What's the difference between children and adults? Conflict,cooperation and indifference in relationships between adult and children's therapeutic services

Children's and adult mental health services come from different traditions and have for long tended to work in ignorance of, or in conflict with, each other. This has led to many opportunities for a joined‐up approach to family difficulties being missed. Family therapy as a method is in a good position to make links between these separate silos and tackle the divisiveness of tribal professional thinking through the development of a crossover practice that draws on the best in both traditions.     

Do mental disorders moderate the association between diabetes status and alcohol consumption?

Although heavy alcohol consumption is associated with diabetes-related complications, little is known about patterns of alcohol use among people with diabetes. Moreover, heavy drinking is more common among individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BD), and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) than in the general population, and these disorders are often comorbid with diabetes. The present study tested the hypothesis that mental disorders moderate the association between diabetes status and alcohol consumption. A total of 14,302 adult participants aged 40-79 were included from the cross-sectional 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey-Mental Health (1,698 with diabetes). Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear regression models. MDD and BD, but not GAD, significantly moderated the association between diabetes status and alcohol quantity, such that the presence of diabetes was strongly and negatively associated with alcohol quantity if individuals had MDD or BD. There was no interaction between diabetes status and any of the mental disorders and alcohol frequency. This study suggests that among individuals with diabetes, those with comorbid MDD or BD drink less than those without MDD or BD. Further investigation of this association is needed and could help inform future alcohol-related interventions among individuals with diabetes.     

Hand preference in children with developmental coordination disorders: cause and effect?

Inter- and intra-modal matching by eight-year-old children diagnosed as having hand-eye coordination problems (HECP) and categorized as left-handed, together with a left-handed control group of children without such problems, were tested using a manual sensory matching task. The task required the children to locate target pins, visually (seen target), proprioceptively (felt target) or in combination (felt and seen target), while matching to the located target was always carried out without vision. Performance was superior when the target was located visually or visually/proprioceptively for both groups of children. These results question the conclusion that intra-modal will always be more accurate than inter-modal matching. When the combined scores for both hands were analyzed, the HECP children showed inferior performance to the control children in both inter- and intra-modal matching. Separate right and left hand analyses, demonstrated that the differences between the HECP group and control children could be accounted for by lowered performances when the right hand (nonpreferred) was used to match the located target position. Putative neurological disorders related to the development of the hemisphere controlling the nonpreferred hand (left hemisphere) are invoked to account for the poor performance with the nonpreferred hand of the HECP children.     

Which spatial abilities and strategies predict males' and females' performance in the object perspective test?

The present study aimed to investigate whether different spatial abilities and strategies sustain perspective-taking (PT) performance in males and females. The PT task used was the Object Perspective Test (OPT, Kozhevnikov and Hegarty in Mem Cogn 29:745-756, 2001; Hegarty and Waller in Intelligence 32:175-191, 2004). A sample of 40 males and 40 females completed the OPT and several other visuo-spatial tasks and questionnaires. Multiple regression analysis showed that OPT performance was predicted positively by a spatial imagery preference and negatively by the specific use of mental rotation strategy (i.e. turning the sheet of paper). Gender interacted with the Embedded Figure Test (EFT), a spatial visualization task, since high EFT scores only positively predicted the OPT results in males. Overall, our results show that OPT performance is sustained by specific spatial abilities and strategies modulated, at least in part, by gender.     

Does the coordination of verbal and motor information explain the development of counting in children?

Counting is often considered to be the coordination of two actions: saying the number-words and pointing to each object. We report three experiments to test the hypothesis that this coordination requires the use of the central executive (A. D. Baddeley, 1990), and that the cost of coordination decreases with age. Participants were 5- and 9-year-old children and adults. At all ages tested, the manipulation of the difficulty of each component affected counting performance but did not make coordination more difficult. These results suggest that, at least from the age 5, counting is a procedure in which the control of coordination is not attention demanding.     

Does theory of mind performance differ in children with early‐onset and regressive autism?

A deficit in theory of mind (ToM), or the ability to infer the mental states of others, has been implicated as one of the major characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD); however, little attention has been devoted to possible differences in ToM ability within ASD. The current study examined ToM performance in children with early-onset autism and regressive autism in comparison to typically developing children. Results indicated that children in the regressive autism group performed significantly better than the early-onset autism group on the non-verbal appearance-reality task. Additionally, Fisher's exact tests indicated a pattern of lowest scores in the early-onset group and highest scores in the typically developing group, whereas the regressive autism group tended to score in between the early-onset and typically developing groups. The apparent heterogeneity in ToM performance within ASD could account for the lack of universality in ToM ability found in previous studies.     

Word fluency performance and strategies in children with cochlear implants: age‐dependent effects?

