African American Men,Gender Role Conflict,and Psychological Distress: The Role of Racial Identity

Little research exists exploring the intersection of male gender role conflict (GRC), racial identity, and psychological distress. Accordingly, using a sample of 130 self‐identified African American male participants, this study explored which aspects of racial identity mediated the relationship between GRC and psychological distress. Results demonstrated that racial identity attitudes reflective of internalized racism (Self‐Hatred) partially mediated the relationship between GRC and psychological distress.     

Stereotyping the Stereotypic: When Individuals Match Social Stereotypes

This research examines how attention and accuracy motivation moderate stereotyping in person perception. Hypotheses were derived from the stereotype validity model, which proposes that perceivers are more likely to use a stereotype as the basis of their impressions when they believe that the generalized beliefs contained within it are valid for the particular target whom they are judging. Consistent with the model's predictions, high attention and high accuracy motivation produced stronger label effects when a target's individuating information matched a stereotype's content. Also consistent with the model's predictions, the opposite pattern was found when a target's individuating information did not match a stereotype's content. Under conditions of a poor match, high accuracy motivation produced weaker label effects. The authors discuss these findings with respect to accuracy and bias in the impression-formation process.     

The impact of stigma on behavioral health care utilization among active duty service members

This study assessed the relationship between the stigma of seeking psychological help and use of outpatient behavioral health services over a 2-year period among active duty military service members initially referred for neuropsychological evaluation secondary to their histories of mild traumatic brain injury. Although research has examined how stigma predicts proxies for help-seeking (i.e., attitudes towards/intentions to use services), very little research has looked at actual behavior, and studies that do have largely focused on previous use. In this study, we examined the relationship between participants’ stigma and subsequent behavioral health use. Our results indicated that whereas greater self-stigma (i.e., negative self-judgments for seeking psychological help) was associated with attending fewer behavioral health care sessions, public stigma (i.e., perceptions of public attitudes towards people who seek psychological help) was not associated with service use. These findings support the need for addressing the self-stigma associated with seeking behavioral health care.     

Exploring Correlates and Predictors of Stress in Parents of Children Who are Deaf: Implications of Perceived Social Support and Mode of Communication

Parenting stress has been linked to negative outcomes for both parents and children, including poor attachment, behavior problems, less positive parent–child interactions, and marital dissatisfaction. Given that parents of special needs children often experience excess stress, they may be susceptible to negative outcomes, thus investigations of protective factors are needed. We explored relationships among parenting stress, social support, mode of communication, and child cochlear implant status in parents rearing a deaf child or child with hearing loss. Findings of our exploratory study indicated that parents of children who use sign language only reported more support, while parents of children who use total communication exhibited less self-reported stress. Also, parents with children who use implants did not differ on any of the measures compared to parents of children without implants. Additional findings suggested that higher levels of perceived social support corresponded with lower stress among parents, however, receipt of supportive behaviors did not correlate significantly with parenting stress. In an overall model, perceived social support and mode of communication were significant predictors of parenting stress. Finally, enacted support predicted significantly life satisfaction in parents. Implications and limitations, as well as suggestions for future research, will also be offered.     

Population-Wide Parenting Intervention Training: Initial Feasibility

A population-level approach to deliver parenting and family support is a necessary but neglected approach needed to reduce the high prevalence of emotional/behavioral problems in children, decrease inadequate and potentially abusive parenting practices, and to provide improved parenting support to all parents within a specified population. We examined the initial feasibility of a large-scale professional training regimen to prepare existing service providers to implement an evidence-based preventive intervention in the realm of parenting and family support. Data from the U.S. Triple P System Population Trial are used to illustrate how a parenting and family support intervention can be successfully disseminated to a large, multidisciplinary workforce. We discuss lessons learned from this dissemination effort as well as implications for population-based approaches to child and family well-being.     

Recently attended masks are less effective

Much work has been done to investigate participants' ability to detect repeated targets, but the presentstudy examined the influence of recently attended stimuli on target masking. Participants performed a target identification task in which the item that masked the target was either a recently attended item or a novel item. When it was identical to a previously attended stimulus, the mask was rendered considerably less effective. We have termed this effect a repeated mask reduction (RMR). This simple manipulation resulted in a large, reliable effect on the efficacy of visual masking in a single-target identification paradigm. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3, we demonstrated the basic effect and noted that the RMR increased as task difficulty increased. Experiments 4 and 5 suggested that attention to the first instance of the mask was crucial to this effect by showing that the magnitude of the RMR was unaffected by repetition of nonmask distractors and that the magnitude of the effect was reduced when less attention was paid to the first instance of the mask.     

The Motivations for and Outcomes of Employee Referrals

Research on employee referrals demonstrates positive outcomes for the recruited individual and the organization. However, little research addressed employees who make employment referrals, also known as employee recommenders. To address this gap in knowledge, we developed a conceptual model and present the theoretical basis for addressing the motivation of, and organizational outcomes associated with, employees who make employment recommendations. The model is based on the theories of word-of-mouth communication, cognitive dissonance, self-perception, and attitude change through self-persuasion. Partial support for the model was found in an experimental design simulating an employee referral situation. Results showed an increase in normative commitment of recommenders.     

Male Restricted Emotionality and Counseling Supervision

This study attempted to determine (a) if 103 male psychology interns would, in the context of supervision, deal with their socialized restricted emotionality (RE) by using either the turning‐against‐other or the turning‐against‐self defensive style and (b) assess the impact of the sex of the supervisor on this behavior. Results indicated that male supervisees with higher levels of RE evidenced a turning‐against‐self style. Male supervisees working with a male supervisor reported poorer perceptions of the supervisory working alliance.     

Stimulus-Specific Delay Activity in Human Primary Visual Cortex

ABSTRACT— Working memory (WM) involves maintaining information in an on-line state. One emerging view is that information in WM is maintained via sensory recruitment , such that information is stored via sustained activity in the sensory areas that encode the to-be-remembered information. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we observed that key sensory regions such as primary visual cortex (V1) showed little evidence of sustained increases in mean activation during a WM delay period, though such amplitude increases have typically been used to determine whether a region is involved in on-line maintenance. However, a multivoxel pattern analysis of delay-period activity revealed a sustained pattern of activation in V1 that represented only the intentionally stored feature of a multifeature object. Moreover, the pattern of delay activity was qualitatively similar to that observed during the discrimination of sensory stimuli, suggesting that WM representations in V1 are reasonable "copies" of those evoked during pure sensory processing.