Hours of nonmaternal care and infants’ proximity-seeking behavior in the strange situation

textRobertson and Bowlby (1952) found that prolonged separations from the mother lower the extent to which infants seek proximity to their mother. Although prolonged separations are no longer common today, some infants experience extremely long hours of nonmaternal care, which may lead them to seek less proximity to their mother. I examined this hypothesis using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Development: Early Child Care and Youth Development Study (N = 1,281). A series of regression analyses revealed that infants’ hours of nonmaternal care at 4 to 6, 7 to 9, and 10 to 12 months, but not at 1 to 3 or 13 to 15 months, were associated with their proximity-seeking behavior in the Strange Situation at 15 months. Using a polynomial regression analysis, I further found a cubic relation between the number of nonmaternal care hours at 7 to 9 months and infants’ proximity-seeking behavior. Specifically, proximity-seeking behavior rapidly declined during two time periods: when infants spent from 0 to 10 hours per week in nonmaternal care and when they spent over 60 hours per week in nonmaternal care. I also found that mothers’ and nonmaternal caregivers’ sensitivity was associated with infants’ proximity-seeking behavior, and proximity-seeking behavior predicted young children's ability to control their behavior and also the amount of time that they were able to focus their attention on their mother or their experimenter during a developmentally challenging task at 36 months. Findings reported in this dissertation highlight the important role of proximity-seeking behavior in the attachment relationship formed with the caregiver during infancy and the development of self-control and attention during the preschool years.Human Development and Family Science

The Relationship between Psycholinguistic Features of Religious Words and Core Dimensions of Religiosity: A Survey Study with Japanese Participants

Previous studies have reported that religious words and religiosity affect mental processes and behaviors. However, it is unclear what psycholinguistic features of religious words (e.g., familiarity, imageability, and emotional aspects) are associated with each dimension of personal religiosity (intellect, ideology, public practice, private practice, and experience). The purpose of this study was to examine whether and how the above-mentioned psycholinguistic features of religious words correlate with each of the core dimensions of religiosity. Japanese participants evaluated four psycholinguistic features of twelve religious words using a 5-point Semantic Differential scale for familiarity and imageability and a 9-point Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale for emotional valence and emotional arousal. The participants also rated their own religiosity using the Japanese version of the Centrality of Religiosity Scale (JCRS). The results of the study revealed that (1) the scales measuring the psycholinguistic features of religious words were statistically reliable; (2) the JCRS was reliable; (3) the familiarity, emotional valence, and emotional arousal of religious words and each mean dimensional score of the JCRS score correlated positively with each other; and (4) highly religious people had higher familiarity and higher emotional arousal to religious words than non-religious people, whereas highly religious people had higher emotional valence to religious words in comparison with non-religious and religious people. In addition, religious people had higher familiarity to religious words than non-religious people. Taken together, these findings suggest that psycholinguistic features of religious words contribute to the detection of religiosity

Romantic attachment and motivation for sex in emerging adulthood: Do gender and self-esteem matter?

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between attachment and sexual motivation taking into account the roles of global self-esteem and gender in emerging adults. Sample comprised 581 Czech emerging adults (96 male, mean age=22.72; SD=1.29) who are currently in a relationship and participate in a 5-years longitudinal study Paths to adulthood. Five structurally equivalent multigroup models (by gender) were estimated in Mplus 7 – one model for each sex motivation.Both attachment dimensions and global self-esteem were weakly associated with different motivations to have sex with different pattern of relationships for males and females. Males’ motivations to have sex did not seem to be related to their self-esteem. In females, higher self-esteem slightly increased intrinsic motivations and decreased extrinsic motivation. Attachment dimensions seem to affect males’ motivation to have sex more than females’ motivation

Are one’s attachment avoidance toward a particular person and his/her placement of this particular person in the attachment hierarchy inversely overlapping? Four bifactor-analysis studies

Do one’s hierarchical preference for attachment support from a particular person over other people (attachment hierarchy) and his/her discomfort with closeness and uneasiness about being dependent on that particular person (attachment avoidance) inversely overlap? These two constructs have been distinctly conceptualized. Attachment hierarchy has been regarded as a normative characteristic of attachment relationships, while attachment avoidance has been considered to reflect an individual difference of relationship quality. Employing bifactor analyses, we demonstrated a unidimensional general factor of these two concepts in four studies exploring Czech young adults’ relationships with mother, father, friends, and romantic partner (Study 1); U.S. young adults’ relationships with a romantic partner (Study 2); Czech adolescents’ relationships with mother, father, and friends (Study 3); and Japanese young adults’ relationships with mother, father, and romantic partner (Study 4). These convergent results provide the replicable and generalizable evidence that one’s attachment avoidance toward a particular person and her/his placement of that particular person in the attachment hierarchy are inversely overlapping

Transfer of Early to Late Adolescents’ Attachment Figures in a Multicohort Six-Wave Study : Person- and Variable-Oriented Approaches

Although Bowlby proposed that adolescence is a major developmental period to transfer their attachment figures from parents to other people, no comprehensive longitudinal study on attachment transfer from early to late adolescence exists. This study employed 215 early to late adolescents between ages 11 and 18 years (X---age = 14.02, SD = 2.05 at Wave 1), using a six-wave 2-year longitudinal design with four different cohorts: 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th grades. Both person- and variable-oriented analyses revealed that once adolescents have transferred their attachment figures from parents to peers, they were unlikely to revert to parents in the future. The transfer of attachment from parents to friends is more prevalent in early adolescence than in late adolescence. However, throughout adolescence, friends were not considered to be exclusive attachment figures, whereas parents and romantic partners were. Finally, many adolescents spent 4 months or fewer until their romantic partner became the primary attachment figure

言語と意味の連合に関する調査・実験研究2021

本研究は，広島大学教育学部共同研究プロジェクトによって支援を受けた。またこの他に，研究代表者神原利宗は科研費若手研究，村田学術振興財団研究助成，浦上食品・食文化振興財団研究助成などの研究支援をいただいていた