Parent and Adolescent Responses to PovertyRelated Stress: Tests of Mediated and Moderated Coping Models

We tested several models of the associations among economic strain, life stress, coping, involuntary stress responses, and psychological symptoms in a sample of 57 parent-adolescent dyads from rural, lower-income families. Economic strain and life stress predicted symptoms for both parents and adolescents. Stressor-symptom specificity was found for parents, such that economic strain uniquely predicted depression, whereas negative life events predicted hostility. Involuntary stress responses were associated with higher levels of symptoms for both parents and the adolescent children. Secondary control coping was associated with fewer symptoms for both parents and adolescents. Results support a mediational role of coping and responses to stress during adolescence, with a shift to moderational status in adulthood. Implications of these results are discussed with regard to developmental coping theory and potential interventions with at-risk families.     

Amygdala activation to sad pictures during high-field (4 tesla) functional magnetic resonance imaging

Fear-related processing in the amygdala has been well documented, but its role in signaling other emotions remains controversial. The authors recovered signal loss in the amygdala at high-field strength using an inward spiral pulse sequence and probed its response to pictures varying in their degree of portrayed sadness. These pictures were presented as intermittent task-irrelevant distractors during a concurrent visual oddball task. Relative to neutral distractors, sad distractors elicited greater activation along ventral brain regions, including the amygdala, fusiform gyrus, and inferior frontal gyrus. In contrast, oddball targets engaged dorsal sectors of frontal, parietal, and cingulate cortices. The amygdala's role in emotional evaluation thus extends to images of grief and despair as well as to those depicting violence and threat.     

Timing of pubertal maturation in girls: an integrated life history approach

Life history theory provides a metatheoretical framework for the study of pubertal timing from an evolutionary-developmental perspective. The current article reviews 5 middle-level theories--energetics theory, stress-suppression theory, psychosocial acceleration theory, paternal investment theory, and child development theory--each of which applies the basic assumptions of life history theory to the question of environmental influences on timing of puberty in girls. These theories converge in their conceptualization of pubertal timing as responsive to ecological conditions but diverge in their conceptualization of (a) the nature, extent, and direction of environmental influences and (b) the effects of pubertal timing on other reproductive variables. Competing hypotheses derived from the 5 perspectives are evaluated. An extension of W. T. Boyce and B. J. Ellis's (in press) theory of stress reactivity is proposed to account for both inhibiting and accelerating effects of psychosocial stress on timing of pubertal development. This review highlights the multiplicity of (often unrecognized) perspectives guiding research, raises challenges to virtually all of these, and presents an alternative framework in an effort to move research forward in this arena of multidisciplinary inquiry.     

Relationships between physical activity and motor skills in middle school children

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between physical activity measured as pedometer steps and performance on three motor skill tests. A secondary purpose was to determine if middle school children are meeting the recommendation for the number of daily steps. A sample (n =217) of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students participated. Each subject wore a Digi-Walker pedometer for three consecutive days. Subjects additionally recorded their pedometer steps in two 45 min.-physical education classes. There were strong significant correlations between daily steps taken by boys and girls, pedometer steps during physical education class and the AAHPERD Passing Test and the Bass Stick Balance. Similar correlations were weaker for the Side-Step Agility Test. Multivariate analysis of variance was utilized to examine variability of the three skills test by sex and year in school. Differences between students in Grades 7 and 8 on the AAHPERD Passing Test were significant. In addition, significant differences between daily pedometer steps and steps during physical education between Grades 6 and 7 were observed. Boys and girls had similar means on the AAHPERD Passing Test and Bass Stick Balance Test, but not on the Side-Step Agility Test. Scores on the three movement skills tested in this study were not strongly related to physical activity of the entire sample. Steps taken by middle school children appear not to be related to these measures of motor skills.     

How to be an Anti-Skeptic and a NonContextualist

Contextualists often argue from examples where it seems true to say in one context that a person knows something but not true to say that in another context where skeptical hypotheses have been introduced. The skeptical hypotheses can be moderate, simply mentioning what might be the case or raising questions about what a person is certain of, or radical, where scenarios about demon worlds, brains in vats, The Matrix, etc., are introduced. I argue that the introduction of these skeptical hypotheses leads people to fallaciously infer that it is no longer true to say that the relevant person knows. I believe that that is a better explanation of the so-called intuition that the person does not know than the contextualists who claim that raising these skeptical hypotheses changes the standards that determine when it is true to say S knows that P. At the end I raise the possibility that contextualists might defend their view on pragmatic rather than skeptical grounds by arguing that the standards of evidence rise when more is at stake in a practical sense.     

Resilient teachers: resisting stress and burnout

In Australia, the incidence of teacher stress and burnout has caused serious concern. Many studies of teacher stress have focused on the dysfunctional strategies of individual teachers – in other words they have adopted a deficit approach to the problem with the focus firmly fixed on whats going wrong. From this perspective, the failure of some teachers to cope has generally been defined as a personal rather than an institutional weakness and the solutions that have been promoted have been largely palliative or therapeutic. The study reported in this paper adopted a different approach to the question of teacher stress and burnout. Instead of asking whats going wrong we asked why are some teachers able to cope successfully with the same kinds of stressors that appear to defeat others – in other words, we looked at whats going right.     

Look into my eyes: gaze direction and person memory

The current research considered the effects of gaze direction on a fundamental aspect of social cogition: person memory. It was anticipated that a person's direction of gaze (i.e., direct or averted) would impact his or her subsequent memorability, such that recognition would be enhanced for targets previously displaying direct gaze. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with faces displaying either direct or averted gaze in a person-classification (i.e., conceptual) task. Then, in a surprise memory test, they were required to report whether a presented face had been seen before. As expected, a recognition advantage was observed for targets displaying direct gaze during the initial classification task. This finding was replicated and extended in a second experiment in which participants initially reported the spatial location (i.e., perceptual task) of each face. We consider the implications of these findings for basic aspects of social-cognitive functioning and person perception.