The Effect of Parents’ Literacy Skills and Children’s Preliteracy Skills on the Risk of Dyslexia

The combination of investigating child and family characteristics sheds light on the constellation of risk factors that can ultimately lead to dyslexia. This family-risk study examines plausible preschool risk factors and their specificity. Participants (N?=?196, 42 % girls) included familial risk (FR) children with and without dyslexia in Grade 3 and controls. First, we found impairments in phonological awareness, rapid naming, and letter knowledge in FR kindergartners with later dyslexia, and mild phonological-awareness deficits in FR kindergartners without subsequent dyslexia. These skills were better predictors of reading than arithmetic, except for rapid naming. Second, the literacy environment at home was comparable among groups. Third, having a dyslexic parent and literacy abilities of the non-dyslexic parent related to offspring risk of dyslexia. Parental literacy abilities might be viewed as indicators of offspring’s liability for literacy difficulties, since parents provide offspring with genetic and environmental endowment. We propose an intergenerational multiple deficit model in which both parents confer cognitive risks.     

Situational aspects are more important in shaping proactive coping behaviour than individual characteristics: A vignette study among adults preparing for ageing

It seems likely that proactive coping is an important mechanism for dealing successfully with threats to personal goals, yet little empirical research has been conducted in relation to this concept. The aim of the present study is to examine to what extent proactive coping is influenced by situation-specific features as well as by personal characteristics. Three vignettes, each representing a potential decline in an important resource (health, social relationships and finance), were presented to 123 adults between 50 and 70 years old. Multilevel analyses show that proactive coping is highly variable within persons and that three situational factors (type of stressor, appraised threat and appraised control) affected the employment of proactive coping strategies. Future temporal orientation was identified as a significant, positive predictor of proactive coping, but none of the other personal factors were found to be relevant.     

Holy Apparition or Hyper-Religiosity: Prevalence of Explanatory Models for Religious and Spiritual Experiences in Patients with Bipolar Disorder and Their Associations with Religiousness

Pastoral Psychology - One point that emerges from qualitative research on religion and bipolar disorder (BD) is the problem patients with BD experience in distinguishing between genuine religious...     

Revelation,delusion or disillusion: subjective interpretation of religious and spiritual experiences in bipolar disorder

The objective of this study is to explore the interpretation of religious and spiritual experiences during mania, depression and recovery, from the perspective of bipolar clients and to inquire into their expectations of treatment in relation to these experiences. For this purpose, a qualitative pilot study is designed, which includes interviews with 10 outpatients of Altrecht, a Dutch mental health institution. The meaning of religious and spiritual experiences and the question of their authenticity proved to be an important theme for the participants. The support of spirituality for illness management was brought to the fore, as well as the temporary lack of this support during depression by some participants. Participants considered it desirable that more attention be paid to the topic during treatment, and to establish better cooperation between spiritual counsellors of the institution and other professionals. Thus, a more existential or hermeneutical approach towards religious experiences in relation to bipolar disorder would be a desirable contribution to standard treatment. The exact outlines of such an approach demand more empirical research.     

Effects of Gestures on Older Adults' Learning from Video‐based Models

This study investigated whether the positive effects of gestures on learning by decreasing working memory load, found in children and young adults, also apply to older adults, who might especially benefit from gestures given memory deficits associated with aging. Participants learned a problem‐solving skill by observing a video‐based modeling example, with the human model using gesture cues, with a symbolic cue, or without cues. It was expected that gesture compared with symbolic or no cues (i) improves learning and transfer performance, (ii) more in complex than simple problems, and (iii) especially in older adults. Although older adults' learning outcomes were lower overall than that of children and young adults, the results only revealed a time‐on‐task advantage of gesture over no cues in the learning phase for the older adults. In conclusion, the present study did not provide strong support for the effectiveness of gestures on learning from video‐based modeling example. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When constituencies speak in multiple tongues: The relative persuasiveness of hawkish minorities in representative negotiation

Although constituencies often consist of opposing factions, we know little about the way such opposing factions influence the representative’s negotiation strategy. This study addressed this issue: Representatives negotiated as sellers on behalf of a group consisting of hawkish (competitive) and dovish (cooperative) factions. Experiments 1–3 showed that a minority of hawks was sufficient to influence the representatives to acting in a competitive way; only when all constituents unanimously advocated a cooperative strategy were representatives more conciliatory towards their negotiation partner. These tendencies did not differ as a function of the representatives’ pro-social versus pro-self value orientation, or the unanimity versus majority rule putatively used in the constituency to accept of reject the representative’s negotiated agreement. We conclude that hawkish minorities are persuasive and influential because representatives accord more weight to hawkish than to dovish messages.     

Sweet Delight and Endless Night: A Qualitative Exploration of Ordinary and Extraordinary Religious and Spiritual Experiences in Bipolar Disorder

The authenticity of religious and spiritual experiences during mania is an important subject for bipolar patients. The exploration of such experience in bipolar disorder is the central point of this qualitative study. A psychiatrist and a hospital chaplain conducted 35 semi-structured interviews with recovered participants, recruited from mental health care institutions in the Netherlands, the patients’ association and via the internet, about their religious and spiritual experiences during illness episodes and in stable times. A variety in types (such as divine presence, unity, mission, meaningful synchronicity) during mania was reported, which were on a sliding scale with experiences/views in stable times in more than half of the interviews. During depression, absence of religious or spiritual experience was predominant. The reported experiences were viewed by most participants as both authentically religious or spiritual but also related to the disorder, requiring therefore language that transcended medical terminology. Also indicated is the relevance of the results for fundamental discussions about the nature or religious experience.     

Effects of pointing compared with naming and observing during encoding on item and source memory in young and older adults

Research showed that source memory functioning declines with ageing. Evidence suggests that encoding visual stimuli with manual pointing in addition to visual observation can have a positive effect on spatial memory compared with visual observation only. The present study investigated whether pointing at picture locations during encoding would lead to better spatial source memory than naming (Experiment 1) and visual observation only (Experiment 2) in young and older adults. Experiment 3 investigated whether response modality during the test phase would influence spatial source memory performance. Experiments 1 and 2 supported the hypothesis that pointing during encoding led to better source memory for picture locations than naming or observation only. Young adults outperformed older adults on the source memory but not the item memory task in both Experiments 1 and 2. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants manually responded in the test phase. Experiment 3 showed that if participants had to verbally respond in the test phase, the positive effect of pointing compared with naming during encoding disappeared. The results suggest that pointing at picture locations during encoding can enhance spatial source memory in both young and older adults, but only if the response modality is congruent in the test phase.