Children’s scale errors and object processing: Early evidence for cross-cultural differences

Scale errors are observed when young children make mistakes by attempting to put their bodies into miniature versions of everyday objects. Such errors have been argued to arise from children’s insufficient integration of size into their object representations. The current study investigated whether Japanese and UK children’s (18–24 months old, N = 80) visual exploration in a categorization task related to their scale error production. UK children who showed greater local processing made more scale errors, whereas Japanese children, who overall showed greater global processing, showed no such relationship. These results raise the possibility that children’s suppression of scale errors emerges not from attention to size per se, but from a critical integration of global (i.e., size) and local (i.e., object features) information during object processing, and provide evidence that this mechanism differs cross-culturally.     

Constrained Choice: Children's and Adults’ Attribution of Choice to a Humanoid Robot

Young children, like adults, understand that human agents can flexibly choose different actions in different contexts, and they evaluate these agents based on such choices. However, little is known about children's tendencies to attribute the capacity to choose to robots, despite increased contact with robotic agents. In this paper, we compare 5- to 7-year-old children's and adults’ attributions of free choice to a robot and to a human child by using a series of tasks measuring agency attribution, action prediction, and choice attribution. In morally neutral scenarios, children ascribed similar levels of free choice to the robot and the human, while adults were more likely to ascribe free choice to the human. For morally relevant scenarios, however, both age groups considered the robot's actions to be more constrained than the human's actions. These findings demonstrate that children and adults hold a nuanced understanding of free choice that is sensitive to both the agent type and constraints within a given scenario.     

Defining the new concept of sustainable success – A state-of-the-art analysis on the phenomenon

Research on success and sustainability has been somewhat limited and narrow. Yet, in the current world, a positively oriented understanding about the concept of sustainable success is needed. The purpose of this research was to analyze what kind of research about sustainable success has been conducted and what the elements of sustainable success according to research found around this topic are. These questions were answered through a literature review or a state-of-the-art review that focused on nine articles that were chosen for a more detailed analysis. The findings illustrate how success and sustainability appeared as research targets and what the main elements of success and sustainability were in the data. None of the articles under review used positive psychological knowledge or strength-based approaches in their definition of success and sustainability. The need for a conceptual definition for sustainable success appeared evident. From the perspective adopted in this research, sustainable success consists of positive development, flourishing, and well-being, and also top performances. It is based on positive educational psychological knowledge. Educational psychological research alongside multidisciplinary perspectives can provide new and innovative ways of understanding and guiding people's behaviors toward sustainability.     

孔子思想中的君子人格：心理学测量的探索

君子人格是中国文化(尤其是儒学思想)中的理想的人格特质, 对于理解中国文化心理具有重要意义, 但鲜有实证研究。通过经典文本的理论分析与心理测量的实证分析相结合的方法, 选取《论语》中孔子对君子的论述编制初测条目, 通过探索性和验证性因素分析、效标关联效度分析等实证研究方法(总样本量 = 1916), 对孔子思想中的君子人格的内在结构进行了探索, 并编制了具有良好信效度的测量工具。结果表明, 孔子思想中的君子人格包含了智仁勇、恭而有礼、喻义怀德、有所不为、持己无争5个因素。此外还考察了其与大五人格、中国人价值观、自我和谐、合作与竞争人格倾向、亲社会倾向等效标变量的相关关系。     

Evidence for Relationships Between Hope,Resilience, and Mental Health Among Youth

Predictive modeling was used to evaluate the associations between hope, resilience, happiness, and mental health in 449 middle and high school students. Model results indicated large effect sizes for middle school (R² = .28) and high school (R² = .36) participants, with hope and resilience tending to predict self‐reported mental health symptoms. These findings and their application to counseling practice are explained.     

