Creative Problem Solving and Problem Finding in Young Adults: Interconnections with Stress,Hassles, and Coping Abilities

This study examined the relationship among creative problem solving (PS) and problem generation (PG) abilities, stress and daily hassles, and coping skills in a sample of college undergraduates. Heirarchical regression analyses indicated that separate sets of both PS and PS task scores were predictive of scores on certain coping scales even after the variance accounted for by indices of stress and hassles was removed. Specifically, PG and PS abilities were negatively related to such coping processes as confrontation, distancing, escape-avoidance tendencies, and excessive acceptance of responsibility, and positively associated with more general adaptive qualities. The findings strongly suggest that PS and PG abilities are important components of an individual's overall capacity to cope with both major and minor stresses of life.     

Identity and Location Priming Effects and their Temporal Stability in Young and Older Adults

ABSTRACT

Unlike previous studies, the present experiment was designed to directly compare negative (NP) and positive priming (PP) in 37 young (mean age: 21.5 years) and 37 older adults (mean age: 69.4 years) by means of two independent identity- and location-based priming tasks. While identity PP was shown to be reduced in older adults, no age-related differences were found for location PP. This pattern of results supports the notion that mechanisms involved in identity- and location-based PP are largely independent of each other. Both age groups exhibited reliable identity and location NP although location NP was decreased in older adults. Extremely low temporal test–retest coefficients indicated that mechanisms underlying identity and location NP represent situational states rather than stable traits. This lack of temporal stability may also account for highly ambiguous results obtained in previous studies.     

Validity and Stability of the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory in a Nonforensic Sample of Young Adults

Scores were obtained for 103 Subjects on the Sixteen Personality Factor test, Form C; the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule; the Otis Quick Scoring Test, Form G; Raven's Progressive Matrices, Sets A-E; and on 47 handwriting variables. First, personality and intelligence variables, then handwriting variables were factored and rotated, after which factor scores were obtained. Through a regression of handwriting from personality and intelligence factor scores, it was found that 6 of 16 handwriting factors could be predicted by 5 of 10 personality and intelligence factors. These results and their relation to graphology are discussed.     

Sexual Enhancement for Young Adults

Despite the recent development of sexual enhancement programs, young, premarital aged adults (18 to 20) have usually been excluded from participation. Few models exist that attempt to meet the needs of this age group. In an effort to bridge this gap, a sexual enhancement workshop has been developed that focuses specifically on the needs of young adults.     

Not So Fast: Reassessing Gender Essentialism in Young Adults

We examined young adults’ essentialist reasoning about gender categories. Previous developmental results suggest that until age 9 or 10, children show marked essentialist reasoning about gender, but this disappears by early adulthood. In contrast, results from social cognition suggest that essentialist thinking about social categories persists into adulthood. To address this discrepancy, 69 undergraduates engaged in a switched-at-birth task under speeded or delayed conditions. Delayed participants made essentialist decisions about physical but not behavioral properties and replicated past findings. Speeded participants showed markedly higher essentialist responding for behavioral properties compared with delayed participants. These findings suggest that gender essentialism does not necessarily diminish in adulthood but instead may be suppressed by more explicit reasoning processes.     

Predictors of Subjective Memory in Young Adults

While the nature of memory complaints during older adulthood has been studied extensively, the meaning of subjective memory concerns in younger adults has not been fully addressed. Using a sample of 95 younger adults, this study examined the role of personality, health, and depression in predicting objective and subjective memory. For objective memory, openness and self-rated health were unique predictors. For subjective memory ability, only self-rated health was predictive. Finally, similar to studies with older adults, neuroticism and conscientiousness were predictive of both perceived frequency of forgetting and global memory. Using subjective memory concerns as an indicator of actual memory functioning may be inappropriate given the extent to which personality traits and health predict memory concerns.     

Fast Mapping in Healthy Young Adults: The Influence of Metamemory

Several research studies suggest the significant role played by metamemory in lexical abilities of both adults and children. To our knowledge, there have been no studies to date that have explored the role of metamemory (Judgments of Learning) in fast mapping of novel words by adults. One hundred and twelve undergraduate students were given tasks of fast mapping and judgments of learning. A one-way Multivariate Analysis of Variance revealed that participants who performed well on fast mapping had superior global and item-by-item absolute prediction scores compared to poor performers. However, the good and poor performers did not significantly differ in their item-by-item relative predictive accuracy (Goodman–Kruskal gamma correlations) in the immediate as well as the delayed judgments of learning conditions. The possible reasons for inferior gamma correlations, the methodological issues for future research and the clinical implications for the assessment and treatment of adults with lexical deficits are discussed.     

Value Priorities and Organ Donation in Young Adults

This research identifies major personal values among American university students that predict organ-donation registration with the Department of Motor Vehicles. Participants responded to a factual test of their knowledge about organ donation, indicated whether or not they had registered as posthumous donors, and filled out a personality inventory measuring their personal values (Schwartz, 1992, 1994). The data indicated a high level of factual knowledge about organ donation; and the greater the level of knowledge, the more likely participants were registered to donate their organs. Also, participants higher in benevolence, universalism, achievement, and stimulation were more likely to have registered to donate their organs. The results are discussed in terms of the need to develop more effective health-communication campaigns by using specific health-education messages tailored to students majoring in different disciplines or to people in various occupations as a means of increasing their willingness to donate.     

