Effects of a Parenting Intervention on Features of Psychopathy in Children

This study examined whether Project Support, a parenting intervention shown to reduce child conduct problems, also exerts positive effects on features of psychopathy in children. Participants were 66 families (mothers and children) recruited from domestic violence shelters who participated in a randomized controlled trial evaluating Project Support. Each family included at least one child between the ages of 4 and 9 who was exhibiting clinical levels of conduct problems. Families were randomly assigned to the Project Support intervention condition or to an existing services comparison condition, and they were assessed on 6 occasions over 20 months, following their departure from the shelter. Children in families in the Project Support condition, compared with those in the comparison condition, exhibited greater reductions in features of psychopathy. Moreover, the changes in features of psychopathy remained after accounting for changes in conduct problems. Project Support’s effects on features of psychopathy were mediated by improvements in mothers’ harsh and inconsistent parenting. These findings on the effects of an intervention on features of psychopathy are the first from a randomized controlled trial. They inform the debate about whether features of psychopathy in children are responsive to intervention, and hold important implications for clinical practice.     

Better (or worse) for some than others: Individual differences in the positivity offset and negativity bias

People tend to respond with more positive than negative affect to mildly emotional stimuli (i.e., positivity offset) and respond more strongly to very negative than to matched positive stimuli (i.e., negativity bias). In the current study, the authors examine individual differences in the positivity offset and negativity bias and demonstrate that both are stable over time and generalize across different kinds of stimuli (e.g., pictures, sounds, words, games of chance). Furthermore, the positivity offset and negativity bias are not redundant with traditional personality measures and exhibit differential predictive validity, such that both types of measures predict behavior in meaningful ways. Implications for a comprehensive understanding of affect and emotion and their relationship to physical and mental health are discussed.     

Childhood Social Withdrawal,Interpersonal Impairment,and Young Adult Depression: A Mediational Model

Building on interpersonal theories of depression, the current study sought to explore whether early childhood social withdrawal serves as a risk factor for depressive symptoms and diagnoses in young adulthood. The researchers hypothesized that social impairment at age 15 would mediate the association between social withdrawal at age 5 and depression by age 20. This mediational model was tested in a community sample of 702 Australian youth followed from mother’s pregnancy to youth age 20. Structural equation modeling analyses found support for a model in which childhood social withdrawal predicted adolescent social impairment, which, in turn, predicted depression in young adulthood. Additionally, gender was found to moderate the relationship between adolescent social impairment and depression in early adulthood, with females exhibiting a stronger association between social functioning and depression at the symptom and diagnostic level. This study illuminates one potential pathway from early developing social difficulties to later depressive symptoms and disorders.     

Effects of Child Psychopathology on Maternal Depression: The Mediating Role of Child-Related Acute and Chronic Stressors

In light of recent research highlighting the potential effects of children’s behavior on mothers’ mental health, the current study examined 679 mothers and their adolescent children from a community-based sample to determine the effects of youth psychopathology on maternal depression and levels of child-related stress in mothers’ lives. It was hypothesized that the number of past clinical diagnoses in 15-year-old adolescents would predict the presence of maternal depression at youth age 15 and 5 years later, as well as more episodes of maternal depression during the follow-up period. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that increased levels of child-related stress in mothers’ lives would mediate these relationships. Regression analyses indicated that past youth diagnoses do confer risk for the presence of current and future maternal depression, as well as more episodes of maternal depression, and mediation analyses revealed that child-related acute and chronic stress were mediators of the relationship between youth diagnoses and the presence of maternal depression at follow-up. Findings suggest that increased levels of child-related objective stress in mothers’ lives are one mechanism by which children’s psychopathology affects mothers’ future risk for depression.     

The association between cognitive ability across the lifespan and health literacy in old age: The Lothian Birth Cohort 1936

Three hundred and four participants in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 study took a validated IQ-type test at age 11 years and a battery of cognitive tests at age 70 years. Three tests of health literacy were completed at age 72 years; the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine (REALM), the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults (S-TOFHLA), and the Newest Vital Sign (NVS). Participants who had a lower childhood IQ exhibited poorer performance on all three tests of health literacy taken in older adulthood. Relative cognitive change from age 11 to 70 and education were also important factors influencing performance on health literacy tasks, independent of childhood cognitive ability. It is important to understand the determinants of low health literacy in order to support individuals in managing their own health.     

