Vocal group signatures in the goitred gazelle Gazella subgutturosa

The potential for vocal modification in mammals has recently been of great interest. This study focuses on the potential for vocal matching in juvenile and adolescent goitred gazelles Gazella subgutturosa that were group housed as part of an animal management programme. Two groups of animals (16 and 19 unrelated individuals, respectively) were recorded at two different ages, juvenile and adolescent, regarding 20–25 calls per individual per age; each group was evaluated in a separate year. Vocal similarity of group members compared to non-members was prominent in both ages, but higher in juveniles. Individual identity was prominent in both ages and higher in adolescents. The more prominent vocal indicators of group membership in juveniles could be related to their higher social dependence compared to adolescents. The more individualized calls of adolescents could be a mechanistic consequence of more stable growth at older age. Our results suggest vocal plasticity of goitred gazelles under social influences. These data add to recent evidence about domestic goat kids Capra hircus, suggesting that vocalizations of species that are not capable of imitation are more flexible than previously thought.     

Identity and the Theory of Planned Behavior: Predicting Maintenance of Volunteering After Three Years

Is identity an important predictor of social behavior? The present longitudinal study is focused on identity in order to understand why people continue to volunteer over an extended period of time. The theory of planned behavior and the role identity model of volunteering are used as theoretical framework. Two hundred thirty Italian volunteers were sampled and followed for 3 years. We analyzed functions of role identity as a volunteer. Results showed a significant impact of role identity in predicting volunteer performance after 3 years, mediated through behavioral intentions. Role identity fully mediated the relationships between behavioral intention and attitude, social norms, past behavior and parental modelling.     

Familiar Verbs Are Not Always Easier Than Novel Verbs: How German Pre‐School Children Comprehend Active and Passive Sentences

Many studies show a developmental advantage for transitive sentences with familiar verbs over those with novel verbs. It might be that once familiar verbs become entrenched in particular constructions, they would be more difficult to understand (than would novel verbs) in non‐prototypical constructions. We provide support for this hypothesis investigating German children using a forced‐choice pointing paradigm with reversed agent‐patient roles. We tested active transitive verbs in study 1. The 2‐year olds were better with familiar than novel verbs, while the 2½‐year olds pointed correctly for both. In study 2, we tested passives: 2½‐year olds were significantly below chance for familiar verbs and at chance for novel verbs, supporting the hypothesis that the entrenchment of the familiar verbs in the active transitive voice was interfering with interpreting them in the passive voice construction. The 3½‐year olds were also at chance for novel verbs but above chance with familiar verbs. We interpret this as reflecting a lessening of the verb‐in‐construction entrenchment as the child develops knowledge that particular verbs can occur in a range of constructions. The 4½‐year olds were above chance for both familiar and novel verbs. We discuss our findings in terms of the relative entrenchment of lexical and syntactic information and to interference between them.     

Sexuality and meaning in Freud and Merleau‐Ponty

This article analyzes the links between the conception of the body and of sexuality found in Freud and Merleau‐Ponty. The French philosopher refers to Freud in various of his works, and performs a reading of Freud through which he rescues the meaning that the latter gives to sexuality as he integrates it into the totality of the person, without making it into a blind or merely instinctive force. As a consequence of this integration, the notions of the unconscious and of instinct or drive are interpreted in the light of the meaning or signification that they have in the person's behavior. Merleau‐Ponty's notion of pre‐reflective knowledge plays a decisive role in this understanding of meaning. In the same way, it allows important contemporary analysts to use these studies in their therapeutic work and also in psychological studies.     

Preschoolers joke with jokers, but correct foreigners

Thirty- and 36-month-old English speakers' (N = 106) ability to produce jokes, distinguish between humorous and sincere intentions, and distinguish between English- and foreign-language speakers, was examined in two tasks. In the Giving task, an experimenter requested one of two familiar objects, and a confederate always gave her the wrong object. In the Naming task, the confederate mislabeled familiar objects. In the English-speaking conditions, the confederate laughed after doing the wrong thing (English-Humor) or said, 'There!' (English-Sincere). In the Foreign conditions, the French- or Italian-speaking confederate laughed (Foreign-Humor) or said, 'D'accord!' or 'Va bene!' (Foreign-Sincere). When preschoolers were subsequently requested to give and name the same objects and a new set of familiar objects they were significantly more likely to imitate and 'do the wrong thing' in the Humor versus Sincere, and in the English versus Foreign conditions.     

