Parent–child relationships during the divorce process; from attachment theory and intergenerational perspective

This study examined four possible predictors of parental satisfaction in the first year after divorce: Attachment style, parenting style, perception of own parents parenting, and the ex-spouses assessment of the quality of the parents parenting. Findings among 49 divorced couples showed that the mothers satisfaction was anchored in themselves and their behavior, fathers satisfaction in their perceptions of their mothers and ex-wives. Among mothers, the less dismissing their attachment style and the greater the centrality of the child in their parenting style, the more satisfaction they tended to report. Among fathers, greater satisfaction was predicted by more education, perception of their own mother as less overprotective, and their perception of their ex-wifes approval of the quality of their fathering.     

Coping and Psychological Distress as a Function of the Bully Victim Dichotomy in Older Children

While it has been well established that bullying and being bullied have negative psychological consequences for children, the more recent literature has suggested a more complex relationship based on social cognition. A debate has arisen as to whether bullies have deficits or strengths in social cognition. In a study of 236 children (112 males and 124 females) aged between 12 and 15 years the current research explored three main aspects of social cognition, problem-solving style, perceived control and optimism in both bullies and victims. The findings suggest that the debate may hinge on whether the bullies are also victims. In this study bullies had higher scores on problem-solving control while bully victims had the lowest scores. These variations corresponded to differences in psychological distress suggesting that bullies may have developed more effective coping strategies with the reverse being true for bully victims     

Styles of Remembering and Types of Experience: An Experimental Investigation of Reconstructive Memory

No one can access the original events to examine the veracity of a human experience in everyday situations. The present experiment was done to compare two conditions under which a participant remembered (1) her actual contact with the environment and (2) her indirect experience—information about another person’s direct experience that was communicated to her. Several differences in the forms of remembering such as narrative styles, way of describing and naming of object, motive for actions—were found to differ between those two conditions. Those differences were shown to disappear with repeated remembering occasions due to intrapersonal and interpersonal conventionalization. These results suggest that it is possible to examine the veracity of an experience based on forms of remembering, rather than on its content. Theoretical discussion links the present experiment to the study of memory and remembering from the perspective of Bartlett’s (Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932) schema theory.

An ERP study on self-relevant object recognition

We performed an event-related potential study to investigate the self-relevance effect in object recognition. Three stimulus categories were prepared: SELF (participant's own objects), FAMILIAR (disposable and public objects, defined as objects with less-self-relevant familiarity), and UNFAMILIAR (others' objects). The participants' task was to watch the stimuli passively. Results showed that left-lateralized N250 activity differentiated SELF and FAMILIAR from UNFAMILIAR, but SELF and FAMILIAR were not differentiated. In the later time-course, SELF was dissociated from FAMILIAR, indicating the self-relevance effect in object recognition at this stage. This activity did not show consistent lateralization, in contrast to previous studies reporting right lateralization in self-relevant face and name recognition. We concluded that in object recognition, self-relevance was processed by higher-order cognitive functions later than 300ms after stimulus onset.     

Invisible displacement understanding in domestic dogs (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Canis familiaris</Emphasis>): the role of visual cues in search behavior

Recently, (Collier-Baker E, Davis JM, Suddendorf T (2004) J Comp Psychol 118:421–433) suggested that domestic dogs do not understand invisible displacements. In the present study, we further investigated the hypothesis that the search behavior of domestic dogs in invisible displacements is guided by various visual cues inherent to the task rather than by mental representation of an object’s past trajectory. Specifically, we examined the role of the experimenter as a function of the final position of the displacement device in the search behavior of domestic dogs. Visible and invisible displacement problems were administered to dogs (N = 11) under two conditions. In the Visible-experimenter condition, the experimenter was visible whereas in the Concealed-experimenter condition, the experimenter was visibly occluded behind a large rigid barrier. Our data supported the conclusion that dogs do not understand invisible displacements but primarily search as a function of the final position of the displacement device and, to a lesser extent, the position of the experimenter.