Time crawls: the temporal resolution of infants' visual attention

Conscious visual perception of the constantly changing environment is one of the brain's most critical functions. In virtually every moment of every daily activity, the visual system is confronted with the task of accurately representing and interpreting scenes that change rapidly over time. Adults can judge the identity and order of changing images presented at a rate of up to 10 Hz (~50 ms per image); this limit reflects a finite temporal resolution of attention. In the research reported here, although 6- to 15-month-old infants could detect the presence of rapid flicker without difficulty, their ability to segment individual alternating states within the flicker was severely limited: Fifteen-month-old infants had a temporal resolution of attention approximately one order of magnitude lower than that of adults (~1 Hz). Coarse temporal resolution constrains how infants perceive and utilize dynamic visual information and may play a role in the visual processing deficits found in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders.     

Practicing Safe Text: the Impact of Texting on Walking Behavior

Sending and receiving text messages on cell phones is increasingly common. Texting while walking or driving, however, increases the likelihood of accidents. One possible cause is that distracted individuals are unable to detect safe opportunities for action. To investigate this, we asked participants to walk through doorways of differing widths while holding or texting on their phone. We measured walking speed, doorway‐to‐shoulder‐width ratio, and the number of bumps into the doorframes. Our results revealed that texters were more cautious than non‐texters; they walked slower and rotated their body through doorways they could have safely walked straight through. There were no significant differences, however, in the number of bumps into the doorframes. If texters in the real world behave like those in our laboratory, then the number of texting‐related accidents reported in other studies might suggest that being overcautious while texting does not actually decrease the likelihood of accidents. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating empirically supported therapies for treating personality disorders: a synthesis of psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral group treatments

Abstract This paper describes the theoretical foundations and components of an intensive group treatment program for individuals diagnosed with personality disorders. The Chrysalis Community Day Treatment Program integrates aspects of three empirically supported therapies: Transference-Focused Psychotherapy and Mentalization-Based Therapy, both psychodynamic psychotherapies, and Dialectical Behavior Therapy, a cognitive-behavioral therapy. Each of these modalities is structured for the treatment of individuals suffering from the symptoms of borderline personality disorder, and each of the treatments addresses problems that occur across a wide spectra of beliefs, capacities, and behaviors. The program is comprised of expressive, psycho-educational and skills-training groups, and participants attend three days per week, for 15 weeks. Preliminary evaluation is promising, reflecting decreases in self-injurious behavior, suicide attempts, psychiatric hospitalizations, and psychiatric symptoms at a one-year follow-up.     

Patterns of Women’s Aggression Against Partners and Others: Broadening Our Understanding of Violence

Research on women's aggression typically focuses on relational aggression. However, the study of violence must include multiple forms of violence such as aggression against partners and non‐partner others, while also considering victimization experiences by partners and non‐partners. The focus of this study is the multiple experiences of violence (perpetration and victimization) of women who are incarcerated. Incarcerated women are likely to experience higher rates of both than women in community settings, but most will be released in a brief period of time. Using a random sample (N = 580) we conducted cluster analyses to identify five patterns of women's aggression. Clusters varied depending on the target/s of aggression (i.e., partner and/or others), and type of aggression (i.e., physical and/or intimidation). Multinomial logistic regression was performed to determine the relationship between women's membership in a perpetration cluster and their victimization. Victimization history was related to an increased risk of perpetrating aggression, and varied depending on the target and type of aggression. Our findings provide support that research and interventions addressing women's use of aggression must also address their victimization history. Furthermore, results indicate that for some women, aggression towards partners and others is related. Future research should investigate multiple forms of aggression.     

Resilient,Undercontrolled, and Overcontrolled Personality Prototypes Among Persons With Spinal Cord Injury

Brendan Maher (Ed.). Clinical Psychology and Personality (The Selected Papers of George Kelly). New York: Wiley, 1969. 361 pages + viii, $8.95. Reviewed by Wilson H. Guertin

L. J. Bischof. Interpreting Personality Theories. New York: Harper &; Row, 1970. 653 pages, $10.95.

L. A. Pervin. Personality—Theory, Assessment and Research. New York: Wiley, 1970. 632 pages, $9.95. Reviewed by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi

Michael Cole &; Irving Maltzman, Editors. A Handbook of Contemporary Soviet Psychology. New York and London: Basic Books, Inc., 1969, 832 pages, $25.00. Reviewed by Irving R. Stone

