Latent Profile Analysis of Traditional and Cyber-Aggression and Victimization: Associations with Dark Triad Traits and Psychopathology Symptoms

Research has shown that while traditional (e.g., physical and relational) and cyber aggression and victimization often co-occur, individuals may differ in terms of their experiences with aggression and victimization as well as social-psychological adjustment. The current study investigated whether there are distinct groups of college students who experience different forms of aggression and victimization using latent profile analysis (LPA), and whether these groups differ from one another in their maladaptive personality characteristics and psychopathology symptoms. Participants were 540 undergraduate students from a Midwestern university (53% female; 78.5% White; average age?=?19.27 years). Four profiles were identified: Non-Involved (80.7%), Traditional Victim-Only (10.3%), Traditional Aggressor/Victim (4.8%), and Combined Aggressor/Victim (traditional aggression, cyber aggression and victimization; 4.1%). Maladaptive personality traits and psychopathology symptoms differed across the four groups. Both the traditional aggressor/victim group and the combined aggressor/victim group, compared to the non-involved and traditional victim-only group, reported higher levels of narcissism, psychopathy, and callous-unemotional (CU) traits. The traditional aggressor/victim group, compared to the combined aggressor/victim group, reported higher levels of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and CU traits. The combined aggressor/victim group reported higher levels of psychopathology symptoms (i.e., emotion dysregulation, depression, anxiety, and stress) compared to the traditional aggressor/victim group. These findings enhance our understanding of the heterogeneity in experiences with aggression and victimization among college students, and highlight the importance of developing interventions that target their specific mental health needs.

     

Of Men and Money: Characteristics of Occupations that Affect the Gender Differentiation of Children’s Occupational Interests

Occupational interests become gender differentiated during childhood and remain so among adults. Two characteristics of occupations may contribute to this differentiation: the gender of individuals who typically perform the occupation (workers’ gender) and the particular goals that the occupation allows one to fulfill, such as the opportunity to help others or acquire power (value affordances). Two studies tested hypotheses about whether U.S. 6- to 11-year-olds show gender differences in their interest in novel jobs that were depicted as (a) being performed by men versus women and (b) affording money, power, family, or helping values. In Study 1, 98 children rank-ordered their preferences for experimentally-manipulated novel jobs, and they answered questions about their occupational values and the value affordances of jobs in which men and women typically work. In Study 2, a second sample of 65 children was used to test the replicability of findings from Study 1. As hypothesized, children were more interested in jobs depicted with same- than other-gender workers in both studies. Boys showed greater interest than did girls in novel jobs depicted as affording money in Study 1, but not Study 2. Explicit knowledge that men and women typically work in jobs that afford differing values increased with participants’ age.     

Chaotic-Enmeshment and Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Psychological Flexibility and Self-Compassion

With anxiety becoming the most prevalent mental health issue among the college student population, it is important to understand the factors that are associated with symptomology. This study aims to expand the research on the interrelationship between family functioning, intrapsychic factors, and anxiety. Guided by the circumplex model of family systems, the current study explores the link between college student (N?=?500) chaotically-enmeshed family functioning and anxiety, and whether psychological flexibility and self-compassion mediate this relationship. Multiple-sample latent structural equation modeling results revealed that higher levels of chaotically-enmeshed family functioning was significantly associated with lower levels of psychological flexibility and self-compassion levels, and that psychological flexibility and self-compassion mediated the relationship between chaotic-enmeshment and anxiety. Implications for family therapists who provide services to this population are discussed.     

Evolution of Cultural Interbehavior in a Turn-Based Matching-to-Sample Procedure

The Psychological Record - Kantor’s (1982) analysis of cultural interbehavior focuses on shared stimulus–response functions that are conventional across individuals and established...     

