Creating flexible work arrangements through idiosyncratic deals

A survey of 887 employees in a German government agency assessed the antecedents and consequences of idiosyncratic arrangements individual workers negotiated with their supervisors. Work arrangements promoting the individualization of employment conditions, such as part-time work and telecommuting, were positively related to the negotiation of idiosyncratic deals ("i-deals"). Worker personal initiative also had a positive effect on i-deal negotiation. Two types of i-deals were studied: flexibility in hours of work and developmental opportunities. Flexibility i-deals were negatively related and developmental i-deals positively related to work-family conflict and working unpaid overtime. Developmental i-deals were also positively related to increased performance expectations and affective organizational commitment, while flexibility i-deals were unrelated to either.     

A lifespan database of adult facial stimuli.

Faces constitute a unique and widely used category of stimuli. In spite of their importance, there are few collections of faces for use in research, none of which adequately represent the different ages of faces across the lifespan. This lack of a range of ages has limited the majority of researchers to using predominantly young faces as stimuli even when their hypotheses concern both young and old participants. We describe a database of 575 individual faces ranging from ages 18 to 93. Our database was developed to be more representative of age groups across the lifespan, with a special emphasis on recruiting older adults. The resulting database has faces of 218 adults age 18-29, 76 adults age 30-49, 123 adults age 50-69, and 158 adults age 70 and older. These faces may be acquired for research purposes from http://agingmind.cns.uiuc.edu/facedb/. This will allow researchers interested in using facial stimuli access to a wider age range of adult faces than has previously been available.     

Strategies for Securing Commitment to Treatment from Individuals Diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder

Individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are notoriously difficult to engage in treatment. The purpose of this paper is to highlight therapeutic strategies that are likely to facilitate early alliance in therapy with individuals diagnosed with BPD. The seven strategies include, collaborative assessment, the use of contracts, motivational interviewing, linking treatment targets to client goals, commitment strategies, validation, and the use of metaphors. Clinical vignettes are presented to elucidate the concepts described and demonstrate their use in clinical practice.     

Thirty years on – a large anti‐Flynn effect/ (II): 13‐ and 14‐year‐olds. Piagetian tests of formal operations norms 1976–2006/7

Background Shayer, Ginsburg, and Coe (2007) showed that children leaving primary school in Y6 entered secondary school with much lower levels of understanding of the physical conservations than in 1976. It seemed desirable to investigate cognitive development in the first three years of secondary education. Aims By using two Piagetian tests of formal operations, one of which had been used in the 1976 CSMS survey, the performance of Y8 and Y9 pupils would be compared with the survey results published in 1978. Sample Eight schools were selected as willing to test their Y9 or Y8 classes on either the Pendulum (in 2007) or the Equilibrium in the Balance tests (in 2006), giving 39 classes on which to make the comparison with 1976 performance. Method Regression of the pupils' class mean on each formal test on either the class's 2004 MidYIS or nferCAT standardized scores, and computing the regression at IQ = 100 allows comparison with that found in 1976. Results On Equilibrium in the Balance the Y8 pupils were down on the proportion at the early formal level or above by ?0.61 standard deviations (SD) for boys and ?0.63 SD for girls on the 1976 results. On the Pendulum the Y9 boys were down by ?0.49 SD and the girls by ?0.48 SD on the proportion at the early formal level or above. Conclusion The negative Flynn‐effect found on Volume & Heaviness for Y7 pupils is paralleled by a similar negative effect on attainment of formal operations by Y8 and Y9, compared with 1976. Yet at the same time the proportion of pupils using the top level of concrete operational thinking has increased on both tests. It seems that there has been a change either in general societal pressures on the individual or in the style of teaching in schools – or both – favouring a lower level of processing of reality.     

The Diving Bell Meets the Butterfly: Identity Lost andRe-Membered

Jean Dominique Bauby, former editor of Elle, suffereda stroke to his brain stem that left him with locked-in syndrome. Subsequently, through blinking his left eye, he writes his memoirof this experience, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Thispaper explores the meaning of embodiment, especially as one'sbody bears upon one's personal identity. It explores the variouschallenges and threats to selfhood that result from Bauby'sexperience and recounts how Bauby rises to the challenge throughhis memory and imagination.     

Body satisfaction and pressure to be thin in younger and older Muslim and non-Muslim women: The role of Western and non-Western dress preferences

Younger and older Muslim and non-Muslim women living in the United States completed questionnaires about body satisfaction and their internalization of Western standards of beauty (thin-ideal). Younger Muslim women wearing non-Western clothing and a head veil were significantly less likely to express drive for thinness or pressure to attain a thin-ideal standard of beauty than women wearing Western dress or younger women wearing non-Western dress without a head veil. Older women, while expressing greater discrepancy between their ideal body shape and their current body shape, and less satisfaction with their bodies than younger women, reported less drive for thinness and less pressure to attain the Western thin-ideal standard of beauty than younger women. These results are discussed in terms of how factors such as age and religion may serve as protective factors against a strong or unhealthy drive for thinness or thin-ideal standard.     

Evidence of teaching in atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) by mother dolphins foraging in the presence of their calves

Teaching is a powerful form of social learning, but there is little systematic evidence that it occurs in species other than humans. Using long-term video archives the foraging behaviors by mother Atlantic spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) were observed when their calves were present and when their calves were not present, including in the presence of non-calf conspecifics. The nine mothers we observed chased prey significantly longer and made significantly more referential body-orienting movements in the direction of the prey during foraging events when their calves were present than when their calves were not present, regardless of whether they were foraging alone or with another non-calf dolphin. Although further research into the potential consequences for the naïve calves is still warranted, these data based on the maternal foraging behavior are suggestive of teaching as a social-learning mechanism in nonhuman animals.