Despite its importance for the successful maturation of adolescents, relatively little is known about the development of prosocial behaviour during this life period. Attachment theory, although largely absent from the literature in this area, provides an informative theoretical description of how prosocial behaviours in response to the distress of others may be socialized. The aim of this study was to investigate the relative influence of attachment security to mothers, fathers, closest grandparents, and friends on the response to others' distress among early adolescents, via the mediation of empathic concern. Cross-sectional, quantitative survey data from 520 adolescents (aged 11-14) from 9 schools in Cape Town were used in the analyses. Zero-order correlations confirmed the expected positive relationships between attachment security to all four figures and empathic concern, as well as self-reported prosocial behaviour, but not for teacher-reported prosocial behaviour. Structural Equation Modelling revealed that empathic concern completely mediated the relation between attachment security and both self- and teacher-reported prosocial behaviour. Furthermore, when controlling for attachment security to mothers, fathers, closest grandparents and friends simultaneously, peer attachment emerged as the only significant indirect influence on self-reported prosocial behaviour. For teacher-reported prosocial behaviour, however, the indirect effect of friend attachment failed to reach significance. The results of this study provide theoretical insight into the influence of secure attachments on prosocial behaviour, and highlight the importance of supportive same-age peer relationships in adolescence.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-145). / This study sets out to explain and understand the behaviour of individuals who were involved in the anti-Apartheid struggle. These persons, more commonly referred to as activists, played key roles within various anti-Apartheid organisations between the period 1960 - 1994. Further, the study examines, via the life experiences of seven (7) activists drawn from various 'struggle' affiliations, including the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC) Umkhonto we Sizwe, their role, behaviour and political proximity to the current government and the existing political status quo. Here, the study ties together key psychological factors, which cross discursively between two distinct political landscapes, that of Apartheid and the demands of a post-Apartheid South Africa. In so doing, the study reflects substantively on the psychology of activists during, and post, the Apartheid era and critically examines contextually emphasised notions of political activism, the complexity of forgiveness and remorse and the ever-increasing anxiety of reconciliation, nation building and development. The study proposes that the activist of today is not the activist of yesteryears and that individual metamorphosis is closely tied to political transmutation and, in the South African context, the often burdening (but necessary) process of social transformation.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-113). / Epistemic actions are physical actions which increase the speed, accuracy, and/or robustness of internal computation by allowing cognitive work to be off-loaded to the environment, thus simplifying internal computation. Previous studies on epistemic action are limited in that they demonstrate that epistemic actions may only improve task performance within tasks which are inherently spatial in nature. In this regard, a cross-linguistic replication of an experiment by Maglio et al. (1999) which required participants to produce as many words as possible within five minutes from a string of seven random letters was performed in order to investigate epistemic actions in a verbal task domain.

Bibliography: leaves 176-188. / This study sought to develop an understanding of the ways in which rights are conceived of and made use of by people diagnosed with mental illness. This research sheds light on the processes involved in actualising rights in the lives of people diagnosed with mental illness. It focuses on the experiences of people diagnosed with mental illnesses living in the community.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-74). / Considerable research evidence suggests that post-operative cognitive impairment is a common complication of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. This study evaluated the short-term effects of CABG surgery on cognitive performance one to two days prior to surgery (baseline) and one-month post-surgery (follow up). 40 CABG surgical patients and 40 healthy, nonsurgical control participants were assessed with a standard neurocognitive battery that evaluated seven areas of cognitive functioning. Visioconstruction, visual memory, verbal memory, attention, psychomotor speed, executive functioning and language were measured. Additionally, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) were included to assess mood and anxiety states pre- and post-operatively. Demographic data pertaining to participants' general medical conditions were also collected. The repeated measures ANOV A with mixed designs procedure showed cognitive improvement on the domains of visioconstruction (p = 0.017), visual memory (p = 0.001), psychomotor speed (p = 0.001), executive functioning (p = 0.012) and language (p = 0.001). Significant cognitive decline on the domain of verbal memory (p = 0.026) was also found in both control and surgical groups. Furthermore, changes in mood and anxiety states did not influence post-operative changes in neurocognitive performance. The results yielded in the present study are mixed and confirm the multifactorial problem of studying cognitive functioning post-CABG surgery.

Disordered sleep in PTSD constitutes a major component of the presenting symptomatology. However, the literature on PTSD and sleep is characterized by discrepancies across studies, especially due to the fact that some use objective and some use subjective measures of sleep quality. As a result, disordered sleep and its underlying mechanism have been ambiguously characterized in PTSD. Our research focused on the link between PTSD and disordered sleep, using both objective and subjective measures of sleep quality. Specifically, we investigated hypervigilance (one of the three symptom clusters in the PTSD diagnosis) as an underlying mechanism of this link. We also investigated whether hypervigilance affects dream content and themes in individuals with PTSD.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / Parenting programmes have been shown to have wide-ranging benefits, including the prevention of behavioural and emotional problems in children as well as child maltreatment. The majority of research conducted on parenting programmes is from high-income countries, with little available knowledge on programmes within low- and middle-income countries, such as South Africa. This study sought to identify, as far as possible, the range of parenting programmes offered in South Africa and investigate their design and evaluation practices in relation to best practices. It also sought to identify high-quality programmes which could be scaled-up successfully. This is particularly important in South Africa due to the country’s high rates of violence and child maltreatment.

This study explored the relationship between maternal involvement and child adjustment in two parent and single parent families. This study examined whether the amount of involvement by mothers differed according to family structure and whether greater mother involvement was associated with better adjustment in children. The study further examined to what extent maternal involvement accounted for the child's adjustment when other factors such as socio-economic status were taken into account.

Includes bibliographical references. / Dreaming is yet to be studied in relation to sleep microstructure. By endeavouring to study mentation in relation to the finer neurophysiological processes underlying the rhythmicity of the sleep cycles, dream science stands to benefit from the wealth of knowledge of these processes. While relationships between dreaming and certain of these processes have been identified in the literature, a comprehensive study of dreaming in relation to all of the recognized components of the sleep microstructure is completely lacking. With this in mind, the main aim of this study was to examine sleep microstructure in relation to dreaming and determine whether there is any relationship between dream recall and the various types of phasic arousal phenomena during NREM sleep, as systematised within the global framework of the cyclic alternating pattern (CAP).

Includes bibliographical references. / A review of the literature indicates that a physiological function for dreaming has not yet been empirically established. Based on recent findings regarding the neural correlates of dreaming, this study tested the Freudian hypothesis that dreams protect sleep. In order to do this, sleep architecture in patients who had experienced dream loss as a result of thrombotic stroke in the region of the posterior cerebral arteries was compared with that of patients with the same pathology who had not experienced dream loss. Using medical records, structural neuro-imaging, clinical interviews, neuropsychological testing, analysis of subjective sleep quality, and polysomnographic data collected over two consecutive nights in the sleep laboratory, two non-dreaming and three dreaming cases were studied. Analysis of the individual case studies indicates that sleep was disrupted in both non-dreaming cases.