Exploration of the links among fathers' unresolved states of mind with respect to attachment,atypical paternal behavior,and disorganized infant–father attachment

Atypical maternal behavior has consistently been identified as a precursor of disorganized infant–mother attachment, but to date, no research has examined the role of atypical paternal behavior in the development of disorganized infant–father attachment. This study aims to enhance our understanding and conceptualization of infant–father attachment by examining the role of fathers' unresolved states of mind and the display of atypical paternal behavior in the development of disorganized infant–father attachment. Thirty‐one middle‐class couples participated in this study. Maternal and paternal Adult Attachment Interviews (C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1996 ) were completed prenatally and at infant age 6 months, respectively. Infant–mother and infant–father dyads participated in the Strange Situation paradigm (M. Ainsworth, M. Blehar, E. Waters, & S. Wall, 1978 ) when the infants were 12 and 18 months of age, respectively. The Atypical Maternal Behavior Instrument for Assessment and Classification (E. Bronfman, E. Parsons, & K. Lyons‐Ruth, 1999 ) was used to assess maternal and paternal behavior during the Strange Situation. Maternal states of mind regarding attachment predicted infant–mother attachment relationships, and paternal states of mind predicted infant–father attachment relationships. Atypical maternal behavior was associated with infant–mother disorganized attachment; however, atypical paternal behavior did not predict infant–father disorganized attachment. Thus, it is possible that other factors, yet to be uncovered, might contribute to the development of infant–father disorganized attachment.     

Distributed attentional deficits in chronic methamphetamine abusers: evidence from the Attentional Network Task (ANT)

Objective

The goal of the present study was to examine distributed attentional functions in long-term but currently abstinent methamphetamine (MA) abusers using a task that measures attentional alertness, orienting, and conflict resolution.

Methods

Thirty currently abstinent MA abusers (1 month-5 years) and 22 healthy non-substance using adults were administered a multimodal version of the Attentional Network Task (ANT-I). In this task subjects identified the direction of a centrally presented arrow using a key press. Analyses examined the interaction between alerting tones, location cueing and congruency between the target arrows and flanking distractor stimuli.

Results

All participants were faster when an auditory tone preceded the trial onset (p < 0.001), on trials in which a valid cue preceded the location of the target arrow (p < 0.001), and on congruent trials (i.e., when all display arrows faced in the same direction) (p < 0.001). Of primary interest was the finding that MA abusers were more influenced by the conflict between the peripheral arrows and the central target arrow (p = 0.009). There were also correlations between length of drug sobriety and executive function as well as between drug-induced psychiatric symptoms and alertness.

Conclusions

These results suggest that chronic MA abusers display cognitive deficits that may reflect a specific vulnerability to distraction on a task of executive function. These findings are consistent with other studies that have reported deficits in anterior attentional systems and top-down cognitive control.     

How emotional pictures influence visuospatial binding in short-term memory in ageing and Alzheimer’s disease?

The present study examines the prediction that emotion can facilitate short-term memory. Nevertheless, emotion also recruits attention to process information, thereby disrupting short-term memory when tasks involve high attentional resources. In this way, we aimed to determine whether there is a differential influence of emotional information on short-term memory in ageing and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Fourteen patients with mild AD, 14 healthy older participants (NC), and 14 younger adults (YA) performed two tasks. In the first task, involving visual short-term memory, participants were asked to remember a picture among four different pictures (negative or neutral) following a brief delay. The second task, a binding memory task, required the recognition by participants of a picture according to its spatial location. The attentional cost involved was higher than for the first task. The pattern of results showed that visual memory performance was better for negative stimuli than for neutral ones, irrespective of the group. In contrast, binding memory performance was essentially poorer for the location of negative pictures in the NC group, and for the location of both negative and neutral stimuli in the AD group, in comparison to the YA group. Taken together, these results show that emotion has beneficial effects on visual short-term memory in ageing and AD. In contrast, emotion does not improve their performances in the binding condition.