Löfkvist, U., Almkvist, O., Lyxell, B. & Tallberg, I.‐M. (2012). Word fluency performance and strategies in children with cochlear implants: age‐dependent effects? Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 467–474. Word fluency was examined in 73 Swedish children aged 6–9 years divided into two age groups, 6–7 and 8–9 years; 34 deaf children with cochlear implants (CI) (15 girls/19 boys) and 39 age‐matched children with normal hearing (NH) (20 girls/19 boys). One purpose was to compare the ability to retrieve words in two different word fluency tasks; one phonemically based (FAS letter fluency) and one semantically based (animal fluency). A second purpose was to examine retrieval strategies in the two tasks by conducting an analysis of clustering and switching of word sequences. In general we found that age was an important factor for word fluency ability, in both the CI and the NH groups. It was also demonstrated that children with CI aged 8–9 years retrieved significantly fewer words and used less efficient strategies in the retrieval process, especially on the phonemically based task compared to children with NH of the same ages, whereas children 6–7 years performed similarly in both groups regarding number of retrieved words and use of strategies. The results are discussed with respect to factors such as age differences in performance for children with CI, especially for the phonemically based task.     

Do maternal stress and home environment mediate the relation between early income‐to‐need and 54‐months attentional abilities?

Using Ecological Systems Theory and stage sequential modelling procedures for detecting mediation, this study examined how early developmental contexts impact preschoolers' performances on a measure of sustained attention and impulse control. Data from 1273 European‐American and African‐American participants in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care were used to identify the potential mediators of the relation between early household income‐to‐need (INR) and 54‐month impulsivity and inattention. Exploratory analyses were also conducted to determine whether the relationships between early income, home environment, parenting stress, and the outcome variables differ for African‐American versus European‐American‐American children. We found modest support for the study hypothesis that 36‐month home environment quality mediated the INR/attention relationship. INR accounted for more home environment score variance and home environment accounted for more Impulsivity score variance for African‐American children. Home environments were related to inattention in the European‐American, but not African‐American, group. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Barking up the wrong tree? Lexical ambiguity resolution in children with language impairments and autistic spectrum disorders

Lexical ambiguity resolution was investigated in 9- to 17-year-olds with language impairment (LI, n=20), autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) plus language impairment (ALI, n=28), ASD and verbal abilities within the normal range (ASO, n=20), and typically developing children (TD, n=28). Experiment 1 investigated knowledge of dominant and subordinate meanings of ambiguous words. The LI and ALI groups knew fewer subordinate meanings than did the ASO and TD groups. Experiment 2 used a modified version of the paradigm to investigate contextual facilitation and suppression of irrelevant meanings. All groups demonstrated contextual facilitation, responding quickly and more accurately to words following a biased context. However, children with ALI and LI did not use context as efficiently as did their peers without language deficit. Furthermore, for the LI and ALI groups, errors in the suppression condition reflected poor contextual processing. These findings challenge the assumptions of weak central coherence theory and demonstrate the need for stringent language controls in the study of autistic cognition.     

Do humor styles matter in the relationship between personality and subjective well‐being?

The primary goal of this research was to examine the role of humor styles in the relationships between personality (extraversion and neuroticism) and two components of subjective well-being: life satisfaction and affective well-being. The sample consisted of 225 young adults, with mean age 23.61 years. Results indicated that the relationship between both extraversion and neuroticism and satisfaction with life could be partially explained by the mediating role of self-enhancing humor. Additionally, affiliative humor proved to be a partial mediator of the relationship between neuroticism and affective well-being. The findings of this research suggested that adaptive humor styles might be one of the mechanisms linking personality and subjective well-being.     

Do children endorse psychosocial factors in the transmission of illness and disgust?

The present studies examined beliefs concerning the impact of psychosocial factors in the transmission of contagious illness, injuries, and disgust. In Studies 1 and 2, participants ranging from preschoolers through adults judged the likelihood that a character would get sick (or injured) after being contaminated by another individual who was either of no stated relation to the character or who was a best friend, a disliked person, or a family member. Studies 3 and 4 examined effects of psychosocial relatedness on judgments of disgust (a psychological response). Study 5 examined the influence of germs on judgments of disgust. Overall, preschoolers through 2nd graders judged that any type of relatedness decreased the possibility of contracting illness from another person. However, for disgust, preschoolers judged that negative contagion would have a more powerful effect, particularly in the presence of germs. Relatedness had no effect on judgments of injury transmission. These results suggest that young children treat the psychological and biological domains as distinct but mutually interacting.     

Meta‐analyses of love scales: Do various love scales measure the same psychological constructs?

