Academic goals and learning strategies in secondary education Spanish students with social anxiety / Metas académicas y estrategias de aprendizaje en estudiantes españoles de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria con ansiedad social

The purpose of this study was to analyse the relationship between high social anxiety, academic goals and learning strategies in a sample of 2,022 (51.1% male) Spanish adolescents aged 12–16. The Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI), Achievement Goal Tendencies Questionnaire (AGTQ) and Learning and Studies Skills Strategies Inventory — High School Version (LASSI-HS) were used to assess the variables. The results showed no statistically significant differences in goal orientations between students with and without high social anxiety. However, students with high social anxiety used learning strategies significantly less. In addition, the logistic regression results indicated that high social anxiety acts as a significant predictor for setting social reinforcement goals and learning and study strategies.     

A darkly bright republic: Milton's poetic logic

My first section considers Walter J. Ong's influential analyses of the logical method of Peter Ramus, on whose system Milton based his Art of Logic. The upshot of Ong's work is that philosophical logic has become a kind monarch over all other discourses, the allegedly timeless and universal method of mapping and diagramming all concepts. To show how Milton nevertheless resists this tyrannical result in his non-Logic writings, my second section offers new readings of Milton's poems Il Penseroso and Sonnet 16: “On His Blindness”, along with his prose epilogue to his elegies (and thereby the entire collection entitled Poems). These readings attempt to show (1) the original admixing of philosophy and poetry (under the heading of “thoughtfulness”), (2) the shadow-hidden superiority of poetry in connection to the effeminising disability of blindness, and (3) the potential irony of an apology that arguably suggests poetry's superiority to philosophy. Finally, I rest my case for Milton's rebellion by offering an interpretation of Paradise Lost which affirms the character of Satan qua dark, queer, poetic figure of classical republicanism.     

The Importance of Emotional Intelligence and Cognitive Style in Institutionalized Older Adults' Quality of Life

Despite previous evidence showing a positive relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and quality of life (QoL), associating older adults' emotional processing with several health indicators, few studies have explored both the IE and the a mechanisms through which they affect QoL. This cross-sectional study analyzes the mediator role of optimistic and pessimistic cognitive styles in the relationship between perceived EI (PEI) and QoL in 115 institutionalized older adults from Southern Spain. Regression analyses showed, after controlling for cognitive style, that PEI predicted a significant percentage of variance in: Health (β = .25, p < .01), Functional abilities (β = .20, p < .05), Activity and leisure (β = .17, p < .05) and Life satisfaction (β = .21, p < .05). Additionally, multiple mediation analysis revealed that cognitive style partially mediated the relationship between PEI and Health, Activity and leisure and Life satisfaction. Thus, PEI could promote personal but not external or environmental QoL aspects, highlighting the importance of developing emotional skills for healthy aging.     

The Youth Public Arts Program: Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Outcomes for At-Risk Youth

This article provides the findings of a program evaluation of the Youth Public Arts Program, a long-standing community-based art program that serves at-risk youth in eastern North Carolina. The program evaluation was undertaken to examine the art skills, social and interpersonal skills, and community involvement of the participants. The study included four focus groups and telephone surveys with a total of 38 stakeholders (program participants, parents of participants, program staff, and referral sources). Results indicated that the at-risk youth had gains in both interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, including family relationships, peer relationships, community interaction, increased art skills, confidence, and self-regulation. This article adds to the very limited literature on community-based art programs for youth.     

AINSWORTH'S STRANGE SITUATION PROCEDURE: THE ORIGIN OF AN INSTRUMENT

The American‐Canadian psychologist Mary Ainsworth (1913–1999) developed the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) to measure mother‐child attachment and attachment theorists have used it ever since. When Ainsworth published the first results of the SSP in 1969, it seemed a completely novel and unique instrument. However, in this paper we will show that the SSP had many precursors and that the road to such an instrument was long and winding. Our analysis of hitherto little‐known studies on children in strange situations allowed us to compare these earlier attempts with the SSP. We argue that it was the combination of Ainsworth's working experience with William Blatz and John Bowlby, her own research in Uganda and Baltimore, and the strong connection of the SSP with attachment theory, that made the SSP differ enough from the other strange situation studies to become one of the most widely used instruments in developmental psychology today.     

Whatever happened to Kony2012? Understanding a global Internet phenomenon as an emergent social identity

Kony2012 was a viral Internet video that attracted unprecedented online interest in promoting a campaign to arrest the leader of an African militant group. The current research considers the social psychological bases of social media‐based collective action. In three cross‐sectional surveys (N = 304) collected before, on, and after the key action date of 20 April 2012, we consider the nature (opinion based or global) and function (emergent or transforming) of social identity in modern forms of social action. Multigroup structural equation modelling showed that Kony2012 action was best captured by an emergent opinion‐based social identity. Moreover, the same factors that predicted Kony2012 action generally also predicted engagement in new repertoires of protest (involving the use of social media) and an observable traditional socio‐political action (signing a letter to a government minister). The results suggest that there is no sharp dividing line between traditional and new forms of collective action and that both may be understood as valid expressions of collective selfhood. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.