A projective assessment of autonomous motivation in children: Correlational and experimental evidence

This article presents two studies aimed at validating a new TAT-like projective measure of autonomous motivation in children. Study 1 assesses the validity of the new measure by correlating it with self-report questionnaires of autonomous motivation, positive and negative affect, task value and mastery goal orientation. Study 2 is an experiment in which autonomous motivation is manipulated and then assessed with the new projective measure and with a self-report scale. Results of both studies support the validity of the new projective measure. In study 2, regression analysis suggests that the new projective measure is sensitive to aspects of experimentally induced autonomous motivation that are not captured by a self-report measure.

Infant sleep problems: Origins,assessment, interventions

Infant sleep problems have become prevalent as complaints of parents to clinicians during the first 2 years of the child's life. This paper reviews (1) identification of multiple etiological sources for infant sleep problems from a systems perspective, (2) the assessment of sleep disturbances, and (3) the applica tion of intervention methods to the appropriate component of system dysfunction. These areas are reviewed by integrating research findings with clinical vignettes from our practice as pediatric sleep clinicians.     

The Role of Simple Emotion Recognition Skills among School Aged Boys at Risk of ADHD

Poor social skills and behavioral problems are a major component of ADHD. The different explanations offered so far, such as cognitive deficits and deficient self regulation, have not been able fully to account for the various aspects of the social dysfunction, suggesting that other mechanisms might underlay this impairment. Our study sought to assess the emotion recognition of Israeli boys at risk of ADHD, and to evaluate its associations with their social skills. A group of 111 boys (grades 4 and 5) were assigned to an At-risk (n=50) and a control (n=61) group based on their scores in an ADHD symptoms questionnaire. The two groups were matched on age, socio-economic status and class and school environment. Group comparisons revealed that compared to their non-At-risk counterparts, At-risk boys have impaired emotion recognition. Finally, multiple groups Structural Equation Modeling analyses (SEM) demonstrated that emotion misrecognition plays a significant role in the At-risk children's social functioning and behavioral problems compared to its role in the social competence and behavioral problems among the comparison group. Implications for the understanding and treatment of social skills problems among children at risk of ADHD are proposed.     

Young Israelis' Reactions to National Trauma: The Rabin Assassination andTerror Attacks

This study examined the cognitive and emotional reactions of 477 Israeli high school students to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (immediately after the event as well as 5 months later) and to a series of terror attacks. The respondents' reactions to the two events were compared as a function of gender and political orientation. About 50% of the respondents who changed their political views immediately after the assassination reverted to pre-event attitudes 5 months later. Emotional reactions to the assassination showed substantial fading after 5 months, with extent of fading unaffected by gender or political orientation. The intensity of emotional reactions was affected by political orientation: Although Rabin's supporters and his opponents reacted with equal intensity to the terror attacks, supporters reacted with the same intensity to Rabin's assassination, whereas opponents' reactions to the assassination were less intense.     

Predictors of individual,community and national resiliencies of Israeli Jews and Arabs

The contribution of individual characteristics to predicting individual, community and national resilience of Israeli Jews and Arabs was investigated. Psychological resilience refers to people's assessment of their ability to withstand negative psychological consequences of major afflictions, and to keep functioning despite these adversities. The following hypotheses were examined: 1. The Jewish sample would score higher than the Arab sample on indices of individual, community and national resilience. 2. Men of both groups would score higher compared with women on these resilience indices. 3. Exposure to terror and fear of upcoming war would negatively predict the resilience of both groups. 4. Higher level of religiosity, right wing political attitudes, higher income, higher education, older age and higher sense of coherence will positively predict the investigated resiliencies. The random sample included 1100 Jews and 350 Arabs who participated in an internet survey. Resilience was defined in this study as the balance of individual, community and national strength (protective factors) to vulnerability (risk factors). The results supported the first three hypotheses whereas the fourth hypothesis was supported only for the Jewish sample. The present study indicated that some predictors had universal effect on resilience, whereas others seemed to be culture specific predictors.     

