Alphabetizing in old age

Abstract: A long term, intensive analysis with a woman in old old age is reported. An attempt is made to answer the question, ‘What, in analytic work, is healing?’. The patient's previous classical Jungian work is contrasted with the author's developmental perspective. It is suggested that an enactment, representing what Neville Symington has called an analyst's act of freedom, was crucial in effecting a profound transformation in the patient's psyche.     

Use of Self-perspectives and their Sources to Predict the Mathematics Enrollment Intentions of Girls and Boys

An understanding of the differences in the ways in which self-efficacy and interest influence boys’ and girls’ intentions to continue enrollment in mathematics courses may provide insight into how to encourage continued mathematics enrollment for all students. Two competing theoretical models of mathematics self-efficacy and interest in predicting students’ enrollment intentions and achievement were evaluated separately across samples of middle level boys and girls. One model was empirically supported for both groups and indicated the independent influence of self-efficacy and interest in predicting enrollment intentions. Multi-group analyses revealed that self-efficacy’s influence in enrollment intentions and achievement was significantly stronger for boys than for girls, and interest was significantly more important in the prediction of enrollment intentions for girls than for boys.     

Norms of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words

Word processing studies increasingly make use of regression analyses based on large numbers of stimuli (the so-called megastudy approach) rather than experimental designs based on small factorial designs. This requires the availability of word features for many words. Following similar studies in English, we present and validate ratings of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words. These include nearly all lemmas language researchers are likely to be interested in. The ratings are freely available for research purposes.     

Using mixture models with known class membership to address incomplete covariance structures in multiple‐group growth models

Multi‐group latent growth modelling in the structural equation modelling framework has been widely utilized for examining differences in growth trajectories across multiple manifest groups. Despite its usefulness, the traditional maximum likelihood estimation for multi‐group latent growth modelling is not feasible when one of the groups has no response at any given data collection point, or when all participants within a group have the same response at one of the time points. In other words, multi‐group latent growth modelling requires a complete covariance structure for each observed group. The primary purpose of the present study is to show how to circumvent these data problems by developing a simple but creative approach using an existing estimation procedure for growth mixture modelling. A Monte Carlo simulation study was carried out to see whether the modified estimation approach provided tangible results and to see how these results were comparable to the standard multi‐group results. The proposed approach produced results that were valid and reliable under the mentioned problematic data conditions. We also present a real data example and demonstrate that the proposed estimation approach can be used for the chi‐square difference test to check various types of measurement invariance as conducted in a standard multi‐group analysis.     

Dynamic Social Networks in Recovery Homes

Acute treatment aftercare in the form of sober living environments—i.e., recovery houses—provide an inexpensive and effective medium-term treatment alternative for many with substance use disorders. Limited evidence suggests that house-situated social relationships and associated social support are critical determinants of how successful these residential experiences are for their members, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying these relationships. This study explored the feasibility of using dynamic social network modeling to understand house-situated longitudinal associations among individual Alcoholics Anonymous related recovery behaviors, length of residence, dyadic interpersonal trust, and dyadic confidant relationship formation processes. Trust and confidant relationships were measured 3 months apart in U.S. urban-area recovery houses, all of which were part of a network of substance use recovery homes. A stochastic actor-based model was successfully estimated from this data set. Results suggest that confidant relationships are predicted by trust, while trust is affected by recovery behaviors and length of residence. Conceptualizing recovery houses as a set of independent, evolving social networks that can be modeled jointly appears to be a promising direction for research.     

