CAREGIVER SENSITIVITY AND CONSISTENCY AND CHILDREN'S PRIOR FAMILY EXPERIENCE AS CONTEXTS FOR EARLY DEVELOPMENT WITHIN INSTITUTIONS

The current study addressed whether two institution‐wide interventions in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, that increased caregiver sensitivity (Training Only: TO) or both caregiver sensitivity and consistency (Training plus Structural Changes: T+SC) promoted better socioemotional and cognitive development than did a No Intervention (NoI) institution during the first year of life for children who were placed soon after birth. It also assessed whether having spent less than 9 versus 9 to 36 months with a family prior to institutionalization was related to children's subsequent socioemotional and cognitive development within these three institutions. The Battelle Developmental Inventory (J. Newborg, J.R. Stock, L. Wnek, J. Guidubaldi, & J. Svinicki, 1988) was used to assess the socioemotional and cognitive functioning of children in NoI (n = 95), TO (n = 104), and T+SC (n = 86) at two to three time points during their first 6 to 12 months of residency. Results suggest that improving caregiver sensitivity can improve the cognitive development of infants in the first year of institutionalization whereas improving caregiver consistency in addition to sensitivity is more beneficial for socioemotional development than is sensitivity alone. Similarly, for children in T+SC, longer time with a family prior to institutionalization (consistent caregiver, unknown sensitivity) was associated with better socioemotional, but not cognitive, baseline scores and more rapid cognitive than socioemotional development during institutionalization. These results suggest caregiver sensitivity is more highly related to cognitive development whereas caregiver consistency is more related to socioemotional development in the first years of life.     

On Microaggressions: Cumulative Harm and Individual Responsibility

Microaggressions are a new moral category that refers to the subtle yet harmful forms of discriminatory behavior experienced by members of oppressed groups. Such behavior often results from implicit bias, leaving individual perpetrators unaware of the harm they have caused. Moreover, microaggressions are often dismissed on the grounds that they do not constitute a real or morally significant harm. My goal is therefore to explain why microaggressions are morally significant and argue that we are responsible for their harms. I offer a conceptual framework for microaggressions, exploring the central mechanisms used for identification and the empirical research concerning their harm. The cumulative harm of microaggressions presents a unique case for understanding disaggregation models for contributed harms, blame allocation, and individual responsibility within structural oppression. Our standard moral model for addressing cumulative harm is to hold all individual contributors blameworthy for their particular contributions. However, if we aim to hold people responsible for their unconscious microaggressions and address cumulative harm holistically, this model is inadequate. Drawing on Iris Marion Young's social connection model, I argue that we, as individual perpetrators of microaggressions, have a responsibility to respond to the cumulative harm to which we have individually contributed.     

Relation between coping and posttrauma cognitions on PTSD in a combat-trauma population

Individual differences in cognitive processes and coping behaviors play a role in the development and maintenance of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Given the large numbers of combat-exposed service members returning from the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), and Operation New Dawn (OND) conflicts, exploring individual differences in cognitive-affective processes is important for informing our understanding of PTSD etiology and early intervention in military samples. The present study examined the unique main and interactive effects of negative posttrauma cognitions (i.e., negative beliefs about self [NS], the world [NW], and self-blame [SB]) and coping strategies (i.e., positive behavioral, positive cognitive, avoidant coping, and social and emotional coping) on PTSD diagnosis within 155 (M_age = 30.7, SD = 4.48) OEF/OIF/OND combat trauma-exposed Veterans recruited from an ongoing study examining the effects of combat trauma and stress reactivity. In the final, stepwise logistic regression analysis, avoidant coping, but no other coping strategy, was significantly positively related to PTSD diagnosis in the initial step. Higher levels of NS, but not NW, were significantly associated with having a PTSD diagnosis, whereas SB was associated with decreased likelihood of PTSD, above and beyond coping strategies. A significant interaction effect was found between NS and positive cognitive coping, such that greater positive cognitive coping weakened the relationship between NS and PTSD. Examining and addressing coping behaviors and negative thoughts of self jointly may benefit assessment and intervention approaches in a combat-trauma population.     

A review of the experience and consequences of self-aspect activation,number, and distinctiveness

Abstract

The self-concept is an elaborate memory structure, but it operates under the same basic processes as all cognition. Within the self-concept, self-knowledge (e.g., traits, behavioral representations) is organized into self-aspects. Self-aspects vary in their momentary accessibility, and individual self-aspects can become connected through shared associations (e.g., overlapping traits). This paper reviews the author’s research on (1) the consequences and experience of activating specific self-aspects, and (2) outcomes and correlates of self-complexity, which is the number and interrelatedness of self-aspects. Important self-aspects are easier to activate and harder to inhibit, and active self-aspects moderate the accessibility of related self-knowledge with consequences for social judgment and memory. In addition, self-complexity influences emotions, self-regulation, well-being, and social perceptions, and it varies across cultures.     

Why are they being so nice to us? Social identity threat and the suspicion of Whites’ motives

Abstract

Stigmatizing racism has made Whites’ kindness attributional ambiguous to people of color (POC). When this ambiguity is experienced in domains where stereotypes are active, POC may experience praise from Whites as a form of social identity threat. The current article reviews how POC are predicted to respond to Whites’ positivity as a function of their beliefs about Whites’ motives. To the extent that POC are suspicious of Whites’ motives and chronically discount positivity from Whites, praise and positive overtures from Whites were predicted to be threatening. Evidence suggests that POC suspicious of Whites motives are the most sensitive to positive responses from Whites, reacting with both greater threat and social accuracy compared to non-suspicious POC. The current work reviews the empirical evidence on suspicion and highlights avenues for future research that explores suspicion’s origins and capacity to shape the academic and professional identities of POC.     

