Stories of Life Transition: Subjective Well-Being and Ego Development in Parents of Children with Down Syndrome

Eighty-seven parents of children with Down Syndrome (DS; 63 women, 24 men) wrote narratives about finding out that their child had DS and completed questionnaire measures of subjective well-being (SWB) and stress-related growth and completed the Sentence Completion Test as a measure of ego development. Forty-two of these individuals participated in a follow-up 2 years later. Foreshadowing and happy endings in the stories were related to heightened SWB at both time periods. Evidence of accommodative change—actively experiencing a paradigmatic shift—was related to stress-related growth and ego development at both time periods. A high sense of closure and accommodation in the stories was associated with the highest levels of stress-related growth. Implications for research on well-being and personal growth are discussed.     

Visuospatial function in the beagle dog: an early marker of cognitive decline in a model of human aging and dementia

Visuospatial learning and memory impairments are an early marker for age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease. Similar to humans, aged dogs show visuospatial learning and memory deficits (). One hundred and nine beagle dogs ranging between 0.25 and 11.99 years were tested on a visuospatial delayed non-matching to position (DNMP) task to better characterize the progression of visuospatial deficits in the dog. Age predicted 48.2% of the variability in learning the DNMP, with dogs ranging from 1 to 11.99 years generally making more errors with increasing age. By contrast, puppies (<1 year) likely were showing developmental deficits, possibly due to an immature prefrontal cortex. Mild visuospatial deficits were detected by 6 years, which precedes the typical onset of amyloid-beta (Abeta) accumulation in the dog brain by two years, and can serve as an early marker for cognitive decline in the dog. These findings suggest that (1) age-related changes in visuospatial function in the dog models that seen in humans, further validating the dog as a model for human aging and dementia; and (2) other mechanisms, such as oxidative stress, soluble Abeta oligomers or cholinergic deficits, are likely contributing to the early impairment.     

Youth-parent consistencies on ratings of difficulties and prosocial behavior: exploration of an at-risk sample

Low informant agreement is of particular concern in clinical settings, since diagnoses and interventions are largely based on reports from parents and/or youths. This study explores youth-parent consistencies in an at-risk sample of youths (n = 42), several from immigrant and refugee families, all with stressful background experiences. Data from a community sample (n = 165) was used to contrast the clinical results. Results showed that correlations between clinical youths and parents were within the same range as those in the community sample. Consistencies concerning absolute level of behavior were higher in the clinical sample. However, interesting differences in informant consistencies were found on difficulties and resources between the two samples. This study adds to the picture that there is no simple relationship between severity of behavior deviance and informant agreement. Asking about behavioral resources as well as difficulties may provide valuable additional information regarding differences in the perspectives of at-risk youths and parents.     

Does attention cause illusory line motion?

Illusory line motion (ILM) has been shown to occur when a line is presented with one end next to a previously stimulated location. The line appears to be drawn away from the site of stimulation. It has been suggested that this is because of the allocation of attention to the stimulated site. Using an endogenous attentional manipulation (a central arrow cue) with no differences in the display between the two ends of the line at the time of line presentation or immediately prior, no ILM was detected, though there was a small effect in the opposite direction. Those who have found endogenously induced ILM have used an endogenous cue based on a property of a location marker that indicated the cued location. Changing the method of cuing to one based on a property of a peripheral marker instead of a central arrow produced a small but significant report of ILM. The small magnitude of the effect, participant self-reports, and the absence of the effect in the purely endogenous condition, suggest that this was merely a bias. ILM is not generated by endogenous attention shifts.     

