Differentiating shame from guilt

How does shame differ from guilt? Empirical psychology has recently offered distinct and seemingly incompatible answers to this question. This article brings together four prominent answers into a cohesive whole. These are that (a) shame differs from guilt in being a social emotion; (b) shame, in contrast to guilt, affects the whole self; (c) shame is linked with ideals, whereas guilt concerns prohibitions and (d) shame is oriented towards the self, guilt towards others. After presenting the relevant empirical evidence, we defend specific interpretations of each of these answers and argue that they are related to four different dimensions of the emotions. This not only allows us to overcome the conclusion that the above criteria are either unrelated or conflicting with one another, it also allows us to tell apart what is constitutive from what is typical of them.     

Newborn right-holding is related to depressive symptoms in bottle-feeding mothers but not in breastfeeding mothers

This study examines the relationships between infant holding preferences and maternal depression according to the newborn feeding mode. Links between depression and infant holding biases have been observed in mothers [Vauclair, J., Scola, C. (in press). Dépression, alexithymie et latéralisation dans la fa?on de porter un nouveau-né [Infant holding biases in relation to depression, alexithymia and laterality]. Annales Médico-psychologiques; Weatherill, R. P., Almerigi, J. B., Levendosky, A. A., Bogat, G. A., von Eye, A., & Harris, L. J. (2004). Is maternal depression related to side of infant holding? International Journal of Behavioral Development, 28, 421-427] but the fact that breastfeeding has never been studied in relation to these two factors is surprising as breastfeeding has some influence on depression (e.g., [Mezzacappa, E. S., Guethlein, W., Vaz, N., & Bagiella, E. (2000). A preliminary study of breast-feeding and maternal symptomatology. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 22, 71-79]) and must also affect holding biases. Mothers who just gave birth (N=100) were tested few days after delivery. Measures of handedness, infant holding-side preferences, and level of depressive symptoms expressed by mothers (assessed with the CES-D scale) were collected via questionnaires. Asymmetries in emotional perception were assessed via a Chimeric Figure Task and a Dichotic Listening Task. Results showed that breastfeeding (1) reduced left-side bias for holding newborns and (2) was associated with lowest levels of depressive symptoms. Moreover, holding biases were related to maternal depression in bottle-feeding but not in breastfeeding mothers, namely that holding on the right-side while bottle-feeding was associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms. These results were not due to hemispheric specialization as auditory and visual asymmetries were similar between breastfeeding and bottle-feeding mothers. The discussion emphasizes the striking role of the early mother/child relationship's establishment on infant holding biases.     

Role conflict and academic procrastination: A self‐determination perspective

The purpose of the present study was to propose and test a model of role conflict and academic procrastination. This model posits that non‐self‐determined motivations toward school and interpersonal relationships are positively related to role conflict between these two life domains. In turn, role conflict between school and interpersonal relationships is expected to be positively related to academic procrastination. Participants were 292 university students. Results from structural equation modeling supported the model. It thus appears that self‐determination and role conflict are important to foster our understanding of academic procrastination. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A statistical estimate of infant and toddler vocabulary size from CDI analysis

For the last 20 years, developmental psychologists have measured the variability in lexical development of infants and toddlers using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) - the most widely used parental report forms for assessing language and communication skills in infants and toddlers. We show that CDI reports can serve as a basis for estimating infants' and toddlers'total vocabulary sizes, beyond serving as a tool for assessing their language development relative to other infants and toddlers. We investigate the link between estimated total vocabulary size and raw CDI scores from a mathematical perspective, using both single developmental trajectories and population data. The method capitalizes on robust regularities, such as the overlap of individual vocabularies observed across infants and toddlers, and takes into account both shared knowledge and idiosyncratic knowledge. This statistical approach enables researchers to approximate the total vocabulary size of an infant or a toddler, based on her raw MacArthur-Bates CDI score. Using the model, we propose new normative data for productive and receptive vocabulary in early childhood, as well as a tabulation that relates individual CDI measures to realistic lexical estimates. The correction required to estimate total vocabulary is non-linear, with a far greater impact at older ages and higher CDI scores. Therefore, we suggest that correlations of developmental indices to language skills should be made to vocabulary size as estimated by the model rather than to raw CDI scores.     

