The development of organizational strategies in children: evidence from a microgenetic longitudinal study

The authors examined memory on a sort-recall task in children 8 to 12 years of age. Children were first classified as either strategic or nonstrategic on a sort-recall pretest and then participated in an 11-week microgenetic study involving nine sessions. Strategy use was assessed on each trial. Consistent with past longitudinal research, changes from nonstrategic to strategic behavior occurred suddenly rather than gradually. Once children began using organizational strategies, their recall performance improved immediately. Deliberate strategy use was clearly reflected by sorting behavior during encoding but not in clustering during recall. Conclusions about whether there are children with utilization deficiencies are thus affected by how the concept is defined and whether sorting or clustering is taken as the indicator of spontaneous strategy use.     

Made you blink! Contingent attentional capture produces a spatial blink

Previous studies have shown that the capture of attention by an irrelevant stimulus can be eliminated by fore knowledge of the spatial location of the relevant target stimulus. To explore whether spatial certainty is sufficient to eliminate capture, four experiments are reported in which the spatial location of the target is certain but the temporal position is uncertain. Subjects viewed a central rapid serial visual presentation stream in which a target letter was defined by a particular color (e.g., red). On critical trials, irrelevant color singletons appeared in the periphery. In Experiments 1 and 2, peripheral singletons produced a decrement in central target identification that was contingent on the match between the singleton color and the target color. Experiments 3 and 4 provided evidence that this decrement reflected a shift of spatial attention to the location of the distractor. The results suggest that spatial certainty is not sufficient to eliminate attentional capture and that attentional capture can result in a spatial "blink" that is conditional on top-down attentional control settings.     

Significance tests to determine the direction of effects in linear regression models

Previous studies have discussed asymmetric interpretations of the Pearson correlation coefficient and have shown that higher moments can be used to decide on the direction of dependence in the bivariate linear regression setting. The current study extends this approach by illustrating that the third moment of regression residuals may also be used to derive conclusions concerning the direction of effects. Assuming non‐normally distributed variables, it is shown that the distribution of residuals of the correctly specified regression model (e.g., Y is regressed on X) is more symmetric than the distribution of residuals of the competing model (i.e., X is regressed on Y). Based on this result, 4 one‐sample tests are discussed which can be used to decide which variable is more likely to be the response and which one is more likely to be the explanatory variable. A fifth significance test is proposed based on the differences of skewness estimates, which leads to a more direct test of a hypothesis that is compatible with direction of dependence. A Monte Carlo simulation study was performed to examine the behaviour of the procedures under various degrees of associations, sample sizes, and distributional properties of the underlying population. An empirical example is given which illustrates the application of the tests in practice.     

Cross‐cultural evidence of value structures and priorities in childhood

We broaden the developmental focus of the theory of universals in basic human values (Schwartz, 1992, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology) by presenting supportive evidence on children's values from six countries: Germany, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, the United States, and New Zealand. 3,088 7–11‐year‐old children completed the Picture‐Based Value Survey for Children (PBVS‐C, Döring et al., 2010, J. Pers. Assess., 92, 439). Grade 5 children also completed the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ, Schwartz, 2003, A proposal for measuring value orientations across nations. Chapter 7 in the Questionnaire Development Package of the European Social Survey). Findings reveal that the broad value structures, sex differences in value priorities and pan‐cultural value hierarchies typical of adults have already taken form at this early age. We discuss the conceptual implications of these findings for the new field of children's basic values by embedding them in the recent developmental literature.     

Two Jungs. Apropos a paper by Mark Saban

Jung's idea of the ‘personal equation’ amounts to the reflection that theoretical differences between the psychologies that people teach are rooted in their personalities, in other words, that they are due to the psychology each one ‘has’. This concept also applies to different interpretations of Jung's work. The serious difficulties that Mark Saban has with my psychology are a case in point. Recourse to the concept of the personal equation reveals that Saban has his Jung and I have mine. With his insistence on his Talmudic methodological principle of dream interpretation, that ‘the dream is its own interpretation’, according to Saban Jung means nothing but a rejection of Freudian free association. My Jung goes far beyond that. Jung understands this methodological principle above all in terms of what he calls ‘circumambulation’. The main part of this paper is devoted to an elucidation of what circumambulation involves as a mode of dream interpretation. The paper concludes with the distinction Jung himself introduced between two types of reading of his work, either as ‘paper’ and ‘dead nostrums’ or as ‘fire and wind’, and pleads for a reconstruction of Jung's psychology as a whole in terms of his most advanced, deepest insights, instead of a dogmatic reading mainly based on the early Jung, a reading for which his later revolutionary insights are at best negligible embellishments.     

