Representations and narratives during pregnancy

In this paper, we explore how maternal representations, and in particular their contents, are structured during pregnancy. Twenty-three primiparous women were recruited for participation in a longitudinal study about mothers' thoughts and feelings about their infants. A semistructured interview was conducted with each of the subjects in the third trimester of pregnancy. During the interview, subjects were also given five adjective lists based on the semantic differential model. Results from this sample indicate similarities in the content-free aspects of representations of self and baby, but differences in the content of these presentations. Implications of these results are discussed with regard to the construction of an internal representation of the child in the third trimester of pregnancy.     

Four Dimensions of Criticism Against Gender-Fair Language

Sex Roles - The gender-neutral third-person pronoun singular hen was recently introduced in Swedish as a complement to she (hon) and he (han). The initiative to add hen initially received strong...     

Proactive Vitality Management,Work Engagement,and Creativity: The Role of Goal Orientation

This study tested the hypothesis that individuals can proactively manage their own energetic, affective, and cognitive resources in order to be creative at work. Building on proactivity and creativity literatures, we propose a theoretical model in which employees who proactively manage their vitality are more engaged in their work and show improved creative performance. We also tested the boundary conditions of this process. Participants were Dutch employees from various occupations who filled out a background questionnaire and five weekly surveys. The results of multilevel modelling analyses offered support for our model. Weekly proactive vitality management was positively related to changes in weekly creativity through changes in weekly work engagement. As predicted, learning goal orientation strengthened and performance goal orientation weakened the links between proactive vitality management and engagement, and between engagement and creativity. We discuss the theoretical contributions, and indicate how these findings can be used in daily working life.     

Do dogs rescue their owners from a stressful situation? A behavioral and physiological assessment

Animal Cognition - Rescue behavior is considered a type of pro-social response, defined as a voluntary action directed to benefit another individual who is in a stressful or dangerous situation. In...     

Social citizenship and social psychology

This paper outlines the concept of social citizenship, which was first theorized in the late 1940s alongside the creation of the UK welfare state and concerns citizens' rights to a basic income and standard of living. It suggests that social citizenship—particularly welfare provision—is a useful and important topic for social psychological research, albeit one that has been largely overlooked. We provide an overview of key developments in social citizenship and consider the impact of 30‐plus years of neoliberal governance in Western democracies, which has resulted in ongoing changes to how welfare rights and responsibilities are configured, such as policies that make social citizenship rights contingent on conduct. We outline social scientific work that examines these shifting ideas of citizenship, personhood, welfare, and conditionality and make the case for a critical discursive psychological approach, which we illustrate with a brief empirical example. We suggest that critical discursive social psychology is particularly well‐placed to examine how psychological assumptions are built into both policy and lay discourse and how these can legitimate interventions designed to work on the conduct of the unemployed, such as therapeutic and behavior change initiatives. Finally, we argue that psychology is faced with a choice; while there are opportunities for the discipline to contribute to the design and implementation of such initiatives, to do so requires accepting the basic values of the underpinning neoliberal agenda. Instead, it is vital to place these assumptions under the critical microscope and explore how they work to obscure structural disadvantage.     

Perceptual limits on low-dimensional models of Munsell reflectance spectra

Some experimental and theoretical approaches to surface-colour perception depend on approximating surface reflectance spectra by low-dimensional models. In the psychophysical experiment reported here, observers had to discriminate between patterns of Munsell surfaces and their spectral approximations under either the same or different illuminants. The approximations were produced by principal component analysis, by independent component analysis, and by artificial neural networks trained with a supervised-learning rule. In all experimental conditions, observers required, on average, at least 5 basis functions for discrimination performance to be at chance, thus placing a lower limit on the dimensionality of models of Munsell reflectance spectra.     

A dynamic developmental theory of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) predominantly hyperactive/impulsive and combined subtypes

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is currently defined as a cognitive/behavioral developmental disorder where all clinical criteria are behavioral. Inattentiveness, overactivity, and impulsiveness are presently regarded as the main clinical symptoms. The dynamic developmental behavioral theory is based on the hypothesis that altered dopaminergic function plays a pivotal role by failing to modulate nondopaminergic (primarily glutamate and GABA) signal transmission appropriately. A hypofunctioning mesolimbic dopamine branch produces altered reinforcement of behavior and deficient extinction of previously reinforced behavior. This gives rise to delay aversion, development of hyperactivity in novel situations, impulsiveness, deficient sustained attention, increased behavioral variability, and failure to "inhibit" responses ("disinhibition"). A hypofunctioning mesocortical dopamine branch will cause attention response deficiencies (deficient orienting responses, impaired saccadic eye movements, and poorer attention responses toward a target) and poor behavioral planning (poor executive functions). A hypofunctioning nigrostriatal dopamine branch will cause impaired modulation of motor functions and deficient nondeclarative habit learning and memory. These impairments will give rise to apparent developmental delay, clumsiness, neurological "soft signs," and a "failure to inhibit" responses when quick reactions are required. Hypofunctioning dopamine branches represent the main individual predispositions in the present theory. The theory predicts that behavior and symptoms in ADHD result from the interplay between individual predispositions and the surroundings. The exact ADHD symptoms at a particular time in life will vary and be influenced by factors having positive or negative effects on symptom development. Altered or deficient learning and motor functions will produce special needs for optimal parenting and societal styles. Medication will to some degree normalize the underlying dopamine dysfunction and reduce the special needs of these children. The theory describes how individual predispositions interact with these conditions to produce behavioral, emotional, and cognitive effects that can turn into relatively stable behavioral patterns.     

Visual line bisection in sinistrals and dextrals as a function of hemispace, hand, and scan direction

Visual line bisection was investigated in 26 sinistral and 24 dextral subjects as a function of hemispace, hand and scan direction. An ANOVA revealed significant main effects for hand preference, due to the mean bisection errors of dextral subjects being significantly leftward of those of sinistral subjects; for hand, due to the bisection errors of the left hand being significantly to the left of the right hand; and for scan, due to the bisection errors following a left scan being significantly to the left of a right scan. One significant interaction was found, that between hand and direction of scan, due to a significant difference between left and right hands following a scan from the left but not following a scan from the right. For dextral subjects the leftward bisection errors of the left and right hands following a scan from the left, but not for a scan from the right, differed significantly from the midpoint. For sinistral subjects the leftward bisection errors following a scan from the left and rightward bisection errors following a scan from the right differed significantly from the midpoint for the left hand but not for the right hand. No significant main effect or interactions for hemispace were found. This confirms that both sinistral and dextral subjects display pseudoneglect when using their preferred hand and scanning from the left. However, sinistrals, but not dextrals, will display reversed pseudoneglect when using their preferred hand and adopting a scan direction from the right. These results are discussed in terms of the interaction between three factors, whose influence can jointly and severally produce misbisections, hemispheric specialisation for visuospatial function, hemispheric activation for a manual response, and the allocation of visual attention.     

Families created through surrogacy arrangements: parent-child relationships in the 1st year of life

Findings are presented of a study of families created through surrogacy arrangements. Forty-two surrogacy families were compared with 51 egg-donation families and 80 natural-conception families on standardized interview and questionnaire measures of the psychological well-being of the parents, the quality of parent-child relationships, and infant temperament. The differences that were identified between the surrogacy families and the other family types indicated greater psychological well-being and adaptation to parenthood by mothers and fathers of children born through surrogacy arrangements than by the natural-conception parents.