The Chinese Version of the Self-Report Family Inventory: Reliability and Validity

The reliability and validity of the Chinese Self-Report Family Inventory (C-SFI) were examined in three studies. In Study 1, data based on 361 adolescents showed that the C-SFI was temporally stable and internally consistent and there was support for its concurrent and construct validities. In Study 2, data analyzed from a clinical group and a nonclinical group (N = 281 and 451, respectively) showed that the C-SFI scores were able to discriminate these two groups. With data pertaining to 3649 secondary school students, Study 3 gives support for the internal consistency, concurrent validity, and construct validity of the C-SFI in different adolescent samples. These studies strongly suggest that the C-SFI possesses good psychometric properties in different Chinese adolescent samples.     

BOOK REVIEW

The Evolving Mind BEN GOERTZEL, Gordon and Breach, 1993, cloth. ISBN 2–88124–587–0, pp. 260, index

From Power to Partnership: Creating the Future of Love, Work, and Community ALFONSO MONTUORI AND ISABELLA CONTI San Francisco: HarperSanFrisco. 1993, paper. ISBN 0–06–250548–3, $13.00 USD pp. 281 includes index

Applied Chaos Theory: A Paradigm For Complexity A. B. CAMBEL, Academic Press, 1993, cloth; pp. 260, index; 38 USD     

Preschoolers’ emotion knowledge: Self-regulatory foundations,and predictions of early school success

Preschoolers (N=322 in preschool, 100 in kindergarten) were assessed longitudinally to examine the self-regulatory roots of emotion knowledge (labelling and situation) and the contributions of emotion knowledge to early school adjustment (i.e., including social, motivational, and behavioural indices), as well as moderation by age, gender, and risk. Age, gender, and risk differences in emotion knowledge were also examined. Emotion knowledge skills were found to be more advanced in older children and those not at economic risk, and in those with higher levels of self-regulation. Overall, the results support the role of emotion knowledge in early school adjustment and academic success even with gender, age, and risk covaried, especially for boys, older preschoolers, and those at economic risk.     

The Superego and the Two-System Model

The authors note that Freud's clinical struggle with the sadomasochism of his patients led directly to his theory of the superego, which in turn affected his ideas on sadomasochism. The authors use their dual-track model of two systems of self-regulation—the “closed,” sadomasochistic, omnipotent system and the “open,” competent, loving, reality-attuned system—to trace the origins, development, and functions of the “closed” and “open” superego. They suggest that the application of this model will help restore the importance of the superego in psychoanalytic theory and technique, and they provide clinical illustrations from the analysis of an older adult.     

Research Quality: Critique of Quantitative Articles in the Journal of Counseling & Development

The purpose of this study was to examine the quality of quantitative articles published in the Journal of Counseling & Development. Quality concerns arose in regard to omissions of psychometric information of instruments, effect sizes, and statistical power. Type VI and II errors were found. Strengths included stated research questions and appropriateness of analyses. Implications of these results are provided.     

Psychological Climate,Organizational Commitment and Morale: Implications for Army Captains' Career Intent

The purpose of this research was to examine how work experiences contribute to junior officers' intentions to leave the Army. Specifically, we hypothesized that psychological climate perceptions have direct and indirect effects on intent to leave through affective commitment and morale and that affective and continuance commitment interact to predict intent to leave the Army. The sample for this study was 649 captains who responded to an Army-wide survey, the Fall 2002 Sample Survey of Military Personnel. Results demonstrate support for full mediation, indicating that psychological climate impacts intent to leave the Army by influencing captains' affective commitment and morale. The psychological climate dimension of leadership had the largest impact on affective commitment, morale, and intent to leave the Army. Affective commitment did not interact with continuance commitment to predict intent to leave. Implications for Army retention policies and leadership are discussed.     

