With or without you: The impact of partner presence and attachment on exploration

Past research has examined the link of attachment anxiety and avoidance with exploration in adults, though results have been inconsistent and have relied primarily on self-reports. We hypothesized that the presence of the attachment figure (i.e., romantic partner) would play a critical moderating role on exploration duration and enjoyment. Eighty-six couples were randomly assigned to explore alone or with the partner in order to examine the moderating effect of partner presence on the effects of individuals' anxiety and avoidance as well as the partner's anxiety and avoidance. Consistent with hypotheses, there were significant two-way interactions of partner presence with anxiety, avoidance, and partner anxiety. When exploring alone, more (vs. less) anxious individuals spent less time exploring and felt less positive affect. When exploring with the partner, more (vs. less) avoidant individuals spent less time exploring and felt less positive affect. Individuals with more anxious partners felt more positive affect after exploring alone than with the partner, whereas individuals with more avoidant partners were not affected by the partner's presence. Above and beyond individuals' attachment style, partner presence and partner attachment style have implications for exploratory behavior.     

Reply to Commentaries

The following response to discussions by Benjamin and by Fonagy and Target focuses on several issues raised, including linearity versus multiplicity in the assessment of developmental capacities, the complex interplay of shame and subjectivity in an intersubjective field, the notion of surrender in resolving therapeutic impasse, and some thoughts on the concept of the third, as they are exemplified in this case material.     

The Times We Sizzle,and the Times We Sigh: The Multiple Erotics of Arousal,Anticipation, and Release

This paper explores the perspective that an optimal degree of sexual frustration is an absolutely necessary and irreducible dimension of sexual excitement and pleasure. The pleasure, in fact, is predicated on actual enjoyment of the frustration, of being able to tolerate mounting bodily arousal, excitement, and tension without any guarantee of immediate satisfaction and release. The author explores the particular object relational implications of this unique aspect of sexual experience, elaborating a model that suggests two different interacting but separate subsystems of erotic fantasy, in interaction with very different self/ other configurations. The first of these self/other organizations is organized and defined by moments of sexual arousal and yearning, whereas the second occurs around those defined by satisfaction, pleasure, and release. An extended clinical example is provided.     

Gang Fights versus Cat Fights: Urban Young Men's Gendered Narratives of Violence

Scholarly accounts of young men's violence have remained remarkably consistent over time: the use of violence emerges in response to focal concerns that strongly emphasize autonomy, respect, and the defense of reputation, and is indicative of the import of hegemonic masculinities on the streets. Yet, despite persistent gender gaps in the use of violence, recent research suggests that young women use violence more often than commonly believed, and their violence is likewise tied to concerns about status and respect. Given scholarly attention to the functions of violence for accomplishing masculinity, this raises the interesting question of whether and how young men maintain the equation of masculinity with violence when faced with the reality of young women's violence. Drawing from the sociology of accounts and research on gender, language, and discourse, we analyze in-depth interviews with 39 urban African-American young men to compare how they construct and make sense of boys' and girls' violence in the context of conversations about the nature and meanings of violence.     

Interference effects in the memory for serially presented locations in Clark's nutcrackers, Nucifraga columbiana

The authors tested the spatial memory of serially presented locations in Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana). Birds were serially presented with locations in an open room. The authors buried a seed in a sand-filled cup at each location and then tested nutcrackers for their memory for each location in the list by using the cluster method. For each item in the list, the authors opened a cluster of 6 holes. Accuracy was measured by how many tries were required for the bird to find the correct location within each cluster. In Experiments 1 and 2, the authors presented 2 lists of locations and found evidence for proactive and retroactive interference. Nutcrackers made errors by visiting the interfering list of locations during recovery of the target list. This finding demonstrates that nutcrackers are susceptible to proactive and retroactive interference during the recall of spatial information.     

Motivations and attitudes affecting high school students' choice of foreign language

There are some foreign languages that enjoy great status in the United States, while other foreign languages are rarely represented at the high school level. The present study explored the following questions: Why do students choose to take a particular foreign language? Do students gravitate toward it because it is widely thought to be the easiest language to learn or because they perceive greater career opportunities with proficiency in this particular language, or is it simply because there are more classes offered? As long as foreign language study is elective in high schools and as long as a variety of languages are offered, the answers to these questions will remain important for foreign language educators, especially in schools where the various language programs compete with one another for student enrollments and the programs' ultimate survival.     

Correlates of self-worth in preschoolers: The role of gender-stereotyped styles of behavior

It was hypothesized that gender-stereotyped styles of social interaction are apparent as early as the preschool years, and that the use of these gender-stereotyped behaviors is associated with the child's perceived competence and social support. Using a story-completion method with 47 white middle-class preschoolers, the results of the study confirmed the hypotheses. Boys were more likely to use the male-stereotyped styles of domination and intrusion, while girls were more likely to use the female-stereotyped styles of affiliation and inclusion. In addition, the use of male gender-stereotyped behaviors among boys was significantly related to perceived physical competence and peer acceptance. For girls, use of the female gender-stereotyped behavior of Affiliation was related to perceived cognitive competence and, weakly, to perceived maternal acceptance. For both sexes, use of the feminine-stereotyped behavior of Inclusion was negatively related to competence and acceptance variables.     

Stimulus control of self-destructive behavior in a psychotic child

This study attempted to isolate some of the stimulus variables that controlled the self-destructive behavior of a psychotic child. In Experiment 1, the child was exposed to several demand and nondemand situations. In Experiment 2, the situation containing demands was modified so that demands now occurred in the context of a positive, ongoing interaction between the child and the adult therapist. The rates of self-destructive behavior underwent several orderly changes: (1) Rates were high in demand situations and low in nondemand and modified-demand situations; (2) rates decreased sharply when a stimulus correlated with the termination of demands was introduced; and (3) rates of self-destruction typically showed gradual increases within each of those sessions which contained only demands. These results were interpreted as suggesting that (1) self-destruction, under certain circumstances, may be conceptualized as an escape response which is negatively reinforced by the termination of a demand situation and (2) certain modifications of the social environment may provide discriminative stimuli for behaviors other than self-destruction, thereby decreasing this behavior.This investigation was supported in part by USPHS Research Grant 11440 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The research was conducted while the first author held a postdoctoral fellowship from the Medical Research Council of Canada. The authors thank Jon and Lynn Killion and Dennis Russo for their help in data collection and Ivar Lovaas, Laura Schreibman, and Robert Koegel for their many helpful criticisms. The encouragement and support of Tim's parents during the course of this study are sincerely appreciated.     

ACQUISITION OF SIGN LANGUAGE BY AUTISTIC CHILDREN. I: EXPRESSIVE LABELLING

There has been growing interest in teaching sign language to autistic children who have failed to develop speech. However, controlled experimentation in this area is nonexistent. In the present study, four nonverbal autistic children were taught expressive sign labels for common objects, using a training procedure that consisted of prompting, fading, and stimulus rotation. The efficacy of the procedure was demonstrated in a multiple-baseline design across objects. The results were reliable, replicable across children, and generalizable across therapists. A stimulus control analysis demonstrated that, for three of the children, correct signing was controlled solely by the visual cues associated with the presentation of a given object and was independent of the auditory cues related to the same object. These latter results are discussed with respect to the known perceptual and linguistic deficits of autistic children.