Mental Illness and Mental Health: The Two Continua Model Across the Lifespan

Mental health has long been defined as the absence of psychopathologies, such as depression and anxiety. The absence of mental illness, however, is a minimal outcome from a psychological perspective on lifespan development. This article therefore focuses on mental illness as well as on three core components of positive mental health: feelings of happiness and satisfaction with life (emotional well-being), positive individual functioning in terms of self-realization (psychological well-being), and positive societal functioning in terms of being of social value (social well-being). The two continua model holds that mental illness and mental health are related but distinct dimensions. This model was studied on the basis of a cross-sectional representative internet survey of Dutch adults (N = 1,340; 18–87 years). Mental illness was measured with the Brief Symptom Inventory and mental health with the Mental Health Continuum Short Form. It was found that older adults, except for the oldest-old, scored lower on psychopathological symptoms and were less likely to be mentally ill than younger adults. Although there were fewer age differences for mental health, older adults experienced more emotional, similar social and slightly lower psychological well-being. In sum, today’s older adults have fewer mental illness problems, but they are not in a better positive mental health than today’s younger adults. These findings support the validity of the two continua model in adult development.     

Panorama

Panorama

Panorama     

Temporal binding, binocular rivalry, and consciousness.

Cognitive functions like perception, memory, language, or consciousness are based on highly parallel and distributed information processing by the brain. One of the major unresolved questions is how information can be integrated and how coherent representational states can be established in the distributed neuronal systems subserving these functions. It has been suggested that this so-called "binding problem" may be solved in the temporal domain. The hypothesis is that synchronization of neuronal discharges can serve for the integration of distributed neurons into cell assemblies and that this process may underlie the selection of perceptually and behaviorally relevant information. As we intend to show here, this temporal binding hypothesis has implications for the search of the neural correlate of consciousness. We review experimental results, mainly obtained in the visual system, which support the notion of temporal binding. In particular, we discuss recent experiments on the neural mechanisms of binocular rivalry which suggest that appropriate synchronization among cortical neurons may be one of the necessary conditions for the buildup of perceptual states and awareness of sensory stimuli.     

变革型领导对员工绩效和满意度的影响：心理资本的中介作用及程序公平的调节作用

通过对国内一家企业共785位员工及其直接主管的问卷调查, 考察了下属心理资本在变革型领导与下属工作绩效及满意度之间关系的中介作用以及程序公平对该关系的调节作用。研究结果显示：1)下属的心理资本与其工作绩效和满意度正向相关; 2)下属的心理资本部分中介了变革型领导对下属工作绩效及满意度的正向关系; 3) 下属的程序公平调节了变革型领导对下属心理资本的影响。具体而言, 下属的程序公平感越高, 变革型领导与下属心理资本的正向关系越强, 反之越弱; 4) 进一步地, 程序公平调节了下属心理资本对变革型领导－工作绩效和满意度的中介作用, 即：程序公平感越高, 变革型领导通过心理资本对下属的工作绩效和满意度所产生的作用就越强, 反之越弱。最后讨论了该研究的理论意义和应用价值。     

Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics

In this introduction we discuss the motivation behind the workshop “Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics” of which this special issue constitutes the proceedings. We elaborate on historical and empirical aspects of the desired new epistemology, connect it to the public image of mathematics, and give a summary and an introduction to the contributions to this issue.

---

What Motivates People to Participate More in Community‐based Coalitions?

The purpose of this study was to identify potential opportunities for improving member participation in community-based coalitions. We hypothesized that opportunities for influence and process competence would each foster higher levels of individual member participation. We tested these hypotheses in a sample of 818 members within 79 youth-oriented coalitions. Opportunities for influence were measured as members' perceptions of an inclusive board leadership style and members' reported committee roles. Coalition process competence was measured through member perceptions of strategic board directedness and meeting effectiveness. Members reported three types of participation within meetings as well as how much time they devoted to coalition business beyond meetings. Generalized linear models accommodated clustering of individuals within coalitions. Opportunities for influence were associated with individuals' participation both within and beyond meetings. Coalition process competence was not associated with participation. These results suggest that leadership inclusivity rather than process competence may best facilitate member participation.     

Face imagery is based on featural representations

The effect of imagery on featural and configural face processing was investigated using blurred and scrambled faces. By means of blurring, featural information is reduced; by scrambling a face into its constituent parts configural information is lost. Twenty-four participants learned ten faces together with the sound of a name. In following matching-to-sample tasks participants had to decide whether an auditory presented name belonged to a visually presented scrambled or blurred face in two experimental conditions. In the imagery condition, the name was presented prior to the visual stimulus and participants were required to imagine the corresponding face as clearly and vividly as possible. In the perception condition name and test face were presented simultaneously, thus no facilitation via mental imagery was possible. Analyses of the hit values showed that in the imagery condition scrambled faces were recognized significantly better than blurred faces whereas there was no such effect for the perception condition. The results suggest that mental imagery activates featural representations more than configural representations.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Viktor Žirmunskij and German</Emphasis> Mundartforschung

German dialect geography developed, inter alia, as a means to compensate the shortcomings of the Young Grammarians’ approach to language. In contrast to the latter, it was conceived of to be a sociolinguistic project, constituting thereby one link between the development of Soviet and German linguistics. The article tries to answer such questions as who initially participated in transferring ideas of German dialectology to the Soviet Union and what kind of motivations underlay those transfers. Combining biographical facts with systematic aspects, the article surveys the filiations of some productive ideas with the help of archival sources, i.e. letters of the Soviet scholars Dinges (1891–1932) and Viktor Žirmunskij (1891–1971). Finally, I try to single out the elements in Žirmunskij dialect geography, which are specifically sociolinguistic.

A comparative study of adolescent risk assessment instruments: predictive and incremental validity

Promising new adolescent risk assessment tools are being incorporated into clinical practice but currently possess limited evidence of predictive validity regarding their individual and/or combined use in risk assessments. The current study compares three structured adolescent risk instruments, Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI), Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY), and Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV), for both predictive and incremental validity with respect to general and violent recidivism. Receiver operating characteristic and hierarchical logistic regression analyses revealed that the risk tools predicted general and violent recidivism to varying degrees of accuracy, but the SAVRY offered the most in incremental validity. Clinical implications and future directions for youth risk assessment are discussed.