Attachment, borderline personality, and romantic relationship dysfunction

Previous studies have implicated attachment and disturbances in romantic relationships as important indicators for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). The current research extends our current knowledge by examining the specific associations among attachment, romantic relationship dysfunction, and BPD, above and beyond the contribution of emotional distress and nonromantic interpersonal functioning in two distinct samples. Study 1 comprised a community sample of women (N = 58) aged 25-36. Study 2 consisted of a psychiatric sample (N = 138) aged 21-60. Results from both Study 1 and Study 2 demonstrated that (1) attachment was specifically related to BPD symptoms and romantic dysfunction, (2) BPD symptoms were specifically associated with romantic dysfunction, and (3) the association between attachment and romantic dysfunction was statistically mediated by BPD symptoms. The findings support specific associations among attachment, BPD symptoms, and romantic dysfunction.     

A "snapshot" of declarative memory: Differing developmental trajectories in episodic and autobiographical memory

Episodic and autobiographical memory are clearly related, yet in both the adult and developmental literatures it is difficult to compare them because of differences in how the constructs are assessed, including differences in content, levels of control, and time since experience. To address these issues, we directly compared children's and adults' autobiographical and episodic memory using the same controlled paradigm. Participants engaged in a photo-taking activity in a museum (autobiographical encoding) and viewed others' photographs of the same museum exhibits (episodic encoding). At test, participants classified photos as ones they took, viewed, or novel. In the autobiographical condition older children and adults performed similarly; younger children's performance was lower than adults'. In contrast, in the episodic condition both groups of children performed more poorly than adults. The findings suggest the developmental primacy of autobiographical relative to episodic memory, and that traditional episodic tasks may underestimate older children's declarative memory abilities.     

The Role of Paternal Age in the Prediction of Offspring Intelligence

Recent evidence suggests that paternal age at birth influences myriad developmental outcomes among children, but few studies have examined the possibility for father's age to influence children's intellectual development among a sample of high-risk families. The authors use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the association between paternal age at birth among 480 male and 449 female children's verbal IQ scores, as assessed with a version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at 9 years old. The nonlinear association between paternal age and children's verbal intelligence was also examined. Paternal age at birth appears to have a marginally significant nonlinear relationship with male children's verbal IQ scores, despite controlling for a number of possible confounders associated with both young and advanced paternal age.     

Ignored no more: Within‐Person variability enables better understanding of training transfer

The empirical findings from training transfer research rest on a rather static view of the transfer phenomenon, ignoring potential within‐person change in transfer over time. This study investigates within‐person variability in mastery goal orientation together with variability over time in the application of newly acquired knowledge and skills to the job context. Data from longitudinal surveys of trainees voluntarily attending statistical workshops revealed that trainees varied significantly in 2 characteristics of transfer trajectory: (a) initial attempts to transfer and (b) subsequent rate of change in transfer. Two affective learning outcomes showed differential relationships with transfer trajectories: Whereas posttraining self‐efficacy predicted initial attempt of transfer, motivation to transfer assessed at the end of training predicted subsequent rate of change in transfer. Furthermore, level and variability of trainees’ mastery orientation interacted to influence posttraining self‐efficacy and motivation to transfer, and subsequently transfer trajectories. Specifically, a trainee's mastery orientation level had stronger prediction of these outcomes when his/her mastery orientation distribution was less variable across situations. These findings highlight the importance of attending to within‐person variability in the study of training transfer by (a) considering training transfer as trajectories over time and (b) understanding trainee traits as frequency distributions.     

Validating presupposed versus focused text information

There is extensive evidence that readers continually validate discourse accuracy and congruence, but that they may also overlook conspicuous text contradictions. Validation may be thwarted when the inaccurate ideas are embedded sentence presuppositions. In four experiments, we examined readers’ validation of presupposed (“given”) versus new text information. Throughout, a critical concept, such as a truck versus a bus, was introduced early in a narrative. Later, a character stated or thought something about the truck, which therefore matched or mismatched its antecedent. Furthermore, truck was presented as either given or new information. Mismatch target reading times uniformly exceeded the matching ones by similar magnitudes for given and new concepts. We obtained this outcome using different grammatical constructions and with different antecedent–target distances. In Experiment 4, we examined only given critical ideas, but varied both their matching and the main verb’s factivity (e.g., factive know vs. nonfactive think). The Match × Factivity interaction closely resembled that previously observed for new target information (Singer, 2006). Thus, readers can successfully validate given target information. Although contemporary theories tend to emphasize either deficient or successful validation, both types of theory can accommodate the discourse and reader variables that may regulate validation.     

Where is the Dialectic in the Community‐Diversity Dialectic?

Agent‐based modeling has provided some interesting investigations of the hypothesis that there is a dialectical relationship between sense of community and diversity. A close look at those models strongly suggests that only models in which the attributes of agents are fixed completely support that hypothesis. Models which acknowledge that diversity is contextually defined, and thus changeable, suggest that there is no inherent dialectical relationship between the two values. Rather, it is the context of the setting, the way in which the setting is socially constructed, that determines whether a strong sense of community can exist in highly diverse settings.     

Sensitivity hasn’t got a Heterogeneity Problem - a Reply to Melchior

Philosophia - In a recent paper, Melchior pursues a novel argumentative strategy against the sensitivity condition. His claim is that sensitivity suffers from a ‘heterogeneity problem:’...     

Plasticity and language: an example of the Baldwin effect?

In recent years, many scholars have suggested that the Baldwin effect may play an important role in the evolution of language. However, the Baldwin effect is a multifaceted and controversial process and the assessment of its connection with language is difficult without a formal model. This paper provides a first step in this direction. We examine a game-theoretic model of the interaction between plasticity (represented by Herrnstein reinforcement learning) and evolution in the context of a simple language game. Additionally, we describe three distinct aspects of the Baldwin effect: the Simpson–Baldwin effect, the Baldwin expediting effect and the Baldwin optimizing effect. We find that a simple model of the evolution of language lends theoretical plausibility to the existence of the Simpson–Baldwin and the Baldwin optimizing effects in this arena, but not the Baldwin expediting effect.