The association of paternal mood and infant temperament: A pilot study

Maternal depression is associated with adverse child development, but little is known about the effects of paternal depression. This pilot study estimated the prevalence of paternal depression and mood state, and assessed the relationship between paternal mood and infant temperament. The participants in the study were 98 fathers of newborn babies. Fathers were initially screened for depressed mood (Hospital anxiety and depression scale, and Edinburgh postnatal depression scale), and at 6 months parental mood, infant temperament, couple relationship quality, alcohol use, adverse life events, parenting, and demographics were recorded. Infant fussiness was analysed in relation to paternal mood and other contextual factors using multiple regression. Of the 98 fathers, 48 (49%) completed depression-screening measures. Of these 48 fathers, 4 (8%) reported depressive symptoms above the cut-off for case definition. A total of 48% (N=19) completed measures at follow-up. In the adjusted model, higher paternal depression scores, more traditional attitudes towards fathering, and increased recent life events were related to higher infant fussiness scores; and better couple relationship quality was related to lower fussiness scores. This study showed that 1 in 12 fathers had depressed mood, and lower mood was associated with negative infant temperament. Since the findings of this feasibility study were based on a small sample size the association of paternal mood and child development merits further study using a larger sample of fathers.     

Baby Triple P: A Randomized Controlled Trial Testing the Efficacy in First-Time Parent Couples

Journal of Child and Family Studies - In a randomized controlled trial, we tested the efficacy of Baby Triple P in a community sample of first-time parent couples. The intervention was developed to...     

The other side of rumination: reflective pondering as a strategy for regulating emotions in social situations

Recent studies have questioned the idea of rumination as a unitary dysfunctional process and identified an adaptive subcomponent: reflective pondering. We tested whether reflective pondering could represent an adaptive strategy of regulating emotions, and contrasted it with reappraisal and acceptance, strategies linked to major psychotherapeutic approaches. Participants (103 students) received training in one of these and were exposed to a negative mood induction consisting of social scenarios, both in the presence and in the absence of the specific emotion regulation instruction. Acceptance was more useful than reflective pondering in impacting negative emotions and anxiety. Reappraisal was more efficient than pondering for anxiety. However, moderation analysis showed that social anxiety (SA) levels influenced the comparative efficiency of reappraisal and acceptance as contrasted to reflective pondering for negative emotions and anxiety. Participants low in SA made equal use of all strategies, while for those high in SA reappraisal and acceptance were more efficient than pondering. Our results provide preliminary evidence that reflective pondering can, in some circumstances, be an adaptive regulation strategy.     

Resisting Moral Residue

This paper surveys contemporary scholarly conceptions of moral residue in order to demonstrate the fruitful inconsistencies contained in these various notions. Due to the fact that moral dilemmas are commonplace in the practice of medicine, patients and practitioners are uniquely situated to experience moral residue. The authors investigate two medical sites as case studies that demonstrate how a more capacious notion of moral residue can be useful for explaining ethical complexities: euthanasia on the battlefield and care of minors who are members of the Jehovah’s Witness faith community. These case studies will be of particular interest to chaplains, pastoral theologians, and other relevant practitioners and intellectuals. Fruitfully cast against the illuminations of interdisciplinary scholars including Donald Capps, Lorraine Hardingham, and others, these cases are used as instructive discursive devices, shedding greater light on ideas put forth within the literature on this engaging and complex topic.     

Effects of Early Parenting Interventions on Parents and Infants: A Meta-Analytic Review

This systematic review evaluates the efficacy of parenting interventions on parent, infant and parent-infant relationship outcome measures for parents of infants under 12 months old. Parent outcomes examined included competence, and confidence; baby outcomes included infant behaviours of crying, settling, and sleeping problems and parent-infant relationship outcomes included parental responsiveness. Systematic searches of five databases were carried out. In total, 36 randomised controlled trials over the past 35 years were included in the meta-analyses, with a total of 4880 participants. Interventions were carried out either during pregnancy or within the first 12 months after birth and involved teaching specific strategies and provision of information on infant development and behaviour. Mean effect sizes were obtained using a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach to meta-analysis. Heterogeneity was found on parent responsiveness and infant sleep. Potential moderator variables were assessed for these two outcomes using the SEM approach. Results showed that early parenting interventions are effective in improving parental responsiveness (d?=?0.77), and improving or preventing infant sleep problems (d?=?0.24), but not crying problems (d?=?0.27) possibly due to low power. No conclusions could be drawn in regards to parental competence or confidence. Moderator analysis showed that for interventions aimed at improving responsiveness, briefer interventions were more effective than longer ones; and studies published more recently reported smaller effects than older studies. No other moderators influenced the assessed intervention outcomes. The findings of this study provide further evidence for the positive effects of early parenting interventions for infants under 12 months of age, however future research is needed to assess intervention effects on parental competence and confidence.     

The effect of research method type on stereotypes’ content: A brief research report

Stereotype Content Model (SCM) emphasizes the content rather than the underlying processes of the stereotypes and the content might be influenced by several cultural dimensions (e.g., individualism vs. collectivism). The main dimensions of SCM—namely warmth and competence—underlying various contents are assumed to be universal. However, from a cognitive science paradigm, we argue that different research methods (i.e., data collections and data analysis) might also yield different stereotype contents that might impact the universality versus specificity problem in the SCM. Indeed, using a sample from a collectivistic country (i.e., Romania), we found that using different methods in data collection (i.e., unstructured vs. semi-structured vs. structured interview) and different methods of data analysis (i.e., availability vs. accessibility scores) might be an important research strategy to counter artefacts and confusions in the universality versus specificity problem related to the SCM. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Creativity and Affective Temperament in Artistic and Non-artistic Students: Different Temperaments are Related to Different Aspects of Creativity

The relationship between creativity and temperament has been well documented in studies with professional artists. This also pertains to affective temperaments which constitute the vulnerability to affective disorders. However, less is known about the contribution of particular temperaments to specific components of creativity, for example, ideational fluency, or originality of thinking. The aim of the present study was to assess affective temperaments and creativity in artistic and non-artistic students. Ninety (39 artistic and 51 non-artistic) students were enrolled in the study. Affective temperaments were evaluated by means of TEMPS-A questionnaire. Creativity was measured with BWAS test assessing the originality of thinking and a sample of tasks derived from BIS battery, assessing ideational fluency. Artistic students showed higher rates of cyclothymic temperament. They also outperformed non-artistic students in both domains of creativity. The originality of thinking correlated positively with the level of cyclothymic temperament, whereas ideational fluency was positively related to hyperthymic temperament. Ideational fluency also correlated with the level of parental education. Results indicate that creativity is related to temperaments underlying predisposition to bipolar affective disorder; however, different temperaments are related to different aspects of creativity.