Boredom proneness,political orientation and adherence to social-distancing in the pandemic

Motivation and Emotion - Research recently showed that boredom proneness was associated with increased social distancing rule-breaking in a sample collected early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we...     

Gender-Based Effects of Frames on Bullying Outcomes

The study extends research on the effect of frames. It is the first study to examine how framing affects the impact of being bullied. College students were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one framing bullying in terms of resilience and the other framing bullying with negative psychosocial consequences. Participants were asked to engage in a brief writing task aimed to actively create a frame and then completed both implicit and explicit measures. There was a significant main effect by gender and several significant interaction effects between frame and gender. These results suggest that framing impacts an individual’s conceptualization of emotionally salient personal memories and should be considered when developing bullying interventions. The impact of framing bullying may vary by gender.     

Resurgence is greater following a return to the training context than remaining in the extinction context

The present study examined whether resurgence of a previously reinforced target response upon removing alternative reinforcement would be greater when (1) returning to the original training context (ABA context changes) versus (2) remaining in the analogue treatment context in which the alternative response was differentially reinforced (ABB context changes). Experiment 1 arranged reinforcement of button pressing with points exchangeable for money in university students. Experiment 2 arranged reinforcement of lever pressing with food for rats. Experiment 3 arranged reinforcement of responses to a touchscreen with small bites of food with children diagnosed with ASD. Overall, resurgence of target responding tended to be greater when returning to the original training context (A) than when remaining in the analogue treatment context (B). These findings suggest context changes with differential reinforcement treatments could exacerbate the recurrence of problem behavior resulting from reductions in treatment integrity through failure to reinforce appropriate behavior.     

Same face,same place,different memory: manner of presentation modulates the associative deficit in older adults

One of the more severe and consequential memory impairments experienced by older adults is the loss of the ability to form and remember associations. Although the associative deficit is often assumed to be unitary, memory episodes may contain different types of associations (e.g., item–item, item–context). Research in younger adults suggests that these different association types may involve different neural mechanisms. This raises the possibility that different association types are not equally affected by aging. In order to investigate this, the current study directly compared memory across item–item and item–context associations in younger and older adults by manipulating the manner of presentation of the associations. Results indicate that the associative deficit in aging is not uniform and that aging has a greater impact on item–context compared to item–item associations. The results have implications for theories of associative memory, age-related cognitive decline, and the functional organization of the medial temporal lobe in aging.     

Sharenting: Pride,affect and the day‐to‐day politics of digital mothering

The coming together of parenting and routine posting on social networking sites has become a visible and recognisable theme, and the term “sharenting” has found a place in everyday talk to describe some forms of parental digital sharing practices. However, while social media has undoubtedly provided a space for parents to share experiences and receive support around parenting, sharenting remains a contestable issue. Thus, one reading of sharenting would be as a display of good parenting as mothers “show off” their children as a marker of success. However, the term also can be used pejoratively to describe parental oversharing of child‐focused images and content. In this paper, we explore the practice of sharenting in terms of pride, affect and the politics of digital mothering in a neoliberal context to conclude that sharenting can be best understood as a complex affective and intersectional accomplishment that produces motherhood and family as communicative activities within digital social practices.     

The relationship between beliefs about emotions and quality of life in irritable bowel syndrome

Suppression of undesirable emotions, as well as beliefs about the unacceptability of experiencing and expressing emotions, have both been shown to be related to poorer health-related outcomes in several clinical groups. Potential models through which these variables relate have yet to be tested in those with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and are therefore examined in the current article. Online questionnaires were administered to people with IBS (n = 84) to test a mediation model in which beliefs about the unacceptability of emotions are associated with greater emotional suppression, which in turn relates to increased affective distress and consequently poorer quality of life. An alternate model to test the direction of effect along with two further models using support-seeking as mediators of the same predictor and outcome were also tested. Emotional suppression and affective distress (in that particular order) mediate the relationship between beliefs about emotions and quality of life IBS. The models using support-seeking as mediators of the relationship between beliefs about emotions and the two outcomes were not supported. These findings suggest a role for emotional processing in medically unexplained symptoms and imply the need to address such beliefs about emotions in psychological therapies.