Review of the Book Child Street Life. An Inside View of Hazards and Expectations of Street Children in Peru (SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research)

Applied Research in Quality of Life -     

Symbolic representation of the number three: a study with three-year-old children from contrasting socioeconomic environments

The goal of the present study was to compare a range of aspects in children’s symbolic knowledge about the number three among two groups of three-year-olds from contrasting socioeconomic backgrounds. Every child was presented with five tasks that focused on the number three and that had cognitive demands of different complexity: expressing their age, reciting the conventional number series up to three, quantifying a collection of three, and two tasks requiring the use of visually presented quantitative information.The results showed the same order of difficulty of the tasks in both socioeconomic groups and a clear performance difference depending on socioeconomic background. These findings show that symbolic knowledge about the number three does not come in an all or none fashion. Rather, different aspects of this symbolic competence become apparent in response to different tasks, and seem to depend largely on the socioeconomic environment in which children develop.     

Life Design Counseling: A study on client's operations for meaning construction

This study evaluated the adequacy of the micro-theory of client operations to explain meaning construction during Life Design Counseling. Four adolescents were interviewed about their second counseling session. Their recollections were stimulated through the replay of counseling videotapes. The resulting transcribed interviews were qualitatively analyzed. Results confirmed a sequence of client operations evolving from the symbolic representation of experience and reflexive self-examination towards making new realizations and revisioning self. Moreover, clients reported negative and positive session moments evidencing that clients' attention and activity during the session was not restricted to meaning construction operations. Practical implications for life design counseling are derived from the results and discussed.     

Joan as Jesus: A Feminist Theological Analysis of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc

The aim of this article is to explore Carl Theodor Dreyer's portrayal of Joan of Arc in his film The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) as a female Christ‐figure. At the same time I argue that the film can serve as an important dialogue partner in ongoing christological discourse. The conclusion is that Dreyer's Joan provides a vivid image of Jesus Christ that challenges our fixation on Jesus’ maleness, and helps us to understand better what we really mean when we claim that God, dressed in flesh, became human, like us, female or male.     

Mental time travel,language evolution,and human self-domestication

Cognitive Processing - Human self-domestication might have contributed to the evolutionary changes in the hippocampus accounting for our enhanced mental travel abilities, and ultimately for our...     

Developmental patterns of emotion regulation in toddlerhood: Examining predictors of change and long‐term resilience

Emotion regulation is critical for optimal functioning across a wide range of domains and may be even more important for individuals in high‐risk environments. While evidence suggests that childhood is generally a period of emotion regulation growth and development, research is needed to examine factors that may contribute to deviations from a typical trajectory. In a prospective study of 1,905 children, latent class growth analysis (LCGA) was used to identify trajectory groups of emotion regulation across toddlerhood (age 14–36 months), examine predictors of those trajectory groups from child temperament, parenting behaviors, and environmental risk, and explore predictions of resilience in 5th grade from the identified groups. LGCA supported a three‐class model, with a Stable Incline group, a Decline group, and a Catch‐Up group. Child negative emotionality, positive and negative parenting, and environmental risk predicted group membership. These trajectory groups in toddlerhood were predictive of child resilient functioning in the 5th grade. Our findings highlight the importance of utilizing developmental models of emotion regulation and provide implications for prevention and early intervention services to enhance emotion regulation development in early childhood.     

Joking for Gender Equality: Subversive Humor Against Sexism Motivates Collective Action in Men and Women with Weaker Feminist Identity

Sex Roles - Subversive humor has historically been considered a way of protesting, raising awareness, and seeking change. However, to date, no known empirical research has explored the consequences...     

Assessing the Rising Emphasis on Muscularity for Women: Psychometric Properties of the Brazilian Version of the Female Muscularity Scale

The female appearance ideal has undergone considerable changes in recent years, resulting in increases in drive for muscularity among Brazilian women. The Female Muscularity Scale (FMS) was developed to assess muscularity concerns among U.S. women and was shown to be a promising measure of muscularity-related attitudes and behaviors. The present studies aimed to translate and culturally adapt the FMS to Brazilian Portuguese and to explore its factorial structure among Brazilian women (Study 1: n = 202, M_age = 24.40, SD = 5.03) and to confirm the factor structure as well as evaluate convergent and divergent validity and reliability of the FMS for young adult Brazilian women (Study 2: n = 382, M_age = 22.71, SD = 4.32). Exploratory factor analysis revealed a two-factor structure (Attitudes and Behaviors subscales), each comprising five items. Confirmatory factor analysis upheld the original two-factor structure with good fit indices. The full scale and its subscales presented convergent validity through associations with measures of body dissatisfaction, drive for muscularity, body-ideal internalization, body checking and avoidance behaviors, disordered eating, and exercise engagement. Evidence of divergent validity was obtained in relation to self-esteem and depressive symptoms. The Brazilian version of FMS also presented adequate values for internal consistency and 2-week test-retest reliability. These findings support the Brazilian version of the FMS as a useful tool for investigating muscularity-related aspects of body image and body change behaviors that are increasingly a source of concern for women.

     

Emotional Valence Precedes Semantic Maturation of Words: A Longitudinal Computational Study of Early Verbal Emotional Anchoring

We present a longitudinal computational study on the connection between emotional and amodal word representations from a developmental perspective. In this study, children's and adult word representations were generated using the latent semantic analysis (LSA) vector space model and Word Maturity methodology. Some children's word representations were used to set a mapping function between amodal and emotional word representations with a neural network model using ratings from 9-year-old children. The neural network was trained and validated in the child semantic space. Then, the resulting neural network was tested with adult word representations using ratings from an adult data set. Samples of 1210 and 5315 words were used in the child and the adult semantic spaces, respectively. Results suggested that the emotional valence of words can be predicted from amodal vector representations even at the child stage, and accurate emotional propagation was found in the adult word vector representations. In this way, different propagative processes were observed in the adult semantic space. These findings highlight a potential mechanism for early verbal emotional anchoring. Moreover, different multiple linear regression and mixed-effect models revealed moderation effects for the performance of the longitudinal computational model. First, words with early maturation and subsequent semantic definition promoted emotional propagation. Second, an interaction effect between age of acquisition and abstractness was found to explain model performance. The theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.