Parental satisfaction in child abuse and neglect: A review of standardized measures

Low levels of parental satisfaction have been implicated in parents' utilization of harsh disciplining strategies and perpetration of child abuse and neglect. Although measures of parental satisfaction have been present for more than 3 decades, the employment of these instruments in child maltreatment populations has been limited, perhaps due to a lack of empirical evaluation. This paper reviews extant studies that demonstrate the need to examine the relationship between parental satisfaction and child maltreatment, and provides a critical examination of existing measures of parental satisfaction, including their psychometric support and application to child maltreatment. Recommendations are offered regarding the utility of these measures in child maltreatment.     

Parenting a Child with Phenylketonuria (PKU): an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of the Experience of Parents

Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a rare inherited metabolic disorder which can cause neurological damage if left untreated. PKU is identified through newborn screening in developed countries, and treatment begins immediately to prevent these severe consequences. When a child is diagnosed, parents must assume immediate responsibility for the management of PKU and prevention of neurological damage. Quantitative studies have identified significant psychosocial stressors for parents, but little is known about how the parents experience this process. This study aimed to explore the experiences of parents of children with PKU under the age of two. It is the first study to examine these experiences in this way. Seven parents were interviewed about their experiences, and interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse the data. Three main themes were identified: control, striving for normality and acceptance of PKU as a continuum. Links between the themes and processes underpinning the results were explored with relation to existing literature and theories from a clinical psychology perspective. The role of acceptance of PKU was central to the parent’s experiences. Clinical implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Comparing viewer and array mental rotations in different planes

Participants imagined rotating either themselves or an array of objects that surrounded them. Their task was to report on the egocentric position of an item in the array following the imagined rotation. The dependent measures were response latency and number of errors committed. Past research has shown that self-rotation is easier than array rotation. However, we found that imagined egocentric rotations were as difficult to imagine as rotations of the environment when people performed imagined rotations in the midsagittal or coronal plane. The advantages of imagined self-rotations are specific to mental rotations performed in the transverse plane.     

Response rate and reinforcement rate in Pavlovian conditioning

Four experiments used delay conditioning of magazine approach in rats to investigate the relationship between the rate of responding, R, to a conditioned stimulus (CS) and the rate, r, at which the CS is reinforced with the unconditioned stimulus (US). Rats were concurrently trained with four variable-duration CSs with different rs, either as a result of differences in the mean CS-US interval or in the proportion of CS presentations that ended with the US. In each case, R was systematically related to r, and the relationship was very accurately characterized by a hyperbolic function, R = Ar/(r +c). Accordingly, the reciprocal of these two variables-response interval, I (= 1/R), and CS-US interval, i (= 1/r) - were related by a simple affine (straight line) transformation, I = mi+b. This latter relationship shows that each increment in the time that the rats had to wait for food produced a linear increment in the time they waited between magazine entries. We discuss the close agreement between our findings and the Matching Law (Herrnstein, 1970) and consider their implications for both associative theories (e.g., Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) and nonassociative theories (Gallistel & Gibbon, 2000) of conditioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).     

Public service motivation as a predictor of attraction to the public sector

According to public service motivation theory, individuals with a strong public service orientation are attracted to government jobs. This proposition was investigated in three studies by measuring public sector motivation at a pre-entry level as an individual difference variable affecting perceptions of fit and organizational attraction. Results were consistent with a positive relationship between public sector motivation and attraction to both public sector and non-profit organizations. Despite substantial overlap between the constructs of public sector motivation and agreeableness, the present research indicated that public sector motivation has utility in predicting employment interests beyond the general personality factor of agreeableness.     

Do other-reports of counterproductive work behavior provide an incremental contribution over self-reports? A meta-analytic comparison

Much of the recent research on counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) has used multi-item self-report measures of CWB. Because of concerns over self-report measurement, there have been recent calls to collect ratings of employees' CWB from their supervisors or coworkers (i.e., other-raters) as alternatives or supplements to self-ratings. However, little is still known about the degree to which other-ratings of CWB capture unique and valid incremental variance beyond self-report CWB. The present meta-analysis investigates a number of key issues regarding the incremental contribution of other-reports of CWB. First, self- and other-ratings of CWB were moderately to strongly correlated with each other. Second, with some notable exceptions, self- and other-report CWB exhibited very similar patterns and magnitudes of relationships with a set of common correlates. Third, self-raters reported engaging in more CWB than other-raters reported them engaging in, suggesting other-ratings capture a narrower subset of CWBs. Fourth, other-report CWB generally accounted for little incremental variance in the common correlates beyond self-report CWB. Although many have viewed self-reports of CWB with skepticism, the results of this meta-analysis support their use in most CWB research as a viable alternative to other-reports.     

Tipping the scales: Conciliatory behavior and the morality of self-forgiveness

Two studies examined whether conciliatory behavior aids self-forgiveness and whether it does so in part by making it seem more morally appropriate. Participants in Study 1 (n?=?269) completed an offense-recall procedure; participants in Study 2 (n?=?208) imagined a social transgression under conciliatory behavior (yes, no) and receipt of forgiveness (no, ambiguous, yes) conditions. Conciliatory behavior predicted (Study 1) and caused (Study 2) elevated self-forgiveness and increased perceptions of the moral appropriateness of self-forgiveness. Perceived morality consistently mediated the effect of conciliatory behavior on self-forgiveness. Received forgiveness and guilt were considered as additional mechanisms, but received mixed support. Results suggest that conciliatory behavior may influence self-forgiveness in part by satisfying moral prerequisites for self-forgiveness.     

Neural-network models of learning and memory: leading questions and an emerging framework

Real-time neural-network models provide a conceptual framework for formulating questions about the nature of cognition, an architectural framework for mapping cognitive functions to brain regions, a semantic framework for defining terms, and a computational framework for testing hypotheses. This article considers key questions about how a physical system might simultaneously support one-trial learning and lifetime memories, in the context of neural models that test possible solutions to the problems posed. Model properties point to partial answers, and model limitations lead to new questions. Placing individual system components in the context of a unified real-time network allows analysis to move from the level of neural processes, including learning laws and rules of synaptic transmission, to cognitive processes, including attention and consciousness.