Mother-Child Interactions and Preschoolers’ Emotion Regulation Outcomes: Nurturing Autonomous Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation is a complex process that begins in infancy and continues through childhood with parents’ support. Early parent-child interactions shape the way children learn emotion management. We took a sociocultural and social learning approach to exploring the specific components of mother-child interactions that are related to mothers’ perceptions of her child’s regulatory ability and the child’s observed emotion regulation. Thirty mothers and their preschool children were recruited from two New England urban areas: one community sample and one head start sample. Dyads engaged in a free play session, children completed an observed compliance task, and mothers completed a set of questionnaires assessing their perceptions of their child’s regulation. Regression analyses revealed that maternal behaviors during free play predicted child’s observed hostility (F _(2,29)?=?3.137, p?<?.05) and mothers’ perceptions of her child’s regulatory ability predicted observed child compliance (F _{(2, 17)}?=?4.990, p?<?.05). Child behaviors during play significantly predicted child’s compliance (F _(3,20)?=?4.722, p?<?.05) and child’s hostility (F _{(1, 26)}?=?9.220, p?<?.001). Maternal modeling and intentional scaffolding as well as perceptions of her child’s regulatory capacity have a powerful impact on her child’s observed regulation. Results indicate that it is particularly important for mothers of preschoolers to support autonomy while guiding socially appropriate behavior. Interventions that target improving mothers’ negative perceptions of their children, educating on appropriate preschool expectations, and facilitating preschoolers’ mature play may help mothers interact with their children in the ways that foster children’s autonomous emotion regulation.     

Spirituality as a 1‐Year Prospective Predictor of Violence Perpetration and Drug Use Among Youth at Continuation High Schools1

This paper presents the results of a 1‐year prospective study of violence perpetration, drug use, and spirituality among continuation high school youth. Spirituality was found to predict later violence perpetration and drug use as a single predictor. However, it failed to predict violence or drug use in models that also entered 6 other variables; particularly, baseline levels of violence and drug use, and morality of drug use. It is possible that current measures of spirituality predict later violence perpetration and drug use as a result of tapping attitudes about morality. Controlling for baseline spirituality, male gender, low morality of drug use, violence perpetration, and drug use predicted later spirituality. Spirituality appears to be affected by drug use and violence, but not the converse. The protective influence of spirituality is not supported, at least as currently measured.     

Race, Culture, and Ethnicity: Implications for a Community Intervention

We present an overview of research on African American families and emphasize in this discussion limitations of approaches used in the past to study African American families. We also discuss and identify challenges for designing and implementing community, family-based programs targeting competence-promoting behaviors in African American families. In addition, we attempt to accomplish the following objectives: (1) identify themes in studies of African American families, including bias in prior research; (2) discuss ways in which prior approaches and conceptual models guiding studies of African Americans have created challenges for the development and implementation of community-based intervention and research programs; and (3) present the Parents Matter! Program as an example of a community-based prevention effort that attempted to overcome many of the challenges created by prior research efforts.     

The influence of levels of processing on recall from working memory and delayed recall tasks

Recent research in working memory has highlighted the similarities involved in retrieval from complex span tasks and episodic memory tasks, suggesting that these tasks are influenced by similar memory processes. In the present article, the authors manipulated the level of processing engaged when studying to-be-remembered words during a reading span task (Experiment 1) and an operation span task (Experiment 2) in order to assess the role of retrieval from secondary memory during complex span tasks. Immediate recall from both span tasks was greater for items studied under deep processing instructions compared with items studied under shallow processing instructions regardless of trial length. Recall was better for deep than for shallow levels of processing on delayed recall tests as well. These data are consistent with the primary-secondary memory framework, which suggests that to-be-remembered items are displaced from primary memory (i.e., the focus of attention) during the processing phases of complex span tasks and therefore must be retrieved from secondary memory.     

The influence of FMRI lie detection evidence on juror decision-making

In the current study, we report on an experiment examining whether functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) lie detection evidence would influence potential jurors' assessment of guilt in a criminal trial. Potential jurors (N = 330) read a vignette summarizing a trial, with some versions of the vignette including lie detection evidence indicating that the defendant was lying about having committed the crime. Lie detector evidence was based on evidence from the polygraph, fMRI (functional brain imaging), or thermal facial imaging. Results showed that fMRI lie detection evidence led to more guilty verdicts than lie detection evidence based on polygraph evidence, thermal facial imaging, or a control condition that did not include lie detection evidence. However, when the validity of the fMRI lie detection evidence was called into question on cross-examination, guilty verdicts were reduced to the level of the control condition. These results provide important information about the influence of lie detection evidence in legal settings. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parental Strategies for Knowledge of Adolescents’ Friends: Distinct from Monitoring?

Parental monitoring is defined as a set of behaviors used to gain knowledge about an adolescent’s whereabouts, friends and associates, and activities. However, can knowledge of adolescents’ whereabouts/activities, and friends all be attained through the same strategies? Or do they require their own strategies? This study used qualitative interviews with 173 parents of older adolescents from 100 families. Emergent themes described strategies by which parents gain information about their adolescents’ friends and the substance use of those friends. The strategies included direct interaction with the friend, gaining information from the teen, using second-hand sources, and making assumptions. Some of these strategies were consistent with previous research, while others raise new questions and provide interesting new directions to pursue. Primarily, additional consideration needs to be given to assessments of parental monitoring that include strategies for gaining knowledge of adolescents’ friends and their substance use.     

Thought dismissability in obsessive-compulsive disorder versus panic disorder

This study sought to better understand the persistence of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) by studying the dismissability of obsessional thoughts in individuals with OCD relative to the dismissability of panic-relevant thoughts in individuals with panic disorder with or without agoraphobia (PD/A). Individuals with a principal diagnosis of OCD (n = 25) or PD/A (n = 25) completed a thought replacement task in which they replaced a primary obsession (target thought for the OCD group) or a primary panic-relevant thought (target thought for the PD/A group), with a neutral thought, signaling when the target thought occurred and when the neutral thought was in mind. The OCD group had more target thoughts and appraised the recurrence of the target thought more negatively. Whereas mood state did not change in the PD/A group, it declined in the OCD group, and this change was predicted by negative appraisal of target thought recurrences, but not amount of time thinking the target thought. These findings suggest that in vivo appraisal of the recurrence of obsessions may be a unique, key mechanism in the persistence of OCD and that the identification and exploration of appraisal of thought recurrences may be an especially important target in its treatment.     

The development of memory efficiency and value-directed remembering across the life span: a cross-sectional study of memory and selectivity

Although attentional control and memory change considerably across the life span, no research has examined how the ability to strategically remember important information (i.e., value-directed remembering) changes from childhood to old age. The present study examined this in different age groups across the life span (N = 320, 5-96 years old). A selectivity task was used in which participants were asked to study and recall items worth different point values in order to maximize their point score. This procedure allowed for measures of memory quantity/capacity (number of words recalled) and memory efficiency/selectivity (the recall of high-value items relative to low-value items). Age-related differences were found for memory capacity, as young adults recalled more words than the other groups. However, in terms of selectivity, younger and older adults were more selective than adolescents and children. The dissociation between these measures across the life span illustrates important age-related differences in terms of memory capacity and the ability to selectively remember high-value information.