To Be or Not: A Brief History of the Health Humanities Consortium

The Health Humanities Consortium (HHC) was established in 2015 to “promote health humanities scholarship, education, and practice through transdisciplinary methods and theories that focus on the intersection of the arts and humanities, health, illness, and healthcare.” As the founding co-chairs of the HHC, we provide a history of the founding of this organization in this article, describing the journey of its creation, the choices and challenges it faced as a new organization, and our hopes for a rich future.

     

From the Editor

Journal of Medical Humanities -     

Risk and Resilience Factors for Mental Health among Transgender and Gender Nonconforming (TGNC) Youth: A Systematic Review

Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review - In recent years, there has been a proliferation of research regarding transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people. The stigma and legal...     

I don't fit,so I blame you?—Influence of regulatory focus and fit on emotion generation and regulation in single and group context

Person–environment interactions play a crucial role in the process of emotional experience. While Regulatory Focus Theory has been adopted to illustrate how some goal-oriented parts of this process might shape by proposing a regulatory fit between individual and environmental characteristics, whether this fit not only implies feeling “right” but feeling “good” or at least cope better, has not been tested empirically. In this study, we extend earlier research on the influence of the regulatory fit to the generation and regulation of emotions. We additionally emphasize the role of the context, by integrating current work on group-based emotion regulation in comparing single and group environments. We used a within-subjects design, with 2 (situational focus) × 2 (single/group environment) levels. Thirty-two male football players participated in one football-specific task per level. Emotional experience and cognitive regulation strategies were measured after each. Multilevel regression showed, that a regulatory fit predicted more passive-negative emotions in both the environments and more active-negative emotions in the group environments. The Regulatory fit predicted stronger use of functional regulation strategies in the single but less in the group environment. Group membership predicted stronger use of group-based regulation strategies and weaker use of other strategies—thus indicating further constraints and new ways to cope. We discuss the counter-intuitive results regarding emotional experience in the light of the athletic context as well as theoretical accounts of regulatory fit and its role in the moderating motivational intensity and the value assignment. Results regarding the influence of group membership are integrated into current research and we highlight the directions for future research.     

In whose interests? A response to Aaron Zimmerman’s Belief: A Pragmatic Picture

Philosophical Studies - I provide a brief précis of Aaron Zimmerman’s book, Belief: A Pragmatic Picture, then explore two possible problems for the view. The first concerns whether the...     

Relative effects of breastfeeding intention and practice on maternal responsiveness

Our objective was to examine the differential effects of antenatal breastfeeding intention (BI) and breastfeeding practice (BP) on maternal postnatal responsiveness. We conducted a secondary analysis of longitudinal data from a subsample of 962 mother–infant dyads from a U.K.-based birth cohort study the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Exposures were BI and BPs measured at 32 weeks of gestation and 18 months’ postpartum. The outcome was maternal responsiveness assessed at 12 months’ postpartum. We used logistic regression analyses unadjusted and adjusted for confounders. Intention to breastfeed was associated with increased odds of postnatal maternal responsiveness independent of BP, adjusted odds ratio (OR) = 2.34, 95% CI [1.42, 3.86]. There was no evidence that BP was an independent predictor of maternal responsiveness, OR = 0.93, 95% CI [0.55, 1.57]. Life-course epidemiology analyses demonstrated that maternal responsiveness is most positive when both BI and BP are present. This is the first population-based study to provide evidence that BI during pregnancy is more strongly associated with maternal postnatal responsiveness than is BP. Further research is needed to understand the determinants of BI in pregnancy and its relationships with maternal responsiveness.     

Assessing the impact of a family nurse-led intervention on young mothers’ references to internal states

A mother's propensity to refer to internal states during mother–child interactions is important for her child's developing social understanding. However, adolescent mothers are less likely to reference internal states when interacting with their children. We investigated whether young mothers’ references to internal states are promoted by the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) intervention, an intensive home-visiting programme designed to support adolescent mothers in England. We also investigated family, maternal, and child factors associated with young mothers’ references to inner states during interactions with their children. Adolescent mothers (n = 483, aged ≤ 19 years when recruited in pregnancy) and their children participated in an observational substudy of a randomized controlled trial investigating the impact of FNP compared to usual care. Mother–child dyads were video-recorded during free play, and mothers’ speech was coded for use of internal state language (references to cognitions, desires, emotions, intentions, preferences, physiology, and perception). We found no differences in mothers’ use of internal state language between the FNP and usual care groups. A sample-wide investigation identified that other features of mothers’ language and relationship status with the child's father were associated with internal state language use. Findings are discussed with reference to targeted interventions and implications for future research.     

The academic outcomes of working memory and metacognitive strategy training in children: A double‐blind randomized controlled trial

Working memory training has been shown to improve performance on untrained working memory tasks in typically developing children, at least when compared to non‐adaptive training; however, there is little evidence that it improves academic outcomes. The lack of transfer to academic outcomes may be because children are only learning skills and strategies in a very narrow context, which they are unable to apply to other tasks. Metacognitive strategy interventions, which promote metacognitive awareness and teach children general strategies that can be used on a variety of tasks, may be a crucial missing link in this regard. In this double‐blind randomized controlled trial, 95 typically developing children aged 9–14 years were allocated to three cognitive training programmes that were conducted daily after‐school. One group received Cogmed working memory training, another group received concurrent Cogmed and metacognitive strategy training, and the control group received adaptive visual search training, which better controls for expectancy and motivation than non‐adaptive training. Children were assessed on four working memory tasks, reading comprehension, and mathematical reasoning before, immediately after, and 3 months after training. Working memory training improved working memory and mathematical reasoning relative to the control group. The improvements in working memory were maintained 3 months later, and these were significantly greater for the group that received metacognitive strategy training, compared to working memory training alone. Working memory training is a potentially effective educational intervention when provided in addition to school; however, future research will need to investigate ways to maintain academic improvements long term and to optimize metacognitive strategy training to promote far‐transfer. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/-7MML48ZFgw