A Taxonomy of Anger-Related Behaviors in Young Adults

In 2 studies, we investigated the occurrence of anger-related behaviors and their relationship to emotional, performance-related, and situational variables. In the first study, we constructed a comprehensive taxonomy of behaviors associated with anger, and we examined the occurrence of the resulting behavior categories as a function of several independent variables. A total of 8 distinct behavior categories were identified, 3 aggressive and 5 nonaggressive. Our results also demonstrated that fight (including both verbal and physical aggression) and flight behaviors occurred most frequently. Physical aggression, however, occurred most frequently in an inhibited form, in response to the emotion of anger (as compared to the emotion of irritation), and when the anger was intense. A second study was conducted to replicate and extend the findings of Study 1. The results suggest that the taxonomy, as derived in Study 1, is comprehensive and allows for a reliable categorization. Moreover, it appeared that fight and flight behaviors occurred most frequently if the target at whom one is angry was present. The following reduction rules were used: (a) responses that differed only in the order of the words were put together; (b) singular and plural items were joined; (c) responses that differed only in verbs such as “to be,” “to become” or “to do” were grouped together; (d) responses that differed only syntactically (verb, noun or adjective) were grouped together; (e) responses that differed only with respect to an article, a preposition, or a possessive word were grouped together; (f) and a few specific rules were used (e.g., yourself = myself; self = auto). The complete coding manual is available upon request from the first author. This number differed across proportions because it depended on the number of participants assigned to each of the experimental questionnaires. Our initial analyses contained a participant-specific random intercept, so as to take into account individual differences in the propensity to use each of the behavior categories. Inclusion of a random intercept appeared to yield a significant improvement in model fit for two of the eight behavior categories. However, because analyses with a random and with a fixed intercept yielded similar conclusions, we decided to select the most parsimonious model, namely the one without a random intercept. The total number of participant–performance–instrumentality combinations equals 504 (i.e., 84×6) because all 84 participants had to answer six questions.     

Reminiscence as Continuity: Comparison of Young and Older Adults

This study empirically investigates key propositions of a continuity theory approach to reminiscence. According to continuity theory, individuals seek familiarity in the face of uncertainty or impending change, which can accompany the aging process. The reminiscence behavior of young (n = 43) and older (n = 47) adults was compared to ascertain whether significant differences would emerge between the two populations concerning how often they reminisce and their use of reminiscence during transitional periods. Also of interest were differences in potential links between the content of reminiscence episodes and postreminiscence affect. Young adults in this sample reminisced significantly more frequently than older adults and were more likely to reminisce during times of change than were older adults. In addition, there was a direct relationship between the content of reminiscence episodes and postreminiscence affect, with older adults reporting greater emotional satisfaction after recalling the past than did younger adults. Findings lend support to continuity theory: Reminiscence occurs throughout the life span and should not be conceptualized as occurring most frequently in old age.     

Community Matters: Intimate Partner Violence Among Rural Young Adults

Drawing on social disorganization theory, the current study examined the extent to which community-level poverty rates and collective efficacy influenced individual reports of intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration, victimization, and bystander intervention among a sample of 178 young adults (18–24; 67.4 % women) from 16 rural counties across the eastern US who completed an online survey that assessed demographic information, IPV perpetration, victimization, bystander intervention, and collective efficacy. We computed each county’s poverty rate from the 2007–2011 American Community Survey. Generalized estimating equations demonstrated that after controlling for individual-level income status, community-level poverty positively predicted IPV victimization and perpetration for both men and women. Collective efficacy was inversely related to IPV victimization and perpetration for men; however, collective efficacy was unrelated to IPV victimization and perpetration for women. Whereas IPV bystander intervention was positively related to collective efficacy and inversely related to individual-level income status for both men and women, community-level poverty was unrelated to IPV bystander intervention for both men and women. Overall, these findings provide some support for social disorganization theory in explaining IPV among rural young adults, and underscore the importance of multi-level IPV prevention and intervention efforts focused around community-capacity building and enhancement of collective efficacy.     

Bartlett Revisited: Reconfiguration of Long-Term Memory in Young and Older Adults

This study was performed after the tradition of F. C. Bartlett (1932), who demonstrated that memory reconfigures over time. The authors investigated the memory of young and older adults to examine the degree to which the aging process influences reconfigurative tendencies. From an initial sample of 53 participants, 20 young and 19 older adults completed 6 tests of recall for Bartlett's original text materials over an 84-day period. Consistent with the broad conclusions of Bartlett's study, reconfiguration was observed: Both young and older adults introduced errors into memory. Older adult recall was lower overall than that of young adults, and recall performance diminished over time. However, there was no difference between the performances of young and older adults with respect to incorrectly recalled intrusive elements.     

