Parental knowledge and adolescent adjustment: substance use and health-related quality of life

This study analyses two models (maternal and paternal) in which parental care and sources of parental knowledge moderated the relationship between parents' knowledge about their adolescents' lives and adolescents' substance use and health-related quality of life. The sample was made up of 15942 Spanish adolescents who participated in the 2006 edition of Health Behavior in School-aged Children Study. Results showed that increased parents' knowledge about their adolescents' lives reduced adolescents' substance use and increased their quality of life. With respect to the moderation relationship, a limited effect was found. However, parental care and sources of parental knowledge used by both parents generally had main effects on adolescents' substance use and health-related quality of life, with care being the most relevant variable in the health-related quality of life, while knowledge was the most relevant one for substance use.     

Re-enactment of intended acts from a video presentation by 18- and 24-month-old children

We used the Re-enactment of intention paradigm to investigate whether children would re-enact what an adult intended to do in a video presentation as they do when presented with a live demonstration (Meltzoff in Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995). Unlike the 18-month-old infants studied by Meltzoff (Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995), the 18- and 24-month-olds in the current study did not frequently imitate unsuccessful goal-directed actions presented in a video model. Children who performed better in the task also tended to share more of their attention with the experimenter during co-viewing of the video. Performance on the Re-enactment of intention task was positively related to categorization score, an independent measure of cognitive functioning.     

Emotional Processing Therapy for post traumatic stress disorder

While prolonged exposure is considered one of the “gold standard” and recommended treatments for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it has been poorly utilised in clinical practice. Individuals with PTSD often find it too distressing to confront memories, and therapists may be uncomfortable using the therapy. A new Emotional Processing Therapy is described in which an emotional approach to prolonged exposure provides individuals with a new insight into how trauma is processed. A conceptual analysis of exposure suggests that it is exposure to distressing emotional experiences which is a key element. Viewing it as an emotion-based therapy, allows the creative addition of new emotional elements. Through exploring the individual’s emotional processing style, previously learned and unhelpful patterns can be addressed, and the addition of an “emotional preparation” phase helps them understand why it is important to face emotionally distressing memories before exposure sessions begin. Emotional Processing Therapy is intuitive and makes sense to those affected by PTSD. It is framed in an emotional context and is presented as part of a lifestyle change that may reduce the likelihood of psychological problems developing in the future.     

The relative importance of psychopathy-related traits in predicting impersonal sex and hostile masculinity

This paper reports the relative contributions of several facets of subclinical psychopathy (i.e., callous affect, erratic lifestyle, interpersonal manipulation), subclinical narcissism (i.e., entitlement, exploitation), and trait aggression (i.e., anger) to the prediction of four enduring attitudes towards women and sexual assault (i.e., hostility towards women, negative attitudes regarding women, sexual dominance, impersonal sex) and a behavioral indicator of an impersonal sexual behavior (i.e., number of one-night stands). Survey data were collected from 470 single men living in the Detroit Metropolitan area. The importance of personality traits varied as a function of the outcome with anger most predictive of hostility toward women; erratic lifestyle most predictive of impersonal sexual attitudes and behavior, and entitlement most predictive of sexual dominance and negative attitudes toward women. These outcome-specific findings are interpreted and directions for future research are discussed.     

Motivation for Reading and Upper Primary School Students’ Academic Achievement in Reading in Kenya

This study examined primary school students' reading motivation and performance on the standardized exam. Participants included 901 seventh and eighth grade students from Kenya. There were 468 females and 433 males. Contrary to previous studies, results showed reading challenge and aesthetics, but not efficacy, predicted reading achievement, indicating reading motivation may not influence achievement similarly across cultures. Gender differences were found in reading achievement but not motivation, an indication of a complex relationship between reading motivation and achievement. Students who read mostly for compliance and recognition did poorly in reading. Eighth graders did better in both reading motivation and achievement.     

Persuasion in school-aged children: How does it change if the persuadee is the mother or the peer?

The present study was designed to verify how school-aged children’s persuasive tactics changed if the persuadee was the mother or the peer. One hundred and forty-nine children at two grade levels (4th and 5th) were enrolled in the study. Persuasive strategies were investigated using pictures representing two common situations in which each child had to convince his/her playmate and his/her mother to obtain a toy. As predicted, with mothers children engaged more frequently in strategies aimed at encouraging cognitive reappraisal of the situation and offering guarantees. Conversely, with the peers, children adopted a greater variety of persuasive strategies, engaging in lower-order tactics. Implications and limitations of the study were discussed.     

Differentiating challenge reactivity from psychomotor activity in studies of children's psychophysiology: considerations for theory and measurement

Current methods of assessing children’s physiological “stress reactivity” may be confounded by psychomotor activity, biasing estimates of the relation between reactivity and health. We examined the joint and independent contributions of psychomotor activity and challenge reactivity during a protocol for 5- and 6-year-old children (N = 338). Measures of parasympathetic reactivity (respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) and sympathetic reactivity (preejection period [PEP]) were calculated for social, cognitive, sensory, and emotional challenge tasks. Reactivity was calculated relative to both resting and a paired comparison task that accounted for psychomotor activity effects during each challenge. Results indicated that comparison tasks themselves elicited RSA and PEP responses, and reactivity adjusted for psychomotor activity was incongruent with reactivity calculated using rest. Findings demonstrate the importance of accounting for confounding psychomotor activity effects on physiological reactivity.     

Cognitive Assessment of Individuals with Multiple Sclerosis in the Arab World: a Systematic Review

Neuropsychology Review - The prevalence of multiple sclerosis (MS) is on the rise globally, and recent epidemiological studies have observed increased rates in the Arab world (i.e., countries of...     

Epistemic Contextualism

Any contextualist approach to knowledge has to provide a plausible definition of the concept of context and spell out the mechanisms of context changes. Since it is the dynamics of context change that carry the main weight of the contextualist position, not every mechanism will be capable of filling that role. In particular, I argue that one class of mechanisms that is most popularly held to account for context changes, namely those that arise out of shifts of conversational parameters in discourses involving knowledge claims, are not suited to the job because they cannot account for the genuinely epistemic nature of the context shift. A form of epistemic contextualism that defines the context through the structure of our epistemic projects is suggested. Context changes in this account are linked to changes in the background assumptions operative in our epistemic projects and the methods used to carry out our inquiries.