Individual and parental factors related to meaning in life among Hungarian minority adolescents from Romania

Understanding how adolescents achieve meaning in life has important implications for their psychological development. A social cognitive model of meaning development was tested by assessing psychological (self‐efficacy, self‐regulation and social comparison) and parental (parental responsiveness, demandingness, and social support) variables in a sample of 1944 adolescents (aged 15–19 years; 47.8% males) from secondary schools of the Middle Transylvanian Region, Romania. Both psychological and parental factors were significantly related to meaning in life. For both boys and girls, self‐efficacy, self‐regulation, and maternal responsiveness related positively with meaning in life, and paternal demandingness related inversely to meaning in life. However, social comparison related positively to meaning only among boys, and paternal responsiveness related positively to meaning only among girls. Results point to a possible meaning‐supporting role played by social cognitive variables, as well as parental autonomy support. The gender differences observed here suggest that existing theories of meaning development may need to be elaborated to include family of origin and gender.     

Social orientations and adolescent health behaviours in Hungary

Adolescent health behaviours are influenced by a variety of social factors, including social orientations, such as social comparison or competitiveness. The main goal of the present study was to investigate the role that these social orientations might play in health behaviours (both health‐impairing and health‐promoting). Data were collected from high school students (N = 548; ages 14–20 years; 39.9% males) in two counties of the Southern Plain Region of Hungary. The self‐administered questionnaires contained items on sociodemographics, such as age, sex, parental schooling, and socioeconomic status (SES) self‐assessment; school achievement, health behaviours, competitiveness and social comparison. Multiple regression analyses suggest that those who scored higher on competitiveness engaged in more substance use, a pattern that was not present for health‐promoting behaviours. Social comparison, however, was associated with lower levels of substance use. In addition, in relation to health‐impairing behaviours, both competitiveness and social comparison interacted with sex; both social orientation variables proved to be more important for boys. Social comparison also contributed to health‐promoting behaviours among boys. Findings support the idea that the role of social orientations, such as competitiveness and social comparison, can be quite different depending on sex and the nature of the health behaviour. While competitiveness may act as a risk factor for substance use among boys, social comparison may act as a protection. It appears that social orientations play less of a role in girls' health‐related behaviours. More focus is needed on gender differences in influences on adolescents' health‐related behaviours.     

Unpaired shocks during extinction weaken the contextual renewal of a conditioned discrimination

Extinction is generally more fragile than conditioning, as illustrated by the contextual renewal effect. The traditional extinction procedure entails isolated presentations of the conditioned stimulus. Extinction may be boosted by adding isolated presentations of the unconditioned stimulus, as this should augment breaking the contingency between the two stimuli. In a human conditioning experiment with on-line expectancy ratings and electrodermal responding as dependent variables, 32 participants were differentially conditioned to two neutral figures using electric shock. After a change of context, one group received normal extinction treatment whereas another group received explicitly unpaired presentations of the figures and shock. At test, the two figures were presented in the original context again. For both measures, only the group that received normal extinction showed renewal of the conditioned discrimination. These results suggest that unpaired shocks during extinction strengthen the extinction learning.     

Therapeutic Treatment Protocol for Enuresis Using an Enuresis Alarm

Enuresis, one of the most prevalent and chronic childhood disorders, imposes serious financial, physical, and emotional burdens on the child and the family affected by it. This article provides counselors with an overview of the complex etiologies, diagnostic criteria, and current treatment options for the disorder, as well as assessment tools and comprehensive treatment guidelines, including instructions on the use of an enuresis alarm. Supportive interventions and advocacy related issues are discussed.     

An Applied Example of Pooled Time Series Analysis: Cardiovascular Reactivity to Stressors in Children With Autism

The advent of telemetric devices that sample data extensively over time has facilitated single subject or idiographic research to intensively study a single person over time. One of the challenges of idiographic research is combining single subject results to determine generalizability across subjects. This article demonstrates the first behavioral science application of pooled time series analysis, an extension of time series analysis that allows for the testing of between-person effects. The analysis used cardiovascular data gathered from 4 children with autism between the ages of 10 and 20 while exposed to 6 experimentally manipulated environmental stressors. A pooled time series analysis using the general transformation approach identified 1 general (a difficult learning task) and 3 specific stressors (exposure to a loud noise, unstructured time, and eating a preferred food) across the 4 participants. This application of pooled time series analysis demonstrates the challenges and potential for this method to address the issue of generalizability when using an idiographic research approach in the behavioral sciences.     

