Reliability and validity of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) across samples of Mexican,Mexican American,and European American children: a preliminary investigation1 Table of means,standard deviations,and correlations of the RCMAS indicators are available from the first author upon request.

Abstract

The relationship between work and home-based stressors in predicting burnout symptoms was examined amongst 120 drug and alcohol service employees. Staff who reported high levels of burnout on the Maslach Burnout Inventory across all three scales of Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization and Personal Accomplishment were compared with a sample of low burnout employees. High burnout was associated with younger age, larger agency size, high levels of total work stressors, work overload, and daily hassles and a lower level of peer cohesion. Regression analyses revealed that male gender, younger age, work overload, role ambiguity and daily hassles were significant predictors of Emotional Exhaustion. Younger age was also a significant predictor of Depersonalization. Marked differences were found in the way in which males and females responded to work and non-work stressors and the interaction between these variables. For women, a significant interaction was found between total work stressors and home-based stressors in the prediction of Emotional Exhaustion and a trend in this direction was evident for Depersonalization. Low levels of home problems appeared to protect women from the adverse impact of work stressors. The burnout levels of women were relatively unaffected by work stressors, unless home stressors were also high. The level of daily hassles had a direct effect upon symptoms of Emotional Exhaustion, but did not interact with work stressors in predicting Emotional Exhaustion for women. Burnout levels of male employees on Emotional Exhaustion and Depersonalization scales were strongly linked to the level of work stressors and were not predicted by total home stressors nor the interaction between these variables. Symptoms of Emotional Exhaustion in males were predicted by severity of daily hassles, but this variable did not interact with work stressors in predicting Emotional Exhaustion.     

What lies beneath: Reframing framing effects

Decision framing concerns how individuals build internal representations of problems and how these determine the choices that they make. Research in this area has been dominated by studies of the framing effect, showing reversals in preference associated with the form in which a decision problem is presented. While there are studies that fail to reveal this effect, there is at present no theory that can explain why and when the effect occurs. The purpose of this article is to present a selective review of research and use this to argue for a new framework for considering decision framing, to interpret past studies, and to set an agenda for future research. A simple information-processing model is developed. The model provides the basis for arguing that previous research has taken too narrow a view of how decision problems are internally represented and how these representations are transformed into choice behaviour. In addition, the model is used to highlight the importance of decision content and context.     

An advanced specialist-level training programme in psychodynamic individual psychotherapy of psychotic and borderline patients: the Finnish approach

Most training programmes in individual psychotherapy, including psychoanalytic training are, in practice, restricted to the treatmentof lessdisturbed patients than those who have succumbed to psychotic or severely borderline-level disorders. This has had a delaying effect on the development of psychotherapy with such patients. Psychotherapy of severely disturbed patients is usually regarded as a difficult domain and is often practised only by psychoanalysts or other psychotherapists specially dedicated to working with patients of this kind. Between 1994 and 1997, an advanced multi-professional training programme in psychodynamic individual therapy with an emphasis on borderline and psychotic-level disorders was organized through the Centre for Extension Studies of the University of Turku, Finland, to close the gap in systematic training for the treatment of the most serious psychic disorders, and also to integrate some of the special requirements of public and private psychiatric health care. Here we briefly describe the main elements of our training programme as well as some of our training experiences. It is important to emphasize that the training was not meant to replace psychoanalytic training. It is a question of a separate multi-professional programme based on psychoanalytic premises but with particular objectives of its own.     

Directed Forgetting and Aging: The Role of Retrieval Processes,Processing Speed,and Proactive Interference

ABSTRACT

The directed forgetting effect obtained with the item method is supposed to depend on both selective rehearsal of to-be-remembered (TBR) items and attentional inhibition of to-be-forgotten (TBF) items. In this study, we investigated the locus of the directed forgetting deficit in older adults by exploring the influence of recollection and familiarity-based retrieval processes on age-related differences in directed forgetting. Moreover, we explored the influence of processing speed, short-term memory capacity, thought suppression tendencies, and sensitivity to proactive interference on performance. The results indicated that older adults' directed forgetting difficulties are due to decreased recollection of TBR items, associated with increased automatic retrieval of TBF items. Moreover, processing speed and proactive interference appeared to be responsible for the decreased recall of TBR items.     

