Electronic Communication Use and Socio-Emotional Well-Being among Military Youth

The authors seek to investigate the relationship between electronic-communication (e-communication) use and social isolation for adolescents age 11–18 in the context of military family life, with a specific focus on relationship function provided by e-communication. Self-efficacy, developmental stage (early or middle/late adolescence), sex, and military contextual factors (parents’ military rank, number of school changes and parent deployment) on social benefits and social isolation were controls in the model. Data from a computer survey administered to adolescents (N?=?1036) who had at least one active-duty military parent at five US Army installations in the US and Western Europe were analyzed using a path analysis model. Findings suggest that using e-communication to establish new relationships may be strategic for military youth, who experience many geographic relocations and school changes, in terms of creating social benefits (opportunity for nurturance). On the other hand, spending large amounts of time using e-communication may impede the establishment of nurturing relationships with others and ultimately may be linked to social isolation. Within the model, significant moderational effects related to self-efficacy, sex of the adolescent and parents’ military rank were found.     

‘I’ve got to prioritise’: being a parent with cystic fibrosis

Due to advances in earlier diagnosis and treatment, the life expectancy of a person born with cystic fibrosis (CF) has increased. Therefore, more people with CF are becoming parents but the psychological understanding of CF has lagged behind advances in medical treatment; there is very limited applied psychological research on which parents and professionals can draw when considering issues of parenting in this context. This qualitative research explored how mothers and fathers with CF experience and manage the dual roles of being a parent and living with CF. The aim was to facilitate development of an understanding of experience rather than test existing theory. A qualitative methodology was chosen as it allowed participants to reflect openly on their individual experiences. Nine participants completed semi-structured interviews either in their own homes or a clinic base which examined parenting, CF and the interaction between the two roles. Four participants were male and five were female with an age range of 21–50. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis was used to interpret the participants’ accounts and generate super-ordinate and master themes. ‘Being a parent on compressed time’ was the super-ordinate theme which reflected the challenge of parenting within both a limited life trajectory and a complex treatment regime with daily adherence and time pressures. The findings have implications for parents with CF, those considering parenting and for health professionals working in CF services whose guidance needs to be grounded in an evidence-base. Further research is needed to explore the experiences of parents within different family structures, parents who have had a transplant and the perspectives of others in the wider system in which parents with CF are located.     

Energizing respites from work: a randomized controlled study on respite interventions

Increasing and new work demands drain employees’ energy resources at work. This 4-week longitudinal field experiment investigated the energizing potential of a respite intervention conducted at the workplace (either a simulated savouring nature intervention or a progressive muscle relaxation intervention). First, growth modelling analyses confirmed a linear trend for the growth of vigour and decline in fatigue across the days of the intervention group, indicating a typical upward resource trajectory. No changes appeared in the control group. Mediation analyses indicated that repeatedly engaging in a daily respite intervention influenced more stable energy levels after the intervention period indirectly through the immediate changes in daily energy levels during the intervention period. Findings suggest that, in some cases, respite interventions may present a useful tool to replenish and build energy resources at work. Implications for using respite intervention in organizational research and practice are discussed.     

Sex and post-menopause hormone therapy effects on hippocampal volume and verbal memory

Many studies suggest sex differences in memory and hippocampal size, and that hormone therapy (HT) may positively affect these measures in women; however, the parameters of HT use that most likely confer benefits are debated. We evaluated the impact of sex and postmenopausal HT use on verbal learning and memory and hippocampal size in 94 cognitively intact women and 49 men. Using analysis of covariance that controlled for age and education, women had better total word learning and delayed verbal memory performance than men. HT analyses showed that non-HT users performed similarly to men, while HT users performed better than men in Delayed Memory regardless of whether use was current or in the past. Women had larger hippocampal volumes than men regardless of whether they were HT users. Using univariate linear models, we assessed group differences in the predictive value of hippocampal volumes for verbal learning and memory. Hippocampal size significantly predicted memory performance for men and non-HT users, but not for HT users. This lack of relationship between hippocampal size and verbal learning and memory performance in HT users suggests HT use may impact memory through extra-hippocampal neural systems.     

One Thought Too Few: Where <Emphasis Type="Italic">De Dicto</Emphasis> Moral Motivation is Necessary

De dicto moral motivation is typically characterized by the agent’s conceiving of her goal in thin normative terms such as to do what is right. I argue that lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation (at least in a certain broad sense of this term) would put the agent in a bad position for responding in the morally-best manner (relative to her epistemic state) in a certain type of situations. Two central features of the relevant type of situations are (1) the appropriateness of the agent’s uncertainty concerning her underived moral values, and (2) the practical, moral importance of resolving this uncertainty. I argue that in some situations that are marked by these two features the most virtuous response is deciding to conduct a deep moral inquiry for a de dicto moral purpose. In such situations lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would amount to a moral shortcoming. I show the implications for Michael Smith’s (1994) argument against Motivational Judgment Externalism and for Brian Weatherson’s (2014) argument against avoiding moral recklessness: both arguments rely on a depreciating view of de dicto moral motivation, and both fail; or so I argue.     

