Two distinct pathways for developmental coordination disorder: persistence and resolution

This article describes the perceptual motor, educational and social outcome of early motor delay in a group of 17-18 year old Finnish adolescents who were originally evaluated at age 5. The study group consisted of 65 adolescents: 22 with significant motor problems (or developmental coordination disorder, DCD), 23 with minor motor problems (intermediate group) and 20 controls. The goal of this study was to reassess the results obtained when they were age 15 and to determine whether the variables used earlier could still discriminate the adolescents at age 17. The results showed that at age 17 all perceptual motor tasks differentiated the three groups. The DCD group performed less well than the control group on all tasks, with the intermediate group situated between these two. Discriminant function analyses showed that more classification errors occurred between the control and intermediate groups at age 17 than at age 15, suggesting that the distinction between these groups becomes more difficult with age. In the educational domain, similar to the findings at age 15, the adolescents with DCD had the lowest WAIS scores and shortest school careers of the three groups. In the social domain, as found two years earlier, the DCD group had the lowest perceptions of athletic and scholastic competence while the intermediate and control groups did not differ. In addition, the interview results indicated that the three groups were in different stages of identity development. In sum, the outcome at age 17 was a replication of the results obtained at age 15 and suggests two developmental paths for those with early perceptual motor problems: 'persistence' and 'catching up'.     

He said,she said: a quasi-signal detection analysis of daily interactions between close relationship partners

In everyday life, close relationship partners enact behaviors through which they may influence each other. To understand how these exchanges affect partners, previous research has emphasized the enactors' reports, the receivers' perceptions, or the congruence of the two. We developed a strategy based on classic signal detection theory that combined elements from these three approaches in a naturalistic daily experience study. Members of 58 heterosexual dating couples reported daily on their own behaviors and their perceptions of their partners' behaviors. Results showed that an enactor's beliefs about his or her behavior and the perceiver's interpretation combined to affect daily mood and relationship satisfaction. However, different patterns of results emerged for positive and negative behaviors, such that the enactor's perspective accounted for independent effects of negative behaviors. Results show the value of simultaneously considering the perspective of both parties in social interaction.     

Physical fitness and prior physical activity are both associated with less cortisol secretion during psychosocial stress

Background: Evidence linking fitness and decreased psychosocial stress comes from studies of athletes and typically relies upon self-report measures. Furthermore, there is little evidence regarding the impact of physical activity (PA) prior to a stressor. The aims of this study were to determine whether fitness and prior PA influence cortisol concentrations during psychosocial stress.

Methods: Seventy-five non-athletic participants took part in a submaximal walk prior to the Trier Social Stress Test for Groups (TSST-G). During the walk, fitness was assessed using heart rate (HR). A further 89 participants took part in the TSST-G without the walk. Stress responsiveness was assessed using salivary cortisol collected at 10-min intervals on seven occasions.

Results: Hierarchical multiple regression revealed that average walking HR accounted for 9% of the variance in cortisol secretion (P?=?.016), where a higher HR was associated with higher cortisol secretion. Between-subjects ANCOVA revealed that the walking group had a significantly lower cortisol secretion than the non-walking group (P?=?.009).

Conclusions: These findings indicate that fitter individuals have reduced cortisol secretion during psychosocial stress. They also indicate that prior PA can reduce cortisol concentrations during psychosocial stress and are suggestive of a role of PA in reducing the impact of stress on health.     

Personality-based clusters in bulimia nervosa: differences in clinical variables and ecological momentary assessment

The present study examined whether personality-based subgroups of bulimic individuals differed in eating disorder behavior, comorbid psychopathology, treatment history, and momentary assessments of mood and behavior. Participants completed an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) protocol for a period of 2 weeks. Latent profile analysis on the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology revealed 3 groupings of bulimic participants: Interpersonal-emotional, Stimulus seeking-hostile, and Low personality pathology. The personality-based groups differed in histories of mood, anxiety, substance use disorders, features of borderline personality disorder, treatment history, and several momentary measures. These findings suggest that personality variation within the bulimia nervosa diagnostic construct may be associated with meaningful conceptual and clinical differences, including daily experiences in the natural environment.     