Predictors of student burnout and engagement among university students

This study investigated influences of core self-evaluation traits, career decision-making difficulties and social support on student burnout and engagement. A cross-sectional design was used with a non-probability quota sample. In the multiple regression analyses, self-efficacy, inconsistent information due to internal conflict and (lack of) parental support were significant predictors of exhaustion, cynicism, vigour and dedication. Self-esteem was also a significant predictor for the two engagement dimensions. In addition, lack of information about the self, lack of information about the occupations and inconsistent information due to external conflict predicted cynicism.     

Evolutionary origins of human handedness: evaluating contrasting hypotheses

Variation in methods and measures, resulting in past dispute over the existence of population handedness in nonhuman great apes, has impeded progress into the origins of human right-handedness and how it relates to the human hallmark of language. Pooling evidence from behavioral studies, neuroimaging and neuroanatomy, we evaluate data on manual and cerebral laterality in humans and other apes engaged in a range of manipulative tasks and in gestural communication. A simplistic human/animal partition is no longer tenable, and we review four (nonexclusive) possible drivers for the origin of population-level right-handedness: skilled manipulative activity, as in tool use; communicative gestures; organizational complexity of action, in particular hierarchical structure; and the role of intentionality in goal-directed action. Fully testing these hypotheses will require developmental and evolutionary evidence as well as modern neuroimaging data.     

REVIEWS

This article identifies a previously ignored social movement that existed in London during 1827–1831. The Jewish rights movement, as it will be called here, actually involved a coalition of Jews and Christians. During the movement’s initial phase, London Jews, led by Moses E. Levy (an activist from the United States), joined in solidarity with their oppressed brethren in Russia: their public protests against tsarist policies drew a broad response from the national and international press. This unparalleled movement influenced national political agendas and major legislative reforms, and resulted in striking changes within the Anglo‐Jewish community. By utilising the modern social movement framework as an essential tool to reconstruct this long‐forgotten collective effort, the Jewish rights movement has emerged as a notable chapter in the development of modern Jewish political identity.

“At the present moment, the eyes of England, of Europe, and of a great part of the civilized world seem to be directed toward us, and… men are looking with something approaching anxiety for the result of the Public Meetings of the Jewish Nation that have been called (the first time for many centuries)” (Levy Jewish Community).     

The sound of time: cross-modal convergence in the spatial structuring of time

In a new integration, we show that the visual-spatial structuring of time converges with auditory-spatial left-right judgments for time-related words. In Experiment 1, participants placed past and future-related words respectively to the left and right of the midpoint on a horizontal line, reproducing earlier findings. In Experiment 2, neutral and time-related words were presented over headphones. Participants were asked to indicate whether words were louder on the left or right channel. On critical experimental trials, words were presented equally loud binaurally. As predicted, participants judged future words to be louder on the right channel more often than past-related words. Furthermore, there was a significant cross-modal overlap between the visual-spatial ordering (Experiment 1) and the auditory judgments (Experiment 2), which were continuously related. These findings provide support for the assumption that space and time have certain invariant properties that share a common structure across modalities.     

Cognitive enhancement, human evolution and bioethics

The goal of this article are three-fold. The first is to explore the relations between the properties designated by the terms "human", "post-human," "Transhuman", and to clarify the corresponding "isms". The second is to scrutinize the current techniques for cognitive enhancement in order to assess their relations with the three categories just mentioned, and, with the specific ethical issues that they are raising. The third is to examine whether general ethical principles could be invoked either in favor of or against, the normative proposals of post- and trans-humanism, and to consider how compatible the types of enhancement presently developed are with respect to these principles.     

Stress and emotional memory: a matter of timing

Stressful events activate the amygdala and a network of associated brain regions. Studies in both humans and rodents indicate that noradrenaline has a prominent role in this activation. Noradrenaline induces a hypervigilant state that helps to remember the event. This mnemonic effect is enhanced when the situation is so stressful that substantial amounts of corticosteroids are released and reach the amygdala. The combination of the two hormones leads to optimal strengthening of contacts and thus memory. Yet, rises in corticosteroid levels that are not precisely synchronized with noradrenaline release do not act synergistically but rather prevent or suppress the effect of noradrenaline. This dynamic interaction illustrates the adaptive and potentially protective capacity of corticosteroids regarding traumatic memories.