Greater family identification—but not greater contact with family members—leads to better health: Evidence from a Spanish longitudinal study

We investigated the effect of family identification (one's subjective sense of belonging to and commonality with the family) on self‐reported ill‐health in 206 Valencian undergraduates, with eight months between Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2). While greater family identification T1 predicted lower ill‐health T2, ill‐health T1 did not predict family identification T2. Family contact T1 (one's intensity of interaction with family) was unrelated to ill‐health T2. This shows that family identification impacts positively on health over time (rather than health impacting positively on family identification over time), and this is not reducible to effects exerted by family contact. These findings indicate that encouraging patients to engage in group activities might produce negligible health gains unless the patient identifies with the group in question.     

Cognitive architectures: Research issues and challenges

In this paper, we examine the motivations for research on cognitive architectures and review some candidates that have been explored in the literature. After this, we consider the capabilities that a cognitive architecture should support, some properties that it should exhibit related to representation, organization, performance, and learning, and some criteria for evaluating such architectures at the systems level. In closing, we discuss some open issues that should drive future research in this important area.     

Attributional Complexity: A Link Between Training, Job Complexity, Decision Latitude, Leader–Member Exchange, and Performance

Previous research demonstrated that individuals differ in the relative sophistication of their schemas for organizing and interpreting social stimuli (i.e., attributional complexity, or AC) and that AC has been linked to performance in social situations. In the present study, 420 employed students completed surveys for an investigation of the relationship between individual, work role, and job characteristics; AC; and job performance. Educational level and major predicted AC, but leader–member exchange (LMX), decision latitude (DL), and social/task complexity of the job did not. Contrary to expectations, social and task complexity did not interact with DL and LMX to predict AC. AC, DL, LMX, and educational level predicted job performance. Further, AC interacted with social complexity of the job to predict performance. The results suggest that AC may be both content and process based, and predictive of performance in certain jobs.     

Providing a Rationale in an Autonomy-Supportive Way as a Strategy to Motivate Others During an Uninteresting Activity

When motivating others during uninteresting activities, people typically use extrinsic contingencies that promote controlling forms of extrinsic motivation. In contrast, we investigated a motivational strategy that could support another person's capacity to personally endorse and value the effort he or she put forth during the uninteresting activity. That strategy is the provision of an externally provided rationale when communicated in an autonomy-supportive way. In two studies, we tested and found support for a motivational mediation model, based on self-determination theory, in which the presence of such a rationale (vs. its absence) adds to participants' identification with the task's personal value which, in turn, explains participants' subsequent effort. These studies suggest that extrinsically motivated behaviors can become self-determined through the process of identification and that the promotion of this identification experience depends on the presence of a rationale that is communicated in an autonomy-supportive way.     

Narcissism in the modern world

Narcissism has been around since the time of Ovid more than 2000?years ago and the concept has long been a source of study, intrigue, fascination and literature both within and beyond the psychoanalytic community. While Narcissistic Personality Disorder remains a severe and fairly rare clinically diagnosed condition, sub-clinical narcissism or narcissistic traits have reached epidemic proportions with serious consequences. Ever increasing levels of greed, self-obsession, superficial relationships, arrogance and vanity are everywhere apparent and not making us any happier, with common mental health problems on the increase, especially among the young. Seemingly irreversible alterations to family life, technological development – including social media, attitudes to death and dying and celebrity worship, all feature in the rise of our narcissistic society and are interconnected trends. Group greed and grandiosity, as in the world of banking, have led to wide-scale corruption and cover-ups leaving us vulnerable and unable to place our trust in many organisations. Perhaps most sinister of all is our attitude to the planet that supports us, as we play a part in the destruction of much of the environment and many of the species that share the earth with us. Looking at the literature of narcissism, the aim of this paper is to consider ways in which cultural changes have brought about this huge rise in both individual and group egotism. We are seeing many more clients high on the narcissistic spectrum but consideration will be given to the narcissism of the therapist and the impact of the therapist’s narcissism on the client. We live in difficult times and cannot step outside our culture but there are ways of countering our narcissism and helping our clients to do the same. Having compassion for one’s self and recognising how ordinary we really are make for a good start.     

Autism and 15q11-q13 disorders: behavioral, genetic, and pathophysiological issues

New insights into biological factors that underlie autism may be gained by comparing autism to other neurodevelopmental disorders that have autistic features and relatively well-delineated genetic etiologies or neurobiological findings. This review moves beyond global diagnoses of autism and instead uses an endophenotypic approach to compare specific clusters of autistic symptomatology to features of chromosome 15q11-q13 disorders. Paternally or maternally derived deficiencies of 15q11-q13 result in Prader-Willi or Angelman syndromes, and we first use a global approach to review potential autism susceptibility genes in the 15q11-q13 region. We then use a more trait-based approach to suggest possible ties between specific phenotypic characteristics of autism and Prader-Willi syndrome, namely savant-like skills. We conclude with insights from pathophysiological studies that implicate altered development of specific neuron types and circuits in the cerebral cortex as part of the pathophysiological processes associated with autism and mental retardation.     

Rule-based and exemplar-based classification in artificial grammar learning

In this study, we examined the induction of syntactic rules, given the presentation of letter strings generated from a finite-state grammar. Our primary interest was whether application of abstracted syntax or analogy to remembered exemplars could serve as a basis for judgments of grammaticality of novel stimuli. The grammatical status of test items and their objective similarity to studied exemplars were manipulated independently to investigate whether rule-based or instance-based information was a more important determinant of classification performance. When group data were examined, the results indicated that both factors were equally important in influencing grammaticality judgments about novel letter strings. There were, however, large individual differences in the magnitude of grammatical status effects, with a subgroup of subjects clearly using a classification strategy other than analogy to remembered exemplars. The results offer qualified support for the hypothesis (Reber & Allen, 1978) that rule-based information can be implicitly abstracted given limited experience with richly structured stimulus domains, and these results are inconsistent with a strong version of the instance-based model of categorization.     

Proximate and ultimate causes of punishment and strong reciprocity

While admirable, Guala's discussion of reciprocity suffers from a confusion between proximate causes (psychological mechanisms triggering behaviour) and ultimate causes (evolved function of those psychological mechanisms). Because much work on "strong reciprocity" commits this error, I clarify the difference between proximate and ultimate causes of cooperation and punishment. I also caution against hasty rejections of "wide readings" of experimental evidence.