and feedback consistency refers to whether there is more than one way to spell a pronunciation. Previously, Stone, Vanhoy, and Van Orden (1997) reported feedforward and feedback consistency effects for low-frequency words in a lexical decision task. We investigated the effect of feedforward and feedback consistency for both high- and low-frequency words in lexical decision and naming. In both tasks, we found that feedforward and feedback inconsistent words were processed more slowly than consistent words, regardless of word frequency. These findings indicate that both types of consistency are involved in visual word recognition.