Neuroticism and Depression in Children: The Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies

This study's general objective was to analyze whether different types of cognitive emotion regulation strategies (CERS), namely adaptive strategies—specifically positive refocusing and positive reappraisal—and maladaptive strategies—self-blame, catastrophizing, and rumination—mediated the neuroticism-depression relationship in children 9–12 years old, and whether gender and school transition moderated the relationships proposed. A self-reporting measure was administered to 315 children to evaluate said variables. The resulting data were analyzed using structural equations. The study verified that maladaptive CERS partially mediated neuroticism's relationship with depression, while adaptive CERS, though negatively associated with depression, did not show a mediating effect on this relationship. The results provide evidence of the mediating function of maladaptive CERS on the neuroticism-depression relationship. Gender and school transition did not moderate the relationships proposed. Because, by their very nature, these strategies are modifiable, these results constitute an important finding that can be transferred to the design and content of child mental health prevention and promotion programs.     

Making Space for a Dialogical Notion of Religious Subjects: A Critical Discussion From the Perspective of Postsecularity and Religious Change in the West

In this article I address some topical themes from the ongoing discussion on contemporary religious change in the West and how it poses conceptual challenges to the study of religion. The academic discussion on religious change is vast and my observations are, of course, by necessity limited to my particular interest and argument in this article. On the one hand, I draw on some of the literature that has evolved within and around the concept of postsecularity and, on the other, on more general literature on contemporary religious change. Based on some selected observations, I underline the need to critically rethink how we conceptualize both religion and religious subjects. In my view, current research fosters a greater attentiveness of complexity with regard to religion, but simultaneously it requires us to take seriously a dialogical notion of religious subjects that provides a conceptual account of a subject constituted by being located within and emerging through ongoing social process. This dialogical notion provides a better tool for how current social and cultural reconfigurations of religion are simultaneously played out as a diversity of identities that challenge received categories, such as the religious and the secular.     

Longitudinal evidence linking processing speed to the development of reasoning

Age‐related change in processing speed has been linked directly to increases in reasoning as well as indirectly via increases in the capacity of working memory (WM). Most of the evidence linking change in speed to reasoning has come from cross‐sectional research; in this article we present the findings from a 2½‐year longitudinal study of 277 6‐ to‐13‐year‐olds. On three occasions, speed of information processing was assessed with Visual Matching and Cross Out; WM was assessed with reading, listening, backward digit, alphabet, and operation span tasks; and nonverbal reasoning was assessed with Raven's progressive matrices. The results provided consistent evidence of direct links from processing speed to reasoning but inconsistent evidence for indirect links from speed to WM to reasoning. These findings suggest that variations in processing speed may constrain the development of reasoning, directly and perhaps indirectly. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/nc0VlFdi468     

Priming the mental time-line: effects of modality and processing mode

The notion of a mental time-line (i.e., past corresponds to left and future corresponds to right) supports the conceptual metaphor view assuming that abstract concepts like “time” are grounded in cognitively more accessible concepts like “space.” In five experiments, we further investigated the relationship between temporal and spatial representations and examined whether or not the spatial correspondents of time are unintentionally activated. We employed a priming paradigm, in which visual or auditory prime words (i.e., temporal adverbs such as yesterday, tomorrow) preceded a colored square. In all experiments, participants discriminated the color of this square by responding with the left or the right hand. Although the temporal reference of the priming adverb was task irrelevant in Experiment 1, visually presented primes facilitated responses to the square in correspondence with the direction of the mental time-line. This priming effect was absent in Experiments 2, 3, and 5, in which the primes were presented auditorily and the temporal reference of the words could be ignored. The effect, however, emerged when attention was oriented to the temporal content of the auditory prime words in Experiment 4. The results suggest that task demands differentially modulate the activation of the mental time-line within the visual and auditory modality and support a flexible association between conceptual codes.     

Somatic Complaints in Girls: A Longitudinal Perspective

This report presents results from a study of the dimensionality and longitudinal stability of some common self-reported somatic complaints in teenage girls. Data were supplied by the Swedish longitudinal research program “Individual Development and Adaptation”. At four age levels (age 10, 13, 15, and 16 years) a representative sample of approximately 500 girls filled out questionnaires on various adjustment problems, including some typical somatic complaints. A separate dimension of somatic complaints was identified at each age level through factor analysis of the questionnaire data. Correlational stability of somatic complaints was not high until middle adolescence. At this age fairly stable patterns of somatic complaints were also found at the individual level; different somatic complaints were not found to be interchangeable. The results support the interpretation of girls' somatic complaints as a single, meaningful dimension in late childhood and adolescence. This dimension may be hypothesized to constitute a psychological process, somatization, manifesting itself in fairly stable patterns at the individual level in middle adolescence.     