Functional connectivity abnormalities during contextual processing in schizophrenia and in Parkinson’s disease

Functional connectivity was evaluated in patients with schizophrenia (SC) and in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) during the performance of a local contextual processing paradigm, to investigate the proposition that functional disconnection is involved with contextual processing deficits in these populations. To this end, we utilized event-related EEG signals, synchronization likelihood and graph theoretical analysis. Local context was defined as the occurrence of a predictive sequence of stimuli before the presentation of a target event. In the SC patients, we observed a decrease in path length (L) in the beta band, for the predictive sequence and for predicted and random targets, compared with controls. These abnormalities were associated with weaker frontal-temporal-parietal connections. In the PD patients we found longer L (theta band) for predicted targets, and higher cluster coefficients for both the predictive sequence (theta band) and predicted targets (alpha and theta bands), compared with controls. Detection of predicted targets was associated with weaker frontal-parietal connections in PD. No group differences were found for randomized standard stimuli in both SC and PD patients. These findings provide evidence of task-specific functional connectivity abnormalities within frontal networks during local contextual processing.     

Emotional Involvement in Marriage During the Last Trimester of the First Pregnancy: A Comparison of Husbands and Wives

This study examined the emotional involvement of 27 husbands and wives in their marriage relationships during the stressful period of the last trimester of the first pregnancy. Four behavioral dispositions indicated a state of high emotional involvement in the marriage: (a) striving to gratify interpersonal needs primarily through the marital relationship; (b) needing to receive affection and desiring to provide support; (c) desiring to satisfy these needs in a mutually satisfying way; and (d) becoming irritated and hostile when maritally dissatisfied. The results show, according to all indicators except the desire to support one's spouse, that husbands were less emotionally involved in the marital relationship than wives. The finding that husbands showed a low level of emotional involvement in marriage supports Laws's (1971) suggestion that husbands' mode of being-in-the-marriage is basically unresponsive to changes and stresses in the family.     

Autonomous Versus Controlled Religiosity: Family and Group Antecedents

Self-determination theory distinguishes between identified and introjected internalization of religious practices, positing that the former is experienced as autonomous, whereas the latter is experienced as controlling. A study of Italian Catholic youth showed that identified internalization was predicted by (a) parents' behaviors reflecting basic autonomy support (BAS; behaviors involving perspective taking, choice-provision, and control-minimization), (b) youth-group leader BAS, (c) parents' intrinsic value demonstration (IVD), and (d) peers' IVD. Introjected internalization was predicted by (a) conditional parental regard (CR) and (b) peers' IVD. Perceived parental warmth did not mitigate the effect of CR on introjection. The study underscores the importance of two socializing behaviors rarely studied in the area of religious socialization: IVD and conditional regard. The findings also highlight the harmful nature of CR in the religion domain as a practice for which robust negative effects on internalization cannot be eliminated by more salutary parental behaviors as warmth.     

α7 Nicotinic Receptor Subunits Are Not Necessary for Hippocampal-Dependent Learning or Sensorimotor Gating: A Behavioral Characterization of Acra7-Deficient Mice

The α7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) subunit is abundantly expressed in the hippocampus and contributes to hippocampal cholinergic synaptic transmission suggesting that it may contribute to learning and memory. There is also evidence for an association between levels of α7 nAChR and in sensorimotor gating impairments. To examine the role of α7 nAChRs in learning and memory and sensorimotor gating, Acra7 homozygous mutant mice and their wild-type littermates were tested in a Pavlovian conditioned fear test, for spatial learning in the Morris water task, and in the prepulse inhibition paradigm. Exploratory activity, motor coordination, and startle habituation were also evaluated. Acra7 mutant mice displayed the same levels of contextual and auditory-cue condition fear as wild-type mice. Similarly, there were no differences in spatial learning performance between mutant and wild-type mice. Finally, Acra7 mutant and wild-type mice displayed similar levels of prepulse inhibition. Other behavioral responses in Acra7 mutant mice were also normal, except for an anxiety-related behavior in the open-field test. The results of this study show that the absence of α7 nAChRs has little impact on normal, base-line behavioral responses. Future studies will examine the contribution of α7 nAChR to the enhancement of learning and sensorimotor gating following nicotine treatments.