Exploring the hardship of ease: Subjective and objective effort in the ease-of-processing paradigm

Numerous studies examined the role of processing effort in judgments using the “ease-of-processing” paradigm in which participants generate or retrieve few or many issue-relevant thoughts. Because earlier studies only assessed the subjective effort, it is unclear if this paradigm also mobilizes objective effort, and how such effort relates to subjective effort. These questions were addressed in two experiments modeled on standard tasks from the processing effort literature: “ease of argument generation” (Study 1) and “ease of retrieval” (Study 2). In both experiments we simultaneously measured subjective effort (via self-report) and objective effort (via cardiovascular reactivity). The results showed that processing ease manipulations (generation or retrieval of few vs. many exemplars) influence not only subjective effort, but also objective effort, as reflected especially by increases of systolic blood pressure in the many exemplars condition. However, only subjective effort was related to judgment. In the discussion, we consider the role of various forms of effort and other relevant variables in “processing ease” effects.     

Retrospective reports of parental physical affection and parenting style: a study of Finnish twins

Individual differences in parenting behaviors are due, in part, to genetic factors. In the present study, the authors sought to determine whether the degree of genetic influence varied according to the type of parental behavior under consideration. A population-based sample of 2,334 pairs of Finnish twins provided ratings on the physical affection, control, abusiveness, and indifference shown by their father and mother during childhood. Genetic influences, shared environmental influences, and nonshared environmental influences accounted for a small-to-medium proportion (17%-30%), a small-to-large proportion (22%-44%), and a medium-to-large proportion (37%-55%) of the variance in each parenting measure, respectively. There were no significant differences in effect sizes for mothers and fathers or across the 4 types of parental behavior. The genetic results may reflect characteristic styles with which parents respond to genetically influenced behaviors of individuals (gene-environment correlations) or individual perceptions of this relationship (gene-person correlation processes). The findings have implications for intervention and prevention work with families and for interpretation of evidence for interactions between genes and parenting behaviors.     

Grandmaternal and maternal ethnotheories about early child care.

Parenting ethnotheories represent an organized set of ideas about parents, children, and development that are shared by members of cultural groups. Because these ideas and beliefs reflect cultural models and serve as representational frameworks for parenting strategies, they need to change with historical time. To analyze these changes, the authors interviewed mothers and grandmothers of 3-month-old infants in 4 different cultural environments--urban German middle-class families (41 mothers, 22 grandmothers), urban Indian middle-class families (36 mothers, 12 grandmothers), rural Cameroonian Nso families (29 mothers, 20 grandmothers), and urban Cameroonian Nso families (28 mothers, 12 grandmothers)--in regard to their ideas about infant care. The interviews were analyzed according to content and discourse style. The results reveal that there is not only transmission of parental beliefs from one generation to the next but also variation in adaptation to changing environments. Although the global trend toward more independent cultural models of parenting is confirmed, the magnitude of change varies across the different cultural environments.     

Electrophysiological correlates of crossmodal visual distractor congruency effects: Evidence for response conflict

To investigate the basis of crossmodal visual distractor congruency effects, we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERP) while participants performed a tactile location-discrimination task. Participants made speeded tactile location-discrimination responses to tactile targets presented to the index fingers or thumbs while ignoring simultaneously presented task-irrelevant visual distractor stimuli at either the same (congruent) or a different (incongruent) location. Behavioural results were in line with previous studies, showing slowed response times and increased error rates on incongruent compared with congruent visual distractor trials. To clarify the effect of visual distractors on tactile processing, concurrently recorded ERPs were analyzed for poststimulus, preresponse, and postresponse modulations. An enhanced negativity was found in the time range of the N2 component on incongruent compared with congruent visual distractor trials prior to correct responses. In addition, postresponse ERPs showed the presence of error-related negativity components on incorrect-response trials and enhanced negativity for congruent-incorrect compared with incongruent-incorrect trials. This pattern of ERP results has previously been related to response conflict (Yeung, Botvinick, & Cohen, 2004). Importantly, no modulation of early somatosensory ERPs was present prior to the N2 time range, which may have suggested the contribution of other perceptual or postperceptual processes to crossmodal congruency effects. Taken together, our results suggest that crossmodal visual distractor effects are largely due to response conflict.