Crisis Model for Older Adults: Special Considerations for an Aging Population

As the U.S. population ages, counselors must begin structuring their interactions to meet the unique needs of older adults, especially in the area of crisis intervention. The authors propose a new crisis intervention model that accounts for the needs of older adults in crisis by giving special attention to the roles of advocacy, education, and prevention.     

Dopamine modulates frontomedial failure processing of agentic introverts versus extraverts in incentive contexts

The agency facet of extraversion (aE) describes individual differences in goal-directed behavior and has been linked to dopamine function in incentive contexts. Because dopamine presumably modulates the processing of negative feedback/failure, aE may relate to failure processing in incentive contexts. To test this hypothesis, N = 86 participants performed a virtual ball-catching task. An incentive context was created by displaying potential rewards and subtle manipulations of task performance, which either was (control group) or was not (incentive context group) made explicit. To probe the involvement of dopamine, participants received either placebo or the selective dopamine D2 receptor antagonist sulpiride (200 mg). Failure processing was assessed through negative-feedback-evoked differences in the frontal midline theta electroencephalogram power (DFMT) and in the feedback-related negativity event-related potential component (FRN). Before incentives were introduced, DFMT (but not the FRN) was related to neuroticism/anxiety. Importantly, once incentives were displayed, aE was associated with DFMT, FRN, task performance, and changes in self-reported positive affect, which further depended on incentive context group and/or substance group: In the incentive context group but not in the control group, agentic extraverts showed relatively blunted DFMT after placebo. Sulpiride significantly enhanced DFMT, whereas it reduced FRN amplitudes and performance in agentic extra- versus introverts. These findings provide strong support for current dopamine models of aE and failure processing, and also highlight the importance of task context. Moreover, the dissociations of FRN and DFMT suggest the existence of two nonredundant electrophysiological indices of feedback processing, both relating to dopamine and aE.     

What Threatens,Defines: Tracing the Symbolic Boundaries of Contemporary Masculinity

A robust literature ties emasculation to a range of compensatory behaviors. The present study shifts focus away from the effects of masculinity threat toward an understanding of young adult men’s experiences of emasculation in their own words. Drawing on 42 in-depth interviews with undergraduate men attending a selective U.S. university, we examine the behaviors, situations, and narratives—both experienced and hypothetical—that privileged young men perceive as threatening. We use these data not only to contribute to the empirical literature on masculinity threat, but also as a novel approach for theorizing about the meaning and structure of masculinity more broadly. This is an important task given recent social and economic changes that may have altered contemporary definitions of masculinity. Emasculation accounts provide unique analytical leverage for revealing men’s often unspoken understandings of acceptable masculine behavior. We find that, while many interviewees superficially espoused egalitarian and anti-homophobic beliefs, their emasculation narratives implicitly call for the subordination of women and other men. These performances consequently obscure and maintain traditional, hegemonic power relations. We discuss the implications of our finding for scholars, practitioners, and individual men who desire a more equitable gender structure.     

Autobiographical reasoning in life narratives buffers the effect of biographical disruptions on the sense of self-continuity

Personal identity depends on synchronic coherence and diachronic continuity of the self. Autobiographical remembering and autobiographical knowledge as well as the stability of bodily integrity, of social roles, of significant others and of physical and sociocultural environment have been suggested as supporting a pre-reflective sense of self-continuity. Stark biographical discontinuities or disruptions in these areas may destabilise the sense of self-continuity. To test the hypothesis that autobiographical reasoning in life narratives helps to compensate the effects of biographical discontinuities on the sense of self-continuity, life narratives of a lifespan sample with the ages of 16, 20, 24, 28, 44 and 69 (N = 150, 78 female) were investigated. Results confirm that if, and only if there have been biographical disruptions in the past four years, then autobiographical reasoning correlates positively with a sense of self-continuity. The findings contradict the thesis that mere remembering of past episodes is sufficient to maintain a sense of self-continuity under conditions of biographical change.     

Attention: reaction time and accuracy reveal different mechanisms

The authors propose that there are 2 different mechanisms whereby spatial cues capture attention. The voluntary mechanism is the strategic allocation of perceptual resources to the location most likely to contain the target. The involuntary mechanism is a reflexive orienting response that occurs even when the spatial cue does not indicate the probable target location. Voluntary attention enhances the perceptual representation of the stimulus in the cued location relative to other locations. Hence, voluntary attention affects performance in experiments designed around both accuracy and reaction time. Involuntary attention affects a decision as to which location should be responded to. Because involuntary attention does not change the perceptual representation, it affects performance in reaction time experiments but not accuracy experiments. The authors obtained this pattern of results in 4 different versions of the spatial cuing paradigm.     