Effects of repetition and response deadline on associative recognition in young and older adults

The present study examined the joint effects of repetition and response deadline on associative recognition in older adults. Young and older adults studied lists of unrelated word pairs, half presented once (weak pairs) and half presented four times (strong pairs). Test lists contained old (intact) pairs, pairs consisting of old words that had been studied with other partners (rearranged lures), and unstudied pairs (new lures), and participants were asked to respond "old" only to intact pairs. In Experiment 1, participants were tested with both short and long deadlines. In Experiment 2, the tests were unpaced. In both experiments, repetition increased hit rates for young and older adults. Young adults tested with a long deadline showed reduced (Experiment 1) or invariant (Experiment 2) false alarms to rearranged lures when word pairs were studied more often. Young adults tested with a short deadline and older adults tested under all conditions had increased false alarm rates forstrong rearranged pairs. Implications of these results for theories of associative recognition and cognitive aging are explored.     

A Lesbian Feminist Subscale for the Feminist Perspectives Scale

In an attempt to increase the breadth offeminist perspectives assessed by the FeministPerspectives Scale (FPS2; Henley, Meng, O'Brien,McCarthy, & Sockloskie, 1998), we developed andpsychometrically evaluated a new subscale that assesses lesbianfeminist attitudes. As do the six other subscales of theFPS2, the Lesbian Feminist subscale includes 10attitudinal and 3 behavioral items. We conducted 3 studies with 287 respondents (58% EuropeanAmerican, 15% Latino, 13% Asian, and 6% AfricanAmerican); 88% were women and most were collegeeducated. Findings from these preliminary psychometricevaluations support the subscale's reliability (Cronbach'salpha = .91) and validity. We offer recommendations forthe scale's use and discuss its potentiallimitations.     

When What You Want is What You Get: Pay Dispersion and Communal Sharing Preference

The question of whether pay structures should be compressed or dispersed remains unanswered. We argue that pay dispersion can yield uncertainty regarding others' intentions and behaviors; as a result, individuals take a greater risk trusting their group members as pay spreads widen. Accordingly, we explore the conditions under which individuals are more willing to take this risk by viewing their group members as trustworthy even when pay is dispersed. Specifically, preferences for how relationships and resources should be structured in groups should help to determine when pay dispersion relates to trustworthiness perceptions. We hypothesise that the cross‐level interaction between preferences for communal sharing (Level 1)—that is, the extent to which individuals prefer communal, egalitarian structures in their groups—and pay dispersion (Level 2) is associated with trust perceptions. Data drawn from a sample of university professors support our hypothesised cross‐level interaction, and show that when pay dispersion is greater, individuals perceive their group members as more trustworthy only when they have weak preferences for communal sharing. Our results signify the importance of individual attributes to understanding pay dispersion's effects, and show that trust is fostered when preferences and pay conditions are aligned.     

Dissociative tendencies and memory performance on directed-forgetting tasks

The current article presents two studies that aimed to replicate DePrince and Freyd's (2001, 2004) studies demonstrating that high and low dissociators differentially recall neutral and trauma words under conditions of varying cognitive load. We did not find this effect. This lack of replication was apparent for both free recall and word recognition memory and in both studies. In effect, we found little evidence to support betrayal trauma theory, yet observed increased memory fallibility, as demonstrated by lower general recall and (in one study) commission errors, in high dissociators.     

On the uniqueness of attentional capture by uninformative gaze cues: facilitation interacts with the Simon effect and is rarely followed by IOR.

Orienting to an uninformative peripheral cue is characterized by a brief facilitation followed by a long-lasting inhibition once attention is removed from the cued location. Although central gaze cues cause reflexive orienting, the inhibitory effect that is relatively ubiquitous following exogenous orienting to uninformative peripheral cues has been relatively rare. We hypothesized that IOR might be seen following gaze-induced orienting if attention were effectively returned to centre by a return gaze or return flash. The timecourse of gaze-directed orienting was measured by varying the interval between the gaze cue and a peripheral target requiring an orientation discrimination (permitting measurement of the Simon effect). Significant facilitation was observed at all but the longest SOA tested, 2,880 ms, by which time the facilitation had disappeared with no evidence of IOR. Gaze-induced cuing (which was unaffected by return cue condition) interacted with the Simon effect, decreasing it at the gazed-at location, a pattern that is not seen with more typical endogenous and exogenous cuing.