Resilience in the Face of Maternal Psychopathology and Adverse Life Events

Maternal psychopathology has long been recognized as a risk factor for psychopathology in offspring; however, some resilient youth achieve a favorable outcome in the presence of maternal psychopathology. We identified factors that predicted resilience among youth who were exposed to adverse life events, and also examined whether the same factors protected youth against maternal psychopathology and adverse life events. Main and interaction effects of child and family factors were examined employing cross-sectional data from a household probability sample of 1285 youth aged 9 through 17 collected at four sites. On average, children exhibited a greater degree of resilience when they had higher IQ, closer parental monitoring, better family functioning, higher educational aspiration, and were female. Interaction between maternal psychopathology and IQ was significant, and there was a trend between maternal psychopathology and gender. A higher IQ is a protective factor against both maternal psychopathology and adverse life events; whereas being a girl seems to be a protective factor against maternal psychopathology, but not adverse life events.     

Neurocognitive Performance in Children with ADHD and OCD

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) have both been linked to dysfunction in the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuitry (CSTCC). However, the exact nature of neurocognitive deficits remains to be investigated in both disorders. We applied two neuropsychological tasks that tap into different functions associated with the CSTCC, namely a serial reaction time (SRT) task, developed to assess implicit sequence learning, and a delay aversion (DA) task in order to assess abnormal motivational processes. The performance data of boys with ADHD (n = 20), OCD (n = 20) and healthy controls (n = 25), all aged 10–18 years, were compared. Subjects with ADHD less frequently chose the larger, more delayed reward compared to those with OCD and controls, while subjects with OCD showed impaired implicit learning. In contrast, the ADHD group was unimpaired in their implicit learning behavior and the OCD group was not characterized by a DA style. Within the OCD-group, severity of obsessions was associated with implicit learning deficits and impulsive symptoms with DA in the ADHD-group. This double dissociation highlights the distinct cognitive dysfunctions associated with ADHD and OCD and might possibly point to different neural abnormalities in both disorders.     

Parental Influence on Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: I. Relationships Between Parent Behaviors and Child Peer Status

We examined associations between children’s peer relationships and (a) their parents’ social competence as well as (b) their parents’ behaviors during the children’s peer interactions. Participants were families of 124 children ages 6–10 (68% male), 62 with ADHD and 62 age- and sex-matched comparison youth. Children’s peer relationships were assessed via parent and teacher report, and sociometric nominations in a lab-based playgroup. Parental characteristics were assessed via parent self-report and observations of behavior during their child’s playgroup. After statistical control of relevant covariates, parents of children with ADHD reported poorer social skills of their own, arranged fewer playdates for their children, and displayed more criticism during their child’s peer interaction than did parents of comparison youth. Parents’ socialization with other parents and facilitation of the child’s peer interactions predicted their children having good peer relationships as reported by teachers and peers, whereas parental corrective feedback to the child and praise predicted poor peer relationships. Parents’ ratings of their child’s social skills were positively associated with ratings of their own social skills, but negatively associated with criticism and facilitation of the child’s peer interactions. Relationships between parental behaviors and peer relationships were stronger for youth with ADHD than for comparison youth. The relevance of findings to interventions is discussed.     

A Picture-Based Activity Schedule Intervention to Teach Adults with Mild Intellectual Disability to Use an iPad During a Leisure Activity

Individuals with developmental disabilities have limited opportunities to participate in leisure activities, frequently due to lack of skills. The purpose of the current study was to teach three adults diagnosed with mild intellectual disability to use an iPad in the context of playing the video game Angry Birds. We used an adapted multiple baseline across participants research design to teach the task, which included opening the cover of the iPad, unlocking the device, opening Angry Birds, playing the game, and putting the iPad away. Instruction took place during breaks in a private room at a sheltered workshop. During intervention, participants had access to an activity schedule to aid in completion of the task. In some cases, extra prompts were provided to increase attention to the activity schedule. All three participants showed improvement in the target skill with intervention and gains were sustained during the maintenance phase.     

Assessment of the Language Preferences of Five Children with Autism from Spanish-Speaking Homes

Although the number of English Language Learner students is increasing in the US school system, little is known about the preferences of language of instruction, particularly among young students with autism. We implemented a choice assessment with five children with autism to determine preference between English and Spanish instruction using a concurrent-operant design. Participants were allowed to choose between English instruction, Spanish instruction, and a no-language control condition using BIGmack communication devices. We compared choice allocation between previously mastered skills (easy tasks) and targets in the acquisition phase of learning (difficult tasks). None of the participants indicated a preference for language of instruction during easy tasks, while four participants indicated a preference during difficult tasks. Results suggest that the concurrent-operant procedure is an effective method for assessing preference of language of instruction with students with autism.     

