Effects of objective and subjective account components on forgiving

The authors explored the effects of the components of a harm-doer's account of her transgression on the victims' emotional reactions to the transgression and to the character traits that she attributes to the harm-doer. Participants were 480 people whom the authors asked to imagine an incident in which they were harmed by the careless behavior of a friend. Subsequently, the authors offered participants an account of the harm-doer. In a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects design, the authors manipulated 5 account components: Admitting Fault, Admitting Damage, Expressing Remorse, Asking for Pardon, and Offering Compensation. The authors measured the participants' perceptions of these components. Results indicated that (a) the subjective perception of account components occurs schematically so that components are implicitly perceived without being objectively present, (b) objective components affect victims' reactions via subjective perceptions of these components, (c) personality factors (Irreconcilability, Interpersonal Trust, and Trait Anger) affect victims' reactions directly. Finally, certain configurations of account components are more effective than others. Specifically, asking for pardon had an effect on forgiving only when it was combined with an acknowledgment of the damage and a compensation offer. This result suggests that in this situation, the victim perceives a harm-doer's asking for pardon without the other components as an insincere apology.     

The third in mind

Various aspects of the occult as they relate to psychoanalysis are discussed in this article. Drawing on both Freud's writings and Granoff and Rey's (1983) work on the occult in Freudian thought, the author considers the concept of co-thinking and its manifestations in clinical work. The psychoanalytic third is viewed in the context of the occult element known as thought transference, or thought transmission, and is also considered as it bears on psychoanalytic supervision.     

Family conflict tendency and ADHD

A lack of perseverance, poor attention, and poorly modulated behaviour are important criteria of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). Instructions often have to be repeated, sometimes even by different family members before a child with ADHD attends and complies. We hypothesised that a child with ADHD might cause less disagreement in families with almost no conflicts. Responses to the Mannheim Parents Interview and teacher's form of the Conners scale completed by families of 15 boys (ages 6 to 12 years), diagnosed with ADHD were compared with those of a matched, healthy control group of 15 boys. Parents completed a form assessing the family's cooperation and child-rearing practices. Having few family conflicts, i.e., almost no Verbal Disagreement may reduce Physical Punishment and Anger and Disregard and augment the Openness to another's needs and, for that reason, have protective effects on children's behaviour modulation.     

Psychometric properties of the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC) among Icelandic schoolchildren

A psychometric assessment of the Icelandic version of the Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC) was undertaken among Icelandic schoolchildren, between 10 and 15 years of age. In a first study 625 children between 10 and 15 years of age filled in the MASC. A confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the four-factor structure of the instrument was justified. Further, means and standard deviations of the total scale and the subscales were similar to the original normative data reported by March (1997). In a second study the MASC, the Children Depression Inventory (CDI) and the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) were administered to a sample of 249 schoolchildren between 10 and 15 years of age. The results supported the convergent and divergent validity of the MASC. Together the two studies show satisfactory psychometric properties of the Icelandic version of the MASC in a normal population.     

Work values among the unemployed: changes over time and some gender differences

Work involvement (psychological identification with work in general) has generally been considered as a stable, dispositional characteristic, although some studies of unemployment have contradicted this view. Using longitudinal data from a Swedish representative sample (n= 888), this study examines employment status change (e.g. from work to unemployment) and work values development in a 15-month time period. Furthermore, the relationship between employment status change and well-being is explored, with a special focus on the roles played by work values and gender differences. Results indicated that work values are fairly stable over 15 months. As expected, the long-term unemployed (mostly active job seekers) had higher measures of work involvement after 15 months. Further, no gender difference was found with regard to work involvement but females were more likely to agree that there is an entitlement to work. Becoming unemployed was associated with negative health effects, but only among unemployed men.     

Psychological masculinity-femininity via the gender diagnosticity approach: heritability and consistency across ages and populations

Several aspects of the Gender Diagnosticity (GD) approach of Lippa (1995) to measuring the psychological trait of masculinity-femininity within sexes were explored in four samples ranging from 363 to 5,859 individuals, including Swedish and Australian adults, U.S. elderly, and Australian adolescents. Two ways of deriving GD scales yielded highly similar results. Moderate stability of individual differences was found across ages 12 to 16 among adolescents, but substantial shifts over age occurred in relationships with Eysenck scales. Considerable generality of GD scales was obtained across languages and populations. Substantial heritabilities (about 40%) and minimal effects of shared family environments suggest that within-sex masculinity-femininity behaves as a fairly typical personality trait. Cross-age continuity appeared mainly to reflect the influence of the genes.     

Incidence of dysarthria in children with cerebellar tumors: a prospective study

The present study investigated dysarthric symptoms in children with cerebellar tumors. Ten children with cerebellar tumors and 10 orthopedic control children were tested prior and one week after surgery. Clinical dysarthric symptoms were quantified in spontaneous speech. Syllable durations were analyzed in syllable repetition and sentence production tasks. Localization of the cerebellar lesions were defined after manual transfer from individual 2D-MR images onto 3D images of a spatially normalized healthy brain. Cerebellar children showed few and mild clinical signs of dysarthria. No difference was present in the sentence production task compared to controls. In five cerebellar children, syllables were prolonged in the syllable repetition task after surgery. Syllable duration normalized in an additional four-week session in all but one case. The MR-analysis showed that superior paravermal cerebellar areas likely involved in dysarthria in adults (paravermal lobules HVI, Crus I) were not significantly affected. In children, speech impairments appear to be rare after cerebellar surgery because tumors most commonly affect posterior-inferior and medial parts of the cerebellum while critical cerebellar regions are likely spared. The results suggest a similar localization of speech functions in the cerebellum in children and adults.     

The Meta-Contrast Technique: relationships with personality traits and cognitive abilities in healthy women

The relationship between test results from the Meta-Contrast Technique (MCT) and self-reports from Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP), or the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T), was investigated in 100 healthy women. Additionally, it was investigated whether age and cognitive abilities influenced the reports of picture recognition thresholds in the MCT. The results showed no agreement between the different ways to assess anxiety and defensiveness. However, age consistently predicted later reports of the perceptual recognition thresholds A1 (the car), A2 (the face) and C-phase. The WAIS-R Digit Symbol Score predicted earlier reporting of the recognition thresholds A1 and A2, but did not predict the final criteria for correct recognition (C-phase). The KSP aggression factor only predicted an earlier report of recognition threshold A2. The absence of a simple relationship between the different ways to assess anxiety and defensiveness, and the observed relationships regarding perceptual threshold levels, corroborates previous findings.     

Visual neglect in the first weeks after a stroke in the right hemisphere

The aim of the study was to characterize symptoms of visual neglect among patients who recently survived a stroke in the right hemisphere (RH), and to contribute to the understanding of change in symptoms during the first months after a RH stroke. Thirteen patients with a RH stroke and twenty controls were assessed by using standard neglect tests. Five patients were followed up by repetitive test sessions during the next four months. To assess more subtle symptoms, reaction-time (RT) measures derived from an experimental cue-target paradigm were included in the final test session. A high frequency of neglect symptoms was documented at the first test session. The changes in performance during the first weeks were characterized by a high inter-individual as well as a high intra-individual variability. Although the remission rate on standard tests was high in the follow-up study, the RT measures indicated sustained symptoms of visual extinction in all patients. The long-term implication of the changes of neglect symptoms during the first weeks after a stroke and signs of sustained symptoms of visual extinction calls for further longitudinal studies including a larger group of patients.     

Influence of seasonally adjusted exposure to cold and darkness on cognitive performance in circumpolar residents

The effects of seasonally adjusted 24-h exposure to cold and darkness on cognitive performance in urban circumpolar residents was assessed in 15 male subjects who spent three 24-h periods in a climatic chamber at 65° latitude during the winter (January–March) and/or summer (August–September). Each subject was exposed to three different environmental conditions in random order: (1) 22 °C temperature and 500 lx lighting; (2) 10 °C temperature and 500 lx lighting; and (3) 10 °C temperature and 0.5–l lx lighting. Accuracy on an addition-subtraction task was significantly greater in the summer than in the winter ( p = 0.038), while accuracy on a repeated acquisition task was significantly greater in the winter than in the summer ( p < 0.001). Independent of season, exposure to cold and darkness was significantly associated with a decline in response time on five cognitive tests, an improvement in accuracy on three tests measuring complex cognitive tasks, and a decline in accuracy on two tests measuring simple tasks. Increased performance on complex tasks may result from increased arousal in response to the combination of cold temperatures and dim light characteristic of the winter in urban circumpolar settings.