Parental relationships and coping with life stress

Abstract

The primary goal of this investigation was to explore how the quality of parent-student relationships relates to coping style by examining multiple aspects of this relationship–including support and conflict–and by examining the contribution that both parents' and students' perceptions of their relationship make to students' coping reports. We found that perceptions of conflict and depth in the parent-child relationship were each associated with different styles of coping. Moreover, parents' and students' perceptions each accounted for unique variance in students' coping reports. Greater perceived depth (both parent and student reports) predicted higher problem-focused scores, while students' perceptions of conflict predicted higher emotion-focused coping scores. Specific support provisions reported by students and parents also related differentially to the specific coping styles. Finally, the extent to which parents and students reported coping in a similar fashion was predicted by the quality of their relationship.     

Symposium: Research In Projective Techniques

Psychotic and nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients were tested on the Rorschach. "Reality-testing" was measured by four form-level scoring systems designed by Beck, Mayman, Becket, and Wilensky, The psychotic subjects were dichotomized on three diagnostic dimensions: schizophrenia, paranoia, and premorbid social adjustment. No significant differences were found for the Beck system. With the other systems, psychotics showed significantly poorer reality testing than nonpsychotics. No differenced were found for the schizophrenic and paranoid dimensions. The Phillips premorbid adjustment score was negatively correlated with all four measures of "reality-testing." The conclusion drawn was that Rorschach measures of "reality-testing" are associated with psychotic and poor premorbid functioning, but do not differentiate schizophrenic from nonschizophrenic psychotics or paranoid schizophrenics from nonparanoid schizophrenics.     

Further validation of a single‐item measure of social identification

We examine the validity and reliability of a single‐item measure of social identification (SISI). Convergent validity is shown with significant positive correlations with previously published unidimensional and multidimensional measures of in‐group identification and other group‐relevant measures (e.g., entitativity and collective self‐esteem). Divergent validity is shown via nonsignificant correlations with social desirability measures. Predictive validity is shown with positive correlations with group‐relevant behavior (e.g., volunteerism and voting). External validity is shown with correlations with other in‐group identification measures in a community sample. The reliability of the scale is shown by examining scores of the SISI for six different identities at three points in time. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Revelry,Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal: The Fortunes of Hindu Festivals,by Rachel Fell McDermott,New York: Columbia University Press, 2011, xviii + 372 pp. ISBN 978-0-231-12918-3, US$90.00 (cloth); ISBN 978-0-231-12919-0, US$29.50 (paperback)

This article introduces a review symposium on Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism. I situate this book in the newly emerging field of Buddhism and sexuality, and also provide a discussion of previous works by the author that led to the current volume under review. I also provide a broad overview of the book itself for those unfamiliar with the work. The responses in this symposium are offered by Sarah H. Jacoby (Northwestern University), John Powers (Deakin University), and Amy Paris Langenberg (Eckerd College).     

Brilliant: But What For? Meaning and Subjective Well-Being in the Lives of Intellectually Gifted and Academically High-Achieving Adults

Not much is known today about relationships between giftedness and well-being, particular among adults. The present article examined if highly gifted people manage to live meaningful and happy lives in their adult years. Two aspects of giftedness were taken into account: intellectual giftedness, and academically high achievement. Representatives of both groups were compared with each other and a control group with regard to meaningfulness and subjective well-being, respectively. Furthermore, predictors for both facets of well-being were examined. The sample consisted of 198 Intellectually Gifted, 141 academically High Achievers, and 136 control subjects. Results: High Achievers showed degrees of meaningfulness and subjective well-being that were comparable to those of the control group. The Intellectually Gifted, however, reported significantly lower values in both facets of well-being. Results of hierarchical multiple regressions indicated that Intellectually Gifted and High Achievers follow a different path towards meaningfulness and subjective well-being. Among the Intellectually Gifted, generativity is the strongest predictor for meaningfulness, whereas for the High Achievers, meaningful work is most central to their meaningfulness. As regards subjective well-being, self-compassion was established as the strongest predictor for the Intellectually Gifted, whereas development was the most important predictor for the High Achievers.     

