Past and present experiences with maternal touch affect infants’ attention toward emotional faces

Maternal touch is considered crucial in regulating infants’ internal states when facing unknown or distressing situations. Here, we explored the effects of maternal touch on 7-month-old infants’ preferences towards emotions. Infants’ looking times were measured through a two-trial preferential looking paradigm, while infants observed dynamic videos of happy and angry facial expressions. During the observation, half of the infants received an affective touch (i.e., stroke), while the other half received a non-affective stimulation (i.e., fingertip squeeze) from their mother. Further, we assessed the frequency of maternal touch in the mother-infant dyad through The Parent-Infant Caregiving Touch Scale (PICTS). Our results have shown that infants’ attention to angry and happy facial expressions varied as a function of both present and past experiences with maternal touch. Specifically, in the affective touch condition, as the frequency of previous maternal affective tactile care increased (PICTS), the avoidance of angry faces decreased. Conversely, in the non-affective touch condition, as the frequency of previous maternal affective tactile care increased (PICTS), the avoidance of angry faces increased as well. Thus, past experience with maternal affective touch is a crucial predictor of the regulatory effects that actual maternal touch exerts on infants’ visual exploration of emotional stimuli.     

Religious authority and the transmission of abstract god concepts

According to the Standard Model account of religion, religious concepts tend to conform to “minimally counterintuitive” schemas. Laypeople may, to varying degrees, verbally endorse the abstract doctrines taught by professional theologians. But, outside the Sunday school exam room, the implicit representations that tend to guide people’s everyday thinking, feeling, and behavior are about minimally counterintuitive entities. According to the Standard Model, these implicit representations are the essential thing to be explained by the cognitive science of religion (CSR). It is argued here that this theoretical orientation of mainstream CSR misses a whole dimension of religiosity—the acceptance of certain religious authorities, that is, the acceptance of other people’s superior expertise. Average believers (especially in doctrinal traditions) tend to accept the authority of religious experts who espouse highly counterintuitive ideas that they (the laypeople) understand in a distorted form, if at all. These highly counterintuitive ideas are culturally successful because laypeople see them as being justified by people they have reason to regard as epistemic authorities. The tendency for people to endorse (without fully understanding) highly counterintuitive religious ideas espoused by intellectuals may explain parallels in the development of separate traditions (e.g., Judaism and Hinduism), as religious philosophers follow parallel lines of reasoning.     

Testing a Military Family Stress Model

The current study examines a military family stress model, evaluating associations between deployment‐related stressors (i.e., deployment length/number, posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD] symptoms) and parent, child, parenting, and dyadic adjustment among families in which a parent had previously deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan in the recent conflicts. Married families (N = 293) with at least one child between the ages of 4 and 12 were recruited from a Midwestern state. Service members were from the Reserve Component (National Guard or Reserves); fathers (N = 253) and/or mothers had deployed (N = 45) to the recent conflicts in the Middle East. Multiple‐method (observations of parenting and couple interactions; questionnaires) and multiple informant measures were gathered online and in the homes of participants, from parents, children, and teachers. Findings demonstrated associations between mothers’ and fathers’ PTSD symptoms and a latent variable of child adjustment comprising teacher, parent, and child report. Mothers’ but not fathers’ PTSD symptoms were also associated with dyadic adjustment and parenting practices; parenting practices were in turn associated with child adjustment. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for military family stress research and interventions to support and strengthen parents and families after deployment.     

The impact of vacation and job stress on burnout and absenteeism

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that vacation relief decreases psychological and behavioral strains caused by job stressors. We examined the impact of job stress and vacation on strain on 87 blue-collar employees in an industrial enterprise in central Israel. Whereas former respite research focused on the impact of vacation only on psychological strains such as burnout and job and life satisfaction, the current study also examined a behavioral strain, absenteeism. The employees completed questionnaires before and after vacation and again four weeks later. Our findings show that vacation alleviated perceived job stress and bumout as predicted, replicating findings that a respite from work diminishes levels of strain to lower than chronic, on-the-job levels. We found declines in burnout immediately after the vacation and a return to prevacation levels four weeks later, and a similar pattern with regard to absenteeism.     

Job Conditions and Wellness among Finnish Upper Secondary School Teachers

The aim of the present study was to compare the work situation of Finnish upper secondary school teachers to that of average European teachers and to examine to what extent various job conditions and coping strategies explain their well-being. The Finnish data (n = 232) were gathered in the spring term of 1998 by postal questionnaires (response rate 62%). The European reference sample consisted of 1950 upper secondary school teachers from ten European countries. The Finnish upper secondary school teachers assessed, in particular, their job conditions (e.g., lower job demands and higher job control), but also their well-being (higher level of job satisfaction and lower level of depersonalisation and somatic complaints) as better than their European colleagues. Job demands and control had only main effects on well-being: high demands explained low job satisfaction, high emotional exhaustion and high depersonalisation, and high control explained high job satisfaction and high personal accomplishment. The additional job conditions and coping strategies increased the explained variance of somatic complaints, emotional exhaustion, and personal accomplishment.     

Job Conditions and Wellness/Health Outcomes in Dutch Secondary School Teachers

The aim of the present study is to compare the work situation of Dutch secondary school teachers to job conditions of European teachers and to test the Job Demand-Control-Social Support model (JDCS model, Karasek and Theorell, <citeref rid="bib24">1990</citeref>) on burnout, job satisfaction and somatic symptoms. The Dutch data (N = 304) were gathered in seven secondary schools from across the country. The remaining European group consisted of 1878 upper secondary school teachers originating from 10 countries. Additive and interactive effects in the JDCS model could be identified for emotional exhaustion only. Furthermore, a curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship was found between control and emotional exhaustion. In addition to the JDCS model, the contribution of coping in the explanation of the outcomes was tested. Attempts have been made to deal with criticisms, which are frequently leveled at the implementation of the JDCS model. Dutch teachers do not differ on job conditions from the European sample except for two working conditions where the Dutch indicate less physical exertion and environmental risks than the European reference sample. The Dutch report lower levels of coping than the reference group, they are more depersonalised and are less satisfied than teachers of the European reference group. On the other hand, the Dutch teachers had fewer somatic complaints and reported higher levels of personal accomplishment than their European colleagues.