Age compression of behaviours in the development of children.
A cognitive and socio-cultural view

The article focuses on a a social phenomenon known as the age compression of behaviours, described as the dysregulation of boundaries between childhood and adulthood in the area of consumer, social and  product usage behaviours. The age compression of behaviours was defined as reducing the time from the birth of the child to the moment of undertaking behaviours, which in previous decades were common for adolescents and adults. This phenomenon is discussed from a cognitive perspective, as an effect of  acceleration related to certain areas of both children’s cognitive development, as and socio-cultural changes which influence changes in the way children are treated. It was assumed that we simultaneously observe behaviours which, on the one hand, are based on a dysregulation of cognitive processes – accelleration and cognitive asynchrony, and, on the other hand, result from the adaptation to the changing conditions of how children function.
 

Finger counting and its role in the development of math competence

Finger counting plays an important role in mathematical cognition, especially in the acquisition of the concept of number and elementary math competence. Fingers are spontaneously used to count because of their constant availability and easiness of manipulation. Stable counting order within hand facilitates the acquisition of ordinal as well as cardinal numbers. Additionally, using fingers to count alleviates working memory load and allows constant control of counting accuracy. Apart from the usefulness for counting practice, cognitive representations of fingers are strongly interconnected with representations of numbers. Finger gnosis (the quality of the brain representations of fingers) is a good predictor of current as well as future math achievement. There is also evidence that the training of finger differentiation leads to improvements in math achievement.
 

Child’s age and sex and the organization of social development
environment of young children in Poland

The article presents the results of research on the quality of social environment for early childhood development and its subjective conditions. The research was conducted between 2010–2012. The participant group consisted of 972 children aged between 1 to 41 months and their parents of different socioeconomic status, inhabiting different parts of Poland. The research was carried out in their home space – the most natural environment for children. The IT-HOME/PL Inventory, a Polish adaptation of the American IT HOME Inventory (Infant/Todler Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment) by Betty M. Caldwell and Robert H. Bradley, was used. The results show that the social development environment differs visibly depending on the age of a child, which is coherent with the characteristics of the developmental phases presented in various concepts of human development. The first developmental period – infancy – finishes at the age of about one year, followed by early childhood in the second and third year of age. Each of these periods is characterized by different developmental needs of a small child requiring different organization of the developmental environment. However, according to the results achieved, the sex of the child is not a diversifying factor for the quality of social circles in which the child  develops in the period of early childhood.
 

Marital satisfaction and value crisis among women.
Mediating role of the differentiation of self

The study sought to investigate (1) the relationship between marital satisfaction and the value crisis among women, (2) the mediating role of the differentiation of Self. The sample consisted of 220 married women. The marital satisfaction was found to be inversely correlated with the value crisis. Greater marital satisfaction coincided with better differentiation of Self, while lower level of differentiation (less emotional reactivity, greater I position, less emotional cutoff and fusion with others) was significantly associated with higher difficulties in valuing. The differentiation of Self also mediated the linkage between the marital satisfaction and value crisis among women. The results support the searching hypothesis.

 

Marital satisfaction and value crisis among women.
Mediating role of the differentiation of self

The study sought to investigate (1) the relationship between marital satisfaction and the value crisis among women, (2) the mediating role of the differentiation of Self. The sample consisted of 220 married women. The marital satisfaction was found to be inversely correlated with the value crisis. Greater marital satisfaction coincided with better differentiation of Self, while lower level of differentiation (less emotional reactivity, greater I position, less emotional cutoff and fusion with others) was significantly associated with higher difficulties in valuing. The differentiation of Self also mediated the linkage between the marital satisfaction and value crisis among women. The results support the searching hypothesis.
 

Self-descriptive test of adolescents’ with mild intellectual disability coping in difficult situations with  significant persons (R-PDPI) - experimental version

The paper is concerned on presentation the projective instrument (R-PDPI) to get acquainted with youth’s with mild intellectual disability coping with teacher’s or parental humiliation and dominance and also mates’ bullying and isolation. The cognitive concept of universal social stress was adopted  to prepare the set of daily hassles (Tyszkowa, 1986; Hobfoll, 2006). The Content adequacy was checked by the competent judges (the Difference of Proportion Test for independent data). Then an empirical research in the target group of 17-21 years old made it possible to find the range of the coping strategies, declared by themselves, which were sorted comparatively to dimensions: active, directiveness and social costs (Hobfoll, 2006). Analyzes of discriminative value of type of dealing in each situations enable to find their scope and coherence. So the psychometric goodness of the instrument were proved.

Sprawozdanie z konferencji Starość jak ją widzi psychologia, 23–24 kwietnia 2015, Kraków

Recenzja: Sam Goldstein, Jack A. Naglieri (red.) (2014) Handbook of executive functioning. New York: Springer