Comparative assessment of handedness for a coordinated bimanual task in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus)

Hand preferences for a coordinated bimanual task were assessed in a sample of 31 captive gorillas (Gorilla gorilla) and 19 captive orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and were compared with chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) hand preferences in subjects that were matched on the basis of age, sex, and rearing history. The task required that the apes remove food from the inside edges of a symmetrical polyvinyl chloride pipe presented to them in their home cages. The results indicate significant species differences with chimpanzees showing population-level right-handedness and orangutans showing population-level left-handedness. The gorillas showed a nonsignificant trend toward right-handedness. The results are discussed in terms of possible ecological or biomechanical factors that may influence hand preferences in different ape species.     

WHEN COWORKERS AND MANAGERS QUIT: THE EFFECTS OF TURNOVER AND SHARED VALUES ON PERFORMANCE

We examined the relationship between work unit, direct management, and overall management turnover and performance improvement following an intervention in fifty work units in multiple organizations in eight countries. Direct management turnover was negatively related to performance improvement, while work unit and overall management turnover were not. We also investigated shared values as a moderator of the turnover-performance relationship and found that high shared values buffered the negative effect of overall management turnover on performance improvement. The results are noteworthy, as they point to the importance of examining turnover at different organizational levels and identifying moderators of the turnover-performance relationship.

The effects of a physical activity and nutrition intervention on body dissatisfaction, drive for thinness, and weight concerns in pre-adolescents

The primary aim was to examine the effects of a physical activity and nutrition intervention on Body Dissatisfaction, Drive for Thinness, and Weight Concerns in pre-adolescents. Eighty-four 10–12 years old were studied as part of a larger trial of a family-based physical activity and nutrition intervention. Forty-nine children participated in the 8-week intervention (35 in control group) and completed Body Dissatisfaction, Drive for Thinness, and Weight Concerns measures at baseline and post-test. Participants in both groups showed positive but non-significant changes in body image and Drive for Thinness following the trial, but there were no significant between group differences. This was the first study to examine the effects of a physical activity and nutrition intervention on body image and related variables in pre-adolescents. Body Dissatisfaction, Drive for Thinness, and Weight Concerns were not positively or negatively influenced by the intervention.     

Domain-specific identity, epistemic regulation, and intellectual ability as predictors of belief-biased reasoning: a dual-process perspective

To explore the hypothesis that domain-specific identity development predicts reasoning biases, adolescents and young adults completed measures of domain-general and domain-specific identity, epistemic regulation, and intellectual ability and evaluated arguments that either supported or threatened their occupational goals. Biases were defined as the use of sophisticated reasoning to reject goal-threatening arguments and the use of cursory reasoning to accept goal-supportive arguments. Across two measures of bias, hierarchical regression analyses showed that domain-specific vocational identity and epistemic regulation best predicted reasoning biases. Neither age nor intellectual ability predicted significant variance in biases after vocational identity and epistemic regulation scores were entered into the regression equations. The results support the thesis that biases in specific domains can be explained both by domain-specific personality attributes and by domain-general metacognitive dispositions to monitor reasoning and decontextualize problem structure from superficial contents. A dual-process framework is proposed to explain the relationships among identity, epistemic regulation, age, intellectual ability, and reasoning biases.     

Maternal relationship instability and the school behavior of children from disadvantaged families

This longitudinal study examined the relation between the instability of maternal intimate relationships and the school behavior of 3rd-grade children from economically disadvantaged families. After ecological correlates were controlled, chronic relationship instability predicted externalizing behavior for boys and girls and internalizing behavior for girls, but not academic competence. In addition, past and recent instability had independent effects: Recent instability moderated the relation for past instability, and child adjustment in highly unstable families varied with verbal ability and aspects of the family ecology. The theoretical implications concern conceptualizations of the diverse and dynamic nature of family arrangements experienced by disadvantaged children.     

Barriers and Bridges to Intimacy and Mutuality: A Critical Review of Sexual Advice Found in Self-Help Bestsellers

Sexuality in a committed relationship is based ideally on both intimacy and mutuality. Gender socialization may limit women's and men's capacities in these two important areas of sexual relationships. This article describes the results of a content analysis of nine best-selling popular press books on the New York Times Bestseller List between 1988 and 1998 according to their advice related to sexual intimacy and mutuality. Books were analyzed to determine the degree to which they built barriers or bridges to the development of intimacy and mutuality. Results indicate that while most authors offered advice that built bridges to intimacy, several built barriers to the development of mutuality. Implications for therapists are discussed.     

Looking back or moving on: How regulatory modes affect nostalgia

Nostalgia is defined as the remembrance of prior experiences that are self-relevant, involve close others, and carry a predominantly positive affective tone (Wildschut et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 91:975–993, 2006). Given nostalgia’s palliative function for coping with negative affect and self-threats (Sedikides et al. in Curr Dir Psychol Sci 17:304–307, 2008), the present research explores a psychological construct related to greater experience of nostalgia: regulatory mode. According to regulatory mode theory (Kruglanski et al. in J Pers Soc Psychol 79:793–815, 2000; Higgins et al. in Adv exp soc psychol 35:293–344, 2003), assessment is the aspect of self-regulation focused on evaluation, whereas locomotion is focused on goal progress. We hypothesized that emphasis of the assessment mode on evaluation would promote nostalgia, while emphasis of the locomotion mode on progress would prevent it. These predictions were corroborated in two studies that assessed regulatory modes as individual difference factors (Study 1) and induced them experimentally (Study 2). Implications of these findings for the self regulation process are considered.     

Concurrent Relations Between Perspective-Taking Skills,Desire Understanding,and Internal-State Vocabulary

Recent studies suggest that there appears to be a similar developmental sequence in the understanding of mental states in both internal-state language and in standard theory-of-mind tasks. These findings suggest possible developmental relations between children's ability to talk and think about the mind. Two experiments investigated the concurrent relations between internal-state vocabulary and theory-of-mind abilities in 30-month-old toddlers. In Experiment 1, children's internal-state language vocabulary was significantly and specifically related to their concurrent understanding of others' visual and emotional perspectives and was less strongly related to desire understanding. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings by examining the link between internal-state vocabulary and visual perspective-taking and comprehension of own versus other's desire, controlling for general verbal skills. Children with a more developed internal-state vocabulary performed better on perspective-taking tasks. These findings suggest that labeling and reasoning about mental states are related abilities at the early stages of theory-of-mind development.     

Convergent Validity of the Defense Mechanisms Manual and the Defensive Functioning Scale

This report, describing a peculiar reaction of two psychiatric patients to the Rorschach test, tries to relate this phenomenon to some other Rorschach phenomena, already known and previously described.