The Effects of Social-Comparison Versus Mastery Praise on Children’s Intrinsic Motivation

Two studies examined the effects of social-comparison versus mastery praise on 4th- and 5th-grade children’s intrinsic motivation. Children received a high score and either social-comparison praise, mastery praise, or no praise for working on a set of novel puzzles. They then worked on a different task and were given either ambiguous feedback (Study 1) or positive feedback (Study 2) before completing measures of intrinsic motivation. Mastery praise enhanced intrinsic motivation and social-comparison praise curtailed it when uncertainty about children’s subsequent performance was introduced (Study 1) and, for girls, even in situations of continued success (Study 2). Social-comparison praise also tended to discourage children from seeking subsequent self-evaluative normative information. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Coregulation in mother-infant dyads: links to infants' cardiac vagal tone

This investigation explored links between mother-infant coregulated communication patterns and infants' emerging parasympathetic regulatory processes (cardiac vagal tone). Participants included 56 first-time mothers and their 6-mo.-old infants (31 girls, 25 boys). A 4-min. baseline EKG was gathered from the infant and an ensuing 15-min. mother-infant dyadic free-play episode was videotaped and coded using Fogel's 1994 Regional Coding System. This system was developed to describe variations in coregulated features of communication among dyads, ranging from symmetrical patterns to disruptive patterns of coregulation. Analysis suggests a positive link between infants' cardiac vagal tone and more symmetrical features of coregulated communication patterns in mother-infant dyads. Cardiac vagal tone was also negatively correlated with unilateral features of coregulation communication systems. These findings point toward the potential relation between emerging physiological regulatory abilities of infants and the more relational regulatory processes in mother-infant dyads.     

Doddering but dear … even in the eyes of young children? Age stereotyping and prejudice in childhood and adolescence

This study aims to explore age prejudice, and to examine age stereotyping in children and adolescents by adopting the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) as a theoretical framework. It was hypothesised that children are socialised into adopting an ambivalent representation of old age (socialisation hypothesis) and that this cognitive bias becomes weaker in adolescence due to greater cognitive maturity (developmental hypothesis). By analysing representative data from Portugal (European Social Survey; N = 2367), it was ascertained that the ambivalent age stereotype (higher evaluations of warmth than competence for older people) is indeed a shared social representation of older people in Portuguese society. A total of 103 Portuguese children (6–10 year olds) and adolescents (11–15 year olds) were then sampled from a local school and responded to age‐appropriate measures assessing age prejudice as well as age stereotypes. Contrary to previous studies, the findings do not provide evidence for the existence of age prejudice because both children and adolescents reported positive feelings towards older people. However, the socialisation hypothesis was corroborated by showing that the ambivalent old age stereotype was already present in childhood. Contrary to the stipulated developmental hypothesis, the magnitude of this cognitive bias was very similar in adolescence.     

Parental ratings of daily behavior and child cognitive test performance after pediatric mild traumatic brain injury

This study aimed to evaluate the degree to which the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) measure overlapping vs. distinct constructs in pediatric patients with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), and to examine the demographic and injury correlates of such constructs as well as those of cognitive test performance. A total of 100 parents completed the BRIEF and the CBCL within 1 to 12 months after the injury of their child. Groups were contrasted based on the presence vs. absence of impairment on, respectively, the BRIEF and the CBCL. Exploratory maximum likelihood factor analysis was used to evaluate latent constructs. Correlates of the various factor scores were evaluated through regression analysis and contrasted with those of a test of verbal learning and memory.The results revealed that the BRIEF and the CBCL disagree about the presence vs. absence of impairment in about one quarter of cases. A prior history of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was associated with an increased likelihood of impairment on both the BRIEF and the CBCL, whereas prior outpatient psychiatric treatment was associated with the increased likelihood of selective impairment on the CBCL. Latent constructs manifested themselves along cognitive regulation, emotional adjustment and behavioral regulation factors. Whereas premorbid characteristics were the exclusive correlates of these factors, performance on a test of verbal learning and memory was negatively affected by intracranial lesions on neuroimaging.It is concluded that the BRIEF and the CBCL offer complementary and non-redundant information about daily functioning after pediatric mild TBI. The correlates of cognitive test performance and parental behavior ratings after such injuries are different and reflect a divergence between premorbid and injury-related influences.