Scared stiff: The influence of anxiety on the perception of action capabilities

Influences on the perception of affordances (i.e., opportunities for actions) have been primarily studied by manipulating the functional morphology of the body. However, affordances are not just determined by the functional morphology of the perceiver, but also by the physiological state of the perceiver. States of anxiety have been shown to lead to marked changes in individuals’ physiological state and their behaviour. To assess the influence of emotional state on affordance perception, the perception of action capabilities in near space was examined after participants completed an anxiety-provoking task. Anxiety was induced immediately prior to tasks that assessed participants' perceived reaching ability in Experiment 1, grasping ability in Experiment 2, and the ability to pass their hands through apertures in Experiment 3. Results indicated that those participants who experienced changes in anxiety underestimated their reaching, grasping, and passing ability compared to non-anxious participants. In other words, anxious participants were more conservative in their estimations of their action capabilities. These results suggest that anxiety influences the perception for affordances in near space and are consistent with the notion that anxiety induces withdrawal behaviours.     

DISORGANIZED INFANT ATTACHMENT STRATEGIES AND HELPLESS-FEARFUL PROFILES OF PARENTING: INTEGRATING ATTACHMENT RESEARCH WITH CLINICAL INTERVENTION

In this article, recent research on parenting behaviors associated with infant attachment disorganization is summarized and applied to a parent-infant psychotherapy case. Both hostile/self-referential and helpless-fearful patterns of parentingare described and viewed theoretically as alternate aspects of a single hostile-helpless internal working model of attachment relationships. The case material focuses on the more subtle and harder to identify manifestations of a helpless-fearful parental stance. Some attachment-related treatment guidelines for working with a hostile-helpless parenting stance are suggested, including challenging the hostile-helpless model implicitly in the qualities of the therapist's approach to the parent, explicitly articulating the hostile-helpless bind with the parent, increasing the parent's openness to a wider range of affective experience, differentiating attachment-related needs from other communications of the baby, and developing new skills for balancing the needs of the self and the needs of the other in interaction with the baby.     

Empathy,Selfism, and Coping as Elements of the Psychology of Forgiveness: A Preliminary Study

This research expanded understanding of forgiveness by (a) distinguishing forgiveness from unforgiveness and their respective correlates (empathy and selfism) and (b) examining coping style and its impact on the process of forgiveness and unforgiveness. Participants were 92 students in a large northeastern urban public university. Correlates of forgiveness and unforgiveness were distinctly different. With respect to forgiveness, 42% of the variance was explained by the variables under study. Emotion‐focused coping was associated with forgiving. Clinically relevant issues were raised, specifically regarding the role of selfism and emotion‐focused coping and contextual variables such as financial resources, age, gender, and religiosity.     

Global and local evaluations of public speaking performance in social anxiety

Differences in the relative use of global and local information (seeing the forest vs. the trees) may explain why people with social anxiety often do not benefit from corrective feedback, even though they pay close attention to details in social situations. In the current study, participants high (n = 43) or low (n = 47) in social anxiety symptoms gave a series of brief speeches, and then self-rated their speaking performance on items reflecting global and local performance indicators (self-assessment) and also received standardized performance feedback from an experimenter. Participants then completed a questionnaire asking how they thought the experimenter would rate their performance based on the feedback provided (experimenter assessment). Participants completed the self- and experimenter assessments again after 3 days, in addition to a measure of postevent processing (repetitive negative thinking) about their speech performance. Results showed that, as hypothesized, the High SA group rated their performance more negatively than the Low SA group. Moreover, the High SA group's ratings of global aspects of their performance became relatively more negative over time, compared to their ratings of local aspects and the Low SA group's ratings. As expected, postevent processing mediated the relationship between social anxiety group status and worsening global performance evaluations. These findings point to a pattern of progressively more negative global evaluations over time for persons high in social anxiety.     

