Age‐related differences in everyday prospective memory tasks: The role of planning and personal importance

The aim of the present studies was to investigate whether age‐related improvement found in naturalistic but experimenter‐given prospective memory (PM) tasks can be generalized to real‐life intentions. In Study 1, younger, middle‐aged, and older adults generated a list of intended activities for the following week; one week later they marked the tasks that they had performed. The participants were also asked to rate the importance of each listed intention and to describe the circumstances of completion that were already known to them. We found that, compared with younger adults, older adults attributed a higher degree of importance to their intentions and had the circumstances of their completion better planned. However, the age‐related benefit in the PM performance for all listed intentions was not present for the very important and well‐planned tasks. In Study 2 we manipulated whether younger adults engaged or not in the detailed planning of when their intentions could be completed. It was demonstrated that younger adults who had to perform detailed planning completed their intended activities more often than those who did not plan for their intentions. The results support explanations of the age‐related benefit in everyday PM that highlight the role of importance and planning.     

Changes in Skin Potentials During the Psychogalvanic Reflex

Researchers have shown that working memory is related to a variety of high-level cognitive processes. However, the results of recent research have suggested that may be because of its role in attentional control. In the present experiment, the authors investigated that hypothesis by using an attentional interference task with musical stimuli. Listeners were asked to monitor one ear for either a clarinet or violin tone and to ignore any information in the other ear. On some of the trials, they heard only one tone and on other trials, either the same instrument in both ears or different instruments. Individual differences were measured in working memory and musical experience. The results showed more attentional interference in the different-instrument condition for participants with lower working memory scores, which suggested that working memory involves the ability to control attention to inhibit irrelevant information.     

Age Differences in Coping Resources and Satisfaction With Life Among Middle-Aged,Young-Old,and Oldest-Old Adults

The authors examined age differences in perceived coping resources and satisfaction with life across 3 older-adult age groups (45-64, 65-74, and 75 years and older). The 98 participants represented healthy, socially active, community-residing adults. Group comparisons were made on 12 individual coping scales, and an overall coping resource effectiveness score was computed. No significant differences were found for 11 of the coping resources or for overall coping resource effectiveness. Similar consistencies in life satisfaction were found across the 3 age groups. The findings indicate that (a) for healthy adults, the oldest old cope at least as effectively as their younger counterparts, despite their likelihood of encountering increased levels of stress; and (b) psychologically, old age may be viewed as a time of resilience and fortitude.     

Gender Differences in Drinking Motivations and Outcomes

To investigate gender differences in the dynaijiics of alcohol use, we gathered self-report data from male and female college students. Results of our experiment showed that dominance power motivations were correlated with negative drinking outcomes for both men and women; assertiveness power motivations were associated with negative outcomes only for women. For both sexes, a higher proportion of positive social motivations was associated with fewer negative drinking outcomes. We expect that, in addition to the more traditionally defined needs for dominance power shown to be important for drinking among men, women may use alcohol in relation to needs for assertiveness and self-expression.     

Utilization of Individual versus Family Therapy Among Adolescents with Severe Emotional Disturbance

Service utilization patterns among children with severe emotional and/or behavioral disturbances are described for 89 children and families, interviewed at two time points across a 6-month period. Children received a greater number of individual therapy sessions than family therapy sessions, and children significantly decreased their levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Family therapy was associated with decreases in internalizing behaviors when children reported outcomes. Individual therapy was not associated with changes in either internalizing or externalizing behaviors regardless of reporter. Symptom severity did not dictate whether children were provided individual or family therapy. Recommendations for individualized treatment plans are offered.     

Play-Based Activities in Family Counseling

Traditional family therapists often work with family members of similar cognitive levels and exclude small children from the therapeutic process. Recent research indicates that children and families benefit when all family members can be involved in counseling (e.g., Thompson, Bender, Cordoso, & Flynn, 2011). Using an integrative intervention model, this article will focus on specific play-based activities which can be used to effectively include children in family therapy. A developmental, step-by step protocol is introduced and specific play-based activities are discussed.     

The structure of “communities” and communications in the new millennium

The three lineages of information,—the genetic, the cultural and artifactual—will increasingly merge their constituent information contents through advances in biotechnology and information technology. This will redefine what constitutes “social” and what constitutes “community.” A community's members communicate with their “significant others” and change their internal information states (and their internal and external behaviors). Under conditions of merging, information exchanges occur across all the three lineages. In this sense, the concept of significant other,—that is, a communicating entity—, is now spread from human communities to encompass also the biological and the artifactual. A seamless merging between the three realms now occurs affecting their respective internal information stores. The resulting image of interactions that now arises is of multiple oceans of communities, operating at different levels, the genetic, the cultural and the artifactual. There are exchanges across the different levels, up and down and sideways, as information is translated from one realm to the other. These dynamics result in changes in the evolutionary characteristics of each lineage and sub‐lineage, including the internal perceptions from within a lineage, namely in the language of evolutionary epistemology, its “meanings” and “hypotheses” on the world. A future sociology must necessarily take into account these factors and incorporate the dynamics of all three realms.     

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.     

Timescapes of Security: Clocks,Clouds, and the Complexity of Security Governance

This article pulls together the disjointed complexification of security studies. Such analytical overview suggests that the perspective of “timescapes” allows for exploring the complexity that shapes meanings and practices of security and its governance. In this respect, it is the imperative to change that suggests the significance of complexity thinking to security studies—that is, it is alone in taking the discontinuities of global life seriously. Security, in this regard, is not merely about the clockwork of survival, but is redefined through the cloudlike adaptive contingency of “security as resilience.” In this setting, the security governance of complexity is identified through its dancing to the timescaped rhythms of uncertainty, cognitive challenges, complex risks, and exaptation prompted by the heterogeneity of global life.     

Adaptive and Maladaptive Perfectionism as Mediators of Adult Attachment Styles and Depression,Hopelessness, and Life Satisfaction

This study examined the relationships between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism, anxious and avoidant adult attachment styles, depression, hopelessness, and life satisfaction among a sample of 180 undergraduate students. Maladaptive perfectionism mediated the relationship between both forms of adult attachment and depression, hopelessness, and life satisfaction. Adaptive perfectionism mediated the relationship between avoidant adult attachment and hopelessness and life satisfaction. Implications for counselors and future research directions are discussed.