Why Some Women Consent to Unwanted Sex With a Dating Partner: Insights from Attachment Theory

Several studies have shown that many college women engage in unwanted sexual activity with a dating partner. However, little research has examined the differences between women who comply with requests for unwanted sexual activity and women who do not. This study utilized an attachment theory framework to investigate individual differences in women's compliant sexual behavior. An ethnically diverse sample of 125 college women who had consented to unwanted sex with a current dating partner completed measures of their attachment style, commitment to their current relationship, perceptions of their partner's commitment, and willingness to consent to unwanted sex in a hypothetical scenario. Results showed that attachment style and commitment perceptions were associated with women's willingness to consent to unwanted sex with a dating partner in the hypothetical scenario and their reasons for this decision. As predicted, anxiously attached women were the most willing to consent to unwanted sex, and they often cited fears that their partner would lose interest in them as reasons for their compliance. Contrary to hypotheses, avoidantly attached women were not the least willing to consent to unwanted sex. They often reported passively complying with a partner's sexual request in order to fulfill relationship obligations. The importance of sexuality to attachment formation in dating relationships and the potential consequences of consenting to unwanted sex are discussed.     

Adapting Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Depressed Adolescents Exposed to Interpersonal Trauma: A Case Study With Two Teens

A substantial body of evidence indicates that interpersonal trauma increases risk for adolescent and adult depression. Findings from 4 clinical trials for adolescent depression show poorer response to standard cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) among depressed adolescents with a trauma history than youth without such a history. This paper reports on the development of a modified CBT (mCBT) protocol that has been adapted for treating depressed adolescents who have been exposed to traumatic interpersonal events (physical/sexual abuse or witnessing domestic violence). First, we provide an empirical rationale for targeting executive function deficits and trauma-related cognitions in the mCBT protocol. Second, we present promising results from 2 community clinic cases.     

Goal attribution to schematic animals: do 6‐month‐olds perceive biological motion as animate?

Infants are sensitive to biological motion, but do they recognize it as animate? As a first step towards answering this question, two experiments investigated whether 6‐month‐olds selectively attribute goals to shapes moving like animals. We habituated infants to a square moving towards one of two targets. When target locations were switched, infants reacted more to movement towards a new goal than a new location – but only if the square moved non‐rigidly and rhythmically, in a schematic version of bio‐mechanical movement older observers describe as animal‐like ( Michotte, 1963 ). Goal attribution was specific to schematic animal motion: It did not occur if the square moved rigidly with the same rhythm as the animate stimulus, or if the square had the same amount of non‐rigid deformation, but in an inanimate configuration. The data would seem to show that perception of schematic animal motion is linked to a system for psychological reasoning from infancy. This in turn suggests that 6‐month‐olds may already interpret biological motion as animate.     

The Role Maturity of Parents of Emerging Adult Children: Validity of a Parental Maturity Measure

Parental maturity refers to parents’ ability to see their child as an independent adult with limitations and needs, and relate to him/her accordingly. In this study, we had two main aims: (a) develop a measure of parental maturity and test its construct validity in a sample of middle-aged parents with an emerging adult child, and (b) examine how the dimensions of parental maturity varied with a child’s gender and life course transitions (i.e., employment and leaving the parental home). A sample of 343 Portuguese parents (187 mothers and 156 fathers) aged 40–68 participated in this study. Factorial validity of the Parental Maturity Measure was tested using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and measurement invariance across mothers and fathers. Results gave support for a two-factor measure—Comprehending (6 items) and Letting Go (4 items)—with an equivalent meaning across parents. Dimensions of parental maturity were associated with differentiated and positive parent–child relationship qualities, but were quite independent of the child’s gender and life course transitions.     

Personality and its links to quality of life: Mediating effects of emotion regulation and self-efficacy beliefs

We investigated the relationship between personality and quality of life (QoL) considering emotion regulation and self-efficacy beliefs as mediating factors. A total of 409 participants from the French-speaking regions of Switzerland and from France completed questionnaires on personality, emotion regulation, self-efficacy beliefs, and QoL. Our findings revealed that specific personality traits have significant direct and indirect effects on QoL, mediated by emotion regulation and self-efficacy. Particularly, neuroticism was strongly and negatively related to emotion regulation and QoL, but not significantly linked to self-efficacy, whereas extraversion and conscientiousness were positively associated with all variables. This is the first study to demonstrate that both emotion regulation and self-efficacy are important mechanisms that link specific personality traits to QoL, suggesting that they channel and modulate the personality effects. However, more work is needed to understand these relationships in more detail (e.g., how the personality traits concurrently influence each other as well as emotion regulation and self-efficacy).     