Psychopathology Symptoms,Rumination and Autobiographical Memory Specificity: Do Associations Hold After Bereavement?

Symptoms of psychopathology are associated with overgeneral memory retrieval. Overgeneral memory is hypothesized to be the result of an emotion regulatory process, dampening emotional reactions associated with retrieval of distressing specific memories. However, higher post‐loss symptom severity has been related to higher specificity of loss‐related memories recalled on the Autobiographical Memory Test. This may imply that such memories are ‘immune’ to the reduced specificity effect. We aimed to test this idea by investigating, for the first time, associations of depressive and complicated grief symptoms and depressive and grief rumination with autobiographical memory specificity on a sentence‐completion task (SCEPT) in a bereaved sample. One hundred ninety‐one adult mourners (89% women) filled out questionnaires and the SCEPT. A main finding was that higher depressive and complicated grief symptom and grief rumination levels were associated with reduced specificity of non‐loss‐related memories but not with specificity of loss‐related memories. Implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fallbeispiele zum Thema Burnout

Burnout is a process, in which dysfunctional interactions between a person and external stresses (professional, nonprofessional) play a central role in its development. It is accompanied by emotional and physical exhaustion, decreased productivity, and a negative attitude toward work, other stress factors, and people associated with work. Depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, other psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders, and physical and cognitive disorders are often observed as part of burnout. Differentiation from other (in particular psychiatric) diseases is mainly possible based on a history of a lengthy (months, years) process of development associated with external stress factors. This differentiation is essential to determine an appropriate, multiprofessional approach, in which drug treatment, psychotherapy, coaching, lifestyle modification, and methods of stress reduction are available and should be used in a coordinated manner.     

Panikattacken – mTGT ohne Pharmakotherapie

Only a limited number of medical studies referring to Animal Assisted Therapy have been published worldwide. The specific concept of medically oriented Animal Assisted Therapy (mAAT) was developed by the Austrian Institute for Animal Assisted Therapy & Research (AIAATR), based north of the city of Krems/Donau in Lower Austria, as a nonpharmacological treatment method for patients with mental or psychological overload. This particular case study describes a 30-year-old female academic who had been brought to the institute by her concerned neighbour because of repeated panic attacks. Despite extensive briefing, the patient vehemently refused any pharmacological intervention. Therefore, two-step management starting with an acute phase therapy of two therapeutic units (ThU), 90 min each over 5 days – during this period the patient stayed at the patient appartement of the institute – followed by a regular treatment cycle of 1 ThU/week over 12 weeks was selected. The HAMA-21 was used to evaluate treatment quality, therapy progress, and success. A total score of 30 at the beginning declined to 3 at the end of treatment.     

“It's Only Other People Who Make Me Feel Black”: Acculturation,Identity, and Agency in a Multicultural Community

This article explores identity work and acculturation work in the lives of British mixed‐heritage children and adults. Children, teenagers, and parents with mixed heritage participated in a community arts project that invited them to deliberate, construct, and reconstruct their cultural identities and cultural relations. We found that acculturation, cultural and raced identities, are constructed through a series of oppositional themes: cultural maintenance versus cultural contact; identity as inclusion versus identity as exclusion; institutionalized ideologies versus agency. The findings point towards an understanding of acculturation as a dynamic, situated, and multifaceted process: acculturation in movement. To investigate this, we argue that acculturation research needs to develop a more dynamic and situated approach to the study of identity, representation, and culture. The article concludes with a discussion on the need for political psychologists to develop methods attuned to the tensions and politics of acculturation that are capable of highlighting the possibilities for resistance and social change.