The Development of Media Sign Literacy—A Longitudinal Study With 4-Year-Old Children

In a longitudinal study, 137 children at the age of 4 years were tested for media sign literacy, intelligence, and several precursors of academically relevant skills, such as phonological awareness and preschool quantity-number competencies. The children were tested four times over two years, measuring the development of these skills every six months. The purpose of the study was to explore whether children’s level of media sign literacy helps them acquire academically relevant symbolic skills like reading and mathematical competencies. The results indicate that media sign literacy as well as intelligence predict mathematical and linguistic competencies. Longitudinal findings indicate that children with higher levels of media sign literacy also achieve higher scores in precursors of mathematical and reading and writing skills, and structural equation modeling revealed a rich interconnectedness between media sign literacy and intelligence. Media sign literacy had a direct and significant effect on mathematical competencies at measurement point 2 and indirect effects on the precursors of reading and writing skills at measurement point 4.     

Images of Women in General Interest and Fashion Magazine Advertisements from 1955 to 2002

This study was designed to examine the portrayal of women in advertisements in a general interest magazine (i.e., Time) and a women's fashion magazine (i.e., Vogue) over the last 50 years. The coding scheme used for this analysis was based on the one developed by sociologist Erving Goffman in the 1970s, which focuses primarily on the subtle and underlying clues in the picture content of advertisements that contain messages in terms of (stereotypical) gender roles. The results of this study show that, overall, advertisements in Vogue, a magazine geared toward a female audience,depict women more stereotypically than do those in Time, a magazine with the general public as a target audience. In addition, only a slight decrease in the stereotypical depiction of women was found over time, despite the influence of the Women's Movement.     

Does text–picture integration also occur with longer text segments?

Text–picture integration is one of the most important cognitive processes when reading illustrated text. There is empirical evidence that text‐picture integration takes place when learning with pictures combined with single sentences. The present experiment investigated whether text–picture integration also takes place when the single sentences are embedded into longer text segments and hence when materials become more complex. In a within‐subjects design, 43 participants read an illustrated story, in which the different combinations of general and specific sentences and pictures, respectively, were embedded. In line with previous findings, participants were more likely to falsely recognize specific versions of the sentences after having studied their general versions combined with specific pictures. Thus, the experiment shows that text–picture integration also occurs when learners have to read longer text passages combined with pictures.     

Transforming Disorganized Attachment Through Mentalization-Based Treatment

A disorganized attachment pattern is found among several mental disorders, most notably among severe personality disorders (PD). It is characterized by profound mentalizing deficits, which makes relations to self and others highly problematic. There is no evidence of any preferred mode of psychotherapy to heal this condition. In this article we describe the successful treatment of a female (28) with schizotypal and avoidant PD with additional borderline features as well as substance use dependency. She participated in the mentalization-based treatment project of the Bergen Clinic Foundation, Norway. We discuss the therapeutic strategies and interventions that most probably mediated the change for this patient, highlighting the mentalizing stance, working in the transference, managing countertransference and repairing alliance ruptures.