Autonomy,Relationality, and Feminist Ethics

While care ethics has frequently been criticized for lacking an account of autonomy, this paper argues that care ethics’ relational model of moral agency provides the basis for criticizing the philosophical tradition's model of autonomy and for rethinking autonomy in relational terms. Using Diana Meyers s account of autonomy competency as a basis, a dialogical model of autonomy is developed that can respond to internal and external critiques of care ethics.     

Changes ahead! implications of the Vail Conference

Counseling practice is heavily influenced by psychological models. The summer 1973 conference at Vail, Colorado, examined the role of the applied psychologist. The recommendations of this conference are new and powerful and are likely to reverberate throughout the helping professions. The authors, both of whom were delegates to that conference, discuss major conference recommendations and their implications for professional counseling practice.     

Sensation of effort and duration of mentally executed actions

The aim of this study was to examine whether a sensation of effort would arise in subjects requested, by verbal instructions, to mentally perform motor tasks with an internal imagery strategy. Sixteen subjects had to imagine themselves, from a first person perspective, writing a sentence and drawing a Necker's cube either with their right dominant hand or with their left hand, as well as hopping around a square either on their right or left foot. The time needed to mentally execute these actions was measured. The sensation of effort following the mental performance and the difficulty of imaging the tasks were assessed by means of two analog rating scales. The results indicate that the sensation of effort increased across the trials. Furthermore, a negative correlation coefficient (mean r = -0.99) was found between the difficulty to imagining a given motor task and the subjective sensation of effort across the trials. Moreover, the sensation of effort was more pronounced when the tasks involved the non-dominant limb.     

Withdrawal From Coparenting Interactions During Early Infancy

This study examines early withdrawal in the coparenting system, and the utility of a brief problem‐solving discussion about coparenting responsibilities as a means for evaluating such withdrawal. One hundred and fifteen couples were evaluated both prenatally and at 3 months postpartum. During prenatal assessments, parents rated their personalities and completed marital assessments. After the baby arrived, they completed a negotiation task in which they discussed disputes about parenting roles and responsibilities, and interacted together with the baby in a triadic play assessment. Fathers' but not mothers' withdrawal during coparenting negotiations was associated with greater disengagement and less warmth during triadic play and with fathers' feelings that mothers did not respect their parenting. Fathers' but not mothers' withdrawal during coparenting negotiations was also forecast by low ego resilience and by an increase in depressive symptomatology during the postpartum. As the negotiation task appeared to be an effective provocateur of withdrawal when confronting coparenting disagreement, it may prove useful for eliciting this aspect of coparental process in work with couples.     

Indirect interception actions by blind and sighted perceivers: The role of modality and tau

Vernat, J.‐P. & Gordon, M.S. (2011). Indirect interception actions by blind and sighted perceivers: The role of modality and tau. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 52, 83–92. Acoustic and visual interceptive actions were tested in this research by comparing the performance of blind, blind‐folded, and sighted individuals. An indirect interception method was employed in which the participant had to roll an intercepting ball towards a moving target on a perpendicular track. The interception task used conditions that varied the speed, rolling distance, and target size/intensity. While performance was highly consistent and accurate for visual participants in this research, the blind and blind‐folded participants demonstrated much more performance variability in response to changes in speed and distance. Manipulation of target size and intensity did not affect judgments, however performance tended to be more accurate at shorter distances and with faster target speeds. Results from this research are discussed in terms of their implications for tau in acoustic interception, and the use of spatial and temporal cues for guiding interceptive actions.     

MANAGERIAL VALUES: A METHODOLOGICAL STEP TOWARD A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC APPROACH

Managers from Private Enterprises and Public Services answered a questionnaire where they were asked to give the 60 concepts and 40 adjectives that are the most useful to describe and characterize their managing function. Some concepts and adjectives appear with a frequency beyond the chance level they fix the limits of a managerial subjective culture. Additional entropy measures show that concepts are more stereotyped than adjectives and that Public Services Managers are more stereotyped than Private Enterprises Managers although in both cases the entropy curves are quasi-linear meaning that the semantic space of management is economically organized.     

An Exploration of the Dynamics of the Overlapping Worlds of Work and Family

The relationship between the working lives and family lives of people in our society is a concern to both families and corporations. This article describes a research project that yielded theoretical statements about the interactions between organization life and family life for members of large corporations; grounded theory methodology and a systems theory approach were used. Data were obtained in a large multinational corporation from managers and their families who were undergoing three different kinds of organizational stress: international transfer, extensive travel, and job change to facilitator of personal and organizational change. The findings give reason for viewing organization and family as interacting systems and for considering the uniqueness of each individual's response to stressful events. They also indicate that an individual's feeling of influence over stressful events at the organization-family boundaries are significant for both organizational and family effectiveness.