In-Home Training for Fathers of Children with Autism: A Follow up Study and Evaluation of Four Individual Training Components

Literature regarding fathers of children with autism remains sparse, and because mothers are the more common intervening parent, few training methods have focused on fathers. Thus, we sought to evaluate effects of in-home training directed at fathers and their ability to train mothers in the same manner in which they were trained. Fathers were taught four skills commonly associated with in-home training interventions for parents of children with autism: following the child’s lead, imitation with animation, commenting on the child, and expectant waiting. Father skills were evaluated twice a week for 12 weeks during videotaped in-home father–child play sessions. Analyses included visual inspection of graphed data and statistical analyses of father skill acquisition, mother skill acquisition, and child behaviors with both parents. A multivariate repeated measures analysis of 18 dyads revealed significant increases in frequencies of fathers’ imitation with animation, expectant waiting, and commenting on the child. Child initiating rates increased significantly as did frequencies of child non-speech vocalizations. Analysis of mothers revealed significant increases in frequencies of imitation with animation, expectant waiting, and following the child’s lead. Child behaviors had similar results for father and mother sessions. Findings are consistent with those from our first study indicating that fathers can effectively implement skills that promote father–child social interactions and that children respond positively to this approach.     

Implicit causality bias in English: a corpus of 300 verbs

This study provides implicit verb causality norms for a corpus of 305 English verbs. A web-based sentence completion study was conducted, with 96 respondents completing fragments such as “John liked Mary because...” The resulting bias scores are provided as supplementary material in the Psychonomic Society Archive, where we also present lexical and semantic verb features, such as the frequency, semantic class and emotional valence. Our results replicate those of previous studies with much smaller numbers of verbs and respondents. Novel effects of gender and its interaction with verb valence illustrate the type of issues that can be investigated using stable norms for a large number of verbs. The corpus will facilitate future studies in a range of areas, including psycholinguistics and social psychology.     

In God and CAM We Trust. Religious Faith and Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in a Nationwide Cohort of Women Treated for Early Breast Cancer

Turning to faith in God or a higher spiritual power is a common way of coping with life-threatening disease such as cancer. Little, however, is known about religious faith among cancer patients in secular societies. The present study aimed at exploring the prevalence of religious faith among Danish breast cancer patients and at identifying whether socio-demographic, pre-cancer health status, clinical, and health behavior characteristics, including their use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), were associated with their degree of faith. Information on faith in God or a higher spiritual power and use of CAM was provided by a nationwide sample of 3,128 recurrence-free Danish women who had received surgery for early-stage breast cancer 15–16 months earlier. Socio-demographic, clinical, and health status variables were obtained from national longitudinal registries, and health behaviors had been assessed at 3–4 months post-surgery. Of the women, 47.3% reported a high degree of faith (unambiguous believers), 35.9% some degree of faith (ambiguous believers), while the remaining 16.8% were non-believers. Unambiguous believers were more likely than ambiguous believers to experience their faith as having a positive impact on their disease and their disease-related quality-of-life. When compared to non-believers, unambiguous believers were also older, had poorer physical function, and were more frequent users of CAM, and more inclined to believe that their use of CAM would have a beneficial influence on their cancer. Disease- and treatment-related variables were unrelated to faith. While overall religious faith appears equally prevalent among Danish and US breast cancer patients, the majority of Danish breast cancer patients experienced ambiguous faith, whereas the majority of US patients have been found to express unambiguous faith. Our results suggest that future studies may benefit from exploring the role of faith for health behaviors, adherence to conventional treatment, and impact upon quality of life.     

Understanding emotional display rules at work and outside of work: The effects of country and gender

This study examined the long-held, but empirically untested assumption that emotional display rules at work are different from more general display rules. We examined whether the effect of context (work vs. non-work) on display rules depended on rater gender, rater country (i.e., Singapore, United States), and discrete emotion (anger, contempt, disgust, fear, sadness, and happiness). Results revealed that display rules at work involved less expressivity of emotion than did display rules outside of work for all six emotions. Further, display rules in Singapore involved less expressivity of anger, sadness, and fear than display rules in the US, with no country differences being observed for the emotions of happiness, contempt, and disgust. These results were qualified by significant country-by-gender interactions for anger, contempt, and disgust, a significant country-by-context interaction for fear, and a three-way interaction (i.e., country-by-gender-by-context) for sadness.     

Emotion Regulation in Relation to Emerging Adults’ Mental Health and Delinquency: A Multi-informant Approach

Relative to the merits of authoritative parenting, potential adverse outcomes are well documented for authoritarian and permissive parenting. However, conclusions are typically drawn from single informants. The ability of youths’ emotion regulation skills to mediate outcomes in emerging adults has also not been fully explored. This study investigated whether emotion regulation mediated parenting style history and potential outcomes of mental health and delinquency. Parenting style history and emerging adults’ emotion regulation ability were reported by 110 youth and their caregivers; youth reported on mental health functioning and delinquency. Emerging adults’ emotion regulation ability partially mediated the association between authoritative parenting history and mental health functioning and authoritative parenting history was indirectly related to delinquency through emotion regulation; however, based on all reporters, emotion regulation ability was not associated with authoritarian or permissive parenting style history. Results support that the merits of authoritative parenting may lie in fostering better emotion regulation skills.