School-Aged Children’s Attachment Dismissal Prospectively Predicts Divergence of Their Behavioral and Self-Reported Anxiety

Recent studies on attachment in middle childhood suggest that dismissing children tend to underreport their psychological distress relative to physiological indices of distress. However, this has yet to be examined in the context of behavioral indicators of distress. In this longitudinal study, a community sample of children (N?=?34, M _age?=?9.59 years) completed the Child Attachment Interview at Time 1. Three years later, they returned and completed the Trier Social Stress Task for Children (TSST-C), providing ratings of their state anxiety before and after the stressor. Four raters coded children’s behavioral signs of anxiety (e.g., non-signaling gestures, eye movement, posture, facial expression) on a 7-point scale during the storytelling and arithmetic tasks in the TSST-C. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that greater attachment dismissal was associated with greater behavioral anxiety in both the story and math tasks, but was not associated with greater increases in self-reported anxiety. Dismissal prospectively predicted increased divergence of behavioral and self-reported anxiety, such that higher dismissal was associated with higher divergence scores (i.e., underreporting of anxiety relative to behavioral indicators). We discuss these results in terms of their contribution to understanding attachment and emotion in an understudied developmental phase.     

Psychosocial Impact of Familial Adenomatous Polyposis on Young Adults: A Qualitative Study

The aim of this study was to explore in detail the psychosocial impact of either having familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) or being at risk for FAP amongst young adults. In-depth interviews were conducted with eleven individuals aged 18–35 with a clinical or genetic diagnosis of, or at risk of developing FAP. While being at risk did not seem to have a major psychosocial impact upon clinically unaffected participants, clinically affected individuals discussed a number of major stressors including issues in relation to changes in body image and physical functioning as a result of surgery, concerns about discussing FAP with new partners, difficulties in relation to childbearing decision-making, and impact on employment. Genetic counseling was described as being highly effective in providing support, but most participants were not aware of any other support services. Providing longer-term support through ongoing genetic counseling appears necessary to adequately address the ongoing challenges faced by young adults who are dealing with FAP.     

Social learning,sexual and physical abuse,and adult crime

This research examines the relationship between childhood physical and sexual abuse and the types of crimes committed by male adult offenders. We use the method of discriminant prediction to determine whether independent and dependent variables are related in ways that theories predict. Our analyses of data from the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities suggest that offenders model specific behaviors to which they have been exposed. Male offenders who were sexually abused as a child are more likely to commit sexual offenses, particularly sexual offenses against children, than nonsexual offenses. Offenders who were physically abused are more likely to engage in violent offenses than nonviolent offenses. Further analyses show that sexual offenders, and to a lesser extent violent offenders, are likely to specialize in those offenses. Our results are consistent with a social learning approach. They address a heretofore neglected issue: what exactly do children model when they are mistreated. Aggr. Behav. 35:489–501, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Political Philosophy: The View from Cambridge

This article reports on a conversation convened by Quentin Skinner at the invitation of the Editors of The Journal of Political Philosophy and held in Cambridge on 13 February 2001.     

Facilitative interactions of model- and experiencebased processes: Implications for type and flexibility of representation

People are often taught using a combination of instruction and practice. In prior research, we have distinguished between model-based knowledge (i.e., acquired from explicit instruction) and experience-based knowledge (i.e., acquired from practice), and have argued that the issue of how these types of knowledge (and associated learning processes) interact has been largely neglected. Two experiments explore this issue using a dynamic control task. Results demonstrate the utility of providing model-based knowledge before practice with the task, but more importantly, suggest how this information improves learning. Results also show that learning in this manner can lead to "costs" such as slowed retrieval, and that this knowledge may not always transfer to new task situations as well as experientially acquired knowledge. Our findings also question the assumption that participants always acquire a highly specific "lookup" table representation while learning this task. We provide an alternate view and discuss the implications for theories of learning.     

Speaker-external versus speaker-internal forces on utterance form: do cognitive demands override threats to referential success?

To what extent do speaker-external communicative pressures versus speaker-internal cognitive pressures affect utterance form? Four experiments measured speakers' references to privately known (i.e., privileged) objects when naming mutually known (i.e., common ground) objects. Although speaker-external communicative pressures demanded that speakers avoid references to privileged objects, 2 experiments showed that speakers often ignored this demand when it coexisted with a speaker-internal pressure to attend to those privileged objects. The authors hypothesize that this was due to increased salience of privileged objects (a speaker-internal pressure). Experiment 3 showed that directly boosting the salience of privileged objects increased the likelihood that speakers will inappropriately refer to those objects. Experiment 4 showed that the salience-sensitive mechanism in Experiments 1 and 2 is likely related to the mechanism causing such references in Experiment 3. Thus, the language production system is especially sensitive to cognitive pressures even when communicative harm results.     

Teleconferencing model for forensic consultation, court testimony, and continuing education

A medical center-based forensic clinic that provides the necessary comprehensive consultation, continuing education, court testimony, and clinical services through an applied model of teleconferencing applications is addressed. Telemedicine technology and services have gained the attention of both legal and clinical practitioners, examining trends and models of health care for underserved populations, and identifying where consultation with a team of professionals may benefit service providers in rural communities. The contribution offered herein provides an understanding of the history of the development of the clinic, a theoretical model that has been applied to a clinical forensic program that employs telepsychiatry services, and the ethical and malpractice liability issues confronted in using teleconferencing services. This model is examined through a child and adolescent forensic evaluation clinic. The goals of this model are offered, as are a number of applications within the broad spectrum of services utilizing telemedicine. Finally, changing patterns are addressed in clinically based health-care delivery for criminal justice, social services, and forensic mental health.     

Vital exhaustion and cardiovascular disease: are circulating fibrinogen and D-dimer levels a plausible link?

Vital exhaustion has been implicated in the development and progression of cardiovascular disease. In addition, elevated levels of fibrinogen and D-dimer have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Some studies have suggested that fibrinogen and D-dimer are associated with acute, chronic, and perceived stress. In this issue, Kudielka et al examine the relationship between circulating fibrinogen and D-dimer levels and vital exhaustion in a cross-sectional study of middle-aged teachers in Germany, to examine the plausible link between chronic stress and the development of cardiovascular disease. This commentary discusses the limited available evidence of the mechanisms responsible for the association between vital exhaustion and the development of cardiovascular disease and highlights the limitations of previous research and discusses future directions.     

Enhancing Outcomes for Struggling Readers: Empirical Analysis of The Fluency Development Lesson

This study investigated the efficacy of the Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) in improving reading achievement in primary grade struggling readers. 30 readers, enrolled in a summer reading clinic, participated in daily 40-min mini-reading lessons across 5 weeks. During the fluency lessons, readers practiced and developed their literacy skills through participation in repeated readings, word work, rehearsal, and performance. Assessments measured comprehension, reading fluency, including word recognition accuracy, reading speed, and prosody. Control students also took the pre- and post-intervention tests; their performance did not change with repeated testing. The Fluency Development Lesson students showed significant gains on all measures.     

Age differences in recognition of emotion in lexical stimuli and facial expressions

Age differences in emotion recognition from lexical stimuli and facial expressions were examined in a cross-sectional sample of adults aged 18 to 85 (N = 357). Emotion-specific response biases differed by age: Older adults were disproportionately more likely to incorrectly label lexical stimuli as happiness, sadness, and surprise and to incorrectly label facial stimuli as disgust and fear. After these biases were controlled, findings suggested that older adults were less accurate at identifying emotions than were young adults, but the pattern differed across emotions and task types. The lexical task showed stronger age differences than the facial task, and for lexical stimuli, age groups differed in accuracy for all emotional states except fear. For facial stimuli, in contrast, age groups differed only in accuracy for anger, disgust, fear, and happiness. Implications for age-related changes in different types of emotional processing are discussed.