Stuck in a Vicious Cycle? Career Aspirations and Entrapment Among Turkish Au Pairs in the United States

While the service demands of au pair programs have come under much scrutiny, less visible are the ways in which au pair positions are utilized as a career transformation strategy for skilled young women. Building on in-depth and semi-structured interviews with a dozen college-educated Turkish au pairs who left their jobs in Turkey to take care of children abroad, this study shows how young women hope to utilize the educational component of the au pair year to realize their aspirations for career change. However, attempting to stretch the au pair system beyond its original purpose runs the risk of trapping mobile young women in a continuing cycle of service jobs that hinder their academic and career goals. The study shows that transient positions provide only a limited venue to create sufficient human capital and capability to realize such aspirations, instead leading to the effective entrapment of young women abroad in potentially precarious legal and financial positions.     

Memory and metamemory for semantic information in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Several studies have been conducted on OCD patients' memory and metamemory performance in episodic tasks. However, there is a clear lack of research addressing these issues for semantic memory (i.e., retrieval of information from long-term memory). Although findings regarding a memory deficit is somewhat equivocal, the empirical evidence clearly demonstrates that OCD patients with primarily checking compulsions show reduced confidence in their memory performance. The purpose of the present study was to investigate memory and metamemory performance of checkers in semantic memory domain. We compared checker OCD patients, non-checker OCD patients and normal controls on their ability to retrieve answers to general knowledge questions with a recall as well as a recognition test. We also investigated prospective (feeling-of-knowing (FOK)) and retrospective (confidence) metamemory judgments. Checker OCs were not poorer in retrieving semantic information from long-term memory. Neither were they less confident about their ability to remember currently unrecallable information in the future (FOK judgments) or about the accuracy of retrieved information (confidence judgments). Moreover, accuracy of metamemory judgments were comparable across groups. Overall, our results revealed that checker OCs do not show a memory or metamemory deficit when semantic memory was concerned, suggesting that any memory and metamemory deficit may be special to recently experienced materials.     

Canonical Categories in Flashbulb Memories

Recall of canonical categories has been widely used to measure flashbulb memory performance. However, these canonical categories are based on a single study and have been inconsistently used in the literature making comparisons across studies potentially problematic. The purpose of the present study was to provide further data toward determining the generality of canonical categories. We asked 135 participants to provide open‐ended narratives of how they first learned about three public events, one of which was also a personal event for some of the participants. Results showed that seven categories of information consisting of two new categories (others present and thought) in addition to the five identified by Brown and Kulik (place, informant, activity, own affect, and aftermath) accounted for most of the information in flashbulb memory narratives. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The relation of the conceptual self to recent and distant autobiographical memories

Based on the self-memory system model (SMS; Conway, Singer, & Tagini, 2004) of autobiographical memory, this study uses a large sample of young and middle-aged adults to investigate the relation between individuals’ current self-characteristics and the content of both their earliest childhood memory and a recent memory. In the first session, participants’ current self-characteristics were assessed. In the second session, individuals provided a written narrative of their earliest childhood memory and a more recent memory (within-participants design) and rated the self themes present in each memory. In keeping with the SMS model, findings show that current self-characteristics were reflected in individuals’ memories. As predicted, however, recent memories were more frequently linked to current self-characteristics than were earliest memories. All six current self-characteristics predicted the inclusion of these themes in recent memories, but only four self-characteristics were associated with memory themes in earliest memories. The relation between current self-characteristics and memory themes did not differ across young and middle-aged adults, suggesting developmental stability in these relations. Findings provide general support for the SMS model but also suggest possibilities for its extension and refinement.     

The characteristics of separation-individuation in Turkish High School students

The aim of the present study was examine the characteristics of separation-individuation in Turkish high school students and to investigate the contribution of sociodemographic variables on this second individuation process of adolescence. The sample consisted of 618 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 in three urban and two rural high schools (338 females and 280 males). Measures used included a demographic questionnaire and the Separation-Individuation Test of Adolescence (SITA), developed by Levin, Green, and Millon (1986). Results indicated that the 16-year-old group had significantly higher mean scores on the Engulfment Anxiety, Dependency Denial, and Rejection Expectancy subscales than the 15-year-old group. Males had significantly higher scores on the Practicing-Mirroring subscale than girls. Tenth graders had significantly higher mean scores on the Practicing-Mirroring, Nurturance Seeking, Peer Enmeshment, Teacher Enmeshment, and Healthy Separation subscales but the mean scores on the Dependency Denial and Engulfment Anxiety subscales decreased. The means scores on the Practicing-Mirroring, Dependency, Denial, Separation Anxiety, Teacher Enmeshment, and Rejection Expectancy subscales were significantly different among the socioeconomic status groups. Also, rural adolescents can be distinguished from urban counterparts by their increased tendency to perceive themselves as self-centered, to experience separation anxiety, to seek close interpersonal ties with caretakers, teachers, and peers, and by an integration of needs for dependence and independence. The general pattern of results investigating the separation-individuation development of Turkish adolescents suggested that compared with individualistic Western cultures, Turkish culture stressed the importance of connection as well as separation and psychic restructuring and interpersonal relatedness changes leading to an autonomous self within relational contexts.     

The Relationship Between Mindfulness and Happiness in Student-Athletes: The Role of Self-Compassion—Mediator or Moderator?

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - In the present study, the mediating and moderating role of self-compassion in the relationship between mindfulness and happiness was...     

Consistency of adults’ earliest memories across two years

ABSTRACT

The consistency of earliest memories in content, dating, and memory qualities was investigated. A total of 84 (27 males; M_age?=?24.93, SD?=?1.36) adults reported earliest memories, estimated ages, and rated their recollections on memory qualities with a two-year time lag. At Time 2, their original reports at Time 1 were presented and they were asked to report whether the earliest memories they recalled at Time 2 were the same. Fifty-six per cent of the participants reported the same earliest memories and those remembering the same events had earlier memories than those remembering different ones. Although no significant differences were observed in estimated ages on the basis of mean ages, a predating bias of later memories and a tendency to postdate earlier memories were observed on the basis of a 48-month cut-off point. Thus, how the data is analysed is critical in detecting dating biases or errors affecting conclusions and interpretations about the dating consistency of earliest memories. Finally, memory qualities of earliest memories displayed a high level of consistency with a two-year time lag regardless of remembering the same versus different event.     

Minority status,access to information,and individual performance

With growing nationality diversity in organizations, the question under which circumstances differences in nationality background between team members affect individual performance increases in importance. Research showed that dissimilarity may negatively affect individual performance and that the status difference between nationality majority and nationality minority moderates this effect. We take this analysis an important step further by recognizing that not all nationality minorities are low status and propose that status differences among nationality minority groups influence the extent to which nationality minority background affects individual performance. We identify the elaboration of distributed information in the team as a mediator and process accountability as a moderator in this effect. Results of a multilevel team experiment in which we manipulated team nationality composition and process accountability supported our hypotheses, testifying to the value of status-based distinctions between minority groups in the study of relational demography effects. The mediating role of the elaboration of distributed information also provides an important bridge to team diversity research inviting further conceptual integration.