The analysis of an adult with night terror.

The author discusses the analysis of a woman with night terror, a condition rarely seen in adults. The analysis revealed the pathogenicity of splitting mechanisms which had developed under the influence of an overstimulating environment and exposure to the primal scene, followed by the separation and divorce of the patient's parents.     

The beginning of conversation: Early patterns of mother-infant vocal responsiveness

Microanalytic techniques were used to characterize the structure of the prespeech communication of 4-month-old infants and their mothers. Two observers continuously recorded the interactive behavior of mothers and their infants during hour-long observations in the homes of 25 families. Loglinear models were used to examine the extent to which the vocal behavior of one person was conditional upon the vocal behavior of the partner. Within the limits of this microanalytic approach, analyses indicated that patterns of mother-infant vocal exchange were structurally similar to patterns of adult conversation. Initial vocal responses were followed by suppression of vocalization, allowing the partner to join the conversation. The comparative effectiveness of vocal behavior as an elicitor of vocalization and as a response to vocalization was shown for mothers and infants relative to the other behaviors observed. Vocalization served as a modulator of visual attentiveness: When the partner was not visually attentive, vocalization elicited visual attention.     

Mothers' speech to their 1-year-old infants in home and laboratory settings

The speech of mothers and their 1-year-old infants was compared in the home and in the laboratory playroom. The home and laboratory settings were similar for measuring the number of actual words that infants spoke and were similar for measuring the complexity of the mother's speech, including the number of different words, the type-token ratio, and the length of the utterances. Infants vocalized at similar rates in the two settings, but mothers spoke at a faster rate in the laboratory playroom. The usefulness of a preliminary warm-up period was supported by the finding that for the second half of the sessions, mothers slowed their rate of speech and increased the complexity of their speech.     

Stimulus generalization: the ordering and spacing of test stimuli

Twenty-four pigeons learned a successive discrimination between 500 mmu (S+) and 574 mmu (S-). When tested in extinction, some birds received stimuli around S+, with no S- presentations. These birds showed a positive peak shift, with maximum responding not at 550 mmu, but displaced to 538 mmu and 544 mmu. Other birds were tested with stimuli around S-, with no S+ presentations. These birds showed a negative shift, with least responding not at 574 mmu, but at 586 mmu. Though the first group was tested around S+ and the second around S-, total responding between groups did not differ. When retested on the other half of the continuum, however, birds that had gone from the S+ half to the S- half responded fewer times than those that had gone from the S- half to the S+ half. In a second experiment, reducing stimulus spacing from 6 mmu to 2 mmu produced flatter gradients and decreased the amount of positive shift. In a third experiment, birds were tested across the whole continuum with stimuli presented in serial order. A sequence from 538 mmu to 586 mmu produced no responding after the first part of the session; a sequence from 586 mmu to 538 mmu produced responding throughout the session.     

Early child rearing in Japan: Cross-cultural and intra-cultural perspectives

Within the field of cross-cultural developmental psychology, examinations of parenting serve to focus attention on development in the proximal context of the family and the distal context of the culture. Even though Japan is economically in the mainstream of the industrialized Western world, there are many cultural differences between Japan and Western countries; these include differences in cultural values, beliefs about children, parental behaviours and differences in the children themselves. The focus of this special issue is observational studies of early child rearing in Japan; included are cross-cultural comparisons with the United States, Germany and France, as well as studies within Japan. The contexts of the observations reported in this special issue include homes, laboratory playrooms, and day care centres. With intra-cultural and cross-cultural perspectives, an updated view of Japanese child rearing in the early years is presented.     

Generation of speech continua through monaural fusion

A procedure based on monaural fusion has been developed to construct acoustic continua between natural speech sounds, to be used in studies of speech perception. Two speech stimuli of similar temporal structure and different spectral composition are precisely aligned in time and presented simultaneously to the listener. By mixing both stimulus components in varying intensity ratios, a transition from one component to the other can be achieved. Such stimulus continua have several advantages over the synthetic continua commonly used in studies of categorical perception and related phenomena: They are based on real speech stimuli; the endpoint stimuli are unambiguous; and the stimuli are characterized by a well-defined physical variable, the relative intensity of the two components.     

Local dynamic stability of trunk movements during the repetitive lifting of loads

The local dynamic stability of trunk movements was assessed during repetitive lifting using nonlinear Lyapunov analyses. The goal was to assess how varying the load-in-hands affects the neuromuscular control of lumbar spinal stability. Thirty healthy participants (15M, 15F) performed repetitive lifting at 10 cycles per minute for three minutes under two load conditions: zero load and 10% of each participant's maximum back strength. Short- and long-term maximum finite-time Lyapunov exponents (λ(max-s) and λ(max-l)), describing responses to infinitesimally small perturbations, were calculated from the measured trunk kinematics to estimate the local dynamic stability of the system. Kinematic variability was also assessed using mean standard deviations (MeanSD) across cycles. The results of a mixed-design repeated-measures ANOVA showed that increasing the load lifted significantly reduced λ(max-s) (μ(0%-LOAD)=0.379, μ(10%-LOAD)=0.335, p<.001), but not λ(max-l) (μ(0%-LOAD)=0.46E-03, μ(10%-LOAD)=2.41E-03, p=.055) or MeanSD (μ(0%-LOAD)=2.57, μ(10%-LOAD)=2.89, p=.164). There were no between-subject effects of sex, or significant interactions (α<.05). The present findings indicated improved dynamic spinal stability when lifting the heavier load; meaning that as muscular and moment demands increased, so too did participants' abilities to respond to local perturbations. These results support the notion of greater spinal instability during movement with low loads due to decreased muscular demand and trunk stiffness, and should aid in understanding how lifting various loads contributes to occupational low back pain.     

Community identity as resource and context: A mixed method investigation of coping and collective action in a disadvantaged community

Social identities enhance members' well‐being through the provision of social support and feelings of collective efficacy as well as by acting as a basis for collective action. However, the precise mechanisms through which identification acts to enhance well‐being can be complicated by stigmatisation, which potentially undermines solidarity and collective action. The present research examines a real‐world stigmatised community group in order to investigate the following: (1) the community identity processes that act to enhance well‐being and collective action and (2) the consequences of stigmatisation for these processes. Study 1 consisted of a household survey conducted in disadvantaged areas of Limerick city in Ireland. Participants (n = 322) completed measures of community identification, social support, collective efficacy, community action and psychological well‐being. Mediation analysis indicated that perceptions of collective efficacy are an important mediator of the effect of identification upon well‐being. However, levels of self‐reported community action were low and unrelated to community identification. In Study 2, 14 follow‐up multiple‐participant interviews with residents and community group workers were thematically analysed, revealing high levels of stigmatisation, which was reported to lead to disengagement from identity‐related collective action. These findings indicate the potential for stigma to reduce collective action through undermining solidarity and social support. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.