Two Kinds of Time-Consciousness and Three Kinds of Content

This paper explores the distinction between perceiving an object as extended in time, and experiencing a sequence of perceptions. I argue that this distinction cannot be adequately described by any present theory of time-consciousness and that in order to solve the puzzle, we need to consider perceptual content as having three distinct constituents: Explicit content, which has a particular phenomenal character, modal content, or the kind of content that is contributed by the psychological mode, and implicit content, which lacks phenomenal character. These notions are then further clarified and related to each other.     

The Use of Mental Health Services Among Victims of Partner Violence on College Campuses

The present study investigated the relationship between past victimization of different types of intimate partner violence (IPV; physical, psychological, and sexual) and the likelihood of using mental health services. Results indicate 86% of participants reported experiencing some form of IPV, but only 16% of those victims used mental health services to address emotional problems. The participants reported embarrassment, expense, ineffectiveness, and social stigma as the most prominent barriers to seeking help from a mental health professional. The study also found that participants who experienced physical and psychological IPV, but not sexual IPV, reported using mental health services. Sexual IPV may elicit different barriers in help-seeking behaviors. Implications for college IPV prevention programs and mental health services are discussed.     

Conscientiousness,Its Facets,and the Prediction of Job Performance Ratings: Evidence against the narrow measures

This study empirically tested the predictions of the three basic perspectives on the bandwidth debate about the relationship between personality and job performance, regarding the validity of conscientiousness and its facets. The sample consisted of 226 police officers. Conscientiousness and three facets (order, industriousness, and self‐control) were correlated with three performance criteria (overall job performance, task performance, and orderliness). A Schmid–Leiman transformation made it possible to residualize the variance of the facets and to isolate their unique contribution to the prediction of performance measures. The results showed that conscientiousness predicted the three criteria (true validities of.25,.28 and.37, respectively) and that the facets neither predicted job performance nor showed incremental validity over conscientiousness. Finally, the implications of the findings for theory and practice are commented on, and future research is suggested.     

Parent Programs for Reducing Adolescent’s Antisocial Behavior and Substance Use: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Two theoretically based parent training programs, delivered in real-world settings by the social services, were examined in this randomized controlled trial for effectiveness in reducing adolescents’ antisocial behavior and substance use. Two hundred and thirty-seven (237) adolescents in ages between 12 and 18 and their parents were assigned to one of two programs or to a wait-list control condition. The programs were the nine weekly group sessions program Comet 12–18 (Swedish Parent Management Training Program) and the six weekly ParentSteps (Swedish shortened version by Strengthening Families Program 10–14). Outcome measures were antisocial behavior, substance use, and delinquency, and psychosocial dysfunction. Data based on adolescents’ and parents’ ratings of the adolescents’ problem behavior at baseline and 6 months later were analyzed with repeated measures ANVOA, Logistic regression, and Kruskal–Wallis H test. The results showed that parents’ ratings of adolescents’ antisocial behaviors decreased significantly over time, but no time by group effect emerged. No program effects were found in the adolescents’ self-reported antisocial behavior, delinquency, or psychosocial functioning. A threefold risk of illicit drug use was found in both intervention groups. The results suggest that neither Comet nor ParentSteps had beneficial effects on adolescent’s antisocial or delinquent behavior, or on alcohol use. The only significant group difference found was a threefold risk of drug use in the intervention adolescents at follow-up, but for several reasons this finding should be interpreted with caution. Trial registration number: ISRCTN76141538.     

AIDS and social exclusion: personality features or adaptive behaviors?

The purpose of this survey is to detect common personality features in people infected with AIDS who have a case history of drug addiction and who live in a situation of social exclusion. The sample comprised 105 male participants from the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, divided into 4 groups: (a) 30 men with AIDS, having an intravenous drug addiction case history and who live in a condition of social exclusion; (b) 30 men with IVDA case history, also living in a situation of social exclusion; (c) 15 men in a social exclusion condition; and (d) 30 men in a condition of social adaptation. The evaluation instruments were an author-designed semi-structured interview and the Multiaxial Clinical Inventory (MCMI-II; Millon, 1987). Although some differences were found, the results indicate that there is no specific personality profile in the "social exclusion" population. People in a condition of social exclusion (AIDS, drug addicts, and poor people) may obtain similar scores in the variables studied, but there is no clear specific personality profile in the excluded population, although there may be certain situations in which the segregated groups present similar behaviors. Furthermore, these behaviors do not always correspond to personality features but are adaptive responses to a harsh and complex reality.