Maija Lundén & Maarit Silvén

Infants’ dyadic play interaction with mother and father – Familial differences in co-regulation predict children’s language and communicative development

Few studies have compared parent and infant co-regulated play in maternal and paternal dyads or variation in co-regulation at the family level. In this study, we observed Finnish infants’ co-regulation during dyadic play interaction with mother and father at 7 months (N = 24 families). The main interest was to investigate whether parent gender influences co-regulation and how familial differences in co-regulation relate to children’s language and communicative skills at 14 months. In general, the degree parent and infant were actively engaged in co-regulating joint play activities did not differ between maternal and paternal dyads. Moreover, we used cluster analysis to identify groups of families with different co-regulation profiles in mid-infancy. Familial differences in co-regulated play were related to children’s vocabulary size, communicative gestures, actions with objects and imitation of adult actions beyond infancy. The findings suggest that infants’ interactional experiences with both parents are important for later development.

Keywords: co-regulated communication, mother-infant and father-infant dyads, family-level, longitudinal

Sanna Aulankoski

How to develop psychotherapies?

Producing new psychotherapy models based on psychological theories, tracking common factors and integrating psychotherapies with one another have been the main ways of developing psychotherapies. These paths are critically assessed in the article and it is suggested that instead, we should deepen our understanding of therapies on the philosophical level, create concepts that describe therapeutic action more adequately and emphasize the identity of therapies as design science. Considering psychotherapies as design science would help us to see that in the field of therapies the main aim is not to produce knowledge of psychological problems or psychological change but knowledge of therapy itself. Pragmatism should be the most comprehensive context in generating knowledge of psychotherapies and it should guide the development of all kinds of therapies.

Keywords: developing psychothreapies, philosophy of psychotherapy, psychotherapy research, pragmatism

Henri Kauhanen

On Aristotle’s Psychology

In this essay, I review the main tenets of Aristotle’s theory of psychology, placing them in their historical context. I begin by discussing Aristotle’s general definition of soul and how the definition is connected to his metaphysical and methodological postulates. I then turn to an elucidation of his remarks in sensory and cognitive psychology, two domains on whose investigation Aristotle placed much emphasis. I do not discuss Aristotle’s remarks concerning personality, recoverable from his writings on moral and political philosophy, in the present essay. After presenting Aristotle’s views on the localization of the various functions of the soul, I conclude the essay with a brief discussion of Aristotle’s legacy in medieval philosophy and of the import of his psychological theory after the Early Modern ”Cartesian revolution”.

Keywords: Aristotle, cognitive psychology, history of psychology, perception