Description and Evaluation of a Measurement Technique for Assessment of Performing Gender

The influence of masculinity and femininity on behaviors and outcomes has been extensively studied in social science research using various measurement strategies. In the present paper, we describe and evaluate a measurement technique that uses existing survey items to capture the extent to which an individual behaves similarly to their same-gender peers. We use data from the first four waves of The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a nationally representative sample of adolescents (age 12–18) in the United States who were re-interviewed at ages 13–19, 18–26, and 24–32. We estimate split-half reliability and provide evidence that supports the validity of this measurement technique. We demonstrate that the resulting measure does not perform as a trait measure and is associated with involvement in violent fights, a pattern consistent with theory and empirical findings. This measurement technique represents a novel approach for gender researchers with the potential for expanding our current knowledge base.     

How Patient-Perpetrated Workplace Violence Leads to Turnover Intention Among Nurses: The Mediating Mechanism of Occupational Stress and Burnout

This study looked into the impact of patient-perpetrated workplace violence on nurses’ turnover intention by examining the sequential mediation effect of occupational stress and burnout. Results were obtained by analyzing the data collected from 216 nurses working in four public hospitals of central Pakistan. Results provided full support to the research hypotheses, demonstrating that patient-inflicted violence negatively affects nurses’ turnover intention, and that occupational stress and burnout both individually mediate the patient violence–turnover intention relationship. Particularly, the results illustrated that patient violence is related to turnover intention through occupational stress first and then burnout. These results widen the focus of past research by demonstrating that the patient violence–turnover intention link is not as simple as previously believed. Future researchers can use these findings to further develop integrated models that explore the adverse consequences of workplace violence on nursing staff’s personal and professional well-being.     

Development of the infant's hand preference for visually directed reaching: Preliminary report of a longitudinal study

The development of hand preference in infancy was investigated longitudinally by using a visually-directed reaching task. Thirty-two infants, equally divided into groups of familial right- and left-handed boys and girls, were tested every 3 weeks from 24 to 39 weeks of age and once again at 52 weeks. Group trends for the development of hand preference were differentiated by familial handedness and sex of the infant. At all ages, test object position (to the infant's right or left) strongly influenced the hand used for reaching. Marked variability both between and within infants demonstrated an instability of early hand preference, an effect that could be appreciated fully only with a prospective longitudinal design. The results thus suggest that the development of hand preference for reaching is highly variable, discontinuous, and related to the interaction of sex and familial handedness.     

The Schröder staircase: A new perspective

A range of variants of the Schröder staircase was generated by computer, giving quantifiable changes of perspective and the option of adding appropriate texture to the steps of the staircase. Increases in perspective and the addition of texture gradients led to increases in the proportion of viewing time during which the percept appropriate to the perspective was reported. It is suggested that this might be a useful method of studying the processing of depth information.     

Comparing positive and negative patterning in human learning

In human causal learning, positive patterning (PP) and negative patterning (NP) discriminations are often acquired at roughly the same rate, whereas PP is learned faster than NP in most experiments with nonhuman animals. One likely reason for this discrepancy is that most causal learning scenarios encourage participants to treat the presentation and omission of the relevant outcome as two events of comparable significance and likelihood. To investigate this, the current experiments compared PP and NP using a predictive learning paradigm based on a mock gambling task. In Experiment 1, one outcome (winning) was made more salient by being less frequent than the alternative outcome (losing). Under these circumstances, PP was learned faster than NP. In Experiment 2, subjects learned two PP and two NP discriminations, one involved win versus no change outcomes, the other involved lose versus no change outcomes. The subjects learned PP faster than NP, but only when discriminating win from no change. We argue that a difference in difficulty between PP and NP relies on a difference in the salience of the outcomes, consistent with the predictions of a relatively simple model of associative learning.     

The relational tradition: landscape and canon

This essay charts the origins, influences, and evolution of the relational tradition in contemporary psychoanalysis. Considering the theoretical and philosophical influences from nineteenth-century Americans like William James and C. S Pierce, and noting the seminal modern work of Steven Mitchell and Jay Greenberg in opening a critique of one-person focused drive theory, the essay follows developments over a quarter century. Hallmarks of the relational approach-social construction, two-person psychologies, multiple self-states, social regulation and construction of identities like gender and sexual orientation, and an evolving theory of clinical practice-are reviewed. New developments in clinical theory, in the study of identity categories, in the work on embodiment and enactment, and in developmental models are also reviewed.     

Event order versus syntactic structure in recall of adverbial complex sentences

Two experiments using recall of sentences examined two contrasting principles of clause ordering in a type of complex sentences: the main-clause-first (syntactic) principle and the event-order (or temporal-causal order) prir ciple. In Experiment 1, these two principles were studied in complex sentences with a main clause and a subordinate adverbial clause-e.g., When she heard the thunder, she stopped playing Frisbee. In sentences of this type the subordinate clause typically describes a temporally or causally antecedent event, while the main clause describes a subsequent event in the temporal-causal sequence. These two principles make opposite predictions on what is the psychologically simpler or preferred order of the two clauses in this type of complex sentence. Results of Experiment 1 showed an overall preference in memory for main-clause-first order. In Experiment 2, complex sentences with a main clause and a subordinate clause not temporally or causally related were also used in a sentence recall task. Similar results were obtained. The implication of these findings for the determinants of linguistic structures was discussed.     

Becoming irreplaceable: How comparisons to the partner’s alternatives differentially affect low and high self-esteem people

It is proposed that people are motivated to feel hard to replace in romantic relationships because feeling irreplaceable fosters trust in a partner’s continued responsiveness. By contrast, feeling replaceable motivates compensatory behavior aimed at strengthening the partner’s commitment to the relationship. A correlational study of dating couples and two experiments examined how satiating/thwarting the goal of feeling irreplaceable differentially affects relationship perception and behavior for low and high self-esteem people. The results revealed that satiating the goal of feeling irreplaceable increases trust for people low in self-esteem. In contrast, thwarting the goal of feeling irreplaceable increases compensatory behaviors meant to prove one’s indispensability for people high in self-esteem.     

Adverse caregiving in early life: The trauma and deprivation distinction in young children

Knowledge and understanding about the impact of cumulative adverse experiences on the health and wellbeing of children, adolescents, and adults has rapidly expanded over the past 30 years. Despite the invaluable attention and support this proliferation has drawn to the importance of early childhood experiences, we believe that it is time to move beyond broad indices of risk and toward more specific and individualized understanding of how risk exposures are linked to clinical outcomes in young children. Within infant and early childhood mental health, there is a need for greater specificity in linking adverse caregiving experiences in early life to psychopathology in children. We highlight a framework distinguishing experiences of trauma from experiences of deprivation and use the examples of posttraumatic stress disorder and reactive attachment disorder to demonstrate how greater specificity in our understanding of early adverse caregiving can lead to more accurate and targeted diagnosis and treatment for young children. Both researchers and clinicians benefit from an approach to gain a greater appreciation of the links between specific types of experiences and outcomes in the children that we serve.