Narrative means to manage responsibility in life narratives across adolescence

Adolescence is a passage from dependence to adult responsibility. Alongside identity development, social-cognitive development, and the ability to construct a life story, adolescents become increasingly aware of both their potential responsibility in an expanded sphere of life and of complex, contextual influences on their lives. This was partially tested in a cross-sectional study, both in terms of linguistic means and content expressed in life narratives. Indicators were defined for narrative agency, grading of responsibility, serendipity, and turning points, and tested for age differences in relative frequencies in 102 life narratives from age groups of 8, 12, 16, and 20 years, balanced for gender. Narrative grading of responsibility, serendipity, and turning points increased throughout adolescence. The relative frequency of narrative agency, in contrast, remained constant across age groups. Results are interpreted in the context of adolescent development of narrative identity.     

The effect of mood-context on visual recognition and recall memory

Although it is widely known that memory is enhanced when encoding and retrieval occur in the same state, the impact of elevated stress/arousal is less understood. This study explores mood-dependent memory's effects on visual recognition and recall of material memorized either in a neutral mood or under higher stress/arousal levels. Participants' (N = 60) recognition and recall were assessed while they experienced either the same o a mismatched mood at retrieval. The results suggested that both visual recognition and recall memory were higher when participants experienced the same mood at encoding and retrieval compared with those who experienced a mismatch in mood context between encoding and retrieval. These findings offer support for a mood dependency effect on both the recognition and recall of visual information.     

Family psychological factors in relation to children's asthma status and behavioral adjustment at age 4

The objectives of this study were to determine whether family psychosocial factors influenced asthma development by age 4, and whether family factors and early wheezing illness were associated with behavioral adjustment at age 4. Participants were 98 children enrolled in an intervention study at 9-24 months and followed to age 4. Baseline evaluations assessed infants' respiratory illness severity, family psychosocial characteristics, and parental risk factors for asthma development. Active asthma categorization at age 4 utilized both parent report and objective data. Parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Caregiver single-parent status, a composite of baseline family stresses, and early wheezing illness severity were associated with active asthma at age 4. The contribution of prenatal smoke exposure and early hospitalization to active asthma varied with racial/ethnic group membership. Maternal mental health and family stresses predicted CBCL scores at age 4, whereas early illness severity and hospitalization were unrelated to CBCL scores. CBCL scores were not elevated for children with active asthma at age 4. Family factors consistent with a negative emotional environment were associated with both active asthma and adjustment problems at age 4, suggesting that both outcomes may be influenced by a common factor.     

The development of global coherence in life narratives across adolescence: temporal, causal, and thematic aspects

Extending the study of autobiographical narratives to entire life narratives, we tested the emergence of globally coherent life narratives in adolescence, as hypothesized by McAdams (1985). Participants were 102 children and young adults (ages 8, 12, 16, and 20 years) who narrated their lives twice. Between narrations, half of each age group participated in tasks designed to train autobiographical reasoning; the other half participated in control tasks. Coherence was measured by the relative frequency of local temporal, causal, and thematic linguistic indicators identified qualitatively at the level of propositions, as well as by quantitative global rating scales measuring the impressions of the listeners. Coherence increased across the age span. Overall, repeated narrating and training did not increase coherence. Crystallized and fluid intelligence, number of negative life events, and frequency of biographical practices and confiding in others did not contribute substantially to the prediction of coherence beyond age. Results are interpreted in the context of adolescent identity development.     

The Development of the Temporal Macrostructure of Life Narratives Across Adolescence: Beginnings, Linear Narrative Form, and Endings

ABSTRACT The ontogeny of the ability to describe people culminates in adolescence in the development of the life story. An overarching temporal macrostructure and framing by a prehistory and a future-oriented global evaluation of life helps integrate disparate autobiographical memories into a coherent story. Two life narratives each of 8-, 12-, 16-, and 20-year-olds ( N =102) were analyzed in terms of how well-formed their beginnings and endings are and how much they follow a linear temporal order. By age 12, the majority of life narratives began with birth, ended in the present, and followed a chronological order. In late adolescence and early adulthood, more elaborate birth narratives and retrospective evaluations of life and outlooks into the future were added. These formal characteristics were related to biographical practices, biographical knowledge, and fluid intelligence. Text-analytical methods are proposed as a method for the analysis of biographical and autobiographical reasoning and understanding.     

Cognitive colonialism: Nationality bias in Brazilian academic philosophy

This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to test for nationality bias among members of the Brazilian philosophical community. Faculty members and postgraduate students from philosophy departments at seven Brazilian universities evaluated texts attributed to authors of European and Latin American nationalities. Results showed a clear preference for French nationality over Brazilian. They were inconclusive, however, when contrasting other Latin American nationalities with European nationalities, which likely relates to the academic background of the participants. These overall results support the claim that Brazilian academic philosophers are highly critical of Brazilians who produce theories of their own. The paper calls on philosophers to carefully consider the ways in which Eurocentrism impacts their very ability to reason.     

Ceci n'est pas la mort: Evidence for the recruitment of self‐reference from surrealistic art under mortality salience

Previous research has demonstrated that death reminders influence how we perceive art. In the context of terror management theory, this has been explained by the death‐transcending quality of art to convey cultural meaning. In two studies, we examined psychological and neurocognitive responses to naturalistic and surrealistic art when death was primed. We found that naturalistic paintings were evaluated similarly in terms of personal reassurance in both mortality salience and control condition, whereas surrealistic paintings were evaluated as more reassuring in the mortality salience condition than in the control condition. Using high‐field functional magnetic resonance imaging in a second study, we found a similar pattern of results, showing specific activation in the precuneus, a brain area associated with self‐related operations, in all prime conditions for the viewing of naturalistic paintings, but only in the death and disgust prime conditions when viewing surrealistic paintings. Our results suggest motivated self‐reference when viewing both naturalistic and surrealistic artworks under mortality salience. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reports of attempted suicide among Brazilian addicts

Both substance dependence and depressive mood seem to be associated with increased suicide risk. Clinical information on suicide attempts and depressive symptoms were obtained from a sample of 211 psychoactive substance dependents attending a university clinic program for addicts in Brazil. 49 subjects (23.4%) had attempted suicide at least once, and the frequency of reporting attempts was 4.32 times greater among women than among men. Male addicts also tended to engage in potentially more dangerous attempt methods than women. Depressive male addicts were 2.17 times more likely to have attempted suicide than nondepressive addicted men. Among women, no association could be established between having attempted suicide and the presence of depression. Substance addicts have a relatively high risk of attempting suicide and the co-occurrence of depression seems to increase prevalence of suicidal behavior among men.     

Equivalence relations do exist before they are tested: Confirmatory evidence revealed by EEG measurements

We examined equivalence-based N400 effects by comparing EEG data from participants with different experiences with equivalence testing. Before a priming task used in EEG measurement, Group 1 was given only matching-to-sample training trials whereas Group 2 was exposed to matching-to-sample training and equivalence probe trials. We asked whether exposure to the reinforcement contingency was sufficient to bring about an N400 outcome that might indicate potentially emergent equivalence relations or if such a response depended on experience with equivalence tests. Results showed robust N400 in both groups. Experience with equivalence tests did not further increase the N400 effects. Our findings add confirmatory evidence that equivalence relations may originate via the reinforcement contingency alone. Furthermore, complementary EEG data collected from priming tasks involving words from natural language showed functional overlap between laboratory-defined equivalence and natural word-based N400 effects.