Parents' depressive symptoms and children's adjustment over time are mediated by parenting,but differentially for fathers and mothers

Parenting has been found to act as a mediator of the relation between parents' depressive symptoms and children's adjustment. The present study replicated this result, and also found specific effects of gender for both parents and children. A total of 319 parents provided reports of their depressive symptoms (BDI) and two parenting styles (APQ; inconsistent discipline and positive parenting) as well as of their elementary schoolchildren's adjustment (VBV-EL; oppositional-defiant behaviour, hyperactivity, internalizing, social-emotional competence). The first and second measurement occasions were six months apart. Bivariate correlations showed the expected pattern of positive associations between parental depression, child maladjustment and problematic parenting. However, the results differed for mothers and fathers, and the mediation was moderated by the children's gender. Inconsistent discipline was a mediator for both fathers and mothers. The path from fathers' depression was additionally negatively mediated by positive parenting. Boys were more vulnerable than girls.     

Assessment of perception of morphed facial expressions using the Emotion Recognition Task: Normative data from healthy participants aged 8–75

The ability to recognize and label emotional facial expressions is an important aspect of social cognition. However, existing paradigms to examine this ability present only static facial expressions, suffer from ceiling effects or have limited or no norms. A computerized test, the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT), was developed to overcome these difficulties. In this study, we examined the effects of age, sex, and intellectual ability on emotion perception using the ERT. In this test, emotional facial expressions are presented as morphs gradually expressing one of the six basic emotions from neutral to four levels of intensity (40%, 60%, 80%, and 100%). The task was administered in 373 healthy participants aged 8–75. In children aged 8–17, only small developmental effects were found for the emotions anger and happiness, in contrast to adults who showed age‐related decline on anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. Sex differences were present predominantly in the adult participants. IQ only minimally affected the perception of disgust in the children, while years of education were correlated with all emotions but surprise and disgust in the adult participants. A regression‐based approach was adopted to present age‐ and education‐ or IQ‐adjusted normative data for use in clinical practice. Previous studies using the ERT have demonstrated selective impairments on specific emotions in a variety of psychiatric, neurologic, or neurodegenerative patient groups, making the ERT a valuable addition to existing paradigms for the assessment of emotion perception.     

Quality of Family Relationships as Protective Factors of Eating Disorders: An Investigation Amongst Italian Teenagers

The study here presented aims to investigate the links between quality of family relationships and some prodromes in eating disorders. A sample of 1,083 subjects took part in the study by filling PBI, FACES and EDI questionnaires. In order to clarify the role played by family relationships in the onset of EDs, two subgroups (high risk–low risk) were individuated by using the EDI cut-offs as discriminator factors and tested separately from the main sample. The results revealed some significant relationships between the analysed dimensions. It was shown that by increasing the values from the parents’ caring style scale and the real family’s cohesiveness scale the probability for subjects to fall into the high risk group decreases. Also, by increasing the family adaptability’s values, an increase of the probability for subjects to fall into the high risk group occurs. These results support the implementation of preventive and therapeutic plans to promote health and quality of life of adolescence.     

Why Openness to Experience is not a Good Predictor of Job Performance

Recent meta‐analyses investigating the relationship between personality and job performance have found that openness to experience is the least predictive of the Big Five factors. Unlike other research that has sought to explain the low criterion‐validity with relation to job performance, this study explores the actual construct of openness to experience, suggesting that it consists of two dimensions that relate differentially to job performance thus reducing correlations between overall measures of openness to experience and performance criteria. Exploratory factor analysis of the six sub‐dimensions, or facets, of the NEO PI‐R (a popular measure of the Big Five factors) produced two factors of openness to experience corresponding to different areas to which people are open. A confirmatory factor analysis on a second set of data provided some support for this result. A pattern of differential relationships between the two factors and other variables including personality, biodata and supervisor‐rated performance offered further support for the multidimensionality of openness to experience. The implications of these findings for future research in the selection context are discussed.     

