Targeted Prevention of Childhood Anxiety: Engaging Parents in an Underserved Community

Selective prevention programs hold the promise of alleviating child anxiety symptoms, decreasing the risk for emotional problems across the lifespan. Such programs have particular public health import for young children of poor, underserved communities. Identifying factors related to parent engagement, and methods to improve engagement, are paramount in the effort to develop anxiety‐focused, community prevention programs. This feasibility study investigated the effect of an enhanced recruitment strategy to maximize parent engagement, as well as factors related to attendance in a single session focused on anxiety prevention. Participants were poor, ethnic minority parents of children aged 11–71 months (n = 256) who completed a survey that assessed anxiety risk according to trauma exposure, child anxiety, or parent anxiety, as well as preferences for preventive services (phase 1). Those meeting risk criteria (n = 101) were invited to a preventive group session (phase 2). Half of parents received enhanced recruitment (ER), which included personalized outreach, matching parent preferences, and community endorsement. Other parents were invited by mail. Chi square analyses indicated that ER was associated with planning to attend (49 vs. 6 % of control). Parents receiving ER were 3.5 times more likely to attend. Higher sociodemographic risk was correlated with higher child anxiety symptoms but not attendance. Results highlight the need for improved strategies for engaging parents in preventive, community‐based interventions.     

Group‐based Differences in Perceptions of Racism: What Counts,to Whom,and Why?

Belonging to a group fundamentally shapes the way we interpret and attribute the behavior of others. Similarly, perceptions of racism can be influenced by group membership. Experimental and survey research reveal disagreement between Whites and Blacks about the prevalence of racism in America. Several social cognitive factors contribute to this disagreement: discrepancies in Whites' and Blacks' lay intuitions about the attitudes and behaviors that count as racism, comparison standards when determining racial progress, and the salience of and meaning drawn from successful Black individuals in society. These perceptual discrepancies have consequences for policy attitudes, decisions about how best to combat racial inequality, and beliefs about whether inequality persists. Successful interventions that increase Whites' knowledge of structural racism and that attenuate self‐image threat suggest that it is possible to converge Blacks' and Whites' perceptions of racism by expanding Whites' definition of racism.     

Teachers’ academic and behavioral expectations and girls’ pubertal development: Does the classroom learning environment matter?

Experiencing puberty earlier than one’s peers has been linked with behavioral and academic problems in school, particularly among girls. Previously, we reported that practicing elementary school teachers expect girls who develop early to have more academic and social problems in the future, with girls’ race exacerbating these effects (Carter et al. 2017). The present study extends this previous research by examining whether characteristics within classroom learning environments (i.e., Competition, Order and Organization, Innovation, and Rule Clarity) affect the extent to which teachers use girls’ race and pubertal timing as a basis for their expectations. Practicing elementary school teachers (N?=?220; M_age?=?43 years; 91% female; 84% White) were randomly shown behavioral vignettes in two conditions (academic, externalizing) with drawings of fourth-grade Black and White pubertal-age girls, and were asked to report their academic and social expectations of the girls shown in the vignettes. Findings highlight the nuanced ways that classroom environments, girls’ race, and pubertal timing influence educators’ expectations. For example, in the academic condition, teachers who were highly innovative and orderly in the classroom expected Black relative to White early-developing girls to have more problems acquiring and using information (i.e., academic problems); however, White late-developing girls were expected to have more problems acquiring and using information. Conversely, in the externalizing condition, teachers who were highly innovative and orderly in the classroom expected Black late-developing girls to have more problems interacting and relating to others (i.e., social problems). These results highlight the importance of a multifaceted approach to studying race, biological sex, and puberty-related effects in schools.     

