Experiences of longing in Norwegian and Swedish 4- and 5-year-old children

Longing can be defined as a blend of the primary emotions of happiness and sadness. These primary emotions are experienced very early by children, and the meanings of the words happiness and sadness are also known by children early in their verbal development. To find out at what age children are able to understand and use the more developed concept of longing, the authors interviewed 74 preschoolers (4- and 5-year-olds) in Norway and Sweden about their experiences of longing. Chi-square analyses showed age and sex differences in knowledge of the concept, and some differences between categories of longing were also significant. Results showed that young children's ability to understand and use the concept of longing appears to be limited and that girls seem to mature earlier in this respect than boys do.     

Distress after a single violent crime: how shame-proneness and event-related shame work together as risk factors for post-victimization symptoms

To increase understanding of post-victimization symptom development, the present study investigated the role of shame- and guilt-proneness and event-related shame and guilt as potential risk factors. 35 individuals (M age = 31.7 yr.; 48.5% women), recently victimized by a single event of severe violent crime, were assessed regarding shame- and guilt-proneness, event-related shame and guilt, and post-victimization symptoms. The mediating role of event-related shame was investigated with structural equation modeling (SEM), using bootstrapping. The guilt measures were unrelated to each other and to post-victimization symptoms. The shame measures were highly intercorrelated and were both positively correlated to more severe post-victimization symptom levels. Event-related shame as mediator between shame-proneness and post-victimization symptoms was demonstrated by prevalent significant indirect effects. Both shame measures are potent risk factors for distress after victimization, whereby part of the effect of shame-proneness on post-victimization symptoms is explained by event-related shame.     

Short report: correlates of functional disability with disease activity in elderly patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) prevalence increases with age and old people are special patient population. The recognition of functional disability related to RA could be challenging in elderly patients because aging itself and potential co-morbid disease may also cause functional disability. In this study, we aimed to look at the correlation between disease activity and functional disability in elderly RA patients. Elderly RA patients, ≥65 years old at their routine visits were included in the study. The composite ‘disease activity score’ in 28 joints (DAS-28) was used to determine disease activity groups. Health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) scores were calculated to describe the functional disability and compared across the disease activity groups. Two hundred and fifty-eight RA patients with the mean age of 71 ± 5 (65–90) and a total disease duration of 8.4 ± 8.5 (.5–50) years were recruited. The proportion of patients with high and moderate disease activity was 70%. HAQ scores were significantly correlated with disease activity (p < .05). Functional disability estimated by HAQ was correlated with disease activity in elderly patients with RA     

Analytic change: Assessing ways of being in a psychoanalytic follow‐up interview

The article argues that the concepts of relational scenario, structuralized affect and actualized affect are proposed candidates for observation of changes in relational ways of being as it is expressed in transference. A psychoanalytic follow‐up interview of a former analytic patient is presented in order to illustrate how change in relational ways of being may be registered and studied. By triangulating the patient's verbal report of change with nonverbal information and transference–countertransference dynamics, one may grasp qualitative changes in relational ways of being. The case presented illustrates a former patient's on‐going process of working towards representing aggression in a more direct manner and how this process is made observable with the aid of the proposed concepts in the interview situation. The proposed concepts of relational scenario, structuralized and actualized affect discussed are compared to the concept of transference used in studies of core conflictual relationship theme (CCRT).     

Using dynamic field theory to rethink infant habituation

Much of what psychologists know about infant perception and cognition is based on habituation, but the process itself is still poorly understood. Here the authors offer a dynamic field model of infant visual habituation, which simulates the known features of habituation, including familiarity and novelty effects, stimulus intensity effects, and age and individual differences. The model is based on a general class of dynamic (time-based) models that integrate environmental input in varying metric dimensions to reach a single decision. Here the authors provide simulated visual input of varying strengths, distances, and durations to 2 coupled and interacting fields. The 1st represents the activation that drives "looking," and the 2nd, the inhibition that leads to "looking away," or habituation. By varying the parameters of the field, the authors simulate the time course of habituation trials and show how these dynamics can lead to different depths of habituation, which then determine how the system dishabituates. The authors use the model to simulate a set of influential experiments by R. Baillargeon (1986, 1987a, 1987b) using the well-known "drawbridge" paradigm. The dynamic field model provides a coherent explanation without invoking infant object knowledge. The authors show that small changes in model parameters can lead to qualitatively different outcomes. Because in typical infant cognition experiments, critical parameters are unknown, effects attributed to conceptual knowledge may be explained by the dynamics of habituation.