Predicting Divorce among Newlyweds from the First Three Minutes of a Marital Conflict Discussion

This study tested the hypothesis that how a discussion of a marital conflict begins--in its first few minutes--is a predictor of divorce. The marital conflict discussion of 124 newlywed couples was coded using the Specific Affect Coding System, and the data were divided into positive, negative, and positive-minus-negative affect totals for five 3-minute intervals. It was possible to predict marital outcome over a 6-year period using just the first 3 minutes of data for both husbands and wives. For husbands this prediction improved as the groups diverged in the remaining 12 minutes; for wives the prediction remained equally powerful for the remaining 12 minutes as it had been in the first 3 minutes.     

Visibility distances with halogen and conventional headlights

Abstract.— Using visibility distance as a criterion, halogen and conventional continental European high and low-beam headlights were compared in a series of field experiments. On high-beam without opposing light the halogen headlights offered about 25% longer visibility distances than the conventional headlights. With both opposing cars using low-beam there was a slight advantage (<5 m) in favour of halogen headlights. The optimal dipping distance was a function of high-beam system (intensity) rather than low-beam system. Small differences in aiming, atmosphere etc. caused larger differences in visibility distance than did the headlight system.     

Benchmarking a computerized test of immediate verbal memory

We modified the traditional (verbal) digit span task for administration via computer and the Internet. This online version collects data on the floor and ceiling of a subject's span capacity, rather than generating a rough estimate of capacity based on a 50% success rate, as the traditional version does. We compared the two versions within adult subjects in two cohorts: college-age normal readers and college-age reading-disabled readers. To explore the reliability of the online version as a research tool, we employed the Bland-Altman approach to examine agreement between instruments. The online version yielded spans similar to those yielded by the traditional version, tending toward smaller values at the high end and larger values at the low end of span sizes, in the typical readers. It differentiated between the better and poorer readers reliably, and to the same extent as does the verbal version. The online version of the digit span task is comparable to the traditional version in assessing verbal span capacity; the code with which to implement the task is available at www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

自尊的毕生发展

自尊是心理学的一个重要研究领域, 文章介绍了自尊的毕生发展研究在近三十年来的进展, 主要探讨了自尊的稳定性及其毕生发展的影响因素, 包括年龄、性别、种族和文化、社会经济地位与家庭教养方式等方面, 指出自尊毕生发展的研究将来应关注自尊的纵向研究和本土化研究, 并注意区分和探讨不同形式自尊的发展变化。     

Psychodynamic assessment of changes in children with autism under psychoanalytic treatment

In this article the authors report insights into autism developed through their extensive experience of psychoanalytic therapy with children with autism. The fi rst stages of body psychic development are seriously disrupted by this pathology, resulting in primitive anxieties of falling and of being liquefi ed. These anxieties are connected to the fragile development of body ego and of its related spatiotemporal organisation. The changes in children observed by the authors during the therapeutic process lead them to offer a psychodynamic assessment tool, which revolves principally around the development of body ego. After the initial state of 'severe autism', the authors describe three stages: the stage of 'recovery of the skin' (Bick); the established 'symbiotic phase', subdivided into 'vertical then horizontal splitting of the body ego'; and fi nally the stage of 'individuation'. First, the authors describe the principal psychoanalytic approaches to autism and refl ect on the links possible with nonpsychoanalytic work.     

Dual-memory processes in crack cocaine dependents: The effects of childhood neglect on recall

Exposure to adversities during sensitive periods of neurodevelopment is associated with the subsequent development of substance dependence and exerts harmful, long-lasting effects upon memory functioning. In this study, we investigated the relationship between childhood neglect (CN) and memory using a dual-process model that quantifies recollective and non-recollective retrieval processes in crack cocaine dependents. Eighty-four female crack cocaine–dependent inpatients who did (N = 32) or did not (N = 52) report a history of CN received multiple opportunities to study and recall a short list composed of familiar and concrete words and then received a delayed-recall test. Crack cocaine dependents with a history of CN showed worse performance on free-recall tests than did dependents without a history of CN; this finding was associated with declines in recollective retrieval (direct access) rather than non-recollective retrieval. In addition, we found no evidence of group differences in forgetting rates between immediate- and delayed-recall tests. The results support developmental models of traumatology and suggest that neglect of crack cocaine dependents in early life disrupts the adult memory processes that support the retrieval of detailed representations of events from the past.