Type a behavior pattern in mothers of infants: An exploration of associations with attachment,sensitive caregiving,and life-events

Abstract

In the present study. 83 lower- to upper-middle class mothers of first-born, 12-month-old infants were interviewed with the Adult Attachment Interview (George, Kaplan, and Main, 1985), and completed the Groninger Intelligence Test (Luteijn and Van der Ploeg, 1982). Eighteen months after the beginning of the study, 67 mothers (81% of the original sample) were interviewed with the Structured Interview (Rosenman, 1978), and were observed during a brief, semi-structured play session at home with their child - at that time a 2.5-years-old toddler. They also completed a checklist about major life-events that had occurred during the past 18 months. A large majority of these mothers of young children (81%) showed Type A behavior patterns. The job of parenting, indeed, appears to be stressful. Attachment and Type A behaviors, however, did not seem to be related, probably because the influence of attachment is restricted to the regulation of emotions in intimate relationships. Yet, Type A behavior predicted a more sensitive parenting style than Type B did. All mothers who experienced negative life-events or Serious health problems in the recent past showed Type A behavior patterns. Our findings show that the Structured Interview can be applied in a valid manner to mothers of young children passing trough a demanding phase in their lives. Further research is needed to uncover the causes of the high prevalence of Type A behaviors in young mothers.     

Validity of the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4 (PDQ-4+) among mentally ill prison inmates in Singapore

We examined the validity of the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire--4+ (PDQ-4+) as a screening instrument for personality disorders among mentally ill prison inmates in Singapore. A total of 313 prison inmates completed the PDQ-4+ and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Disorders (SCID-II). The subjects were 303 (96.8%) males and 10 (3.2%) females with a mean (SD) age of 40.7 (8.8) years. Kappa agreement between PDQ-4+ and SCID-II for the presence at least one personality disorder was moderate with high sensitivity and low specificity. For specific personality disorders and clusters, we found that the PDQ-4+ diagnosed more subjects as having each of the personality disorders than SCID-II with high negative predictive values. The area under the curve indicated moderate discriminatory capabilities. Our results suggest that the PDQ-4+ could be used as a potential screening instrument for personality disorders in prison inmates.     

Long-term cognitive dynamics of fluent reading development

Most theories of reading development assume a shift from slow sequential subword decoding to automatic processing of orthographic word forms. We hypothesized that this shift should be reflected in a concomitant shift in reading-related cognitive functions. The current study investigated the cognitive dynamics underlying reading development in a large school sample ranging from beginning to experienced readers. The results showed that phonological awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN) contributed substantially to reading fluency over all six primary school grades. However, the relationship between PA and word (but not pseudoword) reading fluency decreased as a function of reading experience, whereas the relationship between RAN and word reading fluency increased gradually. Moreover, this cognitive shift was most pronounced for high-frequency words. The results seem to point to the development of one (and only one) reading network for all types of words in which processing load or type of processing depends on word familiarity and amount of reading experience.     

The interactive evolution of human communication systems

This paper compares two explanations of the process by which human communication systems evolve: iterated learning and social collaboration. It then reports an experiment testing the social collaboration account. Participants engaged in a graphical communication task either as a member of a community, where they interacted with seven different partners drawn from the same pool, or as a member of an isolated pair, where they interacted with the same partner across the same number of games. Participants' horizontal, pair-wise interactions led "bottom up" to the creation of an effective and efficient shared sign system in the community condition. Furthermore, the community-evolved sign systems were as effective and efficient as the local sign systems developed by isolated pairs. Finally, and as predicted by a social collaboration account, and not by an iterated learning account, interaction was critical to the creation of shared sign systems, with different isolated pairs establishing different local sign systems and different communities establishing different global sign systems.     

Showing,Analysis and the Truth-Functionality of Logical Necessity in Wittgenstein's Tractatus

This paper aims to explain how the Tractatus attempts to unifylogic by deriving the truth-functionality of logical necessityfrom the thesis that a proposition shows its sense. I first interpret the Tractarian notion of showing as the displaying ofwhat is intrinsic to an expression (or a symbol). Then I argue that, according to theTractatus, the thesis that a proposition shows its sense implies the determinacy of sense, the possibility of the complete elimination of non-primitive symbols, the analyticity thesis and the strong analyticity thesis. The picture theory emerges as what provides the only acceptable account of an elementary proposition, subject to the constraint that a proposition must show its sense. The picture theory and the analyticity thesis then entail the contingency thesis (that an elementary proposition is contingent) and the independence thesis (that elementary propositions are mutually logically independent) which, together with the strong analyticity thesis, imply that all logical propositions are tautologies.     

Children's early theory of mind: exploring the development of the concept of desire in monolingual Spanish children

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the lexical term ‘querer’ (want) qua genuine reference to desire. The instances of ‘querer’ to be analyzed were taken from the naturally occurring speech of monolingual speakers of Spanish. Specifically, a database of 24,558 child utterances taken from the CHILDES system was analyzed. This corpus yielded 444 utterances with the desire term ‘querer’. The utterances belong to several children whose ages range from 21 to 46 months. The results of this study support the hypothesis that children consistently refer to desire at around 2 years of age and that children undergo a marked increase in their reference to this concept at 36 months of age, although it is not yet clear whether they start referring to their own desires before those of someone else.     

Johnson on the Metaphysics of Argument

This paper responds to two aspects of Ralph Johnson's Manifest Rationality (2000). The first is his critique of deductivism. The second is his failure to make room for some species of argument (e.g., visual and kisceral arguments) proposed by recent commentators. In the first case, Johnson holds that argumentation theorists have adopted a notion of argument which is too narrow. In the second, that they have adopted one which is too broad. I discuss the case Johnson makes for both claims, and possible objections to his analysis.     

Lifestyles of virtual world residents: living in the on-line game "lineage".

This study was conducted to explore the lifestyles of online game players who have adopted the virtual world as part of their life. An online survey was conducted on players of an Internet-based game, Lineage. Lineage is the largest online game where people assume new identities and play various roles in a virtual environment, accommodating over 6 million users worldwide. A total of 4,786 game players participated in this survey, and their lifestyles were compared with their values and attitudes in the virtual world. Upon classification of their real-world lifestyles, their tendencies and desires were compared to lifestyles in the virtual world. This study showed that game players have developed their own distinctive lifestyles, and their lifestyles were a strong criterion for explaining behavior patterns and desires in the virtual world. Lifestyles were classified into three general categories: (1) single-oriented player, (2) community-oriented player, and (3) off-Real world player. Each group displayed distinct differences in their values and game activities, as well as in their anti-social behavior tendencies. The differences reflected not only their personality but also their socio-economic status within the virtual world, which is constructed through game activities. This study serves as a model to understand how players from different real-life backgrounds will behave in various game features and how they adopt the virtual world for their new social identities.