Accumulation of Risk and Promotive Factors Among Young Children in US Military Families

In the families of the new cohort of war veterans now entering the civilian population in the United States are over two million young children (Cozza, Haskins & Lerner, 2013; Institute of Medicine, 2013). Several noteworthy studies have shown that children exposed to separation from a parent due to combat‐related deployment are at elevated risk for a variety of negative consequences (Lester & Flake, 2013). Cozza et al. (2013) argue that existing studies of military children focus too much on the stresses or deficits they experience, failing to give sufficient attention to their strengths, the strengths of their families, or the supports around them. In the current study we focus on risk and promotive factors in the lives of children aged 0–10 in military families. We examine the likelihood of negative outcomes as functions of additive, cumulative, and interactive relationships between risk and promotive factors and children's outcomes. Risk factors, particularly parental depression, community poverty, and cumulative risk, were more strongly associated with children's outcomes than promotive factors. There was, however, a significant risk‐protective relationship between accumulations of risk and promotive factors, consistent with promotive conditions operating in a protective fashion under conditions of elevated risk.     

Salesperson brand attachment: a job demands-resources theory perspective

Sales researchers have largely ignored the idea that salespeople form attachments to the brands that they sell, and that these attachments hold important consequences for sales outcomes. Drawing on job demands-resources theory, the authors suggest that salesperson brand attachment (SBA) serves as a unique psychological resource for salespeople. Using data from 154 salespeople from the beverage industry, they provide evidence that SBA increases selling effort toward the brand, and ultimately job satisfaction. In addition, they show that salesperson's brand attachment acts as a buffer against perceived job demands, including job codification and hierarchy of authority. In general, results support the job demands-resources framework and confirm that SBA is a resource that may be leveraged to offset job demands, under certain situations.     

Balancing Genetics (Science) and Counseling (Art) in Prenatal Chromosomal Microarray Testing

Genetic counselors frequently are called upon to assist patients in understanding the implications of prenatal testing information for their pregnancies and their family’s lives. The introduction of highly sensitive testing such as chromosomal microarray has generated additional kinds of uncertainty into the prenatal period. Counselors may feel uncomfortable or inadequately prepared to engage in discussions with prospective parents who are faced with making critical, and timely, decisions about a pregnancy based on uncertain information. As highly sensitive prenatal testing becomes routine in prenatal care, counselors may be in search of approaches to prenatal counseling, as well as specific skills to approach, engage with, and help families find resolution in such challenging circumstances. To assist genetic counselors, we describe practice skills and provide language for approaching conversations with prospective parents. When clinicians regularly provide care to patients and families making life-altering decisions under conditions of significant uncertainty, discomfort is common and compassion fatigue is likely. We make recommendations directly to the genetic counselor working in reproductive and perinatal settings to enhance training and self-care and to decrease discomfort in balancing the scientific- and art- demands of genetic counseling.     

Pet Peeves and Happiness: How Do Happy People Complain?

The present study was designed to investigate the relationships among mindfulness, happiness, and the expression of pet peeves. Previous research has established a positive correlation between happiness and mindfulness, but, to date, no research has examined how each of these variables is related to complaining in the form of pet peeves. Four hundred ten male and female college students listed the pet peeves they had with a current or former relationship partner. They also completed measures of happiness, positive and negative affect, depression, mindfulness, relationship satisfaction, and satisfaction with life. Pet peeves were negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction, well-being, and mindfulness. Consistent with hypotheses, support was found for the mediating role of mindfulness in the relationship between happiness and pet peeves.     

Spirituality and Optimism: A Holistic Approach to Component-Based,Self-management Treatment for HIV

For people living with HIV (PLWH), spirituality and optimism have a positive influence on their health, can slow HIV disease progression, and can improve quality of life. Our aim was to describe longitudinal changes in spirituality and optimism after participation in the SystemCHANGE?-HIV intervention. Upon completion of the intervention, participants experienced an 11.5 point increase in overall spiritual well-being (p = 0.036), a 6.3 point increase in religious well-being (p = 0.030), a 4.8 point increase in existential well-being (p = 0.125), and a 0.8 point increase in total optimism (p = 0.268) relative to controls. Our data suggest a group-based self-management intervention increases spiritual well-being in PLWH.     

A teacher‐centered exploration of the relevance of social factors to theory of mind development

Many accounts of children's Theory of Mind (ToM) development favor a cognitive explanation, for example, in terms of mental representational improvements at or before 4 years. Here, we investigated whether social factors as rated by a child's teacher, are related to ToM development. We tested 82 children of 3–6 years on each of four ToM tasks, and their class teacher completed a social questionnaire about each child's playing behavior, sharing, talkativeness, confidence, aggressiveness and outgoingness. A measure of task memory and the child's gender were also recorded. Here, children generally passed ToM tasks after 5 years‐old, but no one gender performed reliably better than the other. Teacher‐rated confidence and playing behavior were correlated to ToM. But in a regression analysis, these were replaced by teacher‐rated talkativeness; with age and memory given primacy in both sets of analyses. It is concluded that maturation and cognitive factors may well have primacy but social factors, facilitated during early primary education, must also be given a role in ToM development.     

A Dose-Ranging Study of Behavioral and Pharmacological Treatment in Social Settings for Children with ADHD

Placebo and three doses of methylphenidate (MPH) were crossed with 3 levels of behavioral modification (no behavioral modification, NBM; low-intensity behavioral modification, LBM; and high-intensity behavior modification, HBM) in the context of a summer treatment program (STP). Participants were 48 children with ADHD, aged 5–12. Behavior was examined in a variety of social settings (sports activities, art class, lunch) that are typical of elementary school, neighborhood, and after-school settings. Children received each behavioral condition for 3 weeks, order counterbalanced across groups. Children concurrently received in random order placebo, 0.15 mg/kg/dose, 0.3 mg/kg/dose, or 0.6 mg/kg/dose MPH, 3 times daily with dose manipulated on a daily basis in random order for each child. Both behavioral and medication treatments produced highly significant and positive effects on children’s behavior. The treatment modalities also interacted significantly. Whereas there was a linear dose–response curve for medication in NBM, the dose–response curves flattened considerably in LBM and HBM. Behavior modification produced effects as large as moderate doses, and on some measures, high doses of medication. These results replicate and extend to social-recreational settings previously reported results in a classroom setting from the same sample (Fabiano et al., School Psychology Review, 36, 195–216, 2007). Results illustrate the importance of taking dosage/intensity into account when evaluating combined treatments; there were no benefits of combined treatments when the dosage of either treatment was high but combination of the low-dose treatments produced substantial incremental improvement over unimodal treatment.