Lethal combinations: A conjunctive analysis of crime scene behavior associated with sexual homicide

This research investigates violent stranger rapes and the factors leading these cases to sexual homicides. Variables relating to modus operandi characteristics on one part and offender behavior on the other part are examined using conjunctive analysis of cases configuration to identify the different combinations leading to a lethal outcome. Using a French sample of 1263 cases of violent rapes and 303 cases of sexual homicides involving female adult victims, we find that blows given by offenders and information about physical resistance of victims are strongly associated intentional and non‐intentional sexual homicides. Psychoactive substance consumption by offenders as well associal isolation are in a lesser extend also associated with the lethal outcome.     

Imaging brain plasticity during motor skill learning

The search for the neural substrates mediating the incremental acquisition of skilled motor behaviors has been the focus of a large body of animal and human studies in the past decade. Much less is known, however, with regard to the dynamic neural changes that occur in the motor system during the different phases of learning. In this paper, we review recent findings, mainly from our own work using fMRI, which suggest that: (i) the learning of sequential finger movements produces a slowly evolving reorganization within primary motor cortex (M1) over the course of weeks and (ii) this change in M1 follows more dynamic, rapid changes in the cerebellum, striatum, and other motor-related cortical areas over the course of days. We also briefly review neurophysiological and psychophysical evidence for the consolidation of motor skills, and we propose a working hypothesis of its underlying neural substrate in motor sequence learning.     

Cultivating Resilience in Families Who Foster: Understanding How Families Cope and Adapt Over Time

Families who foster offer essential care for children and youth when their own parents are unable to provide for their safety and well‐being. Foster caregivers face many challenges including increased workload, emotional distress, and the difficulties associated with health and mental health problems that are more common in children in foster care. Despite these stressors, many families are able to sustain fostering while maintaining or enhancing functioning of their unit. This qualitative study applied an adaptational process model of family resilience that emerged in previous studies to examine narratives of persistent, long‐term, and multiple fostering experiences. Data corroborated previous research in two ways. Family resilience was again described as a transactional process of coping and adaptation that evolves over time. This process was cultivated through the activation of 10 family strengths that are important in different ways, during varied phases.     

Effect of Daylight Saving Time on Punctuality for Medical Appointments

We studied the effect of the switch from daylight saving time to winter time on punctuality for medical appointments, thus allowing us to investigate the role of dynamic and analytic modes of time management in time‐based prospective memory tasks. Insofar as some authors assume that the dynamic mode of time management is based on rhythms, we hypothesised that the switch from daylight saving time would cause more disturbances when participants' everyday activity had a weak temporal structure. Results showed that after the switch, participants arrived early for their appointments, but this earliness was not higher for participants whose everyday activity had a low temporal structure than for participants with highly structured everyday activity. Nevertheless, compared to the time they planned to arrive, participants with low regularity of activity arrived earlier after the switch, suggesting that their temporal reference would the time fixed by themselves, rather than the appointment time. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Auditory orienting of attention: Effects of cues and verbal workload with children and adults

The use of tone cues has an improving effect on the auditory orienting of attention for children as for adults. Verbal cues, on the contrary, do not seem to orient attention as efficiently before the age of 9 years. However, several studies have reported inconsistent effects of orienting attention on ear asymmetries. Multiple factors are questioned, such as the role of verbal workload. Indeed, the semantic nature of the dichotic pairs and their load of processing may explain orienting of attention performance. Thus, by controlling for the role of verbal workload, the present experiment aimed to evaluate the development of capacities for the auditory orienting of attention. Right-handed, 6- to 12-year-olds and adults were recruited to complete either a tone cue or a verbal cue dichotic listening task in the identification of familiar words or nonsense words. A factorial design analysis of variance showed a significant right-ear advantage for all the participants and for all the types of stimuli. A major developmental effect was observed in which verbal cues played an important role: they allowed the 6- to 8-year-olds to improve their performance of identification in the left ear. These effects were taken as evidence of the implication of top-down processes in cognitive flexibility across development.