Relatedness and Individuation Among Young Adults Born Preterm: The Role of Relationships with Parents and Death Anxiety

Preterm birth may constitute a risk factor for long-term difficulties when facing developmental tasks of relatedness and individuation in young adulthood. Since these early experiences might leave individuals more susceptible to anxiety, we examined whether relationships with parents and death anxiety mediated the associations between preterm birth and difficulties in relatedness and individuation. The sample included 57 emerging adults who were born preterm, and a paired control group that filled out questionnaires: The Perceptions of Adult Attachment Questionnaire, Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships, the death anxiety test, and projective assessment of death anxiety. Preterm young adults and their counterparts exhibited similar levels of closeness with their parents, with romantic partner, and with best friend. A different picture emerged with regard to differentiation and death anxiety. Preterm young adults exhibited higher levels of emotional reactivity and fusion with others, and higher levels of death anxiety than their counterparts. Death anxiety mediated the relations between preterm birth status and differentiation. It appears that, despite the fact that these youngsters experienced a traumatic event early in their lives, they overcame this difficult experience and were successful in maintaining closeness with close others. In contrast, the traces of the preterm birth might be more pronounced in the domain of differentiation. People who experienced separations from significant others, especially early in life, may develop high levels of death anxiety as death is experienced as the ultimate separation from a close person. Enduring death anxiety might complicate the individuation process. Gender differences that were found are in accord with previous findings. The strengths and limitations of the study as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Investigating the role of response in spatial context learning

Recent research has shown that simple motor actions, such as pointing or grasping, can modulate the way we perceive and attend to our visual environment. Here we examine the role of action in spatial context learning. Previous studies using keyboard responses have revealed that people are faster locating a target on repeated visual search displays ("contextual cueing"). However, this learning appears to depend on the task and response requirements. In Experiment 1, participants searched for a T-target among L-distractors and responded either by pressing a key or by touching the screen. Comparable contextual cueing was found in both response modes. Moreover, learning transferred between keyboard and touch screen responses. Experiment 2 showed that learning occurred even for repeated displays that required no response, and this learning was as strong as learning for displays that required a response. Learning on no-response trials cannot be accounted for by oculomotor responses, as learning was observed when eye movements were discouraged (Experiment 3). We suggest that spatial context learning is abstracted from motor actions.     

White bear everywhere: Exploring the boundaries of the attentional white bear phenomenon

Some failures of selective attention may be explained by the attentional white bear (AWB) phenomenon Tsal & Makovski (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 32:351?C363, 2006), which indicates that prior knowledge of a distractor location causes attention to be actively allocated to it. The AWB effect is demonstrated in a task that includes infrequent trials that involve two simultaneous dots embedded among flanker trials. The dot positioned at an expected distractor location is perceived as appearing before the dot at an expected empty location, indicating that attentional resources have initially been allocated to the expected distractor locations. The main goal of this study was to explore the boundaries of the AWB phenomenon by imposing perceptual, memory, and sensory constraints on the flanker task. The results showed that the AWB effect was obtained even when additional constraints severely taxed the information-processing system. We propose that a mandatory mechanism guides a fixed minimal amount of attention to expected distractor locations in a top-down manner.     

Linking Family Functioning and Self-Discrepancies among Children with Functional Somatic Symptoms

Functional somatic symptoms (FSS), defined as physical symptoms of unknown pathology, are common among children and adolescents and are often associated with high levels of functional impairment. Self-discrepancy theory (SDT) suggests that discrepancies between one’s ideal, ought, or undesired self-states and one’s actual self-representation may lead to emotional distress. Among families with dysfunctional patterns, such emotional distress may result in FSS. The current study examined the relationship between familial patterns and children’s levels of self-discrepancies, among children with and without FSS. Twenty-three children diagnosed with FSS and 23 children with orthopedic problems (non-FSS) and their mothers participated in the study. Mothers and children completed the Child Somatization Inventory and the Integrated Self-Discrepancies Index. Mothers also completed the general scale of the Family Assessment Device. Higher levels of symptom intensity were found in the FSS group than in the non-FSS group. Dysfunctional familial patterns were significantly higher in the FSS group, and higher levels of discrepancies were reported in the FSS group, compared with the non-FSS group. No significant relationship was found in the FSS group between level of self-state discrepancies and level of family functioning. Higher levels of dysfunctional patterns are observed among families of children with FSS. Furthermore, children with FSS and their mothers hold relatively high levels of self-state discrepancies. However, these elevated discrepancies are not significantly related to familial dysfunctional patterns. Viewing self-state discrepancies together with family maladaptive patterns might help address both inter- and intrapersonal conflicts within the family and reduce children’s symptoms.     

Go with the flow: How the consideration of joy versus pride influences automaticity

Recently, we have shown that the consideration of joy, without the actual experience of the emotion, impaired performance on the antisaccade task (Katzir, Eyal, Meiran, & Kessler, 2010). We interpreted this finding as indicating inhibitory control failure. However, impaired antisaccade performance may result from either the weakening of inhibitory control, the potentiation of the competing automatic response, or both. In the current research we used a task switching paradigm, which allowed us to assess cognitive control more directly, using Backward Inhibition, Competitor Rule Suppression, and Competitor Rule Priming as cognitive-control indices as well as assessing the Task Rule Congruency Effect (TRCE) which, like the antisaccade, is influenced by both control and automaticity. We found that considering joy compared to pride did not influence any of the cognitive control indices but increased the TRCE. We interpret this finding as evidence that joy consideration leads to increased reliance on automatic tendencies, such as short-term desires.