Tú velas por los tuyos: Weak Labor Markets and the Importance of Social Networks

Literature on the economic incorporation of immigrants to new destinations has been missing a discussion on how the strength of the local economy affects immigrants’ need for social networks and how it might also affect the relative importance of strong versus weak ties for immigrant job seekers. Through the use of in-depth interviews, the role and importance of social networks in the labor market incorporation of Hispanic immigrants in economically weak cities is examined, as well as the consequences to those immigrants who are unable to command or lack access to social networks and/or ethnic resources. This paper contextualizes the importance of strong ties for immigrants in economically weak new destinations and argues that in places with such a constricted labor market and stagnant economies, it is imperative for recent arrivals to access and/or construct these strong ties in order to more effectively gain entry into the host society’s labor market.     

Self-affirmation and affective forecasting: Affirmation reduces the anticipated impact of negative events

When forecasting how they will feel in the future, people overestimate the impact that imagined negative events will have on their affective states, partly because they underestimate their own psychological resiliency. Because self-affirmation enhances resiliency, two studies examined whether self-affirmation prior to forecasting reduces the extremity of affective forecasts. Participants in self-affirmation conditions completed a values scale or wrote an essay asserting their most important value, whereas participants in the no-affirmation condition asserted a relatively unimportant value. Participants then predicted their affective reactions to a negative or positive imagined event. In both studies, self-affirmation reduced the unpleasant affect expected to result from a negative event, but had no impact on affective forecasts for a positive event. This pattern was mediated by participants’ cognitive appraisals of the imagined event, but not by differential focus on that event. Results are consistent with self-affirmation activating or enhancing psychological resiliency to counteract immune neglect during affective forecasting of a negative event.     

Understanding Real and Fictional Persons: Narrative Negotiations Seen Through Cognitive Poetics

Narrative theories of personal identity have traditionally taken literary characters as models to better understand how our identities are constituted through the narratives of our lives. However, there have been several recent criticisms of these comparisons, showing that philosophers of personal identity paid no attention to the nature of literary characters, and consequently, these philosopher’s comparisons were under-motivated. In the present article, I rely on a cognitive framework to define literary characters. From that point of view, I assert that it is fruitful to compare ourselves with literary characters to understand the role that the narratives told by others about ourselves play in the constitution of our own personal identities.     

Counselling psychology in New Zealand

This article offers a brief overview of the history of counselling psychology in New Zealand. It describes current postgraduate study options and registration pathways as well as the institutions and organisations that provide legislative and professional membership and support to counselling psychologists in New Zealand. Data collected from a national survey in 2014 provide insight into the demographics of the profession in New Zealand, the theoretical frameworks that are utilised and employment opportunities that exist for counselling psychologists. The article also highlights the uniqueness of a cultural and contextual approach that aligns itself with New Zealand’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi/te Tiriti o Waitangi which is based on the principles of partnership, participation and protection. It concludes with the challenges the profession face as a new scope of practice. These challenges include establishing a professional identity in the mental health delivery system in New Zealand and responding to an ever increasing multicultural society.     

Linked proximal and distal changes in the reaching behavior of 5- to 12-month-old human infants grasping objects of different sizes

This study evaluates age-related proximal and distal changes in reaching organization for objects of different sizes. To this end, eight objects ranging from 2 to 9 cm diam. were presented to 23 infants ages 5 to 12 months. Proximal control was determined by the relative frequencies of bimanual reaching for large and small objects. Distal control was assessed by hand opening and orientation with respect to an object, and by the proportion of the object being included within hand opening at touch. Five-month-old infants tended to reach bimanually regardless of object size. Starting at 7 to 8 months, infants tended to reach for large objects bimanually more often than for small ones. Only at 11 to 12 months did reaching closely reflect the object’s diameter. The frequency of thumb-index finger angle opening during the approach phase also increased after 7 to 8 months of age, as well as the adjustment of the angle to the object diameter and the proportion of the object within hand opening at touch. Proximal and distal changes appeared coupled at 5 to 6 months, when the few subjects showing evidence of some proximal adjustments to object size were also those who exhibited some distal adjustments. After they started to appear, however, proximal and distal adjustments seemed to be independent, as revealed by the lack of correlation of proximal and distal changes between 7 and 12 months.     

A seven year follow-up of treating rumination with dietary satiation

”Fred“, a man with profound mental retardation who was 24 years old at the beginning of this study, was referred for treatment of rumination. A number of minimally restrictive interventions, including administration of Zantac, extra fluids, and delivery of peanut butter after meals, had been used without success. In April of 1989 Fred began a satiation diet with ad libitum access to starchy foods or to fruits and vegetables, in addition to his regular meals. His baseline weight was 82 pounds and he ruminated during 58% of 10 s intervals measured during 20 min post-meal observations. During the first month of the satiation diet, Fred's ruminating declined to 6% of measured intervals, he consumed a mean of 163 fluid ounces of extra food per day, and his weight increased to 90 pounds. After 4 months' treatment, Fred's ruminating had declined to zero, his food consumption had stabilized at approximately 65 extra ounces of food per day, and his weight had stabilized at about 120 pounds. Starting in August 1990, in an effort to minimize weight gain, extra food was limited to 50% of Fred's ad libitum food consumption (averaged over the previous 6 weeks). Fred's weight gradually declined to about 100 pounds with zero rumination over the next two years. In August 1992 Fred's ruminating accelerated to 17% of intervals and he was again offered ad libitum food access. Over the next 7 months, rumination declined to zero and his weight increased slightly to about 105 pounds. This study shows that rumination that had not responded to less restrictive procedures was suppressed for 7 years via dietary satiation. Although dietary satiation is not without some risk, Fred has suffered no adverse effects from the procedure, other than gaining approximately one-third of his baseline weight. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Approximation of Value Efficient Solutions

We introduce an approximation set to the value efficient set in multiobjective problems under partial information on the decision maker's preferences modelled by a vector value function. We show monotonicity and convergence properties based on increasingly precise vector value functions with two components, which improve the approximation and might be a support to possible solution methods. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.