The Role of Maternal Communication Patterns About Interparental Disputes in Associations Between Interparental Conflict and Child Psychological Maladjustment

The present study examined the role of mothers’ communication with children about interparental disputes in associations between interparental conflict and child psychological maladjustment in a sample of 227 children and their parents followed over a one-year span. Most of the time (i.e., 79.8%) mothers reported that they would communicate with their children following interparental disputes, with the vast majority of those communications containing relatively constructive depictions of interparental conflict. Post-conflict communications were not associated with children’s adjustment above and beyond the impact of interparental conflict. However, maternal communications underscoring family cohesion and warmth, emphasizing remorse for engaging in the interparental disagreement, and denying the occurrence of the dispute each moderated associations between interparental conflict and child externalizing symptoms in distinct, complex ways. The findings in general suggest that not all positive communications have the beneficial impact on children that parents may have intended.     

Consistent contrast and correlation in free sorting

Two experiments investigated free sorting, a type of unsupervised learning, with multiattribute drawings of alien animals. In previous research on concept formation, with simpler stimulus structure than ours, participants were insensitive to correlational structure in the stimuli, producing primarily "ID sorts," based on the values ofjust 1 dimension or attribute. Our experiments showed that participants used many strategies in categorizing but preferred to generate groupings that reflected the correlations in input when this did not violate consistent contrast. The second experiment used hierarchically structured stimuli to show that participants' sort strategies favor consistency within a set of contrasting categories, distinct from any preference for 1D sorting. Finally, both experiments show that correlational sorts are much more likely when the correlation-based sort contrasts consistently. Our data show complexity at work in free sort tasks: People are sensitive to multiple and sometimes conflicting biases for consistency and correlational structure in the category systems they create.     

Clearing the air: identity safety moderates the effects of stereotype threat on women's leadership aspirations

Exposing participants to gender-stereotypic TV commercials designed to elicit the female stereotype, the present research explored whether vulnerability to stereotype threat could persuade women to avoid leadership roles in favor of nonthreatening subordinate roles. Study 1 confirmed that exposure to the stereotypic commercials undermined women's aspirations on a subsequent leadership task. Study 2 established that varying the identity safety of the leadership task moderated whether activation of the female stereotype mediated the effect of the commercials on women's aspirations. Creating an identity-safe environment eliminated vulnerability to stereotype threat despite exposure to threatening situational cues that primed stigmatized social identities and their corresponding stereotypes.     

The effects of local and global processing demands on perception and action

The line-bisection task, adapted to utilise a wooden rod as the bisection stimulus, has revealed that patients with visuo-spatial neglect may be more accurate at bisection when asked to pick up the rod, compared to pointing to its centre. We recently reported that neurologically intact participants show a similar dissociation on this task-demonstrating a rightward bias when pointing to the centre, which was not present when grasping the rod by the centre. The current paper examined how pointing and grasping responses were affected by adapted rod-bisection tasks that emphasised local or global processing. In Experiment 1, 26 participants completed four rod-bisection tasks. The rods were compound stimuli and the participants directed to focus on either the local or global level. The results demonstrated that when participants focused on the global level, the previous dissociations found for pointing and grasping conditions were evident. However, the perception of centre did change when participants focused on the local level: both the pointing and grasping responses were rightward biased. In Experiment 2, 42 participants completed three bisection tasks which again emphasised either the local or global level, but in different sets of stimuli. The results of this task further support the findings in Experiment 1: the rightward bias in the local-bisection task was again evident and in addition, the global-bisection task resulted in no bias and no difference between the pointing and grasping bisections. These results demonstrate how task demands can similarly affect the pointing and grasping responses, and indicate that local and global processing may be involved in perception/action dissociations on rod bisection.     

Beyond Hedonism and Associationism: A Configural View of the Role of Affect in Evaluation,Processing, and Self-Regulation

Most existing models assume that negative moods are more likely than positive moods to (a) induce recall of negatively toned information, (b) lead to less favorable evaluations, (c) induce more systematic but less flexible processing, and (d) arouse a desire to change the mood. A series of studies is discussed in which each of these effects and its opposite are obtained. The consistent pattern of data in these studies supports a configural, as opposed to a simple hedonistic or associationistic, view of mood. From the configural perspective, people do not seek positive moods; they seek positive outcomes. And, in some contexts, these outcomes can be signaled by a negative mood.     

What Is “I”?

Two responses to the nature-nurture-will issue are set forth in this essay. A devil's-advocate defense of the reductionist position is built on the thesis that the nature of a person is entirely a reflection of genetic and environmental influences; thus, eventually all thought, emotions, and actions would be explained by physicochemical effects of genes and environmental influences. The second position is based on subjective, though non-scientific, truth revealed experientially. This produces a paradox: objectively I am part of a determinism, but subjectively I can have a revelation that there is a Creator who has made me creative and given me a spirit. Subjective truth cannot be explained by science.     

Opiate antagonists and long-term analgesic reaction induced by inescapable shock in rats

Five experiments examined the influence of opiate antagonists on both the short-term analgesic reaction resulting 30 min after exposure to inescapable shock and the long-term analgesic reaction resulting after reexposure to shock 24 hr after inescapable shock exposure. Experiment 1 showed that the long-term analgesic reaction could be reduced by administration of naltrexone prior to exposure to inescapable tail shock. Experiment 2 showed that the reduction in the long-term analgesic reaction produced by naltrexone was dose-dependent. Experiment 3 showed that the long-term analgesic reaction could also be reduced by administration of naltrexone prior to reexposure to shock. Experiment 4 showed that the long-term analgesic reaction could be reduced by administration of large dose of naloxone prior to reexposure to shock. Experiment 5 showed that the short-term analgesic reaction was reduced by naltrexone administered prior to inescapable shock. Some implications of these results for the biochemical substrates of both learned helplessness and stress-induced analgesia are discussed.     

Mental effort and elaboration: effects of accessibility and instruction

The present study examined the effects of accessibility to relevant schematic knowledge for elaboration in the associative learning of noun pairs. Fifth-grade participants performed two simultaneous tasks--associative learning and finger tapping--so that the mental effort demands of elaborating pairs that varied in accessibility could be estimated. The mental effort expended during the creation of sentence elaborations was greater for inaccessible pairs than accessible pairs. This accessibility difference was not observed when subjects were provided with the pair members in sentences. These findings confirm information-processing analyses of the elaboration process and support a knowledge-base interpretation of developmental differences in elaboration effort.