Abstract: Two statistical meta-analyses synthesized 33 empirical studies which investigated the correlation between relationship satisfaction and two types of love: Erotic Love and Companionate Love, measured by various love scales based on four major theories by Rubin, Lee, Hatfield, and Sternberg. The results drawn by the Hunter-Schmidt method showed that satisfaction was highly correlated with Erotic Love, but that its correlation with Companionate Love was unclear due to heterogeneity in the total sample of the all Companionate Love studies. A moderator analysis indicated a potential moderator, that is, theoretical differences between Lee's Color Theory of Love and the other three theories. The result suggested that a Companionate Love named "Storge" in the Color Theory should not be mixed up with other friendship-style loves defined by other theories as the Storge subscale would measure a different psychological construct.     

Do young children grasp the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction?: Evidence against early arithmetic

This research investigates young children’s reasoning about the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction. We argue that this investigation is necessary before asserting that preschoolers have a full understanding of addition and subtraction and use arithmetic principles. From the current models of quantification in infancy, we also propose that the children’s earliest ability to add and subtract is based on representations combining and separating sets of objects without arithmetical operations. In an initial study, 2- to 5-year-old children was tested on addition (2+1), subtraction (3−1) and inversion problems (2+1−1) by using Wynn’s procedure (1992b) of possible and impossible events. Only the oldest age group (4–5 years) succeeded on the inverse problem. In a follow-up study, 3- to 4-year-old children were given a brief training intervention in which they performed adding and subtracting transformations by manipulating small sets of objects without counting. The beneficial effects of the training support the claim that preschoolers respond to the inverse problem on the basis of object representations and not on the basis of numerical representations.     

Do Animated Disney Characters Portray and Promote the Beauty–Goodness Stereotype?

Disney movies are frequently cited as a source of the what‐is‐beautiful‐is‐good stereotype. Two studies (a) assessed prevalence of the stereotype across animated Disney movies; and (b) examined whether exposure to such films influences children's judgments of peers. In Study 1, human characters in 21 films were rated on attractiveness, goodness, and character outcome. Regression analyses demonstrated that attractiveness of a character was a significant predictor of the character's portrayal. In the second study, 42 children (ages 6–12) were exposed to either a high or low beauty‐biased film and then rated target peers. Children rated the attractive target more favorably than the less attractive target. However, film exposure did not increase children's use of the stereotype.     

Child and family‐related predictors of psychological outcomes in children adopted from abroad; what is the role of caregiver time?

International adoptees need to cope with stressful transitions and to develop secure attachment with their caregivers at the same time. Although most children adopted from abroad adjust fine, they are at increased risk of psychological problems. We investigated whether both child and family‐related factors are associated with later psychological problems and whether the length of time spent at home after adoption before daycare moderates these associations among internationally adopted children in Finland (FinAdo, Finnish Adoption Study). The sample consisted of 1,265 children (708 girls, 557 boys) who arrived in Finland before they started school (mean age 2 years at arrival). Later behavioral problems were measured using the Child Behavior Check List (CBCL). According to our results, male gender, older age, child's early clinical symptoms (problems of sensory processing) and single parenthood were associated with later behavioral problems measured by CBCL scores. Longer stay at home before the start of daycare or school modified these results. Longer stay at home was associated with less later behavioral externalizing problems in girls but not in boys compared to those who spent a shorter time at home.     

The MCMI-II depression scales: do they assist in the differential prediction of depressive disorders?

This study examined the diagnostic efficiency of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II (MCMI-II) Major Depression (CC) and Dysthymia (D) scales for the differential prediction of unipolar depressive disorders. The MCMI-II was administered to 109 inpatients at a large private psychiatric hospital in the Midwest. All patients had a primary Axis I diagnosis of a depressive disorder, given at discharge by the attending psychiatrists. When CC scores were compared to clinician diagnoses, results indicated that the sensitivity of the CC scale was improved over what had previously been reported for studies involving the MCMI-I CC scale. However, overall, the D scale functioned slightly better as a predictor of major depression than did the CC scale. One likely factor in explaining this finding is that the CC scale contains very few items assessing vegetative/somatic symptomatology, which are the critical factors in distinguishing major depression from other unipolar depressive disorders.     

Do self‐presentation concerns moderate the relationship between implicit and explicit homonegativity measures?

This study investigated whether the relation between implicit and explicit homonegativity measures is affected by self-presentation concerns, since previous research in this area has been inconclusive. In Experiment 1, 70 high-school students made evaluative ratings of pictures of homosexual and heterosexual couples. Self-presentation was manipulated by either instructing participants that the study concerned attitudes regarding sexual orientation (socially sensitive) or attitudes regarding age (less sensitive). The age-instruction led to increased homonegativity but not to a stronger correlation with an Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee & Schwartz, 1998) with homo/heterosexual couples. Concerns regarding the construct validity of the present implementation of the IAT were alleviated in Experiment 2, where heterosexual (n= 30) but not homosexual (n= 30) participants showed implicit homonegativity. The current findings are problematic for the interpretation of low correspondence between implicit and explicit attitude measures as being primarily an effect of self-presentation concerns.