Mothers', fathers' and children's perceptions of parents' expectations about children's family obligations in nine countries

Children's family obligations involve assistance and respect that children are expected to provide to immediate and extended family members and reflect beliefs related to family life that may differ across cultural groups. Mothers, fathers and children (N = 1432 families) in 13 cultural groups in 9 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand and United States) reported on their expectations regarding children's family obligations and parenting attitudes and behaviours. Within families, mothers and fathers had more concordant expectations regarding children's family obligations than did parents and children. Parenting behaviours that were warmer, less neglectful and more controlling as well as parenting attitudes that were more authoritarian were related to higher expectations regarding children's family obligations between families within cultures as well as between cultures. These international findings advance understanding of children's family obligations by contextualising them both within families and across a number of diverse cultural groups in 9 countries.     

Stepfamilies Doing Family: A Meta‐Ethnography

The present review examines how stepfamily members without a shared history co‐construct a shared family identity and what family processes are relevant in this stepfamily formation. Three databases (Web of Science, PsycInfo, and ProQuest) were systematically searched, resulting in 20 included qualitative studies. The meta‐ethnography approach of Noblit and Hare allowed synthesizing these qualitative studies and constructing a comprehensive framework of stepfamilies doing family. Three interdependent family tasks were identified: (a) honoring the past, (b) marking the present, and (c) investing in the future. Stepfamily members’ experiences of these family tasks are strongly affected by the dominant societal perspectives and characterized by an underlying dialectical tension between wanting to be like a first‐time family and feeling the differences in their family structure at the same time. These findings clearly demonstrate the family work that all stepfamily members undertake and provide a broader context for interpreting stepfamilies’ co‐construction of a new family identity.     

Emotion and the Ultimate Attribution Error

The influence of specific emotions (fear and anger) on the ultimate attribution error was investigated. Participants were recruited from an undergraduate population. There were 420 participants (156 male) with a mean age of 19.26 years. Participants took part in an online study. The study identified participants’ political in-groups (Democrat or Republican), induced them to feel an emotion (fear, anger, or neutral), and asked them to make an attribution (dispositional or circumstantial control) for the good or bad behaviors of Democratic or Republican politicians. Results revealed an ultimate attribution error (participants made in-group favoring/out-group derogating attributions), and an influence of emotion over the pattern of attributions made within this attribution error. The hypothesis that the valence of emotions influences attributions within the ultimate attribution error was supported. No support was found for the hypothesis that appraisal dimensions of emotions influence attributions within the ultimate attribution error. Theoretical implications and future directions were discussed.     

Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation: Existentialism,Aging, and Newly Emerging Issues in Group Therapy

This paper seeks to generate existentialist ideas about emerging issues of aging and its treatment in group therapy for the generations now entering their 60s and 70s. Group therapy had its heyday in the 1970s, and one could say that group therapy has never returned to the level of popularity that it had at that time. Using existential concepts, this paper will explore ways of rejuvenating work with this population now that they are growing older. Rather than just focusing on the common existential themes of death and dread, this article will focus on time, overcoming isolation, finding meaning, and what it means to be in the world now that we are older.     

Predictors of depressive symptoms among breast cancer patients during the first year post diagnosis

It is important to identify predictors of psychological health among breast cancer patients that can be relatively easily identified by medical care providers. This article investigates the role of one class of such potential predictors: easily identified demographics that have potential social and/or practical implications. Specifically, we examined whether income, marital status, presence of children in the home, education, travel distance, age and rurality interact with time to predict psychological health over the first year post diagnosis. Two hundred and twenty five breast cancer patients receiving radiation treatment completed four surveys over the course of 13 months that included measures of both their physical health and depressive symptoms. The results revealed that women who were not married had children living in the home or had to travel long distances to receive radiation treatment reported higher levels of depressive symptoms across the entire study. Women with lower incomes reported increased depressive symptoms, but only after the completion of treatment. Younger women reported elevated depressive symptoms during initial treatment, but this effect dissipated after the completion of treatment. The current results suggest that demographic patient characteristics may indeed be useful in identifying both when and for whom depressive symptoms are particularly likely to be problematic.     