Healing the Heart: A Qualitative Study of Challenges and Motivations to Cardiac Rehabilitation Attendance and Completion among Women and Men

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Given that cardiovascular rehabilitation (CR) participation is the best secondary prevention of cardiac mortality, it is important to understand the challenges and motivations people experience while taking part in rehabilitation. The present qualitative study explored the treatment experiences of 20 women and 20 men at urban and rural rehabilitation clinics in Minnesota. Participants were equally divided based on the number of CR session completed (less than or equal to 18 vs. more than 18). The study’s primary aim was to articulate similarities and differences in the CR treatment experiences by gender. Data were gathered from individual interviews and analyzed using an inductive content analysis. Findings revealed that both women and men view CR as a means to move forward from their cardiac incident and achieve good health. Women were more likely than were men to be motivated by a perceived obligation to CR staff and improved quality of life. Men, in comparison, identified their commitment to CR as a need to complete a task. The study findings can help inform the design of rehabilitation programs and strengthen patient-centered interventions to enhance participation in treatment.     

Understanding Adult Participant and Parent Empowerment Prior to Evaluation in the Undiagnosed Diseases Network

The burden of living with an undiagnosed condition is high and includes physical and emotional suffering, frustrations, and uncertainty. For patients and families experiencing these stressors, higher levels of empowerment may be associated with better outcomes. Thus, it is important to understand the experiences of patients with undiagnosed conditions and their families affected by undiagnosed conditions in order to identify strategies for fostering empowerment. In this study, we used the Genetic Counseling Outcome Scale (GCOS-24) to assess levels of empowerment and support group participation in 35 adult participants and 67 parents of child participants in the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) prior to their UDN in-person evaluation. Our results revealed significantly lower empowerment scores on the GCOS-24 in adult participants compared to parents of child participants [t(100)?=???3.01, p?=?0.003, average difference?=???11.12, 95% CI (??3.78, ??18.46)] and no significant association between support group participation and empowerment scores. The majority of participants (84.3%, 86/102) are not currently participating in any support groups, and participation rates were not significantly different for adult participants and parents of child participants (11.4 vs. 19.7%, respectively, FE p?=?0.40). Open-ended responses provided additional insight into support group participation, the challenges of living with undiagnosed conditions, and positive coping strategies. Future research will evaluate the extent to which empowerment scores change as participation in the UDN unfolds.     

Control by association: Transfer of implicitly primed attentional states across linked stimuli

Although cognitive control has traditionally been viewed in opposition to associative learning, recent studies show that people can learn to link particular stimuli with specific cognitive control states (e.g., high attentional selectivity). Here, we tested whether such learned stimulus-control associations can transfer across paired-associates. In the Stimulus-Stimulus (S-S) Association phase, specific face or house images repeatedly preceded the presentation of particular scene stimuli, creating paired face/house-scene associates in memory. The Stimulus-Control (S-C) Association phase then associated these scenes with different attentional control states by probabilistically biasing specific scenes to mostly precede either congruent or incongruent trials in a Stroop task. Finally, in the Stimulus-Control Transfer (S-CT) phase, the faces and houses from the S-S phase preceded Stroop trials but were not predictive of congruency, testing whether stimulus-control associations would transfer from scenes to their associated face/house stimuli. In Experiments 1 and 3, we found that learned implicit stimulus-control associations could transfer across closely linked cues, and in Experiment 2, we showed that this transfer depended on the memory associations formed in the S-S phase. While this form of transfer learning has previously been demonstrated for stimulus-reward associations, the present study provides the first evidence for the associative transfer of stimulus-control associations across arbitrarily linked stimuli. This work demonstrates how people can learn to implicitly adapt their processing strategies in a flexible context-dependent manner and establishes a novel learning mechanism supporting the generalization of cognitive control.     

Further evaluation of the use of preference categories to identify novel reinforcers: A systematic replication

Preference assessments are frequently used to identify reinforcers for individuals with autism spectrum disorder and intellectual and developmental disabilities. Although well‐established procedures have been shown to identify preferred stimuli for individual items that can be used in skill acquisition and behavior reduction programs, little research has been conducted on identifying categories of preferred items. In this study, paired‐stimulus preference assessments were conducted with 4 individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Researchers classified the edible stimuli as belonging to 1 of 4 categories: chocolate (e.g., chocolate chips and M&M's^®), salty/crunchy (e.g., chips and crackers), gummy (e.g., Swedish Fish^® and Starburst^®), or fruit/vegetable (e.g., grape and apple). Preference hierarchies were identified for individual stimuli and for categories of stimuli. For all participants, at least 3 of the 4 most preferred items came from the same category. Novel items (i.e., items not included in the preference assessments) identified by the researchers as belonging to the high‐preference category functioned as effective reinforcers during subsequent reinforcer assessments for all participants. This finding suggests that clinicians could identify likely effective edible reinforcers based on an individual's categorical preference without explicit testing.