Sweet Pea Summer

For a number of years, the author, now 64, has studied the mythological theme of the mother and daughter mysteries. An earlier memoir in Psychological Perspectives, entitled “Pictures of My Mother” (2010), explored a strained and often painful relationship. In that essay, the author uncovered a previously unfelt love for the “colorful, constrained, complicated, and courageous” woman her mother was. The generative process of writing “Pictures of My Mother” opened a new understanding. In this article the author receives a fresh visitation from Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory. The goddess penetrates beneath images of illness and old age and travels into an earlier time. The author was five, and her mother, at the age of 44, was still vital and alive. The mother, a gifted gardener, taught her daughter how to grow sweet peas. The flowers blossom as an expression of the bond between mother and daughter.     

ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE SCANDINAVIAN PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETIES

This article discusses some basic problems of the theory of science connected with understanding the psychoanalytic process. The epistemology of psychoanalysis is seen in relation to the specific status of time, space and causality. It is argued that in psychic life, time and space cannot be a priori categories in the Kantian sense because they are constituted in psychic development and in the dynamics of the psyche and can be abolished in psychopathological conditions as well as in the unconscious. Psychic causality is discussed in relation to Freud's concepts of Nachträglichkeit and overdetermination and remarks are made on the necessity to consider the complex nature of psychic causality when doing research.     

gang membership,race, and social class: a test of the group hazard and master status hypotheses

This article examines the extent to which gang membership, race, and social class affect a youth's chances of being arrested, independent of their self-reported delinquent behavior. We couple the concepts of group hazard and master status to frame our theoretical predictions. Using data from the Seattle Youth Study (Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis 1981), we find that the odds of being arrested are roughly similar for gang and nongang members, controlling for the nature and level of self-reported delinquency. While being a gang member does not pose a group hazard to being arrested, a youth's master status based on race and social class is associated with arrest risk. Both being black and lower class increases a youth's odds of being arrested, independent of delinquency. Neither race nor class effects can be accounted for by the frequency with which youth hang out with their best friends. We propose several recommendations for reducing race and class profiling.     

Gender and Robbery: A National Test

Robbery is a quintessential male crime. Female involvement in this crime is important, however, as they are responsible for a non-trivial amount of robbery each year. While some qualitative studies have examined female involvement in robbery, patterns discerned from these studies have not been examined using alternative methods. The current study adds to our understanding of the gendered nature of robbery by examining patterns associated with male and female robbery perpetration from the victim's perspective using the National Crime Victimization Survey. Findings suggest the role of gender in robbery is not as influential as extent research indicates.     

Cross-sectional and longitudinal predictors of well-being: invariance across 25 years

This study addressed: (a) whether any changes in well-being over time could be attributed to participants’ aging or to economic or historical events; (b) whether predictors (e.g. age, religiosity, and financial status) were similarly associated with well-being in cohorts of college seniors assessed at different times; and (c) whether predictors of well-being were similar for the same cohort over a 25-year time span. Using three cohorts of emerging adults (1982, n?=?189; 2007, n?=?188; and 2010, n?=?79) and a subsample of the 1982 cohort followed across 25?years (n?=?83), the findings indicated that well-being declined over time, possibly due to historical influences rather than changes associated with aging. Well-being was similarly predicted by religiosity, relationship status, and financial status across cohorts. Longitudinal analyses indicated that earlier religiosity was inversely associated with later financial status and later financial status was associated with higher well-being.     

Dissociation between small and large numerosities in newborn infants

In the first year of life, infants possess two cognitive systems encoding numerical information: one for processing the numerosity of sets of 4 or more items, and the second for tracking up to 3 objects in parallel. While a previous study showed the former system to be already present a few hours after birth, it is unknown whether the latter system is functional at this age. Here, we adapt the auditory‐visual matching paradigm that previously revealed sensitivity to large numerosities to test sensitivity to numerosities spanning the range from 2 to 12. Across studies, newborns discriminated pairs of large numerosities in a 3:1 ratio, even when the smaller numerosity was 3 (3 vs. 9). In contrast, newborn infants failed to discriminate pairs including the numerosity 2, even at the same ratio (2 vs. 6). These findings mirror the dissociation that has been reported with older infants, albeit with a discontinuity situated between numerosities 2 and 3. Two alternative explanations are compatible with our results: either newborn infants have a separate system for processing small sets, and the capacity of this system is limited to 2 objects; or newborn infants possess only one system to represent numerosities, and this system either is not functional or is extremely imprecise when it is applied to small numerosities.     

Human-introduced long-term traditions in wild redfronted lemurs?

Behavioural traditions have only been described for a small subset of species, and the factors responsible for the maintenance of traditions over time are unclear. Redfronted lemurs are known to learn socially but traditions have not been described in the wild. We conducted a social diffusion experiment over three experimental years with artificial feeding boxes that could be opened in two different ways (pushing or pulling a door). Six out of 14 individuals that participated in at least 2 years exhibited a stable preference: five lemurs maintained a pull and one lemur a push preference, suggesting that habit formation and reinforcement learning may have lead to preferences over time. The remaining individuals exhibited fluctuating preferences and switched between showing a preference or no preference, but never switched between preferences. This instability might have been due to the low level of difficulty and/or the low object specificity of the task. The majority of lemurs additionally scrounged. Scrounging was not influenced by age, sex or success in manipulating the boxes. Thus, redfronted lemurs appear to use the two techniques flexibly but also scrounged opportunistically to get access to the rewards, indicating that traditions might be stabilized by multiple factors.