Executive functions and social skills in survivors of pediatric brain tumor

Medical advances have resulted in increased survival rates for children with brain tumors. Consequently, issues related to survivorship have become more critical. The use of multimodal treatment, in particular cranial radiation therapy, has been associated with subsequent cognitive decline. Specifically, deficits in executive functions have been reported in survivors of various types of pediatric brain tumor. Survivors are left with difficulties, particularly in self-monitoring, initiation, inhibition, and planning, to name a few. Another domain in which survivors of pediatric brain tumor have been reported to show difficulty is that of social skills. Parents, teachers, and survivors themselves have reported decreased social functioning following treatment. Deficits in executive functions and social skills are likely interrelated in this population, as executive skills are needed to navigate various aspects of social interaction; however, this has yet to be studied empirically. Twenty-four survivors of pediatric brain tumor were assessed using a computerized task of executive functions, as well as paper-and-pencil measures of social skills and real-world executive skills. Social functioning was related to a specific aspect of executive functions, that is, the survivors' variability in response time, such that inconsistent responding was associated with better parent-reported and survivor-reported social skills, independent of intellectual abilities. Additionally, parent-reported real-world global executive abilities predicted parent-reported social skills. The implications of these findings for social skills interventions and future research are discussed.     

Flexible Mediation Analysis in the Presence of Nonlinear Relations: Beyond the Mediation Formula

In the social sciences, mediation analysis has typically been formulated in the context of linear models using the Baron &; Kenny (1986) Baron, R. M. and Kenny, D. A. 1986. The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51: 1173–1182. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] approach. Extensions to nonlinear models have been considered but lack formal justification. By placing mediation analysis within the counterfactual framework of causal inference one can define causal mediation effects in a way that is not tied to a specific statistical model and identify them under certain no unmeasured confounding assumptions. Corresponding estimation procedures using parametric or nonparametric models, based on the so-called mediation formula, have recently been proposed in the psychological literature and made accessible through the R-package mediation. A number of limitations of the latter approach are discussed and a more flexible approach using natural effects models is proposed as an alternative. The latter builds on the same counterfactual framework but enables interpretable and parsimonious modeling of direct and mediated effects and facilitates tests of hypotheses that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to test. We illustrate the approach in a study of individuals who ended a romantic relationship and explore whether the effect of attachment anxiety during the relationship on unwanted pursuit behavior after the breakup is mediated by negative affect during the breakup.     

Ventral encoding of functional affordances: A neural pathway for identifying errors in action

Functional tool usage is a critical aspect of our daily lives. Not only must we know which tools to use for a specific action goal, we must also know how to manipulate those tools in meaningful way to achieve the goal of the action. The purpose of this study was to identify the regions of the brain critical to supporting the process of understanding errors in tool manipulation. Using fMRI, neural activations were recorded while subjects were presented with images demonstrating typical action scenes (screwdriver used on a screw), but with the tool being manipulated either correctly (screwdriver held by handle) or incorrectly (screwdriver held by bit rather than handle). Activations in fMRI for identifying correct over incorrect tool manipulation were seen along the canonical parietofrontal action network, while activations for identifying incorrect over correct tool manipulation were primarily seen at superior temporal areas and insula. We expand our hypotheses about ventral brain networks identifying contextual error to further suggest mechanisms for understanding functional tool actions, which collectively we regard as functional affordances. This proposes a fundamental role for ventral brain areas in functional action understanding.     

Integrating spatial information across experiences

The current study examined the potential influence of existing spatial knowledge on the coding of new spatial information. In the Main experiment, participants learned the locations of five objects before completing a perspective-taking task. Subsequently, they studied the same five objects and five additional objects from a new location before completing a second perspective-taking task. Task performance following the first learning phase was best from perspectives aligned with the learning view. However, following the second learning phase, performance was best from the perspective aligned with the second view. A supplementary manipulation increased the salience of the initial view through environmental structure as well as the number of objects present. Results indicated that the initial learning view was preferred throughout the experiment. The role of assimilation and accommodation mechanisms in spatial memory, and the conditions under which they occur, are discussed.