Middle Aging in Women: Patterns of Personality Change from the 30s to the 50s

This three-sample study focused on changes in four key features of women's personalities (identity, generativity, confident power, and concern about aging) over the course of middle age. Based on women's retrospective and concurrent feelings about their lives in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, scales were developed and validated for the four themes. We found that identity certainty, generativity, confident power, and concern about aging all were experienced as more prominent in middle age (the 40s) than in early adulthood (the 30s). We also found that these elements of personality were rated even higher in the 50s than the 40s. Scores seemed to be a function of age more than historical period or particular experiences in social roles. Scores on identity certainty, generativity, and confident power were positively related to well-being, while concern about aging was negatively related to well-being.     

斯腾伯格智力测验观评述

长久以来,人们习惯于凭智力测验对一个人的能力做出判断,并用之预测个体未来成就的高低。本文介绍了斯腾伯格(R．J．Stemberg)最近提出的“发展中的专门知识技能说”,认为智力测验和任何学业或职业成就测验一样,测的也是个体正在发展中的某种专门知识技能的暂时水平,其测验结果并不能说明一个人的能力,也不能用作预测。最后讨论了该学说对教育的启示。     

The Genesis of Mind and Spirit

Spiritual life is made possible by the evolution of a human neuropsychology that requires social interdependence for its development. Extensive neuroplasticity requires experiential shaping throughout life. The evolution of frontal cortex hypertrophy suggests that much of this shaping is produced by a socially constructed virtual reality, extending beyond immediate experience. Prefrontal colonization makes possible the social scaffolding of neuroregulation, including the emotional attachments necessary for moral life. Cognitive independence from immediate environments enables symbioses with external memory systems, producing novel forms of socially constituted experience and making possible the transformative effect of religious systems upon individual biologies and psychologies.     

Inhibitory control in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks: A neo-Piagetian inter-task priming study

We investigated whether success in number-conservation and class-inclusion tasks relies on a general ability to inhibit misleading strategies. Two groups of 10-year-olds performed inter-task priming between computerized versions of class-inclusion and number-conservation tasks (Experiment 1). In one group, the class-inclusion task served as a prime and the number-conservation task as an assessment probe and vice versa in the other group. Response times were shorter in the number-conservation task when performed after the class-inclusion task (and vice versa in the other group) than in control prime-probe sequences in which the primes did not require the inhibition of a misleading strategy. Experiment 2 showed that these inter-task priming effects did not simply reflect that class inclusion and number conservation rely on the reversibility of concrete operations as Piaget would have hypothesized. Taken together the results are consistent with the neo-Piagetian assumption that cognitive development is rooted in both the acquisition of knowledge of incremental complexity and the ability to resist (inhibit) previous knowledge. Critically, the present finding suggests that the inhibitory ability is not domain- or strategy-specific.     

Professional Counseling in Nigeria: Past,Present, and Future

The events that circumscribed the parameters of today's counseling in Nigeria are many and varied regarding their influence in shaping the development of the profession in the country. The authors review these events and the current status of counseling in Nigeria, including the challenges faced in the profession. Future trends and suggestions for strengthening the profession are emphasized.     

Humour Perception and Creation between Parents and 3‐ to 6‐month‐old Infants

Humour and laughter are universal to the human psychological experience and have serious developmental and evolutionary implications. Despite the early emergence of laughter in infancy, infants have been largely ignored in the humour research and humour has been largely ignored in the infant research. The present study describes the emergence of humour perception and creation in a sample of 20 parent–infant dyads who were followed from ages 3‐to‐ 6 months. The study examined how infants discover that absurd nonverbal behaviour, known as ‘clowning’, is amusing in the context of social engagement with caregivers. Results indicate that parents primarily use clowning when attempting to amuse their infants and pair these behavioural absurdities with affective cues like smiling and laughing. As they got older, infants were more likely to laugh and smile in response to clowning. Infants' ability to create humor via clowning also increased with age, starting with simple shrieks at 3 months to imitating absurd actions by 5 months. These increases are partly potentially explained by accompanying increases in parental smiling, laughing and clowning in response to infant clowning. Future research should employ more diverse samples and experimentally investigate the role of parental affect and social referencing in infants' interpretation of absurd behavior. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mechanisms of Empowerment: Psychological Processes for Members of Power-based Community Organizations

The paper reports a study of participatory experiences among members of power-based community organizations. A path model of psychological empowerment was tested. Perceived relational characteristics of the community organization were hypothesized as exogenous to participation, perceived organizational power and psychological empowerment. An alternative model was reproduced with the strongest relationships between perceived organizational intimacy and psychological empowerment and an inverse relationship between perceived organizational regulation and perceptions of organizational power.     

Toward the Source of Thought: Insights from David Bohm on a Sustainable Future

Abstract

This article explores insights of physicist David Bohm on the source of thought and the creative intelligence that emerges from this source. It highlights a link that Bohm sees between this creative intelligence and the crises of our age, including environmental degradation, hunger, poverty, and climate change. It describes how creative intelligence gives rise to fresh “generative orders which may open us to new ways of thinking, new possibilities and a fresh lens for experiencing, appreciating, and respecting life.     

Practices and representations of child care and motor development among West Africans in Paris

Massage techniques and postural manipulation used by West African women immigrants in Paris were studied, with the aim of demonstrating that culturally regulated caretaking practices have an influence on infant motor development. Twenty-five infants were observed between the ages of 3 and 12 months and 9 and 15 months. Frequency of massage and its accompanying set of physical exercises were found to be related to age at onset of independent walking. The findings show that infants receiving daily massage walk significantly earlier than infants who do not receive massage, thus confirming other reports that vestibular and postural stimulation have a positive effect on motor development. These results are discussed in relation to the observed frequencey of contact and of physical games with the caregiver for a smaller sample of three infants, and to parental expectations about the age of acquisition of certain cognitive and motor abilities. African immigrant mothers expect their infants to sit and to walk earlier than French mothers. The conclusion emphasizes the contribution of social anthropology, which shows that in all cultures, physical development and body changes elicit symbolic practices and a search for explanation.