Infant Emotion Regulation Strategy Moderates Relations between Self‐Reported Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Infant HPA Activity

Children of mothers with depressive symptoms often have high cortisol levels. Research shows that various child characteristics (e.g., attachment pattern, internalizing behaviours, and temperament) moderate this association. We suggest that these characteristics share common variance with emotion regulation strategy. Therefore, we examine infant emotion regulation strategy as a moderator of the association between maternal depressive symptoms and infant hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) function. We hypothesize that infants who utilize more independent emotion regulation strategies and have mothers who report higher depressive symptoms will exhibit elevated cortisol levels. Participants were 193 mothers and infants (15 months old) recruited from the community. Self‐reported maternal depressive symptoms were assessed. Infant independent regulatory behaviours (withdrawal, wandering away, distraction, scanning, orienting to another object) were coded in the context of a Toy Frustration Task. Infant cortisol was collected via saliva samples at baseline, +20, and +40 minutes. Results indicate that infant emotion regulation strategy moderates the relation between mothers' self‐reported depressive symptoms and infant total cortisol output (AUC_G) and cortisol reactivity (AUC_I). Infants who employed more independent regulatory behaviours and have mothers with higher depressive symptoms experience greater cortisol secretion. We discuss the findings in relation to parent‐infant interactions and the adaptive nature of emotion regulation strategies, as they relate to HPA regulatory capacities. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

应对全球化挑战的开明之举

当前,人类正面临着一长串可怕的全球化挑战——不可再生资源的枯竭,日益严重的收入不均,沉重的国家债务,暴力的全面升级,军国主义,新的帝国主义,广告驱动的消费主义,福利国家的危机,宗教盲信的复兴,种族间不相容的日益加剧,政治的商业化,对传统自由主义和社会主义的中伤,科学和工程学科的学生数量的减少,后现代主义的盛行以及被大众商业文化所取代的高雅艺术。那么,该如何应对这些全球化的挑战呢?对于上述种种现代文明的危机,人们可能持两种观点:一种是蒙昧的,另一种是开明的。蒙昧主义者乐意采纳回溯过去,并企图用堕胎、安乐死和同性婚姻等…     

Correction to: Introduction: The Varieties of Enactivism

Topoi - The original article was published with incomplete acknowledgement. The complete acknowledgement section is given in this correction.     

Toward a Genealogy of Culture

Using psychoanalytic theory, this paper attempts to trace the natural history of the phenomenon designated as Culture. It postulates that psychoanalysis, a product of the Hegelian philosophical revolution, is still one of the best instruments to understand Culture. It traces the origins of culture as postulated by Freud and the pioneer anthropologists and its course from early and evolved religion through humanism, science, and finally postmodernism. It emphasizes the dialectical concepts in psychoanalysis and reviews summarily those psychoanalysts that, according to the author, have had a major impact on the study of culture: Freud, Horney, and Lacan.     

A program for the semantics of science

Concluding remarks Our program is ambitious, as is any attempt to match life (in our case real science) with virtue (e.g., exactness). We want our semantics to be not only simia mathematicae but also ancilla scientiae: built more geometrico and at the same time relevant, nay useful, to live science. The goal of exactness may sound arrogant but is actually modest, for the more we rigorize the more we are forced to leave out of consideration, at least for the time being. As to the service intention: we should try to be of some help to science because the latter faces semantic problems but has no tools of its own for solving them. If it had such tools scientists would not engage in spirited polemics over matters of sense and reference, as they often do. Witness the debates on whether the relativistic and quantum theories are concerned with sentient observers, whether population genetics refers to populations taken as wholes, whether psychology is actually concerned with the brain, and whether the sense of a theory is excreted by its mathematical formalism or is determined by the way the theory is tested.A semantics of science should help settle these and similar issues. Moreover it should give sound advice as to how to formulate scientific theories so as to avoid such imprecisions and ambiguities as may give rise to debates of the kind. Constructing such a semantics, both exact and relevant to science, should be more rewarding than either manufacturing neat but irrelevant theories or pursuing erratic polemics on meaning and meaning changes.

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Coping and learned helplessness: Effects of coping strategies on performance following unsolvable problems

The current study assesses the effects of individuals' coping strategies for dealing with stress on cognitive performance following unsolvable problems. In this study, subjects responded to a questionnaire tapping the use of problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies in dealing with failure in achievement settings. Then they were exposed to either no-feedback or failure in four unsolvable problems. Upon completing these problems, subjects performed a visual search task with a memory component. Results showed that failure, as compared with no-feedback, produced performance deficits among subjects who habitually relied on a single coping strategy, either problem- or emotion-focused, and among subjects who did not rely on any coping response. Only subjects who relied on both problem-focused and emotion-focused strategies did not show any performance deficit following unsolvable problems. The results are discussed in terms of Lazarus and Folkman's stress-coping model.     

Causal attribution,coping strategies,and combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder

The present study assesses the intervening role of ways of coping in mediating the effects of causal attribution for negative events on combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The sample consisted of Israeli soldiers who suffered a combat stress reaction episode during the 1982 Lebanon War and were followed 2 and 3 years after their participation in combat. The results showed that an attribution of negative events to stable and uncontrollable causes was associated with both a more frequent use of emotion-focused coping and a less frequent use of problem-focused coping. It was also found that emotion-focused coping and problem-focused coping were more direct antecedents of combat-related PTSD than causal attribution. Finally, it was found that the association between causal attribution and combat-related PTSD was mediated by variations in emotion-focused coping. The discussion attempts to integrate theoretical notions derived from attributional models and Lazarus and Folkman's stress-coping model.