On being attached

We often use the term “attachment” to describe our emotional connectedness to objects in the world. We become attached to our careers, to our homes, to certain ideas, and perhaps most importantly, to other people. Interestingly, despite its import and ubiquity in our everyday lives, the topic of attachment per se has been largely ignored in the philosophy literature. I address this lacuna by identifying (a type of) attachment as a rich “mode of mattering” that can help to inform certain aspects of agency and emotion. First, drawing on insights from Ancient stoicism and developmental and clinical psychology, I suggest that the relevant form of attachment involves a felt need for its object and a particular relationship between the object and the attached agent’s sense of security. I then argue that these features serve to distinguish the attitude from the more philosophically familiar notion of caring. Finally, I show that recognizing this form of attachment as a distinct mode of mattering has important implications for understanding grief.     

Navigating Frames of Address: María Lugones on Language,Bodies, Things,and Places

Address figures prominently in contemporary (Latina) feminism, yet calls for further theorizing. Modes of address are forms of signification we direct at people, objects, and places, and they at us. Address constitutes a vital dimension of our corporeal interactions with persons and the material world. Our relationships are in motion as we adopt modes of address toward one another or fail to do so. Clarifying address through examples from Gloria Anzaldúa, this essay reveals its importance in María Lugones's writings. The essay thereby highlights underexplored aspects of Lugones's texts, identifies continuities between Lugones's philosophy and (Latina) feminist work that comprehends address as a carrier of aesthetic and political meanings, and illuminates the resources of a remarkably fruitful concept. Address, in Lugones, is the centerpiece of a quotidian cultural politics. Principal concepts she introduces (concerning subjectivity, critique and transformation, social categorization and interaction, the role of language, bodies, objects, and places) recruit address. Yet, by foregrounding address, the essay also brings into view unforeseen obstructions in the paths of address that Lugones champions, and an enlarged playing field that we can activate to realize desirable frames of address and derail objectionable structures. Avenues open up for further development of Lugones's insights and for inquiries into address.     

Health-Related Quality of Life,Functioning and Social Experiences in People with Psychotic Disorders

Applied Research in Quality of Life - To inform development of a model for health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in people with psychotic disorders, we aimed to assess correlations between...     

Identity centrality moderates the relationship between acceptance of group‐based stressors and well‐being

Two two‐wave studies were used to examine the proposition that identity centrality enhances the effectiveness of stressor acceptance in the face of group‐based stressors. Study 1 was conducted in newly commencing psychology students (N = 154). Stressor intensity, psychology student identity centrality, and attempted stressor acceptance were measured at two‐time points over 6‐weeks. Study 2 was conducted in a group of early to late career veterinarians (N = 92) and extended Study 1 by assessing stressor frequency as an indicator of the level of demand. Veterinarian identity centrality and stressor acceptance were measured twice over 12‐months. Both studies provided support for the predicted three‐way interaction. Only when Time 1 stressors and identity centrality were both high was stressor acceptance related to a reduction in perceived stressor intensity (Study 1) or burnout symptoms (Study 2) at Time 2. These findings suggest that identity centrality enhances the effectiveness of stressor acceptance for supporting wellbeing and resilience.     

Oral language deficits in dyslexic children: weaknesses in working memory and verbal planning

This paper focuses on the relationships among language processing (word- and sentence-level), working memory, and verbal/nonverbal linguistic output. The study examined oral language abilities in a group of 26 French-speaking dyslexic children, compared to two control groups (26 normally developing age-matched children and 26 normally developing younger children). The experimental procedure consisted of tasks involving auditory memory skills (digit span, unfamiliar word repetition, sentence repetition), word retrieval (with semantic, phonological and grammatical criteria), and sentence processing (with verbal and act-out production). The major findings reveal that (a) compared with their age-mates, the dyslexic children exhibited a significant deficit affecting all tasks; and (b) the dyslexic children and the younger controls performed similarly on several tasks. The results are consistent with the processing limitation hypothesis and suggest that the core deficit is the formulation of cognitive plans from auditory input to verbal output.     

The Seven-Item Short Form of the Dyadic Adjustment Scale: Further Evidence for Construct Validity

Two studies examine psychometric aspects of the seven-item version of the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) (Spanier, 1976). In Study 1, data from 148 heterosexual clients seeking marital therapy services and 122 heterosexual couples in the community were used to assess the criterion validity of the DAS-7. The measure differentiated between clinic and community participants and between marriages classified as distressed or adjusted based on the full DAS score. In Study 2, the reliability and convergent validity of the DAS7, when administered as a separate scale, was assessed in a community sample of 162 participants who were married or were in cohabiting heterosexual relationships. Obtained values were comparable to those reported in previous research in which the DAS-7 was obtained by extracting items from participants' full DAS. These results demonstrate that the DAS-7 is a psychometrically sound short form for assessing marital adjustment.     

Collective efficacy following a series of natural disasters

This article examined adolescents' reports of how they cope with a specific social stressor: authority conflict with parents. This situation was presented to 626 adolescents as part of a larger study on coping with stress. Students were requested to report on the intensity of the stress experienced, intensity of emotions, emotion regulation, perceived availability of social support, goal framing, and coping strategies used. Coping strategies split up factor-analytically into two coping patterns, namely fighting the stressor and coming to terms with the stressor. The relations between these two coping modes and various aspects of the students' mental representation of the stressor were examined. It was predicted that the way students frame the coping goal would affect their choice of coping strategies. Direct effects of coping strategy, emotion regulation and social support on intensity of stress were tested as well as moderating effects of the type of coping mode used on the relationship between emotion regulation and experienced stress. It is suggested that some youngsters consider an authority conflict with their parents as a normal aspect of daily functioning, whereas other view it as a developmental challenge.     

Introduction

A dynamic model of affect suggests that positive and negative affect (PA and NA) are normally relatively independent of one another, whereas the heightened apprehensiveness and narrowed cognitive attention in persons with anxiety may contribute to a more unidimensional affect structure. This possibility was examined in a sample of 230 patients seeking treatment for anxiety and depressive disorders in the Netherlands. Two methods, a multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Fisher's z test of correlations, were used to test these predicted relationships within a sample of persons diagnosed with either a depressive or an anxiety disorder. Both methods supported these predictions, with the depressed group exhibiting relatively independent PA and NA while the anxious group's affects were more strongly inversely correlated.