Parental Emotion Coaching: Associations With Self-Regulation in Aggressive/Rejected and Low Aggressive/Popular Children

This study investigated associations between maternal and paternal emotion coaching and the self-regulation skills of kindergarten and first-grade children. Participants were 54 children categorized as either aggressive/rejected or low aggressive/popular by peer reports. Findings indicated a statistical trend for fathers of low aggressive/popular children to engage in more emotion coaching than fathers of aggressive/rejected children. Paternal emotion coaching accounted for significant variance in children's regulation of attention. Maternal emotion coaching moderated the relation between children's status and regulation of emotion. Findings suggest that interventions focused on parental emotion coaching may prove beneficial for increasing the self-regulation and attention skills of children with social and conduct problems.     

Keeping Engaged During Deployment: The Interplay Between Self-Efficacy,Family Support,and Threat Exposure

This study investigated the importance of 2 resilience resources for service members’ ability to deal with threat during deployment. Military self-efficacy and family support were measured before deployment and related to work engagement and burnout levels of service members during deployment. We hypothesized that in high threat situations, low self-efficacy would lead to unfavorable outcomes, whereas in low threat situations, high self-efficacy could have negative consequences. In addition, we hypothesized that family support would compensate for both effects. The results showed these expected 3-way interactions. We found that strong self-efficacy helped service members deal with exposure to threatening situations during deployment, leading to more work engagement and less burnout. However, having strong self-efficacy without being exposed to threat during deployment reduced service members’ work engagement and increased burnout. In addition, we found that the presence of family support compensated for these effects. Service members with low self-efficacy benefitted from family support when threat exposure was high, whereas service members with high self-efficacy benefitted from family support when threat exposure was low. As such, family support seemed to act as a compensatory mechanism for the potential negative effects of self-efficacy. This underlines the importance of studying the interplay between resources that help service members deal with deployment experiences. Practical implications relate to supporting service members’ resilience through enhancing multiple resources.     

Executive function performance on the children's kitchen task assessment with children with sickle cell disease and matched controls

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare executive function abilities of 8- to 12-year-old children with sickle cell disease (SCD) with a matched control sample. The measures included the parent and teacher Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF); the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (D-KEFS), Free Sorting Test and Color Word Interference Test; and the Children's Kitchen Task Assessment (CKTA), a new performance measure. Methods: Twenty-two children with SCD were recruited from one hematology clinic and 22 community children, matched on characteristics of age, gender, and race, were selected from a larger sample of controls for comparison. Parents and teachers completed rating scales. Results:As hypothesized, children with SCD scored significantly lower than matched controls on Digit Span Forward; on 5 of the 9 D-KFES Color Word Interference and Sorting tasks; on CKTA organization, initiation, and task completion; and on the BRIEF's parent and teacher Metacognitive Index (MI) and Global Executive Composite (GEC) scores. Conclusion:Cognitive and performance evaluations indicate lower executive function among children with SCD. Results substantiate the need for evaluative triangulation for children with SCD: Neurocognitive testing supported by performance testing, and adult reflection of a child's daily performance compared to other children. These elements will provide rich data to create educational support for children with SCD who have frequent hospitalizations, school absences, and the potential presence of cerebral vascular accident symptomology.     

Trends in Publication of Spirituality/Religiosity Articles in Critical Care Populations

Research on spirituality and religion (S/R) is receiving more attention as healthcare staff recognize the importance of treating the whole person. This is especially pertinent in critical care, where patients and families deal with a multitude of issues. As not all research comes exclusively from theologically educated authors, this study explored publication trends of S/R articles in critical care. Findings indicated medically credentialed professionals, not chaplains and/or pastoral care staff, constituted the majority of authors in S/R articles.     

US habituation,like CS extinction,produces a decrement in conditioned fear responding that is NMDA dependent and subject to renewal and reinstatement

Just as fear can be learned, it can also be inhibited. The most common way of reducing learned fear is through extinction, where the conditioned stimulus (CS) previously paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) is repeatedly presented on its own. Another, much less commonly studied, way to inhibit learned fear is by habituating, or devaluing, the US. In this procedure, fear responding to a CS is reduced by repeatedly presenting the US in the absence of the CS following the conditioning phase. The purpose of the present study was to directly compare the effects of US habituation and CS extinction on a learned fear response (freezing). Experiment 1 demonstrated that US habituation given either after (Experiment 1A) or before (Experiment 1B) fear conditioning reduced freezing to the CS at test. We then showed that the reduction in freezing resulting from either US habituation or CS extinction was context-specific (i.e., a change in context led to a renewal of the learned fear response; Experiment 2) and, furthermore, was attenuated when a pre-test shock was given (i.e., reinstatement of fear was observed in both cases; Experiment 3). Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that an injection of the NMDA antagonist MK-801 prior to US habituation impaired long-term retention of the learning that takes place during this procedure. Together, these results suggest that the decrement in conditioned fear responses produced by US habituation and CS extinction could rely on overlapping processes.     

The whole is equal to the sum of its parts: a probabilistic model of grouping by proximity and similarity in regular patterns

The authors investigated whether the gestalt grouping principles can be quantified and whether the conjoint effects of two grouping principles operating at the same time on the same stimuli differ from the sum of their individual effects. After reviewing earlier attempts to discover how grouping principles interact, they developed a probabilistic model of grouping by proximity, which allows measurement of strength on a ratio scale. Then, in 3 experiments using dot lattices, they showed that the strength of the conjoint effect of 2 grouping principles--grouping by proximity and grouping by similarity--is equal to the sum of their separate effects. They propose a physiologically plausible model of this law.     

Differential Mastication Kinematics of the Rabbit in Response to Food and Water: Implications for Conditioned Movement

Analysis of naturalistic chewing patterns may provide insight into mapping the neural substrates of jaw movement control systems, including their adaptive modification during the classically conditioned jaw movement (CJM) paradigm. Here, New Zealand White rabbits were administered food and water stimuli orally to evaluate the influence of stimulus consistency on masticatory pattern. Chewing patterns were recorded via video camera and movements were analyzed by computerized image analysis. The mandibular kinematics, specifically the extent of dorsal/ventral, medial/lateral, and rostral/caudal movement, were significantly larger in food-evoked than water-evoked chewing. Water-evoked chewing frequency, however, was significantly higher than that of food-evoked movements. In light of known cortical mastication modulatory centers, our findings implicate different neural substrates for the responses to food and water stimuli in the rabbit. A detailed delineation of jaw movement patterns and circuitry is essential to characterize the neural substrates of CJM.