Global self-esteem across the life span

This study provides a comprehensive picture of age differences in self-esteem from age 9 to 90 years using cross-sectional data collected from 326,641 individuals over the Internet. Self-esteem levels were high in childhood, dropped during adolescence, rose gradually throughout adulthood, and declined sharply in old age. This trajectory generally held across gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and nationality (U.S. citizens vs. non-U.S. citizens). Overall, these findings support previous research, help clarify inconsistencies in the literature, and document new trends that require further investigation.     

Unusual Child–Mother Communication During Separation: A Psychoanalytic Study

This paper describes two vignettes from psychoanalytic work with a mother who experienced unusual communication with her baby when they were apart. These episodes suggest there are sensory cues or an extrasensory perceptual awareness between individuals separated by physical distance. This paper attempts to describe these thought transferences in order to better understand communication phenomena that have not been described in the scientific literature.     

Brain Potentials in the Processing of Complex Sentences: An ERP Study of Control and Raising Constructions

In the present study we made use of Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to examine raising and subject control constructions in German. Our most salient result is that the ERPs elicited at the empty subject position of a raising construction are clearly different from those elicited at the corresponding position of an otherwise identical subject control construction, the former producing a stronger P600. We argue that this result provides an electrophysiological correlate of the theoretical distinction between NP trace and PRO.     

Training ethical psychologists: an acculturation model

This article presents an approach to graduate (and professional) training that views becoming an ethical psychologist as an acculturation process. J.W. Berry's (1980, 2003) model of acculturation strategies is used as a framework for understanding ethical acculturation, a developmental process during which students can use several types of adaptation strategies. Students enter training with their own moral value traditions and concepts but are confronted with new ethical principles and rules, some of which may be inconsistent with their ethics of origin. The article explores several applications of the framework to ethics courses, practicum supervision, and other areas of training.     

On the mental representation of negative numbers: Context-dependent SNARC effects with comparative judgments

In one condition, positive and negative number pairs were compared in separate blocks of trials. In another condition, the positive and the negative number pairs were intermixed. In the intermixed condition, comparisons involving negative numbers were faster with the left hand than with the right, and comparisons were faster with the right hand than with the left hand with the positive numbers; that is, a spatial numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect was obtained, in which the mental number line was extended leftward with the negative numbers. On the other hand, in the blocked condition, a reverse SNARC effect was obtained with the negative numbers; that is, negative number pairs have the same underlying spatial representation as the positive numbers in this context. Nongraded semantic congruity effects, obtained in both the blocked and the intermixed conditions, are consistent with the idea that magnitude information is extracted prior to the generation of discrete semantic codes.