Predicting Follow‐up Outcomes in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: The Role of Change in Trust,Relationship‐Specific Attachment,and Emotional Engagement

Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT), an evidence‐based couple therapy (Johnson, Hunsley, Greenberg, & Schindler, 1999), strives to foster lasting change through the creation of secure attachment bonds in distressed couples. Although studies have demonstrated lasting change in follow‐up (Wiebe et al., in press), research is needed to investigate predictors of long‐term outcomes. Our goal was to investigate predictors of long‐term outcomes in relationship satisfaction. Relationship satisfaction was assessed across 24 months in a sample of 32 couples who received an average of 21 EFT sessions. Decreases in attachment avoidance were most predictive of higher relationship satisfaction across follow‐up. These findings support the theoretical assumption that EFT helps couples foster lasting change in relationship satisfaction through the facilitation of secure attachment bonds.     

Personal sacrifice and corporate cultures: career progression for disabled staff in higher education

Disabled people are under-represented in higher education (HE), especially in senior posts. This article reports research on the perspectives of career progression into leadership held by disabled staff in one post-1992 university. Findings indicated that some participants were already engaged in leadership or aspired to such roles, and reported positive experiences. However, participants also experienced barriers to progression, including a lack of awareness of equality and diversity among managers and colleagues, inadequate professional development opportunities and the competitive organisational culture of management that could impact on their health and work–life balance. We conclude that disabled staff in HE do not yet have equal opportunities for progression into leadership roles compared with their non-disabled peers. There is a need for realignment of the culture of leadership and management to make it more compatible with the full inclusion of disabled staff in HE such that their unique contributions are valued.     

Digital Inequality and Place: The Effects of Technological Diffusion on Internet Proficiency and Usage across Rural,Suburban, and Urban Counties*

Recently researchers have made efforts to reconceptualize digital inequality into discrete levels. These levels reflect access to and diffusion of technologies, proficiency in Internet usage, and propensity to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by information and communication technologies for assistance in daily life. We assess the utility of this approach for studying digital inequality across rural, suburban, and urban counties. Based on data from a 2005 nationally representative random sample telephone survey of 2,185 adults, the results provide mixed support for using this approach to studying digital inequality. In particular, we find that rural residents use Internet technologies less for assistance in helping with economics and other daily activities when compared with individuals from suburban and urban areas; however, our results suggest that this relationship is the product of the slow diffusion of advanced technologies to rural areas. The implications of these findings for understanding this under‐theorized form of inequality are discussed, and we make contributions to this literature through empirically addressing issues of digital capital.     

The Politics of Women's Economic Independence

We identify the political conditions that shape the economicposition of married/cohabiting women and of the economicallymost vulnerable group of women—single mothers. Specifically,we examine the determinants of reductions in single mothers'poverty rate due to taxes and transfers, and women's wages relativeto spouses'/ partners' wages. The Luxembourg Income Study archiveyields an unbalanced panel with 71 observations on 15 countries.The principal determinants of poverty reduction due to taxesand transfers are left government, constitutional veto points,and welfare generosity. The relative wage of women in couplesis a function mainly of female labor force participation, parttime work among women, and women's mobilization. In explainingthe causal pathways to these outcomes, we highlight the interrelationshipsof welfare state, care, and labor market policies.     

Effects of a Punitive Environment on Children's Executive Functioning: A Natural Experiment

Few studies have examined the influence of environmental factors on children's executive functioning (EF) performance. The present study examined the effects of a punitive vs. non‐punitive school environment on West African children's EF skills. Tasks included a ‘cool’ (relatively non‐affective) and ‘hot’ (relatively affective/motivational) version of three EF tasks: delay of gratification; gift delay; and dimensional change card sort. Children had more difficulties with the hot versions of the tasks than the cool versions, and older children outperformed younger children. After controlling for verbal ability (Peabody picture vocabulary test‐third edition), a consistent pattern of interaction between school and grade level emerged. Overall, kindergarten children in the punitive school performed no differently than their counterparts in the non‐punitive school. However, in grade 1, children in the punitive school performed significantly worse than their counterparts in the non‐punitive school. These results point to the need to consider interactions among discipline style, age, and internalization processes of self‐regulation to better understand environmental influences on EF development.     

Are Female Executives Over‐represented in Precarious Leadership Positions?

We use a sample of CEO appointments at US corporations over the years 1992–2004 to test the 'glass cliff' hypothesis, which posits that females are appointed to leadership positions at firms that are in a precarious financial condition. Our analysis utilizes three measures of stock-price-based financial performance and two distinct control samples of appointments of males to the CEO position. We find that corporate performance preceding CEO appointments tends to favor females, implying that females (males) are appointed to the CEO position largely at times when the firm is in relatively better (worse) financial health. Disaggregating the data by appointments in up versus down markets, at high-risk versus low-risk firms, and by calendar time yield similar conclusions. There appears to be no glass cliff facing female CEOs at US firms. Our findings suggest a need for additional research to identify where and for what types of positions this phenomenon is prevalent.     

The Development of Gaze Following in a Third‐Party Context

Infants follow the gaze of an individual with whom they are directly interacting by the end of the first year. By 18 months infants are capable of learning novel words in observational (or third‐party) contexts (Floor & Akhtar, 2006). To examine third‐party gaze following in 12‐ and 18‐month‐olds, the parent and experimenter engaged in a conversation while the infant was present. For 8 trials approximately every 30 sec the experimenter would turn her head to the right or left to fixate on a toy placed on either side of the room with the parent following suit. In the first experiment, the parent was seated next to the infant and the experimenter opposite, whereas in the second experiment the positions of the adults were switched. In Experiment 1, 18‐month‐olds but not 12‐month‐olds followed gaze. In Experiment 2, 12‐month‐olds acquired a tendency to follow gaze during the experimental session. These results suggest that an incipient ability to follow third‐party gaze is present by 12 months and that infants acquire a more reliable and general ability to follow the gaze of noninteractive others between 12 and 18 months.     

How People Perceive and Will Cope with Risks from the Diffusion of Ubiquitous Information and Communication Technologies

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly pervasive and continue to reshape our environment. This trend carries different risks. Therefore, the early sensitization of people to these risks, as well as improving their capacity for protective coping behavior, is essential. Based on the protection motivation theory (PMT), we examined with structural equation modeling the relationships between different components of threat and coping appraisal to explain protective and nonprotective responses. Calculations were performed with data from a representative survey on perception and use of ICT among German residents (N= 5,030). Our findings largely supported the proposed model: an increased perceived threat was positively related to the intentions to react protectively and nonprotectively. Perceived coping efficacy increased the protective and decreased the nonprotective responses. Negative affect enhanced the perceived threat and the nonprotective response, but inhibited protective intentions. The implications of these findings on how to sensitize people to the risks of these new technologies are outlined.