Eliciting explanations: Constraints on when self-explanation aids learning

Generating explanations for oneself in an attempt to make sense of new information (i.e., self-explanation) is often a powerful learning technique. Despite its general effectiveness, in a growing number of studies, prompting for self-explanation improved some aspects of learning, but reduced learning of other aspects. Drawing on this recent research, as well as on research comparing self-explanation under different conditions, we propose four constraints on the effectiveness of self-explanation. First, self-explanation promotes attention to particular types of information, so it is better suited to promote particular learning outcomes in particular types of domains, such as transfer in domains guided by general principles or heuristics. Second, self-explaining a variety of types of information can improve learning, but explaining one’s own solution methods or choices may reduce learning under certain conditions. Third, explanation prompts focus effort on particular aspects of the to-be-learned material, potentially drawing effort away from other important information. Explanation prompts must be carefully designed to align with target learning outcomes. Fourth, prompted self-explanation often promotes learning better than unguided studying, but alternative instructional techniques may be more effective under some conditions. Attention to these constraints should optimize the effectiveness of self-explanation as an instructional technique in future research and practice.     

Putting the “th” in Tenths: Providing Place-Value Labels Helps Reveal the Structure of Our Base-10 Numeral System

Research has demonstrated that providing labels helps children notice key features of examples. Much less is known about how different labels impact children’s ability to make inferences about the structure underlying mathematical notation. We tested the impact of labeling decimals such as 0.34 using formal place-value labels (“3 tenths and 4 hundredths”) compared to informal labels (“point three four”) or no labels on children’s problem-solving performance. Third- and fourth-graders (N = 104) learned to label decimals while playing a magnitude comparison game and placing decimals on a number line. Formal labels facilitated performance on problems that required understanding the role of zero. Further, formal labels led to lower performance on problems where a whole-number bias led to a correct answer, suggesting that formal labels may have reduced a whole-number bias. Overall, formal labels helped highlight the place-value structure of decimals, indicating that labels can help children notice mathematical structure.     

I'm Embarrassed for You: The Effect of Valuing and Perspective Taking on Empathic Embarrassment and Empathic Concern

Much research has investigated the cognitive‐perceptual factors that promote empathic concern. However, little research has investigated such factors for a related emotion: empathic embarrassment. We suggest that 2 factors promote empathic embarrassment for a target in a compromising situation: liking the target, and imagining oneself in the target's situation. Results revealed that liking a socially compromised target increases both empathic concern and empathic embarrassment (Experiment 1). Furthermore, imagining the person's thoughts and feelings increases empathic concern and a desire for future exposure to the person, whereas imagining oneself in the person's situation primarily increases empathic embarrassment (Experiment 2). Implications of these results for future empathy research and applications for those who suffer from chronic embarrassability are discussed.     

Trauma‐Informed Programs Based in Schools: Linking Concepts to Practices and Assessing the Evidence

When children experience stress and adversity in their homes and communities, schools become a critically important setting in which to intervene and foster their resilience. Changing practices within schools so that vulnerable and traumatized children are better understood and more compassionately served is a goal shared by many school professionals, yet schools remain poorly equipped to address the needs of these children. Any number of school‐based programs have the potential to benefit children with an elevated risk for academic difficulties and mental health disorders, although questions remain as to which programs are most promising, effective, and sustainable. Questions also remain about which programs best serve diverse populations and which have potential to reach the largest number of children, including those who do not outwardly manifest behaviors consistent with an underlying disorder but nonetheless require support. In this review, we take stock of existing programs used in schools to address the social, emotional, and academic needs of children with trauma histories. We summarize components of a various trauma‐focused programs, categorized as: (a) individual and group‐based approaches, (b) classroom‐based approaches, and (c) school‐wide approaches. For each category, we review and comment on the state and quality of research findings and provide illustrative examples from the literature to show how programs address trauma in the school context. Findings of the review suggest that empirical evidence currently favors individual and group‐based approaches, although classroom‐based and school‐wide programs may be better positioned for integration, access to services, and sustainability. Implications and recommendations center on future research, practice, and policy.