Non-manual elements of sign language acquisition

The sign language contains manual signs and non-manual components which be can used as markers for certain grammatical structures. This article presents the process of acquisition of non-manual sign language elements in children whose first of communication is the sign language. This analysis includes grammatical structures that are signalled non-manually: negation, adverbial, wh-question, closed-ended question, conditional clause and topicalisation (emphasis on the sentence topic). We also present a discussion about the mechanisms of acquiring non-manual elements of the sign language.

Subjective and situational predictors of success in early childhood education: a developmental approach

The article presents the results of research on chosen symptoms and situational determinants of the “success at school” of a primary school pupil. It was assumed that for a child to adapt to the challenges posed by school the following factors were important: a sense of acceptance, a sense of support, a sense of social exclusion and the ability to assess one’s own achievements. The study involved 173 children from grades 2 to 5. Data were collected twice using three tools: SPAS questionnaire (Matějček, Vágnerová, 1992), SUSPO (Mikšík, 2004) and QSL authoring tool. The results show: 1) the role of subjective conditions and their changes over time, 2) the role of the climate in educational environment, and 3) the prospect for the optimization of and increase in the effectiveness with which children adapt to school in the first period of learning

The objective of this study was to answer the question whether the properties of parental attitudes manifested by mothers and fathers are related to the level of adolescent shyness and the intensity of egocentrism in their offspring. The question of the relationship between shyness and egocentrism of adolescents was also posed. The following findings were expected: 1) the overprotective, overdemanding, inconsistent and rejecting attitudes are to a greater degree connected with a higher level of adolescent shyness than the accepting and autonomy giving attitudes; 2) the overprotective, overdemanding, inconsistent and rejecting attitudes are to a greater degree connected with a higher level of egocentrism in adolescents than the accepting and autonomy giving attitudes, and: 3) there exists a positive relationship between shyness and the level of adolescent egocentrism.
The theoretical grounds for this research were: the concept of parental attitudes (Plopa, 2005), the concept of adolescent egocentrism (Elkind, 1967, 1985) taking two types of egocentrism into account – the personal fable and imaginary audience, as well as the concept of shyness as deve­loped by Philip Zimbardo (2011).
A total of 120 Polish “gymnasium” (lower secondary school) pupils aged 13–14 years were tested. The shy group amounted to 84 persons, 43 of whom were girls and 41 were boys. The absence of shyness was declared by 36 persons, 20 girls and 16 boys. Three measuring instruments were used: The Parental Attitude Scale of Plopa in the version for mothers and fathers, the Stanford Shyness Survey of Zimbardo and the unpublished Adolescent Egocentrism Questionnaire of Ludwika Wojciechowska and Żywek. The results of the research allowed the following statements to be made: 1) the attitude of excessive demands on the part of the mother is most strongly connected with adolescent shyness; 2) the overprotective attitude manifested by the mother most strongly relates to the egocentrism dimension of the personal fable; 3) the mother’s attitude of excessive demands is most strongly related to the egocentrism dimension of the imaginary audience; 4) a positive relationship exists between shyness and the level of adolescent egocentrism.
 

The Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised questionnaire: factorial structure, reliability and a short version of the scale in a Polish sample

The Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised is one of the most popular self-report instruments assessing adult attachment in the sphere of avoidance and anxiety. Although the scale is used in Poland, its psychometric properties are not sufficiently documented. In the study, we set out to: estimate the psychometric properties of the scale, controlling for the common method variance (method bias); and introduce a short version of the scale. The sample was composed of 781 adults between the age of 16 and 81. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis supported two-factorial ECR-R structure indicating problems with low factor loadings, which deteriorated even more after controlling for the common method variance. On the basis of the content of the items and their psychometric properties we proposed a short 16-item form of the ECR-R scale which revealed a good model fit and factor loadings. However, the effects of the common method variance on factor loadings and the avoidance-anxiety relation were found to be substantial. The results revealed that the relation between avoidance and anxiety was due to the shared method variance and not to the attachment itself. The issues concerning the construction of attachment self-report scales are discussed along with practical implications for the further use of the ECR-R scale in Poland, named as the DBZ-R (36-items) or the DBZ-RS (the short version).

The Relationship between religiousness and the sense of meaning in life and hope in late adolescence

The religiousness of young people is strongly associated with discovering life goals, identity formation, and the sphere of values. During this period there occur dynamic changes in religious beliefs and behaviours, as well as the process of discovering the meaning of life and creating hope. The purpose of this article is to examine the relationships between religion analysed in terms of personal constructs and post-critical beliefs and the sense of meaning in life, as well as two types of hope: basic hope and hope for success. The research was conducted on a group of 198 people (104 men and 94 women) aged 18–23 years. The results showed that religiousness is more strongly associated with the presence of meaning in life than with searching for it, and more with basic hope than with hope for success. The factor that differentiated people in terms of meaning in life and hope was the character of their attitude towards religion.

I am not a child anymore. Quasi-rituals of leaving childhood in teenagers’ narrations. Anthropological psychology approach

Referring to both the psychological concepts of human development (Erikson, 1997; Labouvie-Vief, 1990) and its anthropological ones (Eliade, 1990; van Gennep, 2006; Turner, 2010), and embedding them in the psychology of myth (Pankalla, Klaus, 2010; Zagórska, 2007), the authors conducted an empirical exploration aimed at finding out whether the adolescents’ behaviours which serve to leave childhood bear the markings of contemporary rites of passage (in their initial phase). However, because these behaviours are highly degraded, residual, they were defined as quasi-rituals of leaving childhood, and in a broader sense – quasi-mythical behaviours (mythos-type behaviours). Analyzing the narratives of 40 teenagers aged 13–16, of both sexes, from a few lower secondary schools in a small and a big city and using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a number of this kind of behaviours were identified. It was found that teenagers – in the absence of socially sanctioned rites of passage and clear criteria of being adult – imitate some adult behaviours, often negative ones, hoping thereby to obtain the status of an adult. Quasi-rituals of leaving childhood are for adolescents a concrete expression of the activity of separating themselves from being perceived as children, but also from any attempts on the part of adults at imposing tasks of adulthood on them. The mythical overtones of such activities stem from the teenagers’ belief in the uniqueness of the adult phase of life, to which they ascribe divine qualities.
 

Emancypacja kobiet w dobie Polski Ludowej. Recenzja książki Małgorzaty Fidelis pt. Kobiety, komunizm i industrializacja w powojennej Polsce, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo W.A.B, 2015.

Sprawozdanie z XVII Europejskiej Konferencji Psychologii Rozwojowej
8–12 września 2015 roku, Braga (Portugalia)