Maternal perinatal representations and their associations with mother–infant interaction and attachment: A longitudinal comparison of Portuguese and Brazilian dyads

Prior research in Western countries (mostly the US, Canada and northern Europe) indicates that mothers' representations are associated with mother–infant interaction quality and their child's attachment security later in the first year. Fewer studies, however, have evaluated whether these associations hold for mother–infant dyads in other countries, such as Brazil and Portugal. Although these countries share a similar language and culture, they differ on societal dimensions that may affect parenting attitudes and mother–infant relationships, such as economic stress, social organisation, social policy, and the availability of services for young families. In this longitudinal study, we followed two independent samples of Brazilian and Portuguese mother–infant dyads from the perinatal period to 12 months post-partum. We assessed mothers' perinatal representations using semi-structured interviews in the first 48 hours after the infant's birth, and evaluated the associations of these representations with mother interaction quality at 9 months and infant attachment at 12 months. Results were similar in each country, corroborating prior research in single Western countries: Mothers with more positive perinatal representations were more sensitive to their infants during free play at 9 months and were more likely to have infants classified as securely attached at 12 months.     

Reading comprehension with the Go/No-Go procedure with compound stimuli

The present study investigated whether the Go/No-Go procedure with compound stimuli produces emergent relations among dictated words (A), pictures (B), and printed words (C) and the emergence of textual behavior (CD) using a multiple probe design across word sets. Three preschool children were exposed to 4 phases: (1) pretests for BC, CB, and CD relations, (2) pretraining with known stimuli, (3) AB and AC training, and (4) posttests for BC, CB, and CD relations. During AB and AC training, responses to A1B1, A2B2, A1C1, and A2C2 compound stimuli, but not to A1B2, A2B1, A1C2, and A2C1, were reinforced. The results showed that all participants met the learning criterion and demonstrated emergence of BC and CB relations (i.e., relations between pictures and printed words), and CD relations (i.e., textual behavior) after training. These results suggest that the Go/No-Go procedure with compound stimuli is an effective alternative for establishing reading comprehension.     

A Refined Interpretation of Intuitionistic Logic by Means of Atomic Polymorphism

Studia Logica - We study an alternative embedding of IPC into atomic system F whose translation of proofs is based, not on instantiation overflow, but instead on the admissibility of the...     

Opium of the people? National identification predicts well-being over time

Social group membership and its social-relational corollaries, for example, social contact, trust, and support, are prophylactic for health. Research has tended to focus on how direct social interactions between members of small-scale groups (i.e., a local sports team or community group) are conducive to positive health outcomes. The current study provides evidence from a longitudinal cross-cultural sample (N = 6,748; 18 countries/societies) that the prophylactic effect of group membership is not isolated to small-scale groups, and that members of groups do not have to directly interact, or in fact know of each other to benefit from membership. Our longitudinal analyses suggest that national identification (strength of association with the country/society of which one is a citizen) predicts lower anxiety and improved health; national identification was in fact almost as positively predictive of health status as anxiety was negatively predictive. The findings indicate that identification with large-scale groups, like small-scale groups, is palliative, and are discussed in terms of globalization and banal nationalism.     

Dialogue and Dominance in Couple Therapy for Depression: Exploring Therapists’ Responses in Creating Collaborative Moments

Previous investigations have found specific communication patterns in couples dealing with depression, specifically when depression concurs with conjugal conflicts. The presence of these patterns can reflect couples’ difficulties in engaging in collaborative communication during their sessions, posing a real challenge for therapists. This exploratory study uses a dialogical approach to examine issues of dominance and type of dialogue in two couples who differed in terms of their levels of dyadic adjustment. The therapists’ reactions were explored in order to detect the kinds of responses that were most effective at engendering a collaborative attitude in therapy sessions. The method used to analyze the dialogue was Dialogical Investigations of Happenings of Change (DIHC). Results on dominance indicated that the degree of quantitative and semantic dominance displayed by a different member of the couple in each case was illustrative of their relational dynamics, while in both cases interactional dominance was exercised by the therapists. Results on dialogue revealed that dialogic dialogue might help to coconstruct new shared meanings of depression. The findings indicated that certain responses by therapists as part of the dialogue could be useful in bringing about a reduction in hostility between the members of a couple, provided that the responses are maintained over the course of the session. Some research and clinical implications that emerge from the results are discussed.     

Latinx Mental Health Scholars' Experiences with Cultural Adaptation and Implementation of Systemic Family Interventions

An increasing number of culturally adapted family-level interventions address mental health disparities with marginalized populations in the United States. However, with these developments many barriers have arisen, such as challenges with degree of cultural fit, engagement, and sustainability. We conducted 12 elite phenomenological interviews with mental health scholars involved in prevention and intervention family research with various Latinx communities within and outside of the United States. These scholars discussed their experiences of overcoming barriers in their research. We used thematic analysis to code and analyze participant responses, and our findings support the gaps in previous literature and highlight potential pathways to overcoming barriers in cultural adaptation research. Themes included the need for: (a) better understanding of the intersection between culture and context; (b) community-centered approaches to addressing implementation challenges; and (c) structural changes within institutional, governmental, and political levels. We discuss implications for researchers and practitioners working with Latinx families.     

Understanding the link between work engagement and job satisfaction: Do role stressors underlie this relationship?

Drawing upon Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, most research on hindrance demands has focused on the antecedent role of work engagement. However, no studies have analysed the potential effects of hindrance demands as moderators in the engagement-job satisfaction link. The objective of this study was to examine the moderator effect of role stressors (conflict and ambiguity) as hindrance demands in the relationship between work engagement and job satisfaction in a Spanish working sample. The sample was composed of 634 Spanish workers from different Southern service organizations. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that the association between work engagement and job satisfaction decreased when role stress (particularly ambiguity) increased. These results underline the need to clarify goals, specify norms about work and member roles in organizations and determine the deleterious effect of hindrance demands even in engaged workers.     

Young adults' partner preferences and parents' in-law preferences across generations,genders, and nations

To examine cultural, gender, and parent–child differences in partner preferences, in eight countries undergraduates (n = 2,071) and their parents (n = 1,851) ranked the desirability of qualities in someone the student might marry. Despite sizable cultural differences—especially between Southeast Asian and Western countries—participants generally ranked kind/understanding (reflecting interpersonal communion) highest, and intelligent and healthy (reflecting mental/physical agency) among the top four. Students valued exciting, attractive partners more and healthy, religious partners less than parents did; comparisons with rankings by youth in 1984 (i.e., from the parents' generation) suggested cohort effects cannot explain most parent–child disagreements. As evolutionary psychology predicts, participants prioritized wives' attractiveness and homemaker skills and husbands' education and breadwinner skills; but as sociocultural theory predicts, variations across countries/decades in gendered spousal/in-law preferences mirrored socioeconomic gender differences. Collectively, the results suggest individuals consider their social roles/circumstances when envisioning their ideal spouse/in-law, which has implications for how humans’ partner-appraisal capabilities evolved.     

Artificial Moral Agents: A Survey of the Current Status

Science and Engineering Ethics - One of the objectives in the field of artificial intelligence for some decades has been the development of artificial agents capable of coexisting in harmony with...     

John Keown: Euthanasia,ethics and public policy: an argument against legalisation, 2nd edition

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -