Pathways to violence in the children of mothers who were depressed postpartum

The impact of postnatal depression on a child's risk for violent behavior was evaluated in an urban British community sample (N=122 families). Mothers were interviewed during pregnancy, at 3 months postpartum, and when the child was 1, 4, and 11 years of age. Mothers, teachers, and children reported on violent symptoms at age 11. Structural equation modeling revealed that the child's violence was predicted by the mother's postnatal depression even when her depression during pregnancy, her later history of depression, and family characteristics were taken into account. Violence was associated with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and problems with anger management. Children were most violent if mothers had been depressed at 3 months and at least once thereafter.     

Testing mediational models with longitudinal data: questions and tips in the use of structural equation modeling

R. M. Baron and D. A. Kenny (1986; see record 1987-13085-001) provided clarion conceptual and methodological guidelines for testing mediational models with cross-sectional data. Graduating from cross-sectional to longitudinal designs enables researchers to make more rigorous inferences about the causal relations implied by such models. In this transition, misconceptions and erroneous assumptions are the norm. First, we describe some of the questions that arise (and misconceptions that sometimes emerge) in longitudinal tests of mediational models. We also provide a collection of tips for structural equation modeling (SEM) of mediational processes. Finally, we suggest a series of 5 steps when using SEM to test mediational processes in longitudinal designs: testing the measurement model, testing for added components, testing for omitted paths, testing the stationarity assumption, and estimating the mediational effects.     

Once hurt,twice hurtful: how perceived regard regulates daily marital interactions

A daily diary study examined how chronic perceptions of a partner's regard affect how intimates interpret and respond to daily relationship stresses. Spouses each completed a diary for 21 days. Multilevel analyses revealed that people who felt less positively regarded read more into stressful events than did people who felt highly regarded, feeling more hurt on days after acute threats, such as those posed by a moody or ill-behaved partner. Intimates who felt less valued responded to feeling hurt by behaving badly toward their partner on subsequent days. In contrast, intimates who felt more valued responded to feeling hurt by drawing closer to their partner. Ironically, chronically activated needs for belongingness might lead people who are trying to find acceptance to undermine their marriage.     

The role of working memory in motor learning and performance

Three experiments explore the role of working memory in motor skill acquisition and performance. Traditional theories postulate that skill acquisition proceeds through stages of knowing, which are initially declarative but later procedural. The reported experiments challenge that view and support an independent, parallel processing model, which predicts that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired separately and that the former does not depend on the availability of working memory, whereas, the latter does. The behaviour of these two processes was manipulated by providing or withholding visual (and auditory) appraisal of outcome feedback. Withholding feedback was predicted to inhibit the use of working memory to appraise success and, thus, prevent the formation of declarative knowledge without affecting the accumulation of procedural knowledge. While the first experiment failed to support these predictions, the second and third experiments demonstrated that procedural and declarative knowledge can be acquired independently. It is suggested that the availability of working memory is crucial to motor performance only when the learner has come to rely on its use.     

Client Advocacy and Collaboration with Insurance and Laboratory Testing Agencies: A Case Study Illustrating Genetic Counselor Roles

Genetic counseling and the many roles a genetic counselor must assume to provide quality genetic health care are becoming increasingly complex, especially when the genetic condition is rare, and DNA testing is costly and not yet routinely used. A case study of a couple with a family history of retinoblastoma and their pursuit of DNA testing for prenatal diagnosis is presented. The case study illustrates the instrumental role of the genetic counselor in advocating for clients for genetic services such as DNA testing and in educating insurance companies in the nature and importance of such services to achieve improved client health care outcomes.     

The Bursts and Lulls of Multimodal Interaction: Temporal Distributions of Behavior Reveal Differences Between Verbal and Non‐Verbal Communication

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, 2012 ), we focus on measuring the temporal patterns of specific communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog.