Predictors of early person reference development: Maternal language input,attachment and neurodevelopmental markers

In a longitudinal natural language development study in Germany, the acquisition of verbal symbols for present persons, absent persons, inanimate things and the mother–toddler dyad was investigated. Following the notion that verbal referent use is more developed in ostensive contexts, symbolic play situations were coded for verbal person reference by means of noun and pronoun use. Depending on attachment classifications at twelve months of age, effects of attachment classification and maternal language input were studied up to 36 months in four time points. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, except for mother absence, maternal verbal referent input rates at 17 and 36 months were stronger predictors for all referent types than any of the attachment organizations, or any other social or biological predictor variable. Attachment effects accounted for up to 9.8% of unique variance proportions in the person reference variables. Perinatal and familial measures predicted person references dependent on reference type. The results of this investigation indicate that mother-reference, self-reference and thing-reference develop in similar quantities measured from the 17-month time point, but are dependent of attachment quality.     

Brief psychotherapy using dream interpretation

I believe it to be true that dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them. Montaigne (Essays III)     

Decoding affective communication in intimate relationships

Situational and personality variables influencing the accurate understanding of partners' communications in intimate couples were studied. The situation was varied by inducing either partner-focused or self-focused attention. The personality variables were gender-role attitudes, control orientation, and empathy. Thirty couples who had been living together for at least 12 months discussed an issue which was important to both partners. Afterwards, each selected their partner's most ‘important’ statement from their videotaped discussion. The two statements were then rated by each of the partners in respect of their own and their partner's emotional reaction to them (intentionally sent and actually experienced emotions). Analyses of variance with correctness of decoding as a dependent variable demonstrated strong effects of other-focused attention and gender as independent variables. Femininity and secondary control correlated positively with correct decoding. These results are interpreted in a theoretical framework of empathy and communication.     

Gender Role Self-concept, Gender-role Conflict, and Well-being in Male Primary School Teachers

In this field-study, we analysed the interrelations between gender role self-concept, gender-role conflict, and well-being in male primary school teachers. Our sample comprised N = 81 respondents from an urban area in Germany (average age: 42.9 years; average tenure: 11.4 years). In Germany, primary school teaching is a numerically female-dominated occupation. We found that masculinity, femininity, and androgyny positively influenced well-being, while gender-role conflict was negatively interrelated with well-being. We expected that gender-role conflict weakens the positive effects of masculinity and femininity. Unexpectedly, we even found a detrimental effect of femininity when gender-role conflict was high: For respondents reporting comparatively high gender-role conflict, femininity was associated with lower work satisfaction.     

Fill the Gap! Combining Pragmatic and Prosodic Information to Make Gapping Easy

Two studies investigated the effects of prosody and pragmatic context on off-line and on-line processing of sentences like John greeted Paul yesterday and Ben today. Such sentences are ambiguous between the so-called ‘nongapping’ reading, where John greeted Ben, and the highly unpreferred ‘gapping’ reading, where Ben greeted Paul. In the first experiment, participants listened to dialogues and gave a speeded response as to which reading of an ambiguous target sentence first comes to mind. In the second experiment, they also responded to a visual probe that was presented during the presentation of the ambiguous target. The results show that context and prosody have independent and strong effects on both on-line processing and off-line interpretation of gapping; in the right combination they can make gapping as easy as the normally preferred nongapping reading.     

Six-year change in affect optimization and affect complexity across the adult life span: a further examination

This study examines the life course of 2 independent components of adult affective development, 1 aimed at differentiation and complexity, the other aimed at optimization and positive emotional balance. These 2 components are predicted to have different developmental trajectories over the adult life span and to become related in a compensatory fashion under conditions of resource restrictions, such as those related to late life. Using individual growth curve estimation, we modeled 6-year longitudinal changes in the 2 components in a total sample of 388 individuals ranging in age from 15 to 88 years. As predicted, initial level of affect optimization was positively associated with age up to late middle age with a subsequent leveling off; individual rates of change were found to decelerate with age up to age 60 years and accelerate again around age 80 years. For affect complexity, initial level of affect complexity was positively associated with age up to age 45 years and negatively associated with age from then on, whereas individual rates of change were negatively associated with age, and this association tended to get stronger with age.     

The State of Community Counseling: A Survey of Directors of CACREP‐Accredited Programs

Directors of CACREP‐accredited community counseling programs were surveyed on plans for their programs, needed curricular changes, professional organization and publications desired, and what makes community counseling distinct as a counseling specialization. Respondents were evenly divided between those who seem to see community counseling as generic counselor preparation for nonschool settings and those who seem to see it as a community‐oriented specialization in its own right. This division of opinion suggests a need to resolve this issue.     

Age and gender differences in cardiac reactivity and subjective emotion responses to emotional autobiographical memories

This research reports age and gender differences in cardiac reactivity and subjective responses to the induction of autobiographical memories related to anger, fear, sadness, and happiness. Heart rate (HR) and subjective state were assessed at baseline and after the induction of each emotion in 113 individuals (61 men, 52 women; 66% European American, 34% African American) ranging in age from 15 to 88 years (M = 50.0; SD = 20.2). Cardiac reactivity was lower in older individuals; however, for anger and fear, these age effects were significantly more pronounced for the women than the men. There were no gender differences in subjective responses, however, suggesting that the lower cardiac reactivity found among older people is dependent on gender and the specific emotion assessed.     

Determining subprocesses of visual feature search with reaction time models

After the classic serial/parallel dichotomy of visual search mechanisms has been increasingly doubted, we investigated what search mechanisms are used between the two poles termed "pop-out" and "strictly serial search" in an overt feature search paradigm. Since reaction time slopes do not contain sufficient information for this purpose, we developed a novel technique for analyzing reaction times. Individual reaction times are modeled as sums of the durations of successive search steps. Model parameters are task characteristics (similarity, number and arrangement of target and distractors) and processing characteristics of the participant (e.g., attention dwell and shift durations). In Experiment 1, several model variants were fitted numerically to empirical reaction times. The best fitting model suggested that more than one item can be processed in a single fixation, movement of attention is abrupt and not continuous, and even in pop out search, attention is often explicitly moved to the target. In Experiment 2, we measured the central model parameter, the so-called range of attention, more directly and thereby validated the model. The model provides an explanation for the strong variation in the slope of reaction time functions, which is not based on an explicit distinction between parallel and serial search processes.