Roles of living arrangements and grandmother social support in adolescent mothering and infant attachment.

Examined the roles of social support from adolescents' mothers and living arrangements in 197 adolescent mother–infant pairs. Major observational measures were teaching interactions, Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) scores, and infant attachment security. Adolescents living with neither mothers nor partners had better teaching interactions but lower HOME scores compared with those living with mothers. High mother support was associated with more secure infant attachment only for those adolescents living with partners. When mother support was low, adolescents living alone had more secure infants than adolescents living with partners. Although parenting scores were related to differences in demographics and personal resources (intelligence and social skills), these did not appear to be responsible for the major findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution.

Ambiguity resolution is a central problem in language comprehension. Lexical and syntactic ambiguities are standardly assumed to involve different types of knowledge representations and be resolved by different mechanisms. An alternative account is provided in which both types of ambiguity derive from aspects of lexical representation and are resolved by the same processing mechanisms. Reinterpreting syntactic ambiguity resolution as a form of lexical ambiguity resolution obviates the need for special parsing principles to account for syntactic interpretation preferences, reconciles a number of apparently conflicting results concerning the roles of lexical and contextual information in sentence processing, explains differences among ambiguities in terms of ease of resolution, and provides a more unified account of language comprehension than was previously available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Has psychology ever been a science of behavior? A comment on Skinner.

Argues that B. F. Skinner (see record 1988-00027-001) failed to recognize the role of behaviorism in the failure of psychology to become a science of behavior. The authors state that behaviorism has generated laws concerning the impact of behavior on certain environments instead of laws of behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Structure of Working Memory From 4 to 15 Years of Age.

The structure of working memory and its development across the childhood years were investigated in children 4-15 years of age. The children were given multiple assessments of each component of the A. D. Baddeley and G. Hitch (1974) working memory model. Broadly similar linear functions characterized performance on all measures as a function of age. From 6 years onward, a model consisting of 3 distinct but correlated factors corresponding to the working memory model provided a good fit to the data. The results indicate that the basic modular structure of working memory is present from 6 years of age and possibly earlier, with each component undergoing sizable expansion in functional capacity throughout the early and middle school years to adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Religious Participation, Interleukin-6, and Mortality in Older Adults.

This study prospectively examined the relationship between religious attendance, interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels, and mortality rates in a community-based sample of 557 older adults. Attending religious services more than once weekly was a significant predictor of lower subsequent 12-year mortality and elevated IL-6 levels (> 3.19 pg/mL), with a mortality ratio of .32 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.15,0.72; p     

Lesbian homoerotic transference in dialectic with developmental mourning: On the way to symbolism from the protosymbolic.

This clinical study illustrates the developmental nature of homoerotic transference, when the psychoanalyst is attuned to the evolving dynamics of the mourning process, in this case with a lesbian analysand. The analysand's psychic fantasies of the female analyst as a muse and a demon lover figure are seen to transform into discrete mother and father transferences, as split off feminine and aggressive parts of the self are reintegrated along with heterosexual desires and oedipal desires. Protosymbolic enactments in terms of romantic gift giving and other seductive overtures transform into symbolic expressions of love, concern, regret, and tenderness. A lesbian marriage is preserved, and the loss of intimacy with men is mourned so that desires for intimacy with men can be sublimated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Relational-Interdependent Self-Construal, Self-Concept Consistency, and Well-Being.

Examination of the assumptions underlying consistency perspectives in social and personality psychology reveals that they are based on an independent, individualistic view of the self. If the self is constructed as relational or interdependent with others, consistency may be less important in social behavior and well-being. Using a variety of measures of well-being, the studies showed that there is a weaker relation between consistency and well-being for individuals with a highly relational self-construal than for those with a low relational self-construal. Study 3 examined the association between the self-construal, consistency, authenticity, and well-being. These findings reveal the importance of a cultural analysis of theories of the self, personality, and well-being for further theory development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)