Self-Esteem, Teasing and Quality of Life: African American Adolescent Girls Participating in a Family-Based Pediatric Overweight Intervention

Two studies investigated overweight in African American girls. First, African American adolescent girls (BMI was ≥ 85th percentile) and their mothers participated in focus groups addressing weight and eating. Although mothers and daughters shared some similar views on these issues, there were important discrepancies, with mothers expressing greater doubt about the potential success of a healthy weight program. The second study evaluated baseline data from 39 African American girls participating in a weight management program; mothers' reports were also analyzed. In both studies, adolescents reported significant teasing, and in the second study, teasing was inversely associated with social quality of life (β=.55, t=3.01, p=.007). Motivation to participate was positively associated with teasing (r=.50, p < .01). Self-esteem was inversely related to positive health habits (all p < .05). Mothers who viewed their daughters as having higher self-esteem were less concerned about their daughters' weight. Differences in mothers' and daughters' perceptions highlight the importance of a family approach in pediatric overweight interventions. Results provide evidence that overweight African American girls face significant weight stigmatization and suggest areas to target regarding intervention implementation.

Developmental changes in perceptions of attractiveness: a role of experience?

In three experiments, we traced the development of the adult pattern of judgments of attractiveness for faces that have been altered to have internal features in low, average, or high positions. Twelve-year-olds and adults demonstrated identical patterns of results: they rated faces with features in an average location as significantly more attractive than faces with either low or high features. Although both 4-year-olds and 9-year-olds rated faces with high features as least attractive, unlike adults and 12-year-olds, they rated faces with low and average features as equally attractive. Three-year-olds with high levels of peer interaction, but not those with low levels of peer interaction, chose faces with low features as significantly more attractive than those with high-placed features, possibly as a result of their increased experience with the proportions of the faces of peers. Overall, the pattern of results is consistent with the hypothesis that experience influences perceptions of attractiveness, with the proportions of the faces participants see in their everyday lives influencing their perceptions of attractiveness.     

A latent consolidation phase in auditory identification learning: time in the awake state is sufficient

Large gains in performance, evolving hours after practice has terminated, were reported in a number of visual and some motor learning tasks, as well as recently in an auditory nonverbal discrimination task. It was proposed that these gains reflect a latent phase of experience-triggered memory consolidation in human skill learning. It is not clear, however, whether and when delayed gains in performance evolve following training in an auditory verbal identification task. Here we show that normal-hearing young adults trained to identify consonant-vowel stimuli in increasing levels of background noise showed significant, robust, delayed gains in performance that became effective not earlier than 4 h post-training, with most participants improving at more than 6 h post-training. These gains were retained for over 6 mo. Moreover, although it has been recently argued that time including sleep, rather than time per se, is necessary for the evolution of delayed gains in human perceptual learning, our results show that 12 h post-training in the waking state were as effective as 12 h, including no less than 6 h night's sleep. Altogether, the results indicate, for the first time, the existence of a latent, hours-long, consolidation phase in a human auditory verbal learning task, which occurs even during the awake state.     

Forgiveness in the context of developmental guidance: implementation and evaluation

This study examined the implementation of forgiveness as a guidance programme with Hong Kong Chinese adolescents in the classroom setting. The forgiveness programme was based on Enright's process model of forgiveness. The effectiveness of the programme was evaluated, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Findings showed that it is viable to promote forgiveness as a classroom guidance programme. Though no significant improvement in participants' self-esteem and hope was found, participants showed a better understanding of forgiveness, had a more positive attitude towards their offenders, and were more willing to apply forgiveness as a strategy. They also evaluated the forgiveness programme positively, specifically the use of an experiential approach. The implications of this study for student guidance and counselling were discussed.     

Processes underlying the cross-race effect: an investigation of holistic, featural, and relational processing of own-race versus other-race faces

Adults are often better at recognising own-race than other-race faces. Unlike previous studies that reported an own-race advantage after administering a single test of either holistic processing or of featural and relational processing, we used a cross-over design and multiple tasks to assess differential processing of faces from a familiar race versus a less familiar race. Caucasian and Chinese adults performed four tasks, each with Caucasian and Chinese faces. Two tasks measured holistic processing: the composite face task and the part/whole task. Both tasks indicated holistic processing of own-race and other-race faces that did not differ in degree. Two tasks measured featural and relational processing: the Jane/Ling task, in which same/ different judgments were made about face pairs that differed in features of their spacing, and the scrambled/blurred task, in which test faces were scrambled (isolates memory for components) or blurred (isolates memory for relations). Both tasks provided evidence of an own-race advantage in both featural and relational processing. We conclude that even when adults process other-race faces holistically, other manifestations of an own-race advantage remain.     

Similarities and differences in the perceptual structure of facial expressions of children and adults

We explored the perceptual structure of facial expressions of six basic emotions, varying systematically in intensity, in adults and children aged 7 and 14 years. Multidimensional scaling suggested that three- or four-dimensional structures were optimal for all groups. Two groups of adults demonstrated nearly identical structure, which had dimensions representing pleasure, potency, arousal, and intensity, despite the fact that one group was tested with a child-friendly “odd-man-out” paradigm and the other group was tested with a conventional similarity-rating paradigm. When tested with the odd-man-out paradigm, the 7-year-olds showed systematic structure, which differed from that of adults in both the meaning of some dimensions and the proximities among some of the expression categories. When tested with similarity judgments, the 14-year-olds showed an adult-like pattern on all measures except that their similarity judgments were more influenced by physical differences than were those of adults. We conclude that an adult-like representation of facial expressions develops slowly during childhood.     

Implicit attitudes and the social capacity for free will

In this paper I ask what implicit attitudes tell us about our freedom. I analyze the relation between the literature on implicit attitudes and an important subcategory of theories of free will—self-disclosure accounts. If one is committed to such a theory, I suggest one may have to move to a more social conceptualization of the capacity for freedom. I will work out this argument in five sections. In the first section, I discuss the specific theories of free will that are central to this paper. In the second section, I will show that implicit-bias research raises questions about people’s capacities to exercise (these specific understandings of) free will. In the third section, I will consider how an individual may overcome these failures and argue that the individual ability for self-regulation is significantly limited. One could stop here and conclude that free will is a limited capacity. But I argue that this conclusion would be too hastily drawn. I will instead continue to ask what would be required for free will. By discussing how failures of free will are due to social structures and may be therefore repaired by changing social structures in section 4, I will arrive at an alternative conclusion about the capacity for free will in section 5.     

Expressed Emotion,Parental Stress,and Family Dysfunction Among Parents of Nonclinical Italian Children

Expressed emotion (EE) is an index of the amount of emotion typically displayed by a family member or caretaker characterized by high emotional involvement, hostility or criticism. The aims of the current study were (a) to examine EE, stress and helplessness in childcare, and family functioning in mothers and fathers of elementary and junior high school children without clinical mental health problems living in a “nonclinical” family context; (b) to assess relationships between child age, gender, socio-economic status and EE; and (c) to investigate whether there are some factors—in a “normal family” context—that play a crucial role in the quality of EE. EE, assessed using the Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS), and questionnaires assessing parenting alliance, family functioning, parenting stress index, and the parent’s state of helplessness in caring for the child were completed by a community-based Italian sample of mothers and fathers of children (N = 381) aged 6–14 years (M = 9.8, SD = 2.25). As expected, low rates in all FMSS variables were found for mothers and fathers, without significant differences between them. Mothers and fathers who showed high EE scores reported higher family non-adaptive functioning. Mothers also reported higher parental stress and higher Helplessness in caring for the child. Mothers’ stress and fathers’ reports of higher family non-adaptive functioning were the most consistent predictors of EE. Further research is needed to highlight associations between EE and family functioning.