Teenagers’ Perceptions of Volunteering Following the 2010–2011 Canterbury Earthquakes,New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Limited research exists of teenagers’ involvement in the response phase of a natural disaster. There is little, for example on volunteering, and of specifically what motivates teenagers to volunteer and the activities they participate in. Therefore, this study investigated teenagers’ involvement and perceptions of volunteering following the 2010–2011 Canterbury, New Zealand, earthquakes. Six focus groups were conducted with 31 teenagers aged 16–18 who had experienced the earthquakes. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis leading to four themes, namely sense of control, sense of purpose, shift in perspective, and restrictions. Findings emphasize the importance of organizing youth-focused volunteer groups, due to volunteering potentially reducing teenagers’ psychological distress postdisaster.     

Response inhibition and interference control: Effects of schizophrenia,genetic risk,and schizotypy

The ability to inhibit inappropriate responses and suppress irrelevant information is a core feature of executive control. In this study, we provide a detailed analysis of prepotent response inhibition and interference in patients with schizophrenia. To further test the role of genetic factors and subclinical schizophrenia‐like traits, we additionally studied clinically unaffected, first‐degree relatives of schizophrenia patients and assessed dimensions of schizotypy in both relatives and healthy controls. Inhibition and interference control were assessed using a battery comprising the antisaccade, Stroop, stop signal, go/no‐go, flanker, and Simon tasks. Schizophrenia patients differed from both relatives and controls in making more errors on the antisaccade task and having longer response times on the Stroop task, especially the incongruent condition. Patients also had general, that is, condition independent, increases in reaction times on the go/no‐go and flanker tasks and made more errors on the flanker and Simon tasks, suggesting general performance impairments independent of inhibitory demand. Relatives were characterized by hypometric antisaccade amplitude gain despite normal prosaccades, suggesting a selective deficit in non‐standard sensorimotor transformations. Schizotypy was correlated with inhibitory performance across a number of tasks in both relatives and controls. Generally, these effects were independent of verbal intelligence levels. Overall, the findings point to rather selective impairments of inhibitory control in the schizophrenia spectrum and confirm a previously observed deficit in antisaccade spatial accuracy as an endophenotype of schizophrenia.     

How Bion’s Work on Thinking Might Throw Light on the Development of Sexuality

ABSTRACT

In preparing this article, I found I needed to take a step back from the specific topic of castration anxiety to a more general consideration of our contemporary understanding of sexuality. Being from a psychoanalytic tradition (Kleinian/Bionian) that has not foregrounded the place of sexuality, but has produced a deepening understanding of the epistemological instinct, I have explored whether one might draw on the work on thinking to contribute to a more general theory of development, and then track this through to its implications for sexuality.     

Episodic future thinking in 3- to 5-year-old children: The ability to think of what will be needed from a different point of view

Assessing children’s episodic future thinking by having them select items for future use may be assessing their functional reasoning about the future rather than their future episodic thinking. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, we capitalised on the fact that episodic cognition necessarily has a spatial format (Clayton and Russell, 2009, Hassabis and Maguire, 2007). Accordingly, we asked children of 3, 4, and 5 to chose items they would need to play a game (blow football) from the opposite side of the table on which they had never before played. The crucial item was the box that was needed by children to reach the table from the other side. Over four experiments, we demonstrated that, while children of 3 perform poorly on future questions and children of 5 generally perform quite well, children of 4 years find a question about what they themselves will need to play in the future harder to answer than a similar question posed about another child. We suggest that this result is due to the ‘growth error’ of over-applying newly-developed Level 2 perspective-taking skills (Flavell et al., 1981), which encourages the selection of non-functional items. The data are discussed in terms of perspective-taking abilities in children and of the neural correlates of episodic cognition, navigation, and theory of mind.     

Becoming who you are: An integrative review of self‐determination theory and personality systems interactions theory

One of the enduring missions of personality science is to unravel what it takes to become a fully functioning person. In the present article, the authors address this matter from the perspectives of self‐determination theory (SDT) and personality systems interactions (PSI) theory. SDT (a) is rooted in humanistic psychology; (b) has emphasized a first‐person perspective on motivation and personality; (c) posits that the person, supported by the social environment, naturally moves toward growth through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. PSI theory (a) is rooted in German volition psychology; (b) has emphasized a third‐person perspective on motivation and personality; and (c) posits that a fully functioning person can form and enact difficult intentions and integrate new experiences, and that such competencies are facilitated by affect regulation. The authors review empirical support for SDT and PSI theory, their convergences and divergences, and how the theories bear on recent empirical research on internalization, vitality, and achievement flow. The authors conclude that SDT and PSI theory offer complementary insights into developing a person's full potential.     

When and how social movements mobilize action within and across nations to promote solidarity with refugees

When and how do social movements form to mobilize action across national boundaries? In the context of the 2015 movement to support Syrian refugees, we develop an integrative model of transnational social movement formation shaped by pre-existing world-views (social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism) and social media exposure to iconic events, resulting in an emergent group consciousness (“we are”, “we believe”, “we feel”). Group consciousness is, in turn, the proximal predictor of solidarity with refugees. Participants were from six countries: Hungary (N = 267), Romania (N = 163), Germany (N = 190), the United Kingdom (N = 159), the United States (N = 244) and Australia (N = 344). Multi-group structural equation models confirmed that group consciousness, shaped by individual differences and exposure to events through social media, was the proximal predictor of solidarity. The subjective meaning of group consciousness varied across samples, reflecting national differences. Results support the importance of considering individual and national differences, and group processes in understanding emergent social movements.     

Interactive apps prevent gender discrepancies in early‐grade mathematics in a low‐income country in sub‐Sahara Africa

Globally, gender differences are reported in the early acquisition of reading and mathematics as girls tend to outperform boys in reading, whereas boys tend to outperform girls in mathematics. This can have long‐term impact resulting in an under‐representation of girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects. Recent research suggests that sociocultural factors account for differences across genders in the acquisition of these foundational skills. In this study, we investigated whether a new technology‐based intervention, that included activities accessible to both boys and girls, can reduce gender differences from emerging during the early primary school years. The novel instructional method used in this study employed apps developed by onebillion© delivered individually through touch‐screen tablets. Over a series of experiments conducted in Malawi, a low‐income country in sub‐Sahara Africa, we found that when children were exposed to standard pedagogical practice typical gender differences emerged over the first grade (Experiment 1). In contrast, boys and girls learnt equally well with the new interactive apps designed to support the learning of mathematics (Experiment 2) and reading (Experiment 3). When implemented at the start of primary education, before significant gender discrepancies become established, this novel technology‐based intervention can prevent significant gender effects for mathematics. These results demonstrate that different instructional practices influence the emergence of gender disparities in early mathematics. Digital interventions can mitigate gender differences in countries where standard pedagogical instruction typically hinders girls from acquiring early mathematical skills at the same rate as boys. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55x-6hhAY9M&feature=youtu.be