A study named desire: Local focus increases approach motivation for desserts

When we desire something, our approach motivation is high. Recent research shows affective states high in approach motivation cause attentional narrowing (localization) (e.g.; Gable and Harmon-Jones in Psychological Science 19:476–482, 2008; Juergensen and Demaree in Motivation and Emotion 39:580–588, 2015). Does the reciprocal relationship exist? That is, when our attention is narrowed, does our motivation to approach something desirable increase? To test this, we primed participants with either global or local attentional focus before viewing images of desirable items (e.g., desserts) or neutral items (e.g., furniture). Relative to participants primed with global attentional focus, participants primed with local attentional focus demonstrated greater approach motivation to desirable desserts compared to neutral items on an Approach Avoidance Task. Despite greater approach motivation for desserts, participants with localized attention did not subjectively rate desserts as more desirable than participants with global attention. These results suggest that increased approach motivation following local priming is evidenced at an implicit level only: participants appear to be unaware of appetitive images’ increased desirability.     

Novel n-back spatial working memory task using eye movement response

We created a novel eye movement version of the n-back task to measure spatial working memory (WM). Rather than one continuous trial, discrete trials were presented in order to develop a simpler WM task. In Experiment 1, we varied the visibility of the final stimulus to maximize the difference in performance between 0-back and 1-back tasks (WM effect). In Experiment 2, we administered the optimized task to children. In Experiment 3, we further simplified the task. Both adults and children easily completed our task, displaying significant WM effects. Further, similar WM effects were obtained in our original and simplified n-back spatial WM tasks, demonstrating flexibility. Because WM deficits are often an early feature of disease and a marker of disease progression, our saccadic measure of spatial WM may be particularly useful in hard-to-test populations, such as patients and children, and may have application in brain-imaging studies that require discrete trials.     

Impact of motivation on cognitive control in the context of vigilance lowering: an ERP study

We assessed the effects of time-on-task on cognitive control expressed by the CRN/Nc and the extent to which motivation modulates this relationship. We utilized two groups of participants, who were told that their performance would (evaluation condition) or would not (control condition) be evaluated online. Both groups performed a version of the Eriksen Flanker Task for 60 min. We observed classical vigilance lowering, manifested by a progressive performance decline with time-on-task, in the control, but not in the evaluation, condition. In the latter, performance remained stable throughout the task. ERP analysis indicated the same interaction in our main component of interest, the CRN/Nc, whose amplitude decreased from the first to the last period in the control condition but remained stable over time in the evaluation condition. To our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate the impact of motivation on monitoring processes as indexed by the correct response negativity, in the context of a prolonged task. Vigilance lowering caused by a repetitive and prolonged flanker task, results in compromised response control and compromised control of correct responses. Our results suggest that alterations in ACC functioning may underlie vigilance decline and can be viewed as evidence that the action monitoring functions of the ACC can be positively affected by motivation.     

Category norm data and relationships with lexical frequency and typicality within verb semantic categories

The aim of the present study was to expand the scope of category norm and typicality data to include verbs for use when investigating semantic memory in fields such as linguistics, psychology, and aphasiology. Two experiments were conducted. In the first, participants were asked to list verbs within 10 semantic categories (e.g. breaking, cleaning, cooking, etc.) and 10 noun categories (e.g. animals, fruit, tools, etc.). In the second experiment, participants were asked to rate the typicality of verbs within 8 of the previously investigated verb categories. Although participants listed fewer verbs in verb categories than nouns in noun categories, the overall patterns with regard to correlation analyses between production frequency, mean rank of responses, lexical frequency, and typicality were consistent with those observed in noun categories. These patterns are also consistent with those observed in previous research. Potential similarities and differences between nouns and verbs, as well as future applications of such data, are discussed.     

Motor execution affects action prediction

Previous studies provided evidence of the claim that the prediction of occluded action involves real-time simulation. We report two experiments that aimed to study how real-time simulation is affected by simultaneous action execution under conditions of full, partial or no overlap between observed and executed actions. This overlap was analysed by comparing the body sides and the movement kinematics involved in the observed and the executed action. While performing actions, participants observed point-light (PL) actions that were interrupted by an occluder, followed by a test pose. The task was to judge whether the test pose depicted a continuation of the occluded action in the same depth angle. Using a paradigm proposed by Graf et al., we independently manipulated the duration of the occluder and the temporal advance of the test pose relative to occlusion onset (occluder time and pose time, respectively). This paradigm allows the assessment of real-time simulation, based on prediction performance across different occluder time/pose time combinations (i.e., improved task performance with decreasing time distance between occluder time and pose time is taken to reflect real-time simulation). The PL actor could be perceived as from the front or back, as indicated by task instructions. In Experiment 1 (front view instructions), evidence of action simulation was obtained for partial overlap (i.e., observed and performed action corresponded either in body side or movement kinematics), but not for full or no overlap conditions. The same pattern was obtained in Experiment 2 (back view instructions), ruling out a spatial compatibility explanation for the real-time pattern observed. Our results suggest that motor processes affect action prediction and real-time simulation. The strength of their impact varies as a function of the overlap between observed and executed actions.