Beat It! Music Overloads Novice Dancers

Together with melody, harmony, and timbre, rhythm and beat provide temporal structure for movement timing. Such musical features may act as cues to the phrasing and dynamics of a dance choreographed to the music. Novice dancers (N = 54) learned to criterion a novel 32‐s dance‐pop routine, either to full music or to the rhythm of that music. At test, participants recalled the dance to the same music, rhythm, new music, and in silence. If musical features aid memory, then full music during learning and test should result in superior dance recall, whereas if rhythm alone aids memory, then rhythm during learning and test should result in superior recall. The presence of a rhythm accompaniment during learning provided a significantly greater memory advantage for the recall of dance‐pop steps than full music. After learning to full music, silence at test enhanced recall. Findings are discussed in terms of entrainment and cognitive load. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Concurrent Movement Impairs Incidental But Not Intentional Statistical Learning

The effect of concurrent movement on incidental versus intentional statistical learning was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants learned the statistical regularities embedded within familiarization stimuli implicitly, whereas in Experiment 2 they were made aware of the embedded regularities and were instructed explicitly to learn these regularities. Experiment 1 demonstrated that while the control group were able to learn the statistical regularities, the resistance‐free cycling group and the exercise group did not demonstrate learning. This is in contrast with the findings of Experiment 2, where all three groups demonstrated significant levels of learning. The results suggest that the movement demands, rather than the physiological stress, interfered with statistical learning. We suggest movement activates the striatum, which is not only responsible for motor control but also plays a role in incidental learning.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Girls</Emphasis> and Sex: A Content Analysis of Sexual Health Depictions in HBO’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Girls</Emphasis>

Sex on television has been a topic of interest to scholars and critics alike. History has shown that certain programs break the mold when talking about sex. One show that is currently leading this trend is HBO’s Girls, a fictional comedy-drama show with 4.1 million viewers that has received much attention for its portrayals of sex. This systematic, quantitative content analysis is a case study of the first three seasons of Girls. It examines sexual behaviors, sexual talk, and sexual risk and responsibility. Results revealed kissing to be the most prevalent sexual behavior and talking about own or other’s sexual interests/actions was the most frequent form of sexual talk. Most surprisingly, sexual risk/responsibility was represented much more in Girls than in shows evaluated in previous television content analyses.     

Advice seeking and loaning of money related to relapse in recovery homes

Recovery homes help individuals who have completed substance use treatment programs re‐integrate back into the community. However, it is unclear what factors determine who will succeed in these settings and how these factors may be reinforced or undermined by the social interactions and social networks between residents living in the Oxford House recovery homes. In an effort to better understand these factors, the current study evaluated (a) the extent to which the density of social networks (i.e., friendship, willingness to loan money, and advice‐seeking relationships) is associated with social capital (i.e., sense of community, quality of life, hopefulness, self‐efficacy), and (b) whether the density of social networks predicts relapse over time. Among the findings, willingness to loan money was positively associated with all four individual‐level social capital variables, suggesting that availability of instrumental resources may be important to ongoing recovery. To test whether these house‐level social network factors then support recovery, a survival analysis was conducted, finding associations between relapse risk and the network densities over a 28‐month span. In particular, more dense advice‐seeking networks were associated with higher rates of relapse, suggesting that the advice‐seeking might represent a sign of organisational house problems, with many residents unsure of issues related to their recovery. In contrast, more dense loaning networks were associated with less relapse, so willingness to lend money could be measuring a willingness to help those in need. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

One does not simply track students: the relationship between teachers’ perceived public track regard and their job satisfaction in a context of rigid tracking

Although there is a wealth of research on the educational and broader outcomes of tracking in education, there is virtually no research that investigates teachers’ track identities on such outcomes. Building on research that focuses on the determinants of teachers’ job satisfaction, tracking outcomes and social categorization theory, this study tests the relationship between the perceived public regard of a teachers’ track and their job satisfaction, in a Belgian context of within- (vocational, technical and general education tracks) and between-school tracking (multilateral versus categorical schools). Data of the Belgian SIS (School, Identity and Society)-survey, a large-scale dataset gathered in 2017, containing the self-reports of 324 teachers, clustered in 43 secondary schools is used to test particular hypotheses regarding this relationship. The results of a multilevel analysis show that the relationship between teachers’ public track regard and their job satisfaction varies according to the track they teach and whether they work in a categorical or multilateral school. The findings highlight the importance of carrying out further research on tracked identities in education.