Maternal Separation Anxiety: Its Developmental Course and Relation to Maternal Mental Health

Maternal separation anxiety is a construct that describes a mother's experience of worry, sadness, or guilt during short-term separations from her child. This investigation examined potential differences in psychological correlates between mothers with high and low levels of anxiety when their children were 8 months, 3 1/2 years, and 6 years of age. High levels of maternal separation anxiety had different psychological correlates contingent upon the age of the child. Depressive symptomatology and separation anxiety were unrelated at times 1 and 2, but when the children were 6 years old, mothers who had the highest levels of anxiety tended to have more depressive symptomatology, fewer coping skills, a more negative representation of self, and embraced more traditional sex-role values. Study findings are discussed with respect to their relevance to the mother's role as developmental partner to the child and linked to major theoretical perspectives that address the mother-child relationship.     

Effects of curriculum organisation on study progress in engineering studies

Procrastination and time investment areimportant issues in the study of studentperformance and progress. Previous research onthese issues has mainly concentrated uponindividual differences between students inpersonality and time management skills.However, study progress depends not only onstudent characteristics but also on theorganisation of the curriculum. A multilevelanalysis that was carried out on dataconcerning 1578 engineering students on twelvedifferent programmes provides evidence thatvariation in study progress can partly beattributed to curriculum organisation. Thespread of study activities over the year,instruction characteristics and examinationcharacteristics were found to have effects onprogress. This implies that institutes inhigher education may improve their studentsprogress to some extent by means of efficientcurriculum organisation.