Electrophysiological correlates of emotional face processing after mild traumatic brain injury in preschool children

Evidence suggests that social skills are affected by childhood mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), but the neural and affective substrates of these difficulties are still underexplored. In particular, nothing is known about consequences on the perception of emotional facial expressions, despite its critical role in social interactions and the importance of the preschool period in the development of this ability. This study thus aimed to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of emotional facial expressions processing after early mTBI. To this end, 18 preschool children (mean age 53 ± 8 months) who sustained mTBI and 15 matched healthy controls (mean age 55 ± 11 months) were presented with pictures of faces expressing anger, happiness, or no emotion (neutral) while event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded. The main results revealed that P1 amplitude was higher for happy faces than for angry faces, and that N170 latency was shorter for emotional faces than for neutral faces in the control group only. These findings suggest that preschool children who sustain mTBI do not present the early emotional effects that are observed in healthy preschool children at visuospatial and visual expertise stages. This study provides new evidence regarding the consequences of childhood mTBI on socioemotional processing, by showing alterations of emotional facial expressions processing, an ability known to underlie social competence and appropriate social interactions.     

Persistence of Traumatic Symptoms After Seven Years: Evidence from Young Individuals Exposed to the L’Aquila Earthquake

In this article, we investigated the presence of trauma-induced sequelae in a sample of 41 young individuals exposed to the L’Aquila earthquake who did not seek mental help in the aftermath of the disaster or in the ensuing months. We compared this group with 43 individuals, matched for age and education, who had not experienced an earthquake but had moved to and lived in L’Aquila after the earthquake and thus experienced the challenges of living in an earthquake-struck city. This study aimed to show that earthquake-exposed individuals scored significantly higher than nonexposed persons on certain scales of the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI) seven years after the event. Our results indicated that exposed individuals exhibited higher scores on the dissociation, intrusive experience, and defensive avoidance scales. Furthermore, a correlational analysis between specific conditions detected by the Earthquake Checklist L’Aquila (ECLA) and the TSI identified the influences of specific conditions, such as being trapped or injured under rubble during the earthquake, experiencing a persistent fear of aftershocks or a life-threatening feeling, and witnessing the death of a loved one. All of these experiences resulted in the persistence of trauma-related symptoms. Dissociative experiences during the trauma, cognitive and behavioral avoidance and reexperiencing were associated with negative effects and may hinder the natural process of recovery in trauma-exposed individuals. Knowledge of mid- and long-term psychological difficulties following a traumatic event may be useful for promoting interventions in mental health across exposed populations.     

Representations of relatedness with parents and friends and autonomous academic motivation during the late adolescence–early adulthood period: Reciprocal or unidirectional effects?

Background The literature on the determinants of academic motivation indicates that social and affective processes connected to students' interpersonal relationships are central elements in understanding students' academic motivation and other school‐related outcomes. Aims The aim of this study was to answer the following questions: Does autonomous motivation drive representations of relatedness, do representations of relatedness drive autonomous motivation, or are these constructs reciprocally related over time? Sample The sample consists of 834 adolescents aged 18 years (SD = 1.88) who participated in a 3‐year longitudinal study. Results Results from the structural equation models provided good support for the effect of representations of relatedness with parents on autonomous academic motivation but no convincing support for the effect of motivation on representations of relatedness with parents. In addition, no significant effect in either direction was found between representations of relatedness with friends and autonomous academic motivation. Conclusion It might be important to inform parents that they may still have an influence on their adolescent's representations of relatedness and subsequently on his/her autonomous academic motivation even during the late adolescence–early adulthood period, a period when some parents may be tempted to believe that they can do little to motivate their offspring.     

A Flaw in the Fabric

There appears to be a broad impression that an explicitly psychoanalytic framework of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is outdated and obsolete. However, interpersonal dynamics and experiences within the family during childhood and their intrapersonal sequelae in particular, may have substantial bearing on the early stages of the development of OCD. The author presents a set of observations about obsessional thoughts based on case material from research projects, psychometric assessments and psychotherapy with these patients. Freud’s contributions to understanding the internal world of the patient are discussed, suggesting a need to extend beyond the crucible of emerging affects and their regulation and into the wider stage in which the most profound struggle exists around relating to the other. We place the individual’s experience of others at the centre of our theories of the aetiology of OCD. We need to expand our understanding of OCD, particularly in how we locate the individual’s internal struggles within the context of the social environment in, and perhaps out of, which they have emerged.     

Reduction,externalism and immanence in Husserl and Heidegger

This paper argues that the Husserl–Heidegger relationship is systematically misunderstood when framed in terms of a distinction between internalism and externalism. Both philosophers, it is argued, employ the phenomenological reduction to immanence as a fundamental methodological instrument. After first outlining the assumptions regarding inner and outer and the individual and the social from which recent epistemological interpretations of phenomenology begin, I turn to the question of Husserl’s internalism. I argue that Husserl can only be understood as an internalist on the assumption that immanence equates with internal. This, however, is not the case as can be seen once the reduction is understood not as setting aside the existence of the world, but rather a reflection on its meaning. Turning to Heidegger, I argue that his commitment to a form of the phenomenological reduction precludes him from being either a semantic or a social externalist. The place of authenticity and the first person perspective in his work derive from his phenomenological commitments, which can be seen in his accounts of discourse and language and of falling (Verfallen). I then go on to briefly outline a more plausible basis for understanding the difference between Husserl’s and Heidegger’s phenomenologies in terms of their respective emphases on logic and on poetics.