The current study explored dynamics of secure state attachment expectations in everyday life in middle childhood, specifically state attachment carry-over and reactivity to experiences of caregiver support in the context of stress. In two independent samples (one community sample, N = 123; one adoption sample, N = 69), children (8–12 years) daily reported on their state attachment for respectively 14 and 7 consecutive days. Additionally, they reported daily on their experiences of distress and subsequent experiences of caregiver support. Results in both samples indicated that secure state attachment on a day-to-day basis is characterized by a significant positive carry-over effect, suggesting that state attachment fluctuations are (partially) self-predictive. In Study 1, experiencing no support following distress significantly related to intraindividual decreases in secure state attachment; in Study 2, experiencing effective support during distress related to intra-individual increases in secure state attachment. Taken together, the current studies provide novel and important insights into how state attachment temporally evolves on a day-to-day basis in middle childhood.

The project Dialect Levelling in West Sweden focuses on the dialect situation in the first decade of the 21st century compared with the dialects spoken in the same region in the 1940s–1960s. Seventy teenagers participating in group interviews have been recorded and their use of phonological and morphological variables has been analysed. Comparisons with data recorded in the same region by The Institute of Language and Folklore in 1940–1960 show that dialect levelling is under way. It seems that the population of this area no longer speak a traditional dialect. An important issue, however, is how much the traditional dialects have actually changed, and to what extent the method for collecting data affects the answer. In the mid-20th century, the praxis within Swedish dialectology for selecting informants was to find as old and rural dialect speakers as possible to represent a specific region, and the purpose was that of documenting the dialect as a linguistic system. Today, however, many studies select informants based on speaker variables, because the aim is to document the dialect situation (i.e. who uses what linguistic variants when), rather than the traditional dialect as a linguistic system. Thus, there is a distinct difference between a linguistic interest and a sociolinguistic one. In this paper I suggest that it is critical when discussing dialect change to observe this very methodological change. In order to illustrate this, the use of dialect variants by two informants recorded in 1948 is compared with the use of dialect variants by three informants recorded in 2007 and 2008. The informants are all from around a small rural village located approximately 70 km from Gothenburg in West Sweden. This is an area where a specific variety of West Swedish has been spoken. By comparing these individuals, the concept of dialect change is problematized.

Little information exists on the extent of day-to-day intra-individual variation in resting metabolic rate (RMR) in women. The present study has investigated the intra-individual variation in RMR of women during the menstrual cycle. Nineteen women (naturally cycling non-pill users) were recruited to the study. Anthropometric and RMR measurements were taken at least three times per week for the duration of one complete menstrual cycle; measurements were taken for a second, consecutive cycle in eight of the nineteen subjects. RMR was measured by indirect calorimetry using a ventilated hood system under standardized conditions. The measurements made throughout each complete menstrual cycle were averaged and the levels of inter- and intra-individual variation in RMR were assessed by determining the CV (%). Mean RMR of the group was 5686 (SD 674) kJ/d; inter-individual variation in RMR was 11·8 %. There were wide differences in the intra-individual variation in RMR of women (CV range 1·7–10·4 %). The CV in ten subjects was small (2–4 %), while the CV in nine women was high (5–10 %), indicating a significant variation in RMR during the menstrual cycle in certain subjects. Using statistical models, it has been shown that there was a significant effect on RMR due to a subject-specific level of variability; this was the case even when accounting for a possible training effect. In conclusion, the findings from our present study show that RMR cannot be assumed to be ‘stable’ in all women. The implications of intra-individual variation in RMR and its impact on energy balance needs further research.