Friendship and Romantic Stressors and Depression in Emerging Adulthood: Mediating and Moderating Roles of Attachment Representations

Although friendships and romantic relationships represent important social relationships during emerging adulthood, problems stemming from these relationships may also pose a threat to emerging adults’ psychological functioning (Collins and Madsen in Handbook of personal relationships. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp 191–209, 2006; La Greca and Moore Harrison in J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol 34(1): 49–61, 2005). Thus, investigating relational stressors in friendships and romantic relationships is an important step toward understanding emerging adults’ psychological adjustment. This study focused on examining the relationship between relational stressors and depression, and the mediating and moderating roles of relationship-general attachment representations between these constructs. Data were collected from 164 emerging adults attending a Midwestern university. In partial support of our hypotheses, emerging adults’ attachment anxiety mediated the relationship between experiences of friendship and romantic stressors and depression; this result, however, was not found for attachment avoidance. Furthermore, results showed that attachment avoidance and anxiety moderated the relationship between friendship stressors and depression in emerging adulthood. Supporting our hypothesis, friendship stressors were predictive of higher levels of depression only for emerging adults who were high in attachment avoidance or anxiety. Future research and practical implications are discussed.     

Domestic Violence Service Providers’ Technology Readiness and Information Needs

Technology-based applications hold promise as effective, efficient means of disseminating research- and practice-based information to professionals whose work relates to domestic violence. Other related uses of technology in the field have grown, including safety planning to address technology-related risks to victims and software programs being integrated into domestic violence agencies. However, to date, the levels of technology readiness and technology-related information needs of these professionals have received minimal research attention. This study involved a national survey of 471 professionals whose work addresses domestic violence. The findings demonstrate differences in professionals’ technology readiness based on key demographic and professional characteristics. They also reveal the most frequently noted information needs within this professional field. Implications for future research and practice are provided.     

Generalist genes and cognitive abilities in Chinese twins

This study considered how far nonverbal cognitive, language and reading abilities are affected by common genetic influences in a sample of 312 typically developing Chinese twin pairs aged from 3 to 11 years. Children were individually given tasks of Chinese word reading, receptive vocabulary, phonological memory, tone awareness, syllable and rhyme awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness and orthographic skills, and Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices. Factor analyses on the verbal tasks adjusted for age indicated two factors: Language as the first factor and Reading as the second factor. Univariate genetic analyses indicated that genetic influences were substantial for nonverbal cognitive ability and moderate for language and reading. Multivariate genetic analyses showed that nonverbal cognitive ability, language and reading were influenced by shared genetic origins, although there were specific genetic influences on verbal skills that were distinct from those on nonverbal cognitive ability. This study extends the Generalist Genes Hypothesis to Chinese language and reading skills, suggesting that the general effects of genes could be universal across languages.     

Predictors of suicide ideation and depression in Hong Kong adolescents: perceptions of academic and family climates

The unique dimensions of perceptions of school and family contributing to depression and suicide ideation in Hong Kong adolescents were examined in two studies. In Study 1, among 327 Hong Kong Chinese female students ages 13-18, 47% reported some suicide ideation. Suicide ideation was significantly associated with depression, test anxiety, academic self-concept, and adolescents' perceived parental dissatisfaction with academic performance. The correlation between test anxiety and depression was especially high (r = .51). Study 2 examined how three different aspects of perceived family relationship were associated with depression and suicide ideation. Among 371 Hong Kong Chinese adolescents ages 14-20, 52.6% reported suicide ideation. Low levels of family cohesion and support and high levels of parent-adolescent conflict were positively related to depression and suicide ideation in both genders. Across both studies, depression mediated associations between academic- and family-related variables and suicide ideation. Findings underscore the importance of both academic and family climate in understanding depression and suicide ideation among Chinese adolescents.     

The use of anticipatory visual cues by highly skilled tennis players

The authors examined 13 skilled and 12 novice tennis performers' ability to use visual information of an opponent's movement pattern to anticipate and respond. In Experiment 1, skilled and novice players anticipated the type of stroke and the direction in which the ball was hit in a highly coupled perception-action environment. Both groups of players correctly anticipated at greater than chance levels. Skilled players were significantly more accurate than novices with live and video displays but not with point-light displays. In Experiment 2, the reaction latencies of 10 expert performers were significantly faster when they returned balls hit by a live opponent than when they returned balls projected from a cloaked ball machine. The findings indicate that experts are able to use movement-pattern information to determine shot selection and to use that information to significantly reduce their response delay times. The findings are discussed in terms of perception-action coupling in time-stress activities.     

Iconic store and partial report

The iconic store has recently been challenged on the grounds that data in its favor may have resulted from some procedural artifacts. The display-instruction compatibility and perceptual grouping hypotheses were reexamined in two experiments with the partial-report paradigm. When care was taken to rectify some procedural problems found in Merikle’s (1980) study, it was established that the iconic store (as a hypothetical mechanism) can still be validly entertained. This report demonstrates one important procedural point in studying the iconic store with the partial report task, namely, that subjects must be given more than token training on the partial-report task.     

The effect of a subsidiary task on iconic memory

Memory & Cognition - Using a subsidiary task technique, Doest and Turvey (1971) concluded that iconic memory was independent of the central processing system. However, they did not control the...     

Age and culture modulate object processing and object—scene binding in the ventral visual area

Behavioral differences in the visual processing of objects and backgrounds as a function of cultural group are well documented. Recent neuroimaging evidence also points to cultural differences in neural activation patterns. Compared with East Asians, Westerners’ visual processing is more object focused, and they activate neural structures that reflect this bias for objects. In a recent adaptation study, East Asian older adults showed an absence of an object-processing area but normal adaptation for background areas. In the present study, 75 young and old adults (half East Asian and half Western) were tested in an fMR-adaptation study to examine differences in object and background processing as well as object—background binding. We found equivalent background processing in the parahippocampal gyrus in all four groups, diminished binding processes in the hippocampus in elderly East Asians and Westerners, and diminished object processing in elderly versus young adults in the lateral occipital complex. Moreover, elderly East Asians showed significantly less adaptation response in the object areas than did elderly Westerners. These findings demonstrate the malleability of perceptual processes as a result of differences in cohort-specific experiences or in cultural exposure over time.     

Variation in coordination of a discrete multiarticular action as a function of skill level

The authors investigated coordination modes that emerged as a function of the interaction between skill level and task constraints in a multiarticular kicking action. Five skilled, 5 intermediate, and 5 novice participants attempted to satisfy specific height and accuracy constraints in kicking a ball over a barrier. Skilled and intermediate groups demonstrated a functional coordination mode involving less joint involvement at the proximal joints and greater joint involvement at distal joints, mimicking a chip-like action in soccer. Conversely, the novice group tended to produce larger ranges of motion throughout the kicking limb in a driving-like kicking action. Key differences were also found for task outcome scores, joint angle-angle relations, and ball-trajectory plots between the skilled and intermediate groups and the novice group. Findings from this study demonstrated that joint involvement during this discrete multiarticular action is a function of skill level and task constraints rather than a consequence of a global freezing-freeing strategy suggested in some previous research. The authors also highlight the merit of using a model of the acquisition of coordination in examining how coordination modes for multiarticular actions differ as a function of skill.