Educating the Senses: Explorations in Aesthetics,Embodiment and Sensory Pedagogy

Studies in Philosophy and Education - This volume takes two different, albeit intertwined approaches. The first concerns a reformulation of aesthetics in education—one which highlights the...     

Parental Involvement and Adolescents’ Academic Achievement: Latent Profiles of Mother and Father Warmth as a Moderating Influence

Parental involvement in their adolescents’ education plays an important role in promoting their children's academic outcomes. Yet, more research is needed to examine the relationship between parenting practices and parental warmth as well as to consider the potential joint contribution of warmth from both fathers and mothers. Thus, the primary purpose of the current study is to examine the extent to which patterns of parental warmth across fathers and mothers moderate the association between parental involvement and adolescents’ grade point average (GPA) and school engagement behaviors. Latent profile analysis was conducted to identify disparate profiles of fathers’ and mothers’ warmth within a nationally representative sample of 2,306 youths (51% male; mean age = 15.31 years, SD = 1.50; 77% non-Hispanic White) residing in opposite-sex, two-parent families from Wave I and II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Latent-class enumeration processes support a five-profile solution characterized by differences in levels of parental warmth and congruency across parents: (a) Congruent High Warmth, (b) Congruent Moderate Warmth, (c) Congruent Low Warmth, (d) Incongruent High Mother/Low Father Warmth, and (e) Incongruent Low Father/Lower Mother Warmth. Subsequent multiple linear regression analyses reveal a moderating effect for Congruent Low Warmth on the relationship between parental involvement and adolescents’ GPA. Ultimately, the results show that variation in parental warmth exists across fathers and mothers with differing impact on adolescents’ outcomes. Excluding one parent without considering the joint effects of both parents will not produce an accurate and precise understanding of parenting in research or practice.     

Effects of Gender and Appearance Comparisons on Associations Between Media-Based Appearance Pressure and Disordered Eating: Testing a Moderated Mediation Model

Sex Roles - Appearance pressure from mass media and appearance social comparisons have been implicated in theory and research on disordered eating. However, mediating effects of upward and downward...     

The Negative Physical Self Scale: Initial development and validation in samples of Chinese adolescents and young adults

This research presents four studies on the initial development and validation of the 48-item Negative Physical Self Scale (NPS), a multidimensional measure of body image concerns for use with Chinese samples. In Study 1 (N = 1095), exploratory factor analyses identified five dimensions underlying the NPS (General Appearance, Facial Appearance, Shortness, Fatness, Thinness). In Study 2 (N = 1057), confirmatory factor analyses replicated this factor structure. In Studies 3 and 4, the validity of all NPS dimensions except Thinness Concern was supported via their patterns of relation with both objective physical characteristics/behaviors and other self-report measures of body image and general self worth. Because Chinese adolescents and young adults expressed relatively more concerns about General Appearance, Shortness, and Facial Appearance than about Fatness, the NPS may have greater utility for assessing body image disturbances in China than existing measures that focus exclusively on general body satisfaction and body size/weight.     

Conditioned Inhibition Produced by Extinction of a Conditioned Stimulus

Four experiments used a conditioned taste aversion procedure to examine the potential for CS-alone extinction treatment to produce a conditioned stimulus that possesses inhibitory properties. In Experiment 1, saccharin was paired with LiCl, and then saccharin was presented alone for several trials to produce extensive behavioral extinction. Animals receiving this treatment were retarded in reacquiring conditioned responding to saccharin relative to control subjects receiving conditioning to the flavor for the first time. In Experiment 2, the extinguished saccharin stimulus was shown to decrease conditioned responding to a known excitor when the two stimuli were presented in compound as a summation test. Experiments 3A and 3B replicated the findings of Experiments 1 and 2 while providing evidence that the effects were not due to the differential effects of neophobia during testing. These three experiments revealed that an extinguished conditioned excitor passes retardation and summation tests for conditioned inhibition. Experiment 4 found that extinction of a known excitor was slowed when the excitor was extinguished in compound with a previously extinguished conditioned stimulus. That is, an extinguished CS provided protection from extinction to another CS, a finding also consistent with the view that extinction produces conditioned inhibition.     

The Impact of Life Transition on Emerging Adult Attachment,Social Support,and Well‐Being: A Multiple‐Group Comparison

Life transitions can induce distress for emerging adults. This study compared a model of the attachment, social support, and well‐being of emerging adults in transition with a model of those not in transition (N = 378). The transition sample reported less life satisfaction and environmental mastery and higher attachment avoidance than the nontransition sample. The transition sample showed weaker mediating effects of social support, suggesting that attachment accounted for additional unique variance for this group. Counseling implications are provided.     

A Comparison of Latent Inhibition and Learned Irrelevance Pre-Exposure Effects in Rabbit and Human Eyeblink Conditioning

The learning of an association between a CS and a US can be retarded by unreinforced presentations of the CS alone (termed latent inhibition or LI) or by un-correlated presentations of the CS and US (termed learned irrelevance or LIRR). In rabbit eyeblink conditioning, there have been some recent failures to replicate LI. LIRR has been hypothesized as producing a stronger retardation effect than LI based on both empirical studies and computational models. In the work presented here, we examined the relative strength of LI and LIRR in eyeblink conditioning in rabbits and humans. In both species, a number of preexposure trials sufficient to produce LIRR failed to produce LI (Experiments 1 & 3). Doubling the number of CS pre-exposures did produce LI in rabbits (Experiment 2), but not in humans (Experiment 4). LI was demonstrated in humans only after manipulations including an increased inter-trial interval or ITI (Experiment 5). Overall, it appears that LIRR is a more easily producible pre-exposure retardation effect than LI for eyeblink conditioning in both rabbits and humans. Several theoretical mechanisms for LI including the conditioned attention theory, stimulus compression, novelty, and the switching theory are discussed as possible explanations for the differences between LIRR and LI. Overall, future work involving testing the neural substrates of pre-exposure effects may benefit from the use of LIRR rather than LI.     

What Triggers Anger in Everyday Life? Links to the Intensity,Control, and Regulation of These Emotions,and Personality Traits

Why do people experience anger? Most of our knowledge on anger‐triggering events is based on the study of reactions at a single time point in a person's life. Little research has examined how people experience anger in their daily life over time. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive examination of the situational determinants of anger over the course of 3 weeks. Using daily diary methodology, people (N = 173; 2,342 anger episodes) reported their most intense daily anger and, with an open‐ended format, described the trigger. Participants also answered questions on anger intensity, control, and regulatory strategies, along with baseline personality trait measures. Using an iterative coding system, five anger trigger categories emerged: other people, psychological and physical distress, intrapersonal demands, environment, and diffuse/undifferentiated/unknown. Compared with other triggers, when anger was provoked by other people or when the source was unknown, there was a stronger positive association with anger intensity and lack of control. Personality traits (i.e., anger, mindfulness, psychological need satisfaction, the Big Five) showed few links to the experience and regulation of daily anger. Although aversive events often spur anger, the correlates and consequences of anger differ depending on the source of aversion; personality traits offer minimal value in predicting anger in daily life.     

“It Just Always Seemed Like it Wasn't a Big Deal,Yet I Know for Some People They Really Struggle with It”: LGBT Religious Identities in Context

Scholarly examinations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) religious identities have typically focused on “identity reconciliation,” which assumes that being both LGBT and religious is a “contradiction,” and posits a “coherent” identity as a desired end goal. The present research draws on a qualitative study of three LGBT‐identified congregations to demonstrate that there are a variety of ways in which LGBT religious people approach the connection between their LGBT identity and their religion. While some participants of the study did feel a need to reconcile these aspects of their self, others report never feeling a strong conflict between their LGBT identity and faith. The differences in these understandings of LGBT identity emerge out of the sociotemporal contexts the interviewees exist in, suggesting that different contexts provide divergent resources for identity performances. Through these findings, I contribute to our understanding of the intersection of religious agency, religious identities, and religion as a quality of social spaces.