Deep Symbols and Mythic Imagination in the Hermeneutics of Creation Texts

This article reflects on creation through the lens of different traditions of Christian scholarship, and argues for a returning of the theology of creation to its rightful place at the centre of theological discourse about God's relationship with the world—intrinsically linked to the economy of salvation and not in opposition to it. It posits a necessary re-visioning of the relationship between humanity and other-than-human creation via a re-evaluation of the epistemological function of symbol and myth, and a re-examining of the governing principles within myth typologies and their implicit axioms within creation theology. The hermeneutical insights of philosopher Paul Ricoeur and biblical exegete Claus Westermann are brought into conversation. Building on the Ricoeurian epistemological axiom that ‘the symbol gives rise to thought’, the article avers the creation imaginary as a deep and formative symbol of God's free and loving purposes enacted through different and even contesting cultures and traditions and within the whole cosmos. In imaginative dialogical rereading, the community of faith can be open to God's free and loving relationship with all creation, thus also participating in the divine work of renewing the face of the earth.     

Effects of state anxiety on performance using a task-switching paradigm: An investigation of attentional control theory

Low- and high-anxious participants performed arithmetical tasks under task-switching or nontask-switching conditions. These tasks were low or high in complexity. The task on each trial was either explicitly cued or not cued. We assumed that demands on attentional control would be greater in the task-switching condition than in the nontask-switching condition, and would be greater with high-complexity tasks than with low-complexity ones. We also assumed that demands on attentional control would be greater when cues were absent rather than present. According to attentional control theory (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007), anxiety impairs attentional control processes required to shift attention optimally within and between tasks. We predicted that there would be greater negative effects of high state anxiety in the task-switching condition than in the nontask-switching condition. Our theoretical predictions were supported, suggesting that state anxiety reduces attentional control.     

Teachers’ Changing Subjectivities: Putting the Soul to Work for the Principle of the Market or for Facilitating Risk?

Studies in Philosophy and Education - Here we reconsider teachers’ changing subjectivities as autonomous agents whose practices acknowledge risk as an essential element in intellectual...     

Sexual trauma and personality: developmental vulnerability and additive effects.

Two types of sexual trauma, sexual abuse in childhood and rape in adulthood, were investigated in terms of possible effects on personality. Four groups of participants were studied: women who had experienced sexual abuse in childhood, women who had experienced rape as adults, women who had experienced both of these sexual traumas, and a control group of women who had experienced no sexual trauma. Personality functioning was assessed using the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology. Groups who had experienced childhood sexual abuse displayed the highest degree of personality disturbance; however, the additive effects of repeated sexual trauma were limited. These findings may reflect the outcome of specific adversity in childhood on the psychobiological constructs underlying personality.     

Heroism and history in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology

Whereas Phenomenology of Perception concludes with a puzzling turn to “heroism,” this article examines the short essay “Man, the Hero” as a source of insight into Merleau-Ponty’s thought in the early postwar period. In this essay, Merleau-Ponty presented a conception of heroism through which he expressed the attitude toward post-Hegelian philosophy of history that underwrote his efforts to reform Marxism along existential lines. Analyzing this conception of heroism by unpacking the implicit contrasts with Kojève, Aron, Caillois, and Bataille, I show that its philosophical rationale was to supply experiential evidence attesting to the latent presence of human universality. It is a mythic device intended to animate the faith necessary for Marxist politics by showing that universal sociality is possible, and that the historically transformative praxis needed to realize it does not imply sacrifice. This sheds considerable light on Merleau-Ponty’s early postwar political thought. But inasmuch as the latter cannot be severed from his broader philosophical concerns, the prospect is raised that his entire phenomenological project in the early postwar period rested on a myth. Not necessarily a bad myth, but a myth nonetheless.