Edwin I. Megargee and Jack E. Hokanson. The Dynamics of Aggression. (Individual, Group and International Analyses) New York: Harper &; Row, 1970. 271 pages, $3.95. Reviewed by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi

Pat Powers and Wade Baskin (Eds.) New Outlooks in Psychology. New York: Philosophical Library, 1968, 512 pages, $12.00. Reviewed by Spencer B. Sterne

Salo Rosenbaum and Ian Alger, (Eds.). The Marriage Relationship, Psychoanalytic Perspectives. New York: Basic Books, 1968. 366 pages, $10.00. Reviewed by S. G. Vandenberg

Rudolph Wittenberg. Postadolescence: Theoretical and Clinical Aspects of Psychoanalytic Therapy. New York: Grune and Stratton, 1968. 138 pages, $6.50. Reviewed by Sarah A. Alleman

Liam Hudson. Frames of Mind. New York: Norton, 1968. 134 pages, $5.50. Reviewed by Russell Eisenman

Irving L. Janis, George F. Mahl, Jerome Kagan, &; Robert R. Holt. Personality: Dynamics, Development, and Assessment. New York: Harcourt, Brace, &; World, 1969. 859 pages, $9.95. Reviewed by Andrew M. Barclay     

School context and health in adolescence: The role of sense of coherence

The aim of this study was to examine the role of school variables and sense of coherence (SOC) in the explanation of health. For this purpose, data were collected from a representative sample of adolescents, aged 13 to 18 years, selected for the Health Behavior in School‐aged Children survey in Spain. Using Structural Equation Modelling, three nested models were tested that represented different hypothesized models of the relationships among school factors, SOC and health. According to goodness‐of‐fit indices, in the best model, school‐related stress and SOC mediated the influence of support from classmates and teachers on health, and SOC had a direct effect on stress. The results supported the idea that a supportive school climate and SOC are relevant to adolescents' health. Furthermore, SOC was the most influential variable; apart from its direct positive effect on health, SOC seemed to condition the degree to which students perceived school demands to be stressful. Specifically, students with a high SOC were less likely to suffer from high levels of school‐related stress.     

Long Lasting Marriages in Chile

Reports the Chilean segment of a multicultural, multicountry (Canada, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, USA) study on long-term marriages. This pilot study is seen as a starting point in research focusing on the childhood background and family history of long-term marital partners in Chile. No statistically significant association between marital satisfaction and economic or educational level was found. A positive correlation was found between marital satisfaction and happiness during childhood. Love, trust, and loyalty appear to be the main ingredients of satisfaction for both satisfied and unsatisfied couples. The findings across countries as to the essential ingredients reported here have been remarkably similar.     

Object permanence and method of disappearance: looking measures further contradict reaching measures

Piaget proposed that understanding permanency, understanding occlusion events, and forming mental representations were synonymous; however, accumulating evidence indicates that those concepts are not unified in development. Infants reach for endarkened objects at younger ages than for occluded objects, and infants’ looking patterns suggest that they expect occluded objects to reappear at younger ages than they reach for them. We reaffirm the latter finding in 5‐ to 6‐month‐olds and find similar responses to faded objects, but we fail to find that pattern in response to endarkened objects. This suggests that looking behavior and reaching behavior are both sensitive to method of disappearance, but with opposite effects. Current cognition‐oriented (i.e. representation‐oriented) explanations of looking behavior cannot easily accommodate these results; neither can perceptual‐preference explanations, nor the traditional ecological reinterpretations of object permanence. A revised ecological hypothesis, invoking affordance learning, suggests how these differences could arise developmentally.     

Access to institutional resources as a measure of social exclusion: relations with family process and cognitive development in the context of immigration

Few studies have examined how experiences associated with being an undocumented immigrant parent affects children's development. In this article, the authors apply social exclusion theory to examine how access to institutional resources that require identification may matter for parents and children in immigrant families. As hypothesized, groups with higher proportions of undocumented parents in New York City (e.g., Mexicans compared to Dominicans) reported lower levels of access to checking accounts, savings accounts, credit, and drivers' licenses. Lack of access to such resources, in turn, was associated with higher economic hardship and psychological distress among parents, and lower levels of cognitive ability in their 24-month-old children.