Attention and social functioning in children with malformations of cortical development and stroke

Attention and social functioning and their interrelationships have not been routinely examined in children with early brain insult (EBI). This study aimed to describe attention and social functioning in children with two types of EBI: malformations of cortical development (MCD) and stroke. Children diagnosed with MCD (n = 14, 6 males) or stroke (n = 14, 8 males) aged 8 to 14 years (M = 12 years 11 months) completed neuropsychological assessments to examine attention processes. Primary caregivers completed a questionnaire to assess executive components of children's attention and teachers completed a questionnaire to measure children's social functioning. Brain scans (MRI or CT) were coded by a pediatric neuroradiologist. Higher rates of impairments in attention and social function were found in children with EBI compared with normative expectations. Children with MCD experienced more global and clinically significant levels of impairment than children with stroke; though impairments were present in both groups. A strong association between executive components of attention and social function was observed. In addition, complex attention processes were associated with social function. The findings emphasize the reciprocity between attention, behavior and social outcomes, and the vulnerability of social function following EBI.     

Associations Between Positive Development in Late Adolescence and Social, Health, and Behavioral Outcomes in Young Adulthood

Little is known about positive development across the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. The purpose of this paper was to use longitudinal data from a large community sample, the Australian Temperament Project, to investigate prospective associations between positive development at age 19?C20?years and changes in social, health, and behavioral outcomes at 23?C24?years. Data from 890 young adults (61.7% women) were analyzed using path analysis. Emotional health, physical well-being, friendship quality, reduced antisocial behavior, and positive development in young adulthood were predicted by higher levels of positive development in late adolescence, after controlling for baseline levels of respective outcomes, gender, and family socioeconomic status. Parent relationship quality and alcohol use were not significantly predicted. Based on these findings, interventions promoting positive development during adolescence should be investigated as a potential means of yielding positive social, health, and behavioral consequences well into young adulthood.     

Adult mice maintained on a high-fat diet exhibit object location memory deficits and reduced hippocampal SIRT1 gene expression

Mounting evidence has established that diet-induced obesity (DIO) is associated with deficits in hippocampus-dependent memory. The bulk of research studies dealing with this topic have utilized rats fed a high-fat diet as an experimental model. To date, there has been a paucity of research studies that have established whether the memory deficits exhibited in DIO rats can be recapitulated in mice. Moreover, the majority of experiments that have evaluated memory performance in rodent models of DIO have utilized memory tests that are essentially aversive in nature (i.e., Morris water maze). The current study sought to fill an empirical void by determining if mice maintained on a high-fat diet exhibit deficits in two non-aversive memory paradigms: novel object recognition (NOR) and object location memory (OLM). Here we report that mice fed a high-fat diet over 23 weeks exhibit intact NOR, albeit a marked impairment in hippocampus-dependent OLM. We also determined the existence of corresponding aberrations in gene expression within the hippocampus of DIO mice. DIO mice exhibited significant reductions in both SIRT1 and PP1 mRNA within the hippocampus. Our data suggest that mice maintained on a high-fat diet present with impaired hippocampus-dependent spatial memory and a corresponding alteration in the expression of genes that have been implicated in memory consolidation.     

Reductionism, Brain Imaging, and Social Identity Commentary on “Biological Indeterminacy”

The practice of reductionism in science and philosophy includes attempts to essentialize human persons, which can lead to serious social problems. Reductionism is not necessary, as comparative philosophers and alternative-thinking scientists have shown.     

Temperament and Happiness in Children in India

The relation between temperament and happiness was assessed in a sample of 441 children aged 7–14 years drawn from a population in Northern India. Parents assessed their children’s happiness and rated their children’s temperament using the Emotionality, Activity, and Sociability Temperament Survey (EAS). Children self-reported their own happiness using a single-item measure, the Oxford Happiness Scale Short Form, and the Subjective Happiness Scale. Parents’ temperament ratings conformed to the four factor structure proposed by Buss and Plomin (Temperament: early developing personality traits. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, 1984): Emotionality, Activity, Sociability, and Shyness. Temperament accounted for between 4 and 11% of the variance in children’s happiness depending on the measures. Children who were more social and active, and less shy, were happier. This result parallels the well-established relation between happiness and personality in adults and is similar to recent research on happiness and temperament in children; temperament traits akin to extraversion were positively associated with happiness. However, despite that neuroticism and its temperament counterpart are strongly and consistently linked to happiness in adults, the relation between happiness and the temperament trait associated with neuroticism (i.e., Emotionality) was weak. This suggests that the relations between temperament and happiness in children may not completely generalize across cultures.