Tenacious goal pursuit and flexible goal adjustment: explication and age-related analysis of assimilative and accommodative strategies of coping

Crises and critical life transitions activate 2 distinct but complementary modes of coping, (a) transforming developmental circumstances in accordance with personal preferences (assimilative tendency) and (b) adjusting personal preferences to situational constraints (accommodative tendency). Assimilative and accommodative tendencies were measured by a questionnaire comprising 2 independent scales (Tenacious Goal Pursuit and Flexible Goal Adjustment). Both scales predict high life satisfaction and low depression and are positively related to generalized internal control beliefs. The scales evinced an opposite relation to age: Cross-sectional analyses on a sample of 890 Ss in the age range from 34 to 63 years revealed a gradual shift from an assimilative to an accommodative mode of coping. Implications for theories of depression and successful aging are discussed.     

Behavior at 10 and 13 years of age for children with low birth weight

This study was based on data from a longitudinal research program. The cohort consisted of 874 normal children in an entire school grade in a Swedish community. The aim of the study was to investigate the relation between birth weight and behavior at school, for all children and for each sex separately. The results identified specific aspects of behaviour disorder significantly related to low birth weight (LBW) for children at the age of 10 but not at the age of 13. When the sexes were separated, there were no relations between birth weight and deviant behaviour for boys of low birth weight as compared to boys of normal birth weight, while girls of low birth weight showed specific behavioural disorders at age 10 as compared to girls of normal birth weight. For girls reared in families of low parental socioeconomic status, aggressiveness and motor restlessness at age 10 but not at age 13 was also present. Further analyses showed that girls born small-for-gestational age showed lack of school motivation and concentration difficulties both at age 10 and age 13.     

Sense and counter-sense--on the deconstruction of histories

Today historiography (the writing of stories) presented as nothing but a search for truth merits the charge of naiveté. Since Freud we must understand any story told about life as a rationalization, that is, as a strategy of conducting one's life. The author argues the proposition that historiography can only fulfill its function of giving sense to life if it simultaneously admits its deconstruction, its counter-sense.     

Dealing with (bypassing) the difference

The author presents different psychoanalytic conceptualizations of gender difference. She reviews the controversy between Freud and Jones and discusses in detail the views put forward by Montrelay, a student of Lacan, who relates early linguistic development to gender-specific differences in closeness between the child and the "mother's body".     

Aspects of family-oriented diagnosis in compulsory legal family expert assessment

In forensic psychology, recommendations that courts request when granting one of the parents the right of child upbringing after a divorce pose a problem for the person who is required to give such expert judgment. The authors describe the difficult situation he faces when having to decide for and, at the same time, against one of the parents. A good knowledge of family psychology and pathopsychology is essential, and for drawing up the expertise and stating his reasons, the expert requires methodical resources. The authors describe four procedures of relational diagnosis and recommend the combined use of these in conjunction with methods that have been employed so far.     

The number of active sweat glands (PSI, palmar sweat index) in stress caused by blood donation

The number of active sweat glands (PSI), heart rate, systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were assessed every 2 minutes in 109 male blood donors. Three measurements were taken at the beginning (adaptation phase), three later but before blood donation (baseline), one during the venous puncture (phase 3), three thereafter but still during donation (phase 4), and four after removal of the cannula (phase 5). Analysis of variance yielded significant differences between phases; PSI and SBP behaved similarly, decreasing from adaptation to baseline, rising during puncture, and decreasing again thereafter. Mean within-subject correlations between variables were significantly above 0. Between-subjects correlations were significantly negative for PSI and DBP. This is best explained by the influence of age on both variables. Correlations of PSI values as determined by three raters had a mean of 0.90. The study shows that the PSI is a very sensitive indicator of stress that is easily accessible also in field studies.     

A kinematic analysis of anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of anterior aphasic subjects using electromagnetic articulography

An investigation was made into the extent and time course of anticipatory coarticulation in the speech of two normal and two anterior aphasic, German-speaking subjects. Both labial and velar coarticulation gestures were investigated. Subjects produced sentences containing target words contrasting in postconsonantal vowel rounding (e.g., [geli:ge]/[gely:gel]) and in nasality (e.g., [ti:de]/[ti:ne]). Speech kinematics were monitored by means of electromagnetic articulography. The data revealed that for correct productions, aphasic speakers' coarticulatory patterns were more highly variable than those of control subjects. These differences, however, were found chiefly for spatial displacement characteristics, while the temporal aspects of articulator movement necessary for anticipatory coarticulation appeared largely intact. Articulator mistiming did not appear to explain a small corpus of stop/nasal substitution errors produced by one of the aphasic speakers.     

Data selection and responsible conduct: Was millikan a fraud?

This paper addresses a problem in reporting scientific research. The problem is how to distinguish between justifiable and unjustifiable data selection. Robert Millikan is notorious for an infamous remark that he used all his data when in fact he had used a selection. On this basis he has been accused of fraud. There is a tension here — historians and his defenders see his selection as understandable and legitimate, while current statements about the Responsible Conduct of Research imply his selection was illegitimate. This paper discusses two main issues that arise in assessing his conduct, whether he was intentionally misleading and whether he actually did mislead the scientific community about some facts of nature. It is argued that he was not intentionally misleading, and that it is unlikely that he misled the scientific community.     

Pharmacological dissociation of memory: anisomycin, a protein synthesis inhibitor, and leupeptin, a protease inhibitor, block different learning tasks

Inhibition of protein synthesis by anisomycin for a short duration impairs memory of a one-trial inhibitory avoidance task in rats. Memory of escape conditioning involving eight trials is disrupted only if the duration of protein synthesis is prolonged by repeated injections. In marked contrast, olfactory memory of rats trained on two odor discriminations is not affected by anisomycin even if the duration of inhibition is prolonged and the number of trials is reduced to a minimum. In previous work, leupeptin, a thiol proteinase inhibitor, was shown to impair olfactory discrimination learning, but left inhibitory and avoidance conditioning intact. Together, these results provide a pharmacological double dissociation of memory, and suggest that the same chemistries, or mixtures of chemistries, may not be involved in all types of memory.     

Exploration and avoidance in rats with lesions in amygdala and piriform cortex

Lesions localized to specific areas of the amygdala and overlying cortex in rats produced differential effects in several behavioral tasks. Three different types of lesions were tested: central, basolateral, and cortex lateral to the amygdala. Lesions restricted to the central nucleus produced increased activity on all parameters studied in an open-field test, but the other two groups were not changed. In one-way active avoidance all three groups with lesions showed deficits. The most pronounced change was observed in the central group. All groups showed the same degree of retention loss, but in forced extinction of one-way active avoidance after retraining, the cortical and basolateral groups were most defective. A fear-reduction hypothesis is proposed for the central lesion. The basolateral and cortical areas may be more specifically involved in passive avoidance behavior.