Perceived Strengths and Difficulties in Emotional Awareness and Accessing Emotion Regulation Strategies in Early Adolescents

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Emotional awareness (EA) and access to emotion regulation strategies (ER) are often conceptualized as being on a single continuum, yet discrepancies in these...     

Examining Primacy as an Identifier of Salience

This article examines whether the first things people report in narrative accounts represent themes of particular importance to them. In two studies, college students recounted autobiographical memories in an interview setting (Study 1: N = 56; M_age = 19.4; 29 male, 27 female; 48.2% Caucasian, 17.9% Asian, 14.3% African American, 10.7% Hispanic/Latino; Study 2: N = 40; M_age = 18.7; 27 female, 13 male; 57.5% Caucasian, 15% Asian, 12.5% Hispanic/Latino, 7.5% African American). Participants reported happy and sad memories (Study 1) or memories of any emotional type (Study 2), and narrative themes were identified from these memories using standard categories of emotion‐eliciting events. Study 2 included a follow‐up task one month later in which participants rated the importance of these themes. The themes from the first memories recurred in subsequent memories significantly more often than would be expected by chance, and this recurrence was not a function of the order of memories, the participant's gender, or the type of theme. Furthermore, the themes from the first memories were rated as significantly more important than other themes in the follow‐up task. These findings provide strong empirical evidence that primacy identifies important material in the context of narrative analysis.     

Career Decision‐Making Intervention With Unemployed Adults: When Good Intentions Are Not Effective

This study adapted existing empirically supported interventions to explore options for serving large numbers of unemployed adults. Participants included 150 unemployed adults (72 experimental group, 78 control group) seeking employment office services to maintain U.S. federal unemployment compensation. A 1‐hour workshop was offered to the 72 experimental group participants. The same career development variables were assessed during data collection for both groups. Results revealed the workshop had no impact on negative career thinking and potentially increased career decision‐making difficulties in the experimental group. Intervention effectiveness issues, implications for future research, and intervention options with unemployed adults are discussed.     

Teaching letter sounds to kindergarten English language learners using incremental rehearsal

Proficiency in letter–sound correspondence is important for decoding connected text. This study examined the effects of an evidence-based intervention, incremental rehearsal (IR), on the letter–sound expression of three kindergarten English language learners (ELLs) performing below the district benchmark for letter–sound fluency. Participants were native speakers of Hmong, Spanish, and Polish. A multiple-baseline design across sets of unknown letter sounds was used to evaluate the effects of IR on letter–sound expression. Visual analysis of the data showed an increase in level and trend when IR was introduced in each phase. Percentage of all non-overlapping data (PAND) ranged from 95% to 100%. All participants exceeded expected growth and reached the spring district benchmark for letter–sound fluency. Results suggest that IR is a promising intervention for increasing letter–sound expression for ELLs who evidence delays in acquiring letter sounds.     

Perceptions of Depression,Counseling and Referral Practices,and Self-Efficacy Reported by Minnesota Clergy

This study’s purpose was to measure clergy’s counseling, referral, and supportive activities for those with depression. Among a Minnesota sample (n?=?367), nearly 80 % (n?=?284) reported counseling their members (mean of 10.25 h/month), with 25 % providing mental health counseling (mean of 2.76 h/month). Ninety-one percent (n?=?336) reported ability to recognize depression, and 64 % (n?=?236) reported moderate to high ability in effectively counseling those with depression. Age, past academic counseling coursework/certification, hours of counseling, and number of individuals counseled were significant predictors of clergy’s self-efficacy in counseling for depression. A mean of 6.14 individuals approached clergy for depression-related help; clergy reported a mean of 3.86 referrals for mental health care. Nearly 90 % stated that one of the roles of the clergy is to provide mental health education.     

Learning Visual Units After Brief Experience in 10‐Month‐Old Infants

How does perceptual learning take place early in life? Traditionally, researchers have focused on how infants make use of information within displays to organize it, but recently, increasing attention has been paid to the question of how infants perceive objects differently depending upon their recent interactions with the objects. This experiment investigates 10‐month‐old infants' use of brief prior experiences with objects to visually organize a display consisting of multiple geometrically shaped three‐dimensional blocks created for this study. After a brief exposure to a multipart portion of the display, each infant was shown two test events, one of which preserved the unit the infant had seen and the other of which broke that unit. Overall, infants looked longer at the event that broke the unit they had seen prior to testing than the event that preserved that unit, suggesting that infants made use of the brief prior experience to (a) form a cohesive unit of the multipart portion of the display they saw prior to test and (b) segregate this unit from the rest of the test display. This suggests that infants made inferences about novel parts of the test display based on limited exposure to a subset of the test display. Like adults, infants learn features of the three‐dimensional world through their experiences in it.     

Psychopathic Traits,Empathy, and Aggression are Differentially Related to Cortisol Awakening Response

Psychopathy is thought to be related to a lack of empathy which interferes with conscience development and promotes aggressive behavior. Little research has examined underlying mechanisms contributing to psychopathy, empathy, and aggression, such as an altered Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis response system. The current study examined how subscales of psychopathic personality traits, empathy, and aggression are related to the cortisol awakening response (CAR), an index of an individual’s physiological preparedness for the challenges of the upcoming day. A mixed-sex sample of 57 college students was recruited for the study, and HLM analyses tested whether these constructs were related to blunted CAR. Results indicated that Machiavellian Egocentricity, Blame Externalization, and Carefree Nonplanfulness subscales of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory – Short Form were all related to blunted CAR, whereas the Social Potency subscale was significantly related to steeper CAR increase. Further, affective empathy and reactive physical aggression were related to blunted CAR. Findings suggest that CAR provides a novel biological index of psychopathic personality traits, affective empathy, and reactive physical aggression.