Social cognitive predictors of prosocial behavior toward same and alternate race children among white pre-schoolers

Social cognitive predictors of 36 White preschoolers' (18 boys, 18 girls) tendencies to say they would act prosocially toward White and African-American children were examined. White preschoolers completed measures of their tendency to engage in prosocial behaviors directed toward White and African-American children, positive racial beliefs about White and African-American persons, and race schematicity. Consistent with previous research examining prosocial behavior in preschoolers, girls were more likely than boys to say they would act prosocially. White preschoolers' age in months did not correlate significantly with their tendencies to engage in prosocial behaviors toward White children. However, age in months was negatively correlated with White preschoolers' inclinations to direct prosocial behaviors toward African-American children. Consistent with an emerging literature concerning the role of social cognitive factors in young children's race schema development, White preschoolers' race schematicity was significantly predictive of their tendencies to say they would engage in prosocial behaviors toward African-American children. Patterns of results partially replicate previous prosocial behavior research, and demonstrate the importance of social cognitive variables on young children's prosocial behaviors. This research was undertaken as part of a graduate program in psychology at the University of Wyoming by the first author under the direction of the second author. The authors express gratitude to Karen Bartsch, Ph.D., and Bernita Quoss, Ph.D., and Jesse Barber, Sylvia Jones, and Nicole Martin of the University of Wyoming and to Nancy Eisenberg, Ph.D., of Arizona State University.     

White racism,civility, and the obligations of the socially privileged

Civility is a virtue associated with civic life, particularly with politics. This article briefly discusses civility as a moral principle requiring moral actions that give rise to the virtue of civility. Civility requires different practices on the part of persons with differential access to social power. In a white supremacist society, those with white privilege must avoid the temptation to use accusations of incivility to silence black voices. Suggestions are offered about how those with white privilege can fulfill their particular duties of civility in a racist society. Points include listening to hard truths and resisting retreat into white fragility.     

The Changing Value of Skill Utilisation: Interactions with Job Demands on Job Satisfaction and Absenteeism

Opportunities to learn and apply new skills are generally considered a favourable job characteristic, but can there be too much of a good thing? In this paper, we draw on vitamin and resource perspectives to investigate a more nuanced perspective on where, when and why skill utilisation delivers value as a resource. Specifically, we examine whether skill utilisation exhibits non-linear relationships with job satisfaction and absenteeism in the presence of two different job demands: task workload, which captures the quantitative demands of work, and surface acting, which captures the qualitative demands of work. Using data from 278 hospital employees, we found that surface acting moderated the non-linear relationship between skill utilisation and absenteeism. Specifically, the relationship between skill utilisation and absenteeism became increasingly positive when surface acting was high, but not when surface acting was low. Interestingly, the linear relationship between skill utilisation and job satisfaction was less positive when surface acting was high. Task workload did not interact with skill utilisation to predict employee outcomes. Our findings highlight complexities in the relationship between job resources and demands and show that the value of skill utilisation changes under demanding conditions.     

Anything Goes by the Wayside: A Reply to Raskin and Debany

Raskin and Debany (this issue Raskin, J. D. (2001). On relativism in constructivist psychology. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 14, 285–313. doi:10.1080/10720530126044[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) profess my failure to appreciate how constructivism does not warrant an “anything-goes” relativism. In this reply, I explain how whether any postmodernist doctrine endorses an “anything-goes” epistemology (or a radical relativism) depends on the nature of the constraints that warrant its propositions. I revisit the three core postmodernist claims that I criticized in previous work, which criticism Raskin and Debany now in turn criticize. Emphasis is given to how an objectivist epistemology, contrary to postmodernist belief, does not entail certitude, and moreover incorporates (a) active and indirect knowing, (b) the situated origins of all empirical knowledge, and (c) a subject/object distinction for certain kinds of human/social kinds. I use the example of racist rhetoric to illustrate how discourse can and does affect extradiscursive realities, thereby implicating our moral obligation to seek objective truth as best we can.     

Enhancing theory of mind in behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia with transcranial direct current stimulation

Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) is a form of frontotemporal degeneration characterized by early changes in personality, emotional blunting, and/or loss of empathy. Recent research has highlighted that these features may be at least partially explained by impairments in the theory of mind (ToM; i.e., the ability to understand and predict other people’s behaviour by attributing independent mental states to them). The aim of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was to test the hypothesis that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the medial frontal cortex (MFC) selectively enhances communicative intention processing, a specific ToM ability. Using a single-session online design, we administered a ToM task that measures the ability to represent other people’s private and communicative intentions during active or sham tDCS to 16 bvFTD patients. To assess the impact of dementia on performance on the ToM task, we included 16 age-matched healthy volunteers who were asked to perform the entire experimental ToM task. BvFTD is characterized by an impairment in the comprehension of both communicative and private intentions relative to a healthy control group and by a disproportional impairment in communicative intention compared with private intention processing. Significant and selective accuracy improvement in the comprehension of communicative intentions after active stimulation was observed in patients with bvFTD. This is the first study that analyses ToM ability in patients with bvFTD using tDCS stimulation. Our findings could potentially contribute to the development of an effective, noninvasive brain stimulation treatment of ToM impairments in patients with bvFTD.