Infants’ understanding of everyday social interactions: A dual process account

Six- and 12-month-old infant’s eye movements were recorded as they observed feeding actions being performed in a rational or non-rational manner. Twelve-month-olds fixated the goal of these actions before the food arrived (anticipation); the latency of these gaze shifts being dependent (r = .69) on infants life experience being feed. In addition, 6- and 12-month-olds dilated their pupil during observation of non-rational feeding actions. This effect could not be attributed to light differences or differences in familiarity, but was interpreted to reflect sympathetic-like activity and arousal caused by a violation of infant’s expectations about rationality. We argue that evaluation of rationality requires less experience than anticipations of action goals, suggesting a dual process account of preverbal infants’ everyday action understanding.     

Is Self‐Determined Functioning a Universal Prerequisite for Motive–Goal Congruence? Examining the Domain of Achievement in Three Cultures

ABSTRACT Research has shown that capacity for accessing implicit motives promotes congruence between the implicit and the explicit motivational system: Individuals able to test a conscious goal for its fit with their implicit motivation commit themselves more fully to self‐congruent goals. However, it has not yet been shown whether this is a universal phenomenon or limited to Euro‐American cultures in which individual needs are less strictly constrained by the social environment than in other cultural contexts. Thus, the present study examined whether self‐determination interacts with the implicit achievement motive to predict how much importance individuals from Cameroon, Germany, and Hong Kong ascribe to achievement goals. Moreover, the importance ascribed to goals should indirectly predict life satisfaction via success in goal realization. Results showed that the associations described above are valid in all three cultural groups and are discussed in terms of their implications for the universal processes characterizing motivation.     

Post-event Processing in Children with Social Phobia

In the aftermath of a distressing social event, adults with social phobia (SP) engage in a review of this event with a focus on its negative aspects. To date, little is known about this post-event processing (PEP) and its relationship with perceived performance in SP children. We measured PEP in SP children (n = 24) and healthy controls (HC; n = 22), aged from 8 to 12 years, after the Trier Social Stress Test for Children (TSST-C). Children also rated their performance immediately after the TSST-C and 2.5 h later. SP children reported more negative and less positive PEP than controls. Regression analyses indicated that negative PEP was associated with social anxiety and perceived task performance independent of comorbid depression. The SP group rated their performance immediately after the TSST-C as worse compared to HCs and ratings remained stable over the following 2.5 h. Results are discussed in relation to current theories of SP.     

Adult temperament and childbearing over the life course

Emerging evidence suggests that temperament may predict childbearing. We examined the association between four temperament traits (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence and persistence of the Temperament and Character Inventory) and childbearing over the life course in the population‐based Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study (n = 1535; 985 women, 550 men). Temperament was assessed when the participants were aged 20–35 and fertility history from adolescence to adulthood was reported by the participants at age 30–45. Discrete‐time survival analysis modelling indicated that high childbearing probability was predicted by low novelty seeking (standardized OR = 0.92; 95% confidence interval 0.88–0.97), low harm avoidance (OR = 0.90; 0.85–0.95), high reward dependence (OR = 1.09; 1.03–1.15) and low persistence (OR = 0.91; 0.87–0.96) with no sex differences or quadratic effects. These associations grew stronger with increase in numbers of children. The findings were substantially the same in a completely prospective analysis. Adjusting for education did not influence the associations. Despite its negative association with overall childbearing, high novelty seeking increased the probability of having children in participants who were not living with a partner (OR = 1.29; 1.12–1.49). These data provide novel evidence for the role of temperament in influencing childbearing, and suggest possible weak natural selection of temperament traits in contemporary humans. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Der professionelle Umgang mit den Medien

There are good reasons for establishing functioning public relations. The world of the media has its own rules. Knowing and complying with these rules makes public relations work easier. In many cases only small details decide whether or not a press report arouses attention or an invitation to a press conference ensues. Public relations work,h owever, is not a one-way path. Both suppliers and media gain by good public relations in the long run. Moreover, reflected and sophisticated relations with the media protect against excessive expectations on both sides.     

Fokaltherapie

In many psychodynamic short therapy methods, the patient and therapist formulate a central conflict, the so-called focus, at the beginning of therapy. In the following therapy sessions,both concentrate on dealing with this focus. In practice, therapists are faced with the question of how they could organize the concrete work with the focus in the most useful manner.The following article presents a clinical study which examines the influence of the therapist's verbalization of the focus on the success of therapy. Results showed that the therapists in the group having a more successful therapy outcome addressed the focus significantly more often and verbalized it in a more complex and interpersonal manner than the therapists in the group with a less successful therapy outcome.     

Traumaadaptierte tiefenpsychologisch fundierte und analytische Psychotherapie

The authors discuss the question which criteria should apply to the depth psychologically oriented psychotherapy (TP) and to the analytic psychotherapy (AT) in order to guarantee a state-of-the-art treatment for traumatized patients on the basis of latest scientific research. Specific demands and modifications of the two guideline treatment methods arise from the scientific findings of interdisciplinary research projects bringing together psychobiological research results and models with concepts and results from empirical psychotherapy research.When TP and AP were conceived, an interdisciplinary concept was still out of reach. In the meantime there exist elaborated traumaspecific concepts for TP/AP and show promising empirical research findings.The adaptation of TP/AP to the demands of trauma patients should proceed in the opinion of the authors under the following term: “As much reform as necessary, as much tradition as possible”, so as not to endanger valuable and proven treatment principles of both methods.     

Importance of and Satisfaction with Sex Life in a Large Finnish Population

This paper describes five sex life issues in a Finnish population–based random sample (n = 21,101) between 20 and 54 years of age. The associations were studied with the following demographic variables: gender, age, marital status, graduation from the 3 upper classes of high school, vocational education, degree of urbanization, and province or area of the country. Men considered sex life more important than women did. Women were more satisfied with their sex lives, found it easier to talk about sex life with an important other, had had a spouse or steady partner more often, but were also less satisfied with their present marriages or marriage-like relationships. The above findings were most consistently shown in the Northern Province.     

Introduction: Developmental Processes in Adulthood—European Research Perspectives

The main objective of this Special European Issue is to investigate some topical aspects of recent research on adult development in Europe. More specifically, the issue offers a detailed discussion of questions involved in complex forms of adult cognition, scientific thinking, responses to the demands of everyday life, the effects of various life events on well-being, and the construction of an integrated model of the cognitive, social, and personality domains. Theo- retically, the articles are based on various viewpoints such as the neo-Piagetian perspectives on thinking, although others have connections with the Vygotskian approach to learning. In conclusion, we assert that the developmental processes of adulthood should always be viewed multidimensionally, contextually, and holistically, as the articles themselves clearly demonstrate.     

Power and Participation: Social Representations among Children in Pre-school

Children’s play is usually connected with qualities such as happiness and innocence, and regarded as important and necessary for learning and development. However, play is not always a state of joy. Experiences of being socially excluded or ignored and of taking part in such activities are occurring. The article draws on a re-analysis of empirical data from a study of pre-school children’s play. The focus in the article is directed towards how pre-school children within the context of play communicate and act in relation to social participation and power. The theoretical framework is built upon a socio-cultural research tradition, particularly emphasising context and communication. Interpretive reproduction, secondary adjustment, and social representations are used as additional theoretical concepts in the analyses and discussions of the results. Empirical data show that children’s social representations of power and participation in play include rationales for who can join the play and who can not, and also how to allow exceptions from the main rule that ‘anyone can join’.