Intentions to report concussion symptoms in nonprofessional athletes: A fuzzy‐trace theory approach

Reducing concussion risks in athletes depends on self‐reporting. Often, athletes decide whether to report concussions or continue playing and risk serious health consequences. Fuzzy‐trace theory (FTT) predicts that reliance on gisty, categorical representations of risky decisions, not amounts of risk/reward, encourages risk avoidance and application of bottom‐line values, or gist principles, thus promoting healthy decisions. Applying FTT, we test whether intentions to report are predicted by gist‐based thinking about risks and values. High school and college students (N = 1,366) were assessed for concussion knowledge, social pressures to not report (by coaches/parents/teammates), categorical gist‐based thinking, endorsement of gist principles expressing values, and intentions to report. As expected, the older group scored higher on gist measures. For young adults, categorical thinking, and gist principles predicted intentions, controlling for sex, knowledge, and social pressures. For adolescents, categorical thinking again predicted intentions. For both age groups, adding FTT's predictors accounted for significantly more variance than baseline models.     

Psychological implications of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world: Introduction to the special issue

Although psychological researchers have long studied the implications of major crises, the outbreak and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have confronted the global community of psychologists and psychological researchers with new challenges. This special issue contributes to the growing empirical literature on the immediate psychological implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. We present and discuss diverse work from authors that followed our call for papers in May 2020, shortly after the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The studies focus on the early phases of the pandemic by addressing (a) implications of the pandemic for psychological well-being and mental health, (b) psychological effects of lockdown scenarios as well as (c) individual compliance with COVID-19 prevention and intervention measures. We conclude by highlighting the need for new research efforts, with a special focus on low- and middle-income regions, international research collaborations and cross-cultural research designs.     

Psychosis,symbol, affectivity 2: another perspective on the treatment of psychotic disorder

This is the second of two papers concerning our study into an integrated approach to psychotic disorders conducted at the University Psychiatry Unit of Palermo’s Polyclinic over approximately 15 years; this paper concentrates on the clinical phenomena. The study aimed to find the best possible treatment and to improve the prognosis of this patient group. We have explored the efficacy of a range of psycho-therapeutic (cognitive-behavioural, systemic-relational, psychodynamic, group and others), psycho-pharmaceutical, psychiatric rehabilitative and psycho-educational treatments, with a hermeneutic approach instead of a systematic one. The study’s conclusions, described in the paper, are that all psychotic functions start with a nuclear psychic issue connected to emotional development. We describe how the most significant symptoms of acute psychotic manifestations (delusions and misperceptions) make use of an encrypted psychological meaning that can be decoded through the patient’s symbolic language. This language is a key element in diagnosis and in the choice of treatment. The paper describes how we revised our understanding of psychosis from being a brain disease to being a process aimed at the rearrangement of psychic functioning. Our significant results are described.     

George Floyd’s death and COVID-19: inflection points in the Anthropocene Era?

George Floyd’s death, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change are on a continuum from the immediate shock of viewing a video-recorded murder, to millions dying worldwide from disease, to deaths related to climate change accumulating over a millennium. They participate in the powerful archetypes of death and inequality. ‘Increase’, Hexagram 42 in the I Ching, archetypically addresses inequalities at all levels – racial, economic, political and the profound imbalance between humans and the environment. Floyd’s death highlights the consequences of systemic racism and income inequalities. The pandemic as ‘nature’s revenge’ hits minority populations harder due to underlying health conditions resulting from poverty and greater exposure to the virus in the workplace. President Trump as Trickster showed Americans their shadow and his response to the pandemic amplified its severity. The pandemic has shocked our social, political and economic systems and paused our species rush into environmental disasters at many levels. The disruptions present opportunities for reflection, experimentation and developing new systems as old forms are challenged. The ecological dimensions of Jung’s concepts emphasize interconnectedness at all levels and the paradigm shift he called a ‘new age’ provides a framework for altering the course of the Anthropocene Era.     

Criminal Justice and Community Psychology: Our Values and Our Work—The Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue of The American Journal of Community Psychology originated from the Society for Community Research and Action Criminal Justice interest group, with a goal of exploring the work of community psychologists intersecting with criminal justice research, practice, and policy and shaped by our shared values—equity, collaboration, creative maladjustment, social justice, and social science in the service of social justice. In this introduction, we discuss the socio‐historical context of the special issue, followed by an outline of the special issue organization, and brief summary of the included papers. Across 13 papers and an invited commentary, we see the ways in which community psychologists are: (1) delivering and evaluating services, programming, or other supports to address the needs of system‐involved people; and (2) working to improve the systems, structures, and interactions with units of criminal justice systems. Across these two sections, authors highlight the guiding role of our values to influence change within and outside of criminal‐legal systems.