Interactive electronic storybooks for kindergartners to promote vocabulary growth

The goals of this study were to examine (a) whether extratextual vocabulary instructions embedded in electronic storybooks facilitated word learning over reading alone and (b) whether instructional formats that required children to invest more effort were more effective than formats that required less effort. A computer-based "assistant" was added to electronic storybooks. The assistant posed extratextual vocabulary questions. Questions were presented in a multiple-choice format so that children could respond by clicking on the picture that best represented the target word. In Experiment 1 (N=20), children read stories with and without questions. Children learned more words when reading with questions than without. Expressive vocabulary was particularly affected by question insertion. In Experiment 2 (N=27), we used two methods for teaching words: one requiring more effort on the part of children (questions) and one requiring less effort ("hotspots" that provide definitions). Results revealed that questions were more beneficial than just providing a definition or synonym of the target word. Implications for designing new e-book apps are discussed.     

Developmental changes in attentional performance in urban children from eight to thirteen years

Abstract

In an earlier study of an epidemiological sample of 435 urban 8-year-old children, factor analytically-derived components of attention, as assessed by neuropsychological tests, were identified and were found to be significantly related to adaptive functioning. In this study we followed that cohort longitudinally and assessed developmental changes in specific aspects of attentional function into early adolescence. Significant reductions in omission errors and improvements in reaction times were found from ages 8 to 13 years on different versions of the Continuous Performance Task, a measure of sustained attention, with the effects varying by task difficulty level and subjects' gender. Significant improvements across age also were found on measures of the ability to focus attention and execute a response, shift attentional focus, and encode information in memory. In general, the most rapid changes in attention occurred between ages 8 to 10 years with more gradual changes occurring between ages 10 to 13. The results highlight the importance of developmental epidemiological approaches for assessing and predicting the normal evolution of attentional function in school-aged children.     

Production of spontaneous and posed facial expressions in patients with Huntington's disease: Impaired communication of disgust

Several studies have reported impairment in the recognition of facial expressions of disgust in patients with Huntington's disease (HD) and preclinical carriers of the HD gene. The aim of this study was to establish whether impairment for disgust in HD patients extended to include the ability to express the emotion on their own faces. Eleven patients with HD, and 11 age and education matched healthy controls participated in three tasks concerned with the expression of emotions. One task assessed the spontaneous production of disgust-like facial expressions during the smelling of offensive odorants. A second assessed the production of posed facial expressions during deliberate attempts to communicate emotion. The third task evaluated HD patients’ ability to imitate the specific facial configurations associated with each emotion. Foul odours induced fewer disgust-like facial reactions in HD patients than in controls, and patients’ posed facial expressions of disgust were less accurate than the posed disgust expressions of controls. The effect was selective to disgust; patients had no difficulty posing expressions of other emotions. These impairments were not explained by compromised muscle control: HD patients had no difficulty imitating the facial movements required to display disgust. Viewed together with evidence of difficulty in other aspects of disgust in HD, the findings suggest that a common substrate might participate in both the processing and the expression of this emotion.     

Young Children's Phonological Sensitivity After Exposure to a Rhyming or Nonrhyming Story

This study examined the ability of preschool children to make phonological discriminations after hearing rhyming or nonrhyming versions of the same story. Participants first listened to either a rhyming or nonrhyming version of a story, Rainy Day Kate (Blegvad, 1987), then attempted a phonological deletion and a rhyme/alliteration detection task. In accordance with prior theoretical notions that listening to rhyme sensitizes young children to phonological properties of words, children who heard the rhyming version of the story showed significantly higher performance on the rhyme/alliteration task than did participants who heard the nonrhyming narrative. Children in the rhyme condition also offered more rhyming and clang (nonword but phonologically similar) associates in completing the phonological deletion task.     

A comparison of sniff bottle staircase and olfactometer-based threshold tests

Olfactometers have been gaining popularity as research tools, but they have yet to replace established testing procedures in a variety of laboratory and clinical settings, including absolute threshold tests. In this research, we designed and operated a simple olfactometer with which to assess threshold. To do this, we used a method-of-adjustment test that was compared to the three-alternative forced choice ascending sniff bottle staircase method, which is currently a standard threshold test procedure. We found that the olfactometer threshold test correlated highly with the staircase method, and that it possessed suitable test–retest reliability. The advantages of the olfactometer threshold test include faster test time and reduced cleaning and reassembly demands. Future use of the olfactometer in olfactory identification and/or detection thresholds amongst odors is also outlined.