The import of infancy for individual, family, and societal development: commentary on the special section: does infancy matter?

Across their life spans humans actualize a rich potential for cognitive and behavioral plasticity, a set of developmental changes that require regulation of organism-context relations on the part of both the individual and society. An individual’s action on the context must be started in infancy and maintained in subsequent periods of life for adaptive functioning to occur across ontogeny. The process of the individual acting as an agent of his or her own development is continuous, although the particular ways in which such control is manifested will change in developmentally appropriate ways. As demonstrated by the papers in this special issue, the significance of infancy for the rest of the life-span rests on an integration of this continuity and discontinuity within the person-context developmental system.     

Interventions in everyday lives: How clients use psychotherapy outside their sessions

The purpose of psychotherapy is to help clients address and overcome problems troubling them in their everyday lives. Therapy can therefore only work if clients include it in their ongoing lives to deal with their problems. Detailed, systematic research is needed on how clients do so in their everyday lives outside their sessions. A design of exploratory case studies on this topic is presented in this article. The main outcomes of such a case study on family therapy are then laid out in general terms. They highlight how treatment practices and clients’ ordinary everyday practices interact when clients change their everyday lives to overcome their troubles. They also highlight what it involves for clients to accomplish this. It is concluded that we need more research on how to understand intervention; on the interaction between interventions and clients’ conduct of their everyday life; on sessions as a particular, secluded part of clients’ ongoing everyday lives, and on how to consider therapists’ procedures and conduct of sessions accordingly.     

Inequalities in Health and Intergenerational Equity

In the popular folklore three-score-years-and-ten is treated as a fair innings for people, and thereby serves as an informal reference point for judgements about distributive justice within a community. But length of life alone is an insufficient basis for such judgements - a person's health-related quality-of-life also needs to be taken into account. If one of the objectives of public policy is to reduce inequalities in lifetime health, it will be demonstrated that this is very likely to require systematic discrimination against the older members of a community. The notion of community solidatity will also be tested, because a decision will need to be made as to whether the same fair innings applies to all members of the community, or whether some are entitled to more than others. The strength of the fair innings principle is that it brings these issues to the fore in a systematic way which should ais their resolition in a practical context.     

A changed perspective: How gratitude can affect sense of coherence through positive reframing

We hypothesized that gratitude would be related to sense of coherence via positive reframing, which is a process by which negative events or circumstances are seen in a positive light. We tested this hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1 (N = 166) we found a strong, robust relationship between trait gratitude and sense of coherence above and beyond life satisfaction, positive and negative affect, happiness, and social desirability. Study 2 (N = 275) showed that gratitude at Time 1 predicted sense of coherence at Time 2, controlling for baseline scores. Positive reframing mediated the relationship between gratitude and SOC. Results are discussed in terms of their practical implications.     

Trunk coordination in healthy and chronic nonspecific low back pain subjects during repetitive flexion–extension tasks: Effects of movement asymmetry,velocity and load

Multiple joint interactions are critical to produce stable coordinated movements and can be influenced by low back pain and task conditions. Inter-segmental coordination pattern and variability were assessed in subjects with and without chronic nonspecific low back pain (CNSLBP). Kinematic data were collected from 22 CNSLBP and 22 healthy volunteers during repeated trunk flexion–extension in various conditions of symmetry, velocity, and loading; each at two levels. Sagittal plane angular data were time normalized and used to calculate continuous relative phase for each data point. Mean absolute relative phase (MARP) and deviation phase (DP) were derived to quantify lumbar–pelvis and pelvis–thigh coordination patterns and variability. Statistical analysis revealed more in-phase coordination pattern in CNSLBP (p = 0.005). There was less adaptation in the DP for the CNSLBP group, as shown by interactions of Group by Load (p = .008) and Group by Symmetry by Velocity (p = .03) for the DP of pelvis–thigh and lumbar–pelvis couplings, respectively. Asymmetric (p < 0.001) and loaded (p = 0.04) conditions caused less in-phase coordination. Coordination variability was higher during asymmetric and low velocity conditions (p < 0.001). In conclusion, coordination pattern and variability could be influenced by trunk flexion–extension conditions. CNSLBP subjects demonstrated less adaptability of movement pattern to the demands of the flexion–extension task.     

大学生的冲动性特质与自杀意念的关系:一个有调节的中介模型

以应激-易感模型为依据考察冲动性特质与自杀意念的关系,并在此基础上提出一个有调节的中介模型,探讨负性生活事件影响的中介作用以及家庭环境的调节作用。采用巴瑞特冲动性量表、青少年生活事件量表、家庭环境量表、贝克自杀意念量表对902名大学生进行集体施测,旨在考察负性生活事件的影响对大学生冲动性特质与自杀意念的中介作用以及家庭环境的调节作用,结果表明:(1)冲动性特质和负性生活事件的影响能正向预测大学生的自杀意念;(2)负性生活事件的影响在冲动性特质和自杀意念之间起中介作用;(3)负性生活事件影响的中介作用和冲动性特质的直接作用受家庭环境的调节。这些结果对于综合解释环境与个体因素对自杀意念的作用与机制具有重要意义。     

Perceived stress and everyday memory complaints among older adult women

Abstract

Memory complaints among older adults are often influenced by depression and anxiety, but the association of stress to memory complaints has received little attention. We examined the associations of perceived stress, life events, and activity level to everyday memory complaints among healthy older women, while controlling for the influence of depression and anxiety. Participants (N=54) completed self-report questionnaires on memory complaints, perceived stress, recent life events, activity level, depression, and anxiety. Partial correlation analyses indicated that higher levels of perceived stress were associated with higher levels of memory complaints when controlling for the influence of depression and anxiety, but that life events and activity level were not related to memory complaints. This study highlights that perceived stress, like depression and anxiety, is a psychological factor that influences the appraisal of cognitive ability; however, larger and more heterogeneous samples will be needed to better understand the multifactorial nature of memory complaints in older adulthood.     

The choreography of everyday life—a missing brick in the general evolution theory

The “choreography of everyday life refers to the existence of rules of daily life, correspondingly to those of dances: the rules impose order upon individual behavior beyond the level of pure improvisation. The fact that acts of everyday life repeat themselves supports the idea that there exist some mechanisms generating order to daily practices. The replicative model of evolution is a candidate to explain this process of routinization. At the beginning of a replicative cycle behavioral patterns might change radically. In the course of time integrative and competitive selective forces start working. Finally some established rules, choreography, determining daily practices will emerge. In this mature phase identical replication takes place.     

WAYS OF DISCOURSE AND WAYS OF LIFE

In book X of the Republic, Plato famously reports “a quarrel between poetry and philosophy.” The present essay examines this quarrel in book X, along with other relevant parts of the Republic, by understanding “philosophy” and “poetry” as rival ways of life and rival ways of discourse. The essay first explains why, in Plato’s view, poetic discourse weakens one’s power to reason and is at odds with philosophic discourse. Then it shows how poetic discourse is bound up with a way of life that champions the value of freedom. Such a life forms a contrast with the philosophic life, which is marked more by stability and unity than by freedom. The quarrel, however, is not a simple antagonism. The essay hence concludes by discussing why, despite the opposition between the two, philosophy cannot do without poetry.     

新生市民主动发展倾向对城市生活适应性的影响:社会支持的中介效应

为探究主动发展倾向和社会支持对新生市民城市生活适应性的作用机制,本研究构建了结构方程模型.采用两个自编量表和一个现成量表,运用两阶段抽样调查法,在作为统筹城乡发展试验区的重庆市范围内,对已经取得城镇户口的新生市民进行问卷调查,获得有效样本322人.对采集的数据运用统计分析软件SPSS17.0和AMOS18.0进行数据分析和模型检验.结果表明,城市化新生市民的主动发展倾向和社会支持均对新生市民的城市生活适应具有显著影响,其中,社会支持在主动发展倾向对城市生活适应影响中具有部分中介作用.