Prayer to the Saints or the Virgin And Health Among Older Mexican Americans

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a conceptual model that assesses whether praying to the saints or the Virgin is associated with the health of older Mexican Americans. A survey was conducted of 1,005 older Mexican Americans (Mean age = 73.9 years; SD = 6.6 years). Data from 795 of the Catholic respondents are presented in this study. The findings support the following relationships that are embedded in the conceptual model: (1) older Mexican Americans who attend church more often are more likely to believe in the efficacy of prayer to the saints or the Virgin; (2) stronger beliefs in the efficacy of intercessory prayer are associated with more frequent prayer to the saints or the Virgin; (3) frequent prayer is to the saints or the Virgin is associated with greater God-mediated control beliefs; (4) stronger God-mediated control beliefs are associated with greater optimism; and (5) greater optimism is associated with better self-rated health.     

Validation of an Italian version of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 (SATAQ-3) on adolescent girls

The present study used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to investigate the factor structure of an Italian version of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 (SATAQ-3) with a sample of 598 adolescent girls. Results of EFA indicated a four-factor structure: Information, Pressures, Internalization-General, and Internalization-Athlete. Factor loadings confirmed the original structure of the scale, except for one item. As expected, the four factors appeared to be slightly correlated. Cronbach's alphas for the four subscales were uniformly high: Information = .91, Pressures = .91, Internalization-General = .94, Internalization-Athlete = .84. Convergent validity of this Italian version of the SATAQ-3 was found to be good. SATAQ-3 seems useful to measure different aspects of societal influences on body image in Italian contexts. Future studies could subject SATAQ-3 to a confirmatory factor analysis in order to confirm the adequate fit of the model according to conventional criteria.     

Fifteen minute stories about training

This panel presentation at the Journal's conference in St Petersburg responded to the conference theme of 'Ancestors in Personal, Professional and Social History' by relating it to the experience of training and being trained on the IAAP 'router' programme in Russia. The two organizers of the programme (JW and CC) have worked in Russia for over 12 years, bringing analysts from Britain to Moscow and St Petersburg on a 'shuttle' basis as supervisors and personal analysts. A few months after handing over the router programme in December 2010 to the Russian colleagues they had trained, they invited four analysts, three Russian and one Belarusian, to tell a short personal story about their training, linking it to the theme of 'the Ancestors'. The resulting four stories are very different but complement each other, using imagery to illustrate issues concerning both value and ambivalence. JW and CC jointly wrote their story about the programme in response to the four stories, reflecting on some of their themes and from them, giving consideration to the flexibility and limits of such a model of cross-cultural training. Themes in the stories included the possibility of mutual adaptation to another culture without losing tradition and identity; moving on from doctrinaire Soviet attitudes in education to embrace 'not knowing'; both organizers and routers learning from mistakes and from joint experience without guilt or shame; the need to protect reflective space amidst the constraints of time and geography. All Russian and UK contributors could finally acknowledge their shared luck to find themselves in the right place at the right time to respond to the collective revival of psychoanalytic practice in Russia.     

The effects of time perspective and level of construal on social distance

Psychological causes of social distance were examined from the perspective of Construal Level Theory (CLT; Liberman, Trope, & Stephan, 2007), which predicts that temporal distance from and abstract construal of a social target would create perception of social distance. Our studies demonstrate that expectations for temporally remote (versus proximal) social interaction produce greater social distance from a target person, measured as reduced familiarity (Study 1) and as reduced similarity to the self (Study 2). We also show that a more abstract, higher level construal of a social target results in less familiarity (Study 3) and in less allocation of resources (Study 4). The research sheds light on how social closeness can be promoted or hindered by previously unaddressed psychological factors.     

From one room to the other: a story of contamination. The relationship between child and adult analysis

Does the analyst who works with both children and adults using ostensibly the same theoretical model perform similar mental operations in these two fields? The author suggests that child analysis is rooted in a different creative process from that of adults. Comparing the analysis of children to painting and that of adults to writing, and making use of the debate between Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell on the relative merits of words and images, the author explores the psychoanalytic debate on the role of child analysis in the development of psychoanalytic theory and practice. Child analysis, initially regarded as an application of psychoanalysis, ended up acting as a catalyst for a true epistemological revolution in the 20th century through the work of Klein and Bion. Playing is not only an alternative medium to words for representing the unconscious but a different method for giving shape to representations through a specific creative process. The reverie which is born in the child analyst’s consulting room reproduces itself through the body’s actions during play, whereas in the adults’ consulting room the analyst’s capacity to dream presupposes the suspension of action. Child analysis, deploying a distinctive creative process that makes use of the body and serves itself of action in its development, may be said to rest on a similar creative process to that of figurative art. For this reason, the child analyst’s mind relates to objects in a different way, being in a more prolonged state of fusion with these as a result of ‘concentration of the body’. The significance of the unspeakable things that take place can often only be conceptualized in après‐coup. Although this difference in the development of the process suggests a significant distinction between the two ‘arts’ of child and adult analysis, the aesthetic sensitivity acquired through child analysis can be profitably used with adults, as will be demonstrated with the help of several clinical examples.