Vagal tone (measured via respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) and vagal withdrawal (measured by decreases in RSA) have been identified as physiological measures of self-regulation, but little is known how they may relate to the regulation of cognitive activity as measured through executive function (EF) tasks. We expected that baseline measures of vagal tone, thought to be an indicator of attention, would correlate with EF performance. We also predicted that vagal withdrawal would allow for the reorientation of attention that is needed to succeed on EF tasks, but too much withdrawal would be detrimental. RSA measured at baseline was indeed related to EF performance in 220 3.5-year-old children, and those who exhibited a moderate decrease in RSA during the EF tasks outperformed children whose RSA decreased by too little or too much. These findings implicate vagal tone withdrawal as a psychophysiological measure of higher cognitive processes, most likely substantiated through increases in the levels of focused attention.

The affect-tone of relationship paradigms-the extent to which a person expects people and relationships to be hostile and malevolent or safe and enriching-is an important dimension on which individuals and various psychopathological populations differ. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this can be conceptualized as the affective coloring of the object world; from a social-cognitive perspective, this can be viewed as the affective quality of interpersonal expectancies. This study provides preliminary support for the validity of 2 measures of affect-tone of relationship paradigms: one for use with the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and the other for use with interview data. Positive findings included significant correlations between the TAT and interview measures, between the TAT measure and similar dimensions assessed from free-response person descriptions and by questionnaire, and between the interview measure and self-reported social adjustment. The results point to both within-subject consistency and variability in the affect-tone of relationship paradigms across situations and relationships. This research was supported by the Faculty Fund, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan. An extended report of these findings is available on request from the authors.We thank Christopher Peterson for methodological advice and for comments on a draft of the manuscript, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft.

We used longitudinal personality data to test whether number and quality of roles were associated with health and self‐enhancement in 100 privileged midlife women. Number of roles (from the set of partner, parent, and worker) was not related to autonomy, individuality, and complexity, as had been hypothesized, but to respect for norms, being well‐organized considering oneselt like other people. Through women with one role were lower in well‐being than women with more than one, hierarchical multiple regression showed no advantage to number of roles after psychological health at age 21 was taken in to account. However, quality of role, as assessed by marital satisfaction and status level in work, was associated with contentment and effective functioning, respectively, even after antecedent psychological functioning was taken into account. Particular roles were associated with particular advantages. The enhancement model of the accumulation of roles is compared with Erikson's theory of the development of personality.

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The cotnplexity of mental representations of self and others is a central dimension of personality structure and interpersonal functioning. The richness, differentiation, and integration of representations develops throughout childhood and adolescence and differs among individuals and among various psychopathological populations. The nature and development of mental representations is central to object relations theories in psychoanalysis, and has been receiving empirical attention in the social cognition literature. This article reports the development of instruments for measuring the complexity of mental representations from narrative data, based on an integration of object relations and social cognition research. The present study provides preliminary support for the validity of two measures, one for use with the TAT, and the other for use with interview data such as research interviews, psychotherapy transcripts, and early memories.Based on clinical observation of patients with severe personality disorders, object relations theorists have argued that the content, stmcture, and affective quality of representations of the self, others, and relationships are critical in mediating interpersonal functioning in intimate relationships (for reviews see Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983;

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