Acculturation and adjustment among immigrant Chinese parents: mediating role of parenting efficacy

This study examined parenting efficacy beliefs as a mediator of the association between acculturation and adjustment. The sample consisted of 177 immigrant Chinese mothers and fathers with early adolescent children in Canada. Acculturation was assessed bidimensionally as Canadian and Chinese orientations. A latent psychological adjustment variable was composed of symptoms of depression, feelings of self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Results showed that relations between Canadian orientation and psychological adjustment were partially mediated by parenting efficacy. As expected, the more parents were oriented toward Canadian culture, the more efficacious they felt in their parenting, which in turn was associated with better psychological adjustment. In contrast, mediation of relations between Chinese orientation and psychological adjustment was not supported, as Chinese orientation was not associated with parenting efficacy and was positively associated with psychological adjustment for mothers only. Similar results were found when the meditational model was extended to evaluate parenting practices as an outcome (i.e., warmth, reasoning, and monitoring). That is, parenting efficacy mediated the relation between higher Canadian orientation and more positive parenting practices, whereas Chinese orientation was unrelated to parenting practices. Invariance testing suggested that the models were similar for mothers and fathers. Results support the theory that higher orientation to Canadian culture may advance feelings of parenting efficacy because parents have the cultural knowledge and skills to feel confident parenting in a new intercultural context. Further, they support the expectation that parenting efficacy beliefs, in turn, are important determinants of psychological adjustment and effective parenting for immigrant parents.     

Adults’ and children’s monitoring of story events in the service of comprehension

When reading narratives, adults monitor shifts in time, space, characters, goals, and causation. Shifts in any of these dimensions affect both moment-by-moment reading and memory organization. The extant developmental literature suggests that middle school children have relatively sophisticated understandings of each of these dimensions but does not indicate whether they spontaneously monitor these dimensions during reading experiences. In four experiments, we examined the processing of event shifts by adults and children, using both an explicit verb-clustering task and a reading time task. The results indicate that middle school children’s and adults’ post-reading memory is organized using these dimensions but that children do not monitor dimensions during moment-by-moment reading in the same manner as adults. These differences were not a function of differentially difficult texts for children and adults, or between-group differences. The findings have implications for models of adult and child text processing and for understanding children’s developing narrative comprehension.     

Structural priming across cognitive domains: from simple arithmetic to relative-clause attachment

In the two experiments reported here, we uncovered evidence for shared structural representations between arithmetic and language. Specifically, we primed subjects using mathematical equations either with or without parenthetical groupings, such as 80 - (9 + 1) × 5 or 80 - 9 + 1 × 5, and then presented a target sentence fragment, such as "The tourist guide mentioned the bells of the church that . . .," which subjects had to complete. When the mathematical equations were solved correctly, their structure influenced the noun phrase--for example, either "the bells of the church" or "the church," respectively--that subjects chose to attach their sentence completion to. These experiments provide the first demonstration of cross-domain structural priming from mathematics to language. They highlight the importance of global structural representations at a very high level of abstraction and have potentially far-reaching implications regarding the domain generality of structural representations.     

Providing therapy to children and families in foster care: a systemic-relational approach

Foster care is a system created to protect children from an unsafe home environment yet multiple foster home placements, conflictual or nonexistent relationships between foster parents and birth parents, long, drawn out court battles, and living in an on-going state of not knowing when or if they will be going home are just some of the challenges many children in care are expected to manage. This paper presents a guide for therapists working with families involved in foster care. Utilizing ideas from the postmodern therapies and structural family therapy, suggestions will be provided about who needs to talk to whom about what, when to have these necessary conversations, and how to talk to people in a way that mobilizes adults to take action for the children, with the goal of minimizing postplacement trauma, strengthening and repairing relational bonds, and moving children out of foster care and into permanent homes as quickly as possible.     

Socrates in the Platonic Dialogues

If Socrates is portrayed holding one view in one of Plato's dialogues and a different view in another, should we be puzzled? If (as I suggest) Plato's Socrates is neither the historical Socrates, nor a device for delivering Platonic doctrine, but a tool for the dialectical investigation of a philosophical problem, then we should expect a new Socrates, with relevant commitments, to be devised for each setting. Such a dialectical device – the tailor‐made Socrates – fits with what we know of other contributions to the genre of the Sokratikos Logos, to which Plato was neither the first nor the only contributor.     

Association between restricted and repetitive behaviors and nonverbal IQ in children with autism spectrum disorders.

The present study explored the relationship between nonverbal IQ and restricted and repetitive behaviors (RRBs) in 830 children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. The role of chronological age as a moderator of this relationship was also investigated. For many behaviors, there was a significant interaction between nonverbal IQ and chronological age, such that nonverbal IQ (NVIQ) was more strongly related to the prevalence of RRBs in older children. For the majority of such behaviors (e.g. repetitive use of objects, hand and finger mannerisms), RRB prevalence was negatively associated with NVIQ. However, the prevalence of certain behaviors (e.g. circumscribed interests) showed positive relationships with NVIQ, which provides some support for the idea of different classes of RRBs. For the severity of different RRBs, there were several significant effects for age and NVIQ, but few interactions.     

Identity configurations and well-being during normative cultural conflict: The roles of multiculturals’ conflict management strategies and academic stage

Multiculturals encounter normative cultural conflicts (intrapersonal conflicts between their cultures’ norms). Yet, no research has examined how these conflicts are managed, nor their antecedents and repercussions. This article examined how these conflicts are managed using two sets of conflict management strategies (active and agreeable) and tested whether they mediate the associations between identity configurations and well-being. Also, as the benefits of having integrated selves typically increase in later life stages, this article examined whether the associations between identity configurations and well-being differ between earlier (pre-university) and later academic stages (university). In Study 1 (N = 235), active strategies mediated the link between identity integration and well-being, whereas agreeable strategies mediated the link between compartmentalization and ill-being. In Study 2 (N = 241), these results were replicated. Study 2 further showed that the association between identity integration and well-being was stronger among university than pre-university students. Implications of these results are discussed.     

The role of community context and psychological well-being for physical health: A dyadic study of military couples

Drawing from the social organizational theory of community action and change (SOAC) within a systemic biopsychosocial perspective, associations between community context (military community connections and satisfaction with military life), psychological well-being (depressive symptoms, anxiety, and self-efficacy), and physical health were examined for a sample of active duty service members and their civilian spouses (N = 236 couples) using an actor partner interdependence framework. Service members with higher levels of military community connections reported better psychological well-being. When civilian spouses were more satisfied with military life, both partners reported better psychological well-being. In turn, both spouses’ psychological well-being was related to their own reports of physical health. Statistically significant indirect effects were found between community contexts and spouses’ physical health. Enhancing community connections may be an important leverage point for supporting health and family readiness.