Self‐esteem Is Mostly Stable Across Young Adulthood: Evidence from Latent STARTS Models

How stable is self‐esteem? This long‐standing debate has led to different conclusions across different areas of psychology. Longitudinal data and up‐to‐date statistical models have recently indicated that self‐esteem has stable and autoregressive trait‐like components and state‐like components. We applied latent STARTS models with the goal of replicating previous findings in a longitudinal sample of young adults (N = 4,532; M_age = 19.60, SD = 0.85; 55% female). In addition, we applied multigroup models to extend previous findings on different patterns of stability for men versus women and for people with high versus low levels of depressive symptoms. We found evidence for the general pattern of a major proportion of stable and autoregressive trait variance and a smaller yet substantial amount of state variance in self‐esteem across 10 years. Furthermore, multigroup models suggested substantial differences in the variance components: Females showed more state variability than males. Individuals with higher levels of depressive symptoms showed more state and less autoregressive trait variance in self‐esteem. Results are discussed with respect to the ongoing trait–state debate and possible implications of the group differences that we found in the stability of self‐esteem.     

Flexible Manualized Treatment for Pediatric Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder: A Case Study

The following case study describes the treatment of an 8 year-old girl with early-onset obsessive compulsive disorder using a manualized cognitive-behavioral therapy with exposure and response prevention (CBT/EPR) protocol, implemented using a “flexibility within fidelity” approach. The case study focuses on how the treatment manual was successfully implemented in a flexible manner to address unique aspects of the case. These unique factors included the child’s extreme shyness at the beginning of treatment (with implications for rapport building), the primarily obsessional presentation of this child’s symptoms, the child’s avoidance of discussing the content of her obsessive thoughts, and secondary depressive symptoms (excessive guilt, frequent crying, and sadness) that contributed to the child’s impairment and distress. Assessment of progress indicated improvement in symptoms after four sessions of cognitive skill building and again in the last five sessions after implementing increased exposure to obsessive thoughts using narrative techniques. The implications for clinicians and student therapists, including the importance of rapport building, developmentally tailoring treatment, and flexibly implementing treatment to address the unique characteristics of the individual patient are discussed.     

Wie können wir in das psychodynamische Erstinterview einführen?

We reflect on which traditional texts are suitable for the introduction into psychodynamic thinking for bachelor students in the faculty of psychology. We come to the conclusion that the use of works known and individually valued by the students from the world and/or trivial literature are suitable to allow students to carry out fictive preliminary conversations with their heroes from novels or films.     

Aktueller Stand der Gruppenpsychotherapieforschung

In view of an increasing importance of group therapies and the intention in healthcare politics to support group treatment, it seems appropriate to provide a review of the current research efforts in this field. In this review, several research traditions are described with a clear focus on the effectiveness of group treatment. Both systematic narrative reviews and recent meta-analyses clearly demonstrate that group treatment of various disorders is equally as effective as individual psychotherapy. Besides outcome research there are other developments in the field, such as the improvement of manualized and focused group therapies even outside cognitive behavioral concepts. Studies related to feedback in groups, specific patient characteristics (especially alexithymia and attachment) as well as the construction of new measures seem to be characteristic for group research during recent years. There is still a need for research related to group dynamics and process aspects of small groups as well as the group leaders and their behavior. In total, research on group psychotherapy has clearly progressed, which justifies the support of this treatment setting.     

INCIDENTAL LANGUAGE LEARNING:

Abstract —Two experiments investigated the performance of first-grade children and adults on an incidental language-learning task. Learning entailed word segmentation from continuous speech, an initial and crucial component of language acquisition. Subjects were briefly exposed to an unsegmented artificial language, presented auditorily, in which the only cues to word boundaries were the transitional probabilities between syllables. Subjects were not told that they were listening to a language, or even to listen at all; rather, they were engaged in a cover task of creating computer illustrations. Both adults and children learned the words of the language. Moreover, the children performed as well as the adults. These data suggest that a statistical learning mechanism (transitional probability computation) is able to operate incidentally and, surprisingly, as well in children as in adults.     

HUMANISM AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

This paper addresses two related questions: 1. Does human life have a purpose? and 2. Is human life intrinsically valuable? Clearly human beings have personal, communal and common purposes, but we cannot know whether there is an external transcendent purpose in addition to these. However the argument that mundane purposes are meaningless without transcendent purposes, though valid, rests on false premises. There are four ways of explaining the intrinsic value of life. The first (pantheism) is the idea that human life is sacred because everything is sacred. A second is that life is intrinsically valuable because something else is valuable and indeed sacred – the idea, for instance, that mankind is made in the image of God. The third is that human life lacks value because of its contrast with the sanctity of the gods. The humanistic explanation is that human life as such has intrinsic value. There are (at least) six reasons for holding that human life is intrinsically valuable; these reasons are given.     

Availability,Similarity, and Gender as Determinants of Adolescent Peer Acceptance1

Attributes of accepted classmates were investigated as a function of (a) respondent-target similarity, (b) availability of desirable peers, (c) gender of respondent and accepted peers, and (d) level of intimacy of the social contact. It was assumed that availability would play a greater role than was previously recognized, in determining attributes of accepted peers in casual as well as intimate contacts, and same-gender and opposite-gender acceptance of males and females would be affected differentially by availability and similarity. Seven hundred and fitly-five 6th, 7th. and 8th grade male and female students indicated their readiness to engage in closer or more casual contacts with each of their classmates, using the Interpersonal Relationship Assessment Technique. It was found that in more superficial relations attributes of accepted peers tended to reflect availability of desirable peers (mean level of desirable student attributes in class), but not respondent-peer similarity; whereas readiness to maintain more intimate contacts with peers was significantly associated with similarity between respondent and accepted peers, as well as availability of desirable peers. It was found further that availability and similarity play different roles in determining acceptance of same-gender or opposite-gender peers by boys and by girls. These results were replicated over four levels of intimacy and four different student attributes.     

Dyadic association between aggressive pretend play and children’s anger expression

This study investigates the association between children’s peer-reported expression of anger and their pretend play with aggressive/negative themes observed during spontaneous play with classmates. Participants comprised 104 Chinese children (M_age = 8.98 years, SD = 0.97, 49% girls) and were filmed playing in peer dyads with toys. Aggressive and non-aggressive negative pretend themes were coded at five-second intervals for 10 minutes. Children’s expression of anger in real situations was reported by peers. Analysis using actor–partner interdependence modelling (APIM) revealed significant partner effects, indicating that children were more likely to engage in pretend play with aggressive themes when they were playing with a partner who was perceived by their peers as more easily angered. It was also found that boys were more likely to engage in pretend play with both aggressive and non-aggressive negative themes compared with girls.     

Developmental Characteristics of Disparate Bimanual Movement Skills in Typically Developing Children

Mastery of many tasks in daily life requires role differentiated bimanual hand use with high spatiotemporal cooperation and minimal interference. The authors investigated developmental changes in the performance of a disparate bimanual movement task requiring sequenced movements. Age groups were attributed to changes in CNS structures critical for bimanual control such as the corpus callosum (CC) and the prefrontal cortex; young children (5–6 years old), older children (7–9 years old), and adolescents (10–16 years old). Results show qualitative changes in spatiotemporal sequencing between the young and older children which typically marks a phase of distinct reduction of growth and myelination of the CC. Results show qualitative changes in spatiotemporal sequencing between the young and older children, which coincides with distinct changes in the growth rate and myelination of the CC. The results further support the hypothesis that CC maturation plays an important role in the development of bimanual skills.