Agreeableness and Conscientiousness promote successful adaptation to the Covid-19 pandemic through effective internalization of public health guidelines

Motivation and Emotion - Social distancing (SD) was an effective way of reducing virus transmission during the deadly and highly infectious COVID-19 pandemic. Using a prospective longitudinal...     

Family Functioning Assessment in a Community Sample of African American Caregivers and Children

Racial/ethnic minority youth receive approximately half of the mental health services of their non-minority peers. Improved methods for identifying African American families in need of behavioral health services are necessary. The Family Assessment Device and General Functioning subscale have been found to be reliable and able to detect family functioning impairment in a generalized sample, but less is known about the reliability and validity of the assessment with an African American community sample. Data from 53 African American caregiver-child (ages 7–13) dyads was collected including family demographics and the Family Assessment Device General Functioning (FAD_GF) scale. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to determine the minimal number of FAD_GF items (12 vs. 6 items) that were valid and reliable. The 12-item FAD_GF and the 6-item scale had acceptable psychometric properties, and the 6-item measure demonstrated improved model fit over the 12-item scale and identified more clinically impaired families (6-item: 28% vs. 12-item: 23%). The 6-item measure of family functioning was more sensitive 12-item FAD_GF. This brief measure may prove useful for identifying and assessing African American families.

     

选择性注意对行人觉察有声信号灯的影响

为考察选择性注意如何影响行人整合交通信号中的多感觉加工优势,研究采用线索—靶子范式,操控交通信号类型(视觉/传统视觉信号灯、听觉、视听觉/有声信号灯)和信号呈现位置(线索化位置、非线索化位置)两个变量,分析被试对视觉、听觉、视听觉三类刺激的反应时和正确率,并通过对相对多感觉反应增强值(rMRE)和竞争模型(race model)的计算,对多感觉加工优势效应进行量化。结果发现:有声信号灯能够产生多感觉加工优势,选择性注意会减弱有声信号灯的多感觉加工优势。该研究结果为有声信号灯的设置提供了理论依据,且提示应当避免在环境中设置容易引起行人选择性注意的设施。     

Fractal-Scaling Properties as Aesthetic Primitives in Vision and Touch

Axiomathes - Natural forms, often characterized by irregularity and roughness, have a unique complexity that exhibit self-similarity across different spatial scales or levels of magnification. Our...     

Attention Bias for Threatening Information in Children Following a Distressing Medical Procedure

Attention bias is common in adults with post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but is less studied in children. Children (n = 22) who experienced a potentially distressing procedure in an outpatient clinic (removal of K‐wires from orthopaedic fractures) and a group of medically unwell children (illness group; n = 27) were compared with healthy controls (n = 32). Children's baseline level of PTS symptoms were indexed prior to the medical procedure, and again at 1‐week follow‐up. Immediately after the K‐wire removal, children completed a dot probe task using two categories of target words (medical threatening and emotionally threatening). While K‐wire children showed an overall bias away from negative words relative to healthy controls, the illness group did not significantly differ from healthy controls. Attention bias in K‐wire and illness groups was unrelated to later PTS symptoms.     

A Class of Distribution-Free Models for Longitudinal Mediation Analysis

Mediation analysis constitutes an important part of treatment study to identify the mechanisms by which an intervention achieves its effect. Structural equation model (SEM) is a popular framework for modeling such causal relationship. However, current methods impose various restrictions on the study designs and data distributions, limiting the utility of the information they provide in real study applications. In particular, in longitudinal studies missing data is commonly addressed under the assumption of missing at random (MAR), where current methods are unable to handle such missing data if parametric assumptions are violated. In this paper, we propose a new, robust approach to address the limitations of current SEM within the context of longitudinal mediation analysis by utilizing a class of functional response models (FRM). Being distribution-free, the FRM-based approach does not impose any parametric assumption on data distributions. In addition, by extending the inverse probability weighted (IPW) estimates to the current context, the FRM-based SEM provides valid inference for longitudinal mediation analysis under the two most popular missing data mechanisms; missing completely at random (MCAR) and missing at random (MAR). We illustrate the approach with both real and simulated data.     

The Structure of Social Exchange in Self-help Support Groups: Development of a Measure

Self-help support groups are indigenous community resources designed to help people manage a variety of personal challenges, from alcohol abuse to xeroderma pigmentosum. The social exchanges that occur during group meetings are central to understanding how people benefit from participation. This paper examines the different types of social exchange behaviors that occur during meetings, using two studies to develop empirically distinct scales that reliably measure theoretically important types of exchange. Resource theory informed the initial measurement development efforts. Exploratory factor analyses from the first study led to revisions in the factor structure of the social exchange scales. The revised measure captured the exchange of emotional support, experiential information, humor, unwanted behaviors, and exchanges outside meetings. Confirmatory factor analyses from a follow-up study with a different sample of self-help support groups provided good model fit, suggesting the revised structure accurately represented the data. Further, the scales demonstrated good convergent and discriminant validity with related constructs. Future research can use the scales to identify aspects of social exchange that are most important in improving health outcomes among self-help support group participants. Groups can use the scales in practice to celebrate strengths and address weaknesses in their social exchange dynamics.     

THE EYE OF THE BEGETTER: PREDICTING INFANT ATTACHMENT DISORGANIZATION FROM WOMEN'S PRENATAL INTERPRETATIONS OF INFANT FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Infant–caregiver attachment disorganization has been linked to many long‐term negative psychosocial outcomes. While various prevention programs appear to be effective in preventing disorganized attachment, methods currently used to identify those at risk are unfortunately either overly general or impractical. The current investigation tested whether women's prenatal biases in identifying infant expressions of emotion—tendencies previously shown to relate to some of the maternal variables associated with infant attachment, including maternal traumatization, trauma symptoms, and maternal sensitivity—could predict infant attachment classification at 18 months postpartum. Logistic regression analyses revealed that together with women's adult history of high betrayal traumatization, response concordance with a normative reference sample in labeling infant expressions as negatively valenced, and the number of infant facial expressions that participants classified as “sad” and “angry” predicted subsequent infant attachment security versus disorganization. Implications for screening and prevention are discussed.     

A Cross-National Study of Family Therapy Training: A Collaborative Pilot Project

We examine family therapy training from the perspective of a sample of 99 family therapists from the United States and another 101 from a total of six countries (Colombia, India, Iran, Indonesia, the Philippines, and two regions of China, mainland China and Taiwan). We compared the responses of the United States sample to that of the other countries, both individually (for trends) and as a combined group. We found differences in training experiences both within and between countries, and discuss the implications of our findings for the continued development of family therapy training and the professionalization of the field in the countries studied.     

Wittgenstein and the Dualism of the Inner and the Outer

A dualism characteristic of modern philosophy is the conception of the inner and the outer as two independently intelligible domains. Wittgenstein’s attack on this dualism contains deep insights. The main insight (excavated from §304 and §293 of the Philosophical Investigations) is this: our sensory consciousness is deeply shaped by language and this shaping plays a fundamental role in the etiology of the dualism. I locate this role in the learning of a sensation-language (as described in §244), by showing that this learning is, under another aspect, the incision of language, namely the infliction of cuts upon certain natural-primitive unities between the inner and the outer. These cuts, driven by powerful forces, eventually harden into an entrenched division between the inner and the outer, thereby providing a constant soil for the dualism. That this dualism is rooted in the very learning of a language is cause for ambivalence about language.