Ordered nanostructures by site-specific heterogeneous nucleation

Highly site-specific heterogeneous nucleation from the vapour phase has been exploited to produce metallic nanostructures on reconstructed ceramic surfaces. The site-specificity arises from the fact that nucleation takes place under highly undersaturated conditions and hence occurs only on specific favourable sites. This approach has been used to produce ordered arrays of nanoparticles, nanorods and nanowires of different metals. The experimental conditions needed to produce different nanostructures are elucidated.     

Dissociation of dislocations in MgAl2O4 spinel deformed at low temperatures

Abstract

When spinel is deformed in compression at 400°C along 〈110〉, the primary slip plane is found to be {111} with cross-slip occurring on a {001} plane. A comparison of weak-beam images of dislocations from both systems indicates that all dislocations which belong to the primary slip plane are dissociated out of the {111} plane independent of the character of the dislocation. It is proposed that deformation occurs by motion of dislocations in their dissociated state and that the partial dislocations actually glide on parallel glide planes. Movement of these dissociated dislocations is then accompanied by a concurrent migration of the stacking fault which takes place by a local shuffling of the cations. A stacking fault energy for conservative dissociation at 400°C on {001} of 530±90mJ m^?2 has been determined from weak-beam images of screw dislocations.     

Book and Website Reviews

Using practicing sales managers as subjects, the results indicate that personal characteristics of gender and weight may be used in making disciplinary judgments following episodes of a particular type of unacceptable work behavior, an unethical selling act. As hypothesized, saleswomen were disciplined less severely while overweight salespeople were disciplined more severely. However, being overweight produced harsher discipline for saleswomen but had no effect on salesmen. A stated organizational policy about the particular type of unacceptable behavior used did bring about more equal treatment for those described as overweight but did not even out the discipline administered to men and women.     

Now for Me,Later for Us? Effects of Group Context on Temporal Discounting

Delayed rewards are less valuable than immediate rewards. This well‐established finding has focused almost entirely on individual outcomes. However, are delayed rewards similarly discounted if they are shared by a group? The current article reports on three experiments exploring the effect of group context on delay discounting. Results indicate that discount rates of individual and group rewards were highly correlated, but that respondents were more willing to wait (decreased discounting) for shared outcomes than for individual outcomes. An explanatory model is proposed suggesting that decreased discount rates in group contexts may be due to the way the effects of both delay and social discounting are combined. That is, in a group context, a person values both a future reward (discounted by delay) and a present reward to another person (discounted by the social distance between them). The results are explained by a combined discount function containing a delay factor and a factor representing the social distance between the decision maker and group members. Practical implications of the fact that shared consequences can increase individual self‐control are also discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Feasibility and validity of the structured attention module among economically disadvantaged preschool-age children

Rooted in the theory of attention put forth by Mirsky, Anthony, Duncan, Ahearn, and Kellam (1991), the Structured Attention Module (SAM) is a developmentally sensitive, computer-based performance task designed specifically to assess sustained selective attention among 3- to 6-year-old children. The current study addressed the feasibility and validity of the SAM among 64 economically disadvantaged preschool-age children (mean age = 58 months; 55% female); a population known to be at risk for attention problems and adverse math performance outcomes. Feasibility was demonstrated by high completion rates and strong associations between SAM performance and age. Principal Factor Analysis with rotation produced robust support for a three-factor model (Accuracy, Speed, and Endurance) of SAM performance, which largely corresponded with existing theorized models of selective and sustained attention. Construct validity was evidenced by positive correlations between SAM Composite scores and all three SAM factors and IQ, and between SAM Accuracy and sequential memory. Value-added predictive validity was not confirmed through main effects of SAM on math performance above and beyond age and IQ; however, significant interactions by child sex were observed: Accuracy and Endurance both interacted with child sex to predict math performance. In both cases, the SAM factors predicted math performance more strongly for girls than for boys. There were no overall sex differences in SAM performance. In sum, the current findings suggest that interindividual variation in sustained selective attention, and potentially other aspects of attention and executive function, among young, high-risk children can be captured validly with developmentally sensitive measures.