Conversation Orientation Moderates the Relationship between Information Sharing of Medically Assisted Reproduction and Child Adjustment

Parents who experienced infertility have increasingly used medically assisted reproduction (MAR) to add children to their families over the past few decades. These parents will need to decide if they will tell their children about being conceived using MAR. Although MAR information sharing operates within family contexts, little is known about the role of conversation orientation—one family contextual factor—in child outcomes associated with MAR information sharing in middle childhood. Derived from the Family Communication Patterns Theory, this study proposes that conversation orientation moderates the associations between MAR information sharing and children's psychosocial adjustment. This proposal was tested using a sample of 81 6- to 12-year-old MAR-conceived children from 55 families and a structured observational measure of conversation orientation. Multiple regression analyses showed that MAR information sharing interacted with conversation orientation to influence children's behavioral and attention problems but not emotional problems. In families with high conversation orientation, MAR information sharing was not significantly associated with children's behavioral and attention problems. In families with low conversation orientation, MAR information sharing was significantly associated with an increase in children's behavioral and attention problems. Results of this exploratory study demonstrate the potential significance of general communication orientation in understanding child outcomes of MAR information sharing and highlight the needed family context nuances in MAR research.     

Solitude in context: On the role of culture,immigration, and acculturation in the experience of time to oneself

Older adults spend much time in solitude (without social interaction), putting them at risk of loneliness, especially if aging outside their country of origin (e.g., Chinese immigrants to Canada). Yet, cultural contextual factors that may reduce loneliness in moments of solitude are poorly understood. This study sought to disentangle the roles of culture, immigration, and acculturation in solitude-loneliness associations across two countries. Community-dwelling adults aged 51–85 in Vancouver (N = 58 East Asian, N = 37 European/North American) and in Hong Kong (N = 56 East/Southeast Asian) completed approximately 30 ecological momentary assessments over 10 days on their current affect and social situations. Participants in Vancouver spent more time in solitude, desired solitude more, and felt less lonely overall than those in Hong Kong. Multilevel models revealed that moments of solitude felt lonelier than moments spent in social interaction, but only for individuals less acculturated to their host culture or not concurrently desiring solitude. Associations held regardless of host culture, cultural heritage, or immigration status. Findings suggest that solitude need not feel lonely if it happens by choice and if individuals feel connected with their host culture, for both immigrant older adults and those aging in their birth country.     

Identifying subgroups that succeed or fail with three levels of physical activity intervention: the Activity Counseling Trial.

The authors used recursive partitioning methods to identify combinations of baseline characteristics that predict 2-year physical activity success in each of 3 physical activity interventions delivered in the multisite Activity Counseling Trial. The sample consisted of 874 initially sedentary primary care patients, ages 35-75 years, who were at risk for cardiovascular disease. Predictors of 2-year success were specific to each intervention and represented a range of domains, including physiological, demographic, psychosocial, health-related, and environmental variables. The results indicate how specific patient subgroups (e.g., obese, unfit individuals; high-income individuals in stable health) may respond differently to varying levels and amounts of professional assistance and support. The methods used provide a practical first step toward identifying clinically meaningful patient subgroups for further systematic investigation.     

Instructions Moderate the Relationship between Creative Performance in Figural Divergent Thinking and Reasoning Capacity

In this study with within-subject design, the “be-creative effect” was investigated using three instructions in figural divergent-thinking tasks: Besides a be-fluent instruction, a be-creative instruction, and a be-creative instruction combined with strategies were applied. In addition, reasoning ability as part of fluid intelligence, self-reported creative ideation, current motivation after reading the instructions, and task-related interest were assessed. Multilevel analysis applying random-intercept-constant-slope models found significant main effects of the instructions on creative performance and fluency. Both be-creative instructions yielded a rise in creative performance in divergent thinking tasks with additional improvement due to supporting strategies. The be-fluent instruction enhanced the quantity of ideas but decreased creative performance. Task-related interest turned out to be a better predictor of creative performance than the self-estimated expected interest prior to working on the task. Moreover, the relationship of creative performance and reasoning ability was moderated by instruction, with no relationship with a be-fluent instruction and small to moderate positive effects with both instructions emphasizing creative ideas.     

A measurement model of women's behavioral risk taking.

The current study was designed to gain a better understanding of the nature of the relationship between substance use and sexual risk taking within a community sample of women (N = 1,004). Using confirmatory factor analysis, the authors examined the factor structure of sexual risk behaviors and substance use to determine whether they are best conceptualized as domains underlying a single, higher order, risk-taking propensity. A 2 higher order factor model (sexual risk behavior and substance use) provided the best fit to the data, suggesting that these 2 general risk domains are correlated but independent factors. Sensation seeking had large general direct effects on the 2 risk domains and large indirect effects on the 4 first-order factors and the individual indicators. Negative affect had smaller, yet still significant, effects. Impulsivity and anxiety were unrelated to sexual health risk domains.     

The effects of self‐explaining when learning with text or diagrams

Self‐explaining is an effective metacognitive strategy that can help learners develop deeper understanding of the material they study. This experiment explored if the format of material (i.e., text or diagrams) influences the self‐explanation effect. Twenty subjects were presented with information about the human circulatory system and prompted to self‐explain; 10 received this information in text and 10 in diagrams. Results showed that students given diagrams performed significantly better on post‐tests than students given text. Diagrams students also generated significantly more self‐explanations that text students. Furthermore, the benefits of self‐explaining were much greater in the diagrams condition. To discover why diagrams can promote the self‐explanation effect, results are interpreted with reference to the multiple differences in the semantic, cognitive and affective properties of the texts and diagrams studied.