Anticipatory baseline effects and information integration in visual world studies

Researchers often conduct visual world studies to investigate how listeners integrate linguistic information with prior context. Such studies are likely to generate anticipatory baseline effects (ABEs), differences in listeners' expectations about what a speaker might mention that exist before a critical speech stimulus is presented. ABEs show that listeners have attended to and accessed prior contextual information in time to influence the processing of the critical speech stimulus. However, further evidence is required to show that the information actually did influence subsequent processing. ABEs can compromise the validity of inferences about information integration if they are not appropriately controlled. We discuss four solutions: statistical estimation, experimental control, elimination of “on-target” trials, and neutral gaze. An experiment compares the performance of these solutions, and suggests that the elimination of on-target trials introduces bias in the direction of ABEs, due to the statistical phenomenon of regression toward the mean. We conclude that statistical estimation, possibly coupled with experimental control, offers the most valid and least biased solution.     

Psychological stress in childhood and susceptibility to the chronic diseases of aging: moving toward a model of behavioral and biological mechanisms

Among people exposed to major psychological stressors in early life, there are elevated rates of morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases of aging. The most compelling data come from studies of children raised in poverty or maltreated by their parents, who show heightened vulnerability to vascular disease, autoimmune disorders, and premature mortality. These findings raise challenging theoretical questions. How does childhood stress get under the skin, at the molecular level, to affect risk for later diseases? And how does it incubate there, giving rise to diseases several decades later? Here we present a biological embedding model, which attempts to address these questions by synthesizing knowledge across several behavioral and biomedical literatures. This model maintains that childhood stress gets "programmed" into macrophages through epigenetic markings, posttranslational modifications, and tissue remodeling. As a consequence these cells are endowed with proinflammatory tendencies, manifest in exaggerated cytokine responses to challenge and decreased sensitivity to inhibitory hormonal signals. The model goes on to propose that over the life course, these proinflammatory tendencies are exacerbated by behavioral proclivities and hormonal dysregulation, themselves the products of exposure to early stress. Behaviorally, the model posits that childhood stress gives rise to excessive threat vigilance, mistrust of others, poor social relationships, impaired self-regulation, and unhealthy lifestyle choices. Hormonally, early stress confers altered patterns of endocrine and autonomic discharge. This milieu amplifies the proinflammatory environment already instantiated by macrophages. Acting in concert with other exposures and genetic liabilities, the resulting inflammation drives forward pathogenic mechanisms that ultimately foster chronic disease.     

?Symbolisierung�� als intersubjektive und intrapsychische Dynamik

Igor A. Caruso (1914?C1981), one of the founders of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies (IFPS) in 1962, began to discuss questions of the interplay of biological, social and evolutional realities and intrapsychic development in the early 1950s with the early Vienna Circle of Depth Psychology. Caruso understood that the specific human ability to transcend the overdetermined biological constitution into a development of consciousness, care and self-awareness is basic for the need and lifelong activity of intersubjective relationship. Sexual and survival drives as the biological basis contain their own transformation as cultural potency within the subject-object relationship. Each act of relationship to things and living objects creates a new reality which is a meaningful symbol for both parts of the relationship in their own individual reality. This new, third, reality gains full effectiveness for both actors as ??symbolic realism?? and initiates the ongoing development. In this understanding psychic development is a process of changing interactive creation and effectiveness, following biological drive dynamics as well as its inherent future transformations by attachment. Symbolization is therefore the main intrapsychic and intersubjective activity of development of object-awareness and self-awareness. Caruso emphasized the meaning of symbol and symbolization as an act of relationship to and within the world and consequently understood psychoanalytical theories as well as a changing symbolization of relationship.     

The role of working memory in the metaphor interference effect

Participants took longer to judge that metaphors (e.g., an insult is a razor, memory is a warehouse) were literally false than to judge that scrambled sentences (e.g., an insult is a warehouse) were false. This result is the metaphor interference effect (MIE). It demonstrates that metaphor processing is automatic. In this experiment, we found that the magnitude of the MIE is predicted by working memory (WM) capacity, with higher WM yielding a smaller MIE. This suggests that although metaphor comprehension is automatic, the early processing of metaphors is controllable by executive mechanisms. We relate our results to Kintsch’s (2000, 2001) predication model. Specifically, we suggest that mechanisms of WM influence metaphor processing by affecting the effectiveness of the construction-integration process that identifies common properties between topics and vehicles. WM also influences the speed with which meanings are identified as literal or figurative.