Variations in Expected Affect in Young and Middle-Aged Adults

Expected positive and negative affects were measured in three samples of college students and in three samples of middle-aged adults. For each of the samples, negative affect decreased with age. The pattern of the effect was the same for the three samples and for the Expected Balance Scale (Staats, 1987, 1989) and the PANAS (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). The higher negative affect in college students, in comparison to that in their middle-aged friends or parents, is contrary to popular stereotypes. This specific and differential decrease in negative affect is not consistent with theories proposing only a general decrement in emotionality with increasing age. An explanation in terms of stress appraisal, coping, and management is suggested.     

Resilience and Subjective Wellbeing: A Psychometric Evaluation in Young Australian Adults

Objective

Resilience is an important and underdeveloped area of research, and there are few studies that describe levels of resilience among youth samples. A major aim of this research is to explore the utility of an adapted form of the 10‐item Connor Davidson Resilience Scale and to clarify the association between this construct and a robust measure of subjective wellbeing.

Method

A representative sample of 1000 Victorians aged 16–25 years participated in a telephone interview comprising the modified 10‐item Connor Davidson Resilience Scale and the Personal Wellbeing Index.

Results

The modified 10‐item Connor Davidson Resilience Scale demonstrated adequate inter‐item reliability and factored as intended. A moderate, positive correlation was found between the modified 10‐item Connor Davidson Resilience Scale and the Personal Wellbeing Index. Significance testing revealed group differences for gender, age, and annual household income. The results are also used to establish theoretical “normal” ranges for resilience in Victoria's youth population.

Conclusion

The results from this study support the modified 10‐item Connor Davidson Resilience Scale as a valid and reliable measure of young people's resilience using traditional psychometric tests. Moreover, this is the first study to describe the levels of resilience among Victorian youths and to evaluate these data alongside a robust measure of subjective wellbeing. The implications of the findings for government policy and service delivery are discussed.     

Latinx LGBQ Young Adults’ Coming-Out Experiences

Abstract

Marriage and family therapists (MFTs) must be culturally competent and sensitive to serve the growing Latinx population in the United States (US). To understand the sexual orientation disclosure experiences of Latinx LGBQ individuals, we interviewed 10 individuals. Using Moustakas’ (1994) phenomenology, we identified six themes: disclosure impacts family closeness, family members experience disbelief, control over the disclosure influences young adults’ perception of their coming-out experience, the coming-out experience is influenced by religion, the coming-out experience is influenced by traditional gender roles, and disclosure of sexual identity is a continuous process. We discuss clinical implications and areas for future research.     

Implicit and Explicit Learning in Aged and Young Adults

There is a wealth of evidence that learning ability declines with age. In almost all of the studies however, the performance measures employed are explicit, even though research has consistently indicated that aged adults have well preserved implicit learning ability. This suggests that under certain circumstances aged adults should be at no great learning disadvantage in comparison to young adults. This experiment used the artificial grammar-learning paradigm, developed by Reber, in a 2 X 2 factorial design that involved systematic manipulation of grammatical complexity and rule provision. The study explored how each combination of conditions influenced explicit or implicit learning and the relationship between learning style and performance by aged and young adults. Learning was assessed primarily by recognition accuracy, involving correct and incorrect grammar exemplars. However, reaction time, error pattern, reliability, and verbal report data was also collected as a way of confirming and providing added detail on learning performance patterns. Aged adults, irrespective of experimental learning conditions, evidenced a remarkably consistent reaction time deficit. In contrast, the accuracy differential between age groups varied markedly across the four treatments. The most salient contrast occurred between complex grammar, without rules, where there was no difference in accuracy between the two age groups and simple grammar, with rules, where the difference was greatest. This change in learning performance between these two conditions indicates that aged adults will learn as well as young adults in situations where the knowledge domain is conducive to implicit learning.     

Driving Behaviour in Young Adults with Developmental Co-ordination Disorder

Between 30 and 70% of children with developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD) will have persistent daily functioning difficulties in adulthood (Cousins and Smyth 2003). However, few DCD studies have focussed specifically on the stage of emerging adulthood. Driving is an important rite of passage which marks the start of independence from parents. Delay, difficulty or avoidance in learning to drive may all have profound social, practical and psychological implications for the young adult with DCD. The driving experiences of 38 students with DCD and 77 typically developing students aged 17–25 years were examined using a semi-structured questionnaire. Quantitative measures indicate that fewer adults with DCD learn to drive compared to controls and that they show continuing difficulties with distance estimation and parking. Qualitative comments give a valuable insight into the learning and driving experiences of adults with DCD. Differences in the driving behaviour of adults with DCD and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are discussed, as it is the need to consider guidance on driving skills when providing a package of care for young adults with DCD.     

Speech-Language Outcomes of Hemispherectomy in Children and Young Adults

Children and young adults who had undergone right or left hemispherectomy for intractable seizures after a period of normal language acquisition were compared with respect to scores on speech and language tests. The majority of the subjects had full scale IQs in the borderline to mentally retarded range. Language scores were computed in relation to estimated mental age, not chronological age. On this basis, the left hemispherectomized children were more likely to show syntactic comprehension and rapid-rate auditory processing deficits than the right hemispherectomized. The two groups were similar to one another and to normal children in speech production. The findings are discussed in relation to developmental language disorders.