Coping with interpersonal stress: role of big five traits

Seventy-one couples living in a stepfamily context reported interpersonal family stressors and related coping strategies daily for 1 week in a daily process study. The role of personality and of the stressful context in each of the spouse's coping was examined. Personality was assessed via the Five-Factor Model (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness). Two types of stressors emerged as primary dimensions of stepfamily stress: marital conflict and child misbehavior. These were treated as contextual factors in multilevel modeling analyses examining the independent and interactive effects of personality and situation on coping. Nine subscales of coping were examined based on three main functions of coping: problem-, emotion- and relationship-focused. Both the situational context and the five dimensions of personality examined were significantly and independently related to coping-strategy use. Moreover, there were significant personality-by-context interactions. The present study highlights the importance of considering personality in context when examining coping behaviors.     

The missing explanation of the false‐belief advantage in bilingual children: a longitudinal study

Bilingual preschoolers often perform better than monolingual children on false‐belief understanding. It has been hypothesized that this is due to their enhanced executive function skills, although this relationship has rarely been tested or supported. The current longitudinal study tested whether metalinguistic awareness was responsible for this advantage. Further, we examined the contributions of both executive functioning and language ability to false‐belief understanding by including multiple measures of both. Seventy‐eight children (n = 40 Spanish‐English bilingual; age M = 49.29, SD = 7.38 and, n = 38 English monolingual; age M = 47.75, SD = 6.86) were tested. A year later the children were tested again (n = 22 bilingual, n = 25 monolingual). The results indicated that language and executive function (inhibitory control) at time 1 were related to false belief in monolinguals at time 2. In contrast, bilinguals' metalinguistic performance at time 1 was the sole predictor of false belief at time 2. The different linguistic and cognitive profiles of monolinguals and bilinguals may create different pathways for their development of false‐belief understanding. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/vILn2gKjFxw     

Sorting out categories: Incremental learning of category structure

Two experiments examine how inferences might promote unsupervised and incremental category learning. Many categories have members related through overall similarity (e.g., a family resemblance structure) rather than by a defining feature. However, when people are asked to sort category members in a category construction task, they often do so by partitioning on a single feature. Starting from an earlier result showing that pairwise inferences increase family resemblance sorting (Lassaline & Murphy, 1996), we examine how these inferences lead to learning the family resemblance structure. Results show that the category structure is learned incrementally. The pairwise inferences influence participants’ weightings of feature pairs that were specifically asked about, which in turn affects their sorting. The sorting then allows further learning of the categorical structure. Thus, the inferences do not directly lead learners to the family resemblance structure, but they do provide a foundation to build on as the participants make additional judgments.     

Are item-level strategy shifts abrupt and collective? Age differences in cognitive skill acquisition

Item-level analysis allows for the examination of qualitative age and individual differences in skill acquisition, which are obscured when aggregating data across items. In the present study, item-level strategy shifts were generally gradual and variable, rather than abrupt and collective. Strategy shift reversions were frequent, and the total transition space was extensive, for both younger and older adults. Shift indices were highly variable between items for both younger and older adults. Age differences in item-level shift patterns suggest that older adults’ greater conservatism in strategy selection leads to more gradual strategy shift transitions for individual items as well as to more collective strategy shifts.     

Effect of sex education on the sexual and contraceptive practices of female teenagers in Mexico City

After reviewing the literature on the relationship between sex education and sexual and contraceptive behavior, the National Research Council (1987) recently concluded that the existing evaluation of the effects of sex education on sexual and contraceptive practice is helpful but not sufficient. 1 possible explanation for the different results obtained are the diverse sociodemographic characteristics of the sample(s) of teens under consideration. Another aspect which might account for the differences seen in the literature focuses on the areas covered in the course. In Mexico, no studies have been undertaken which deal with the relationship between sex education and sexual and contraceptive behaviors. A study carried out with 392 adolescent females ages 16-17 of lower and middle lower socioeconomic status showed that merely attending a sex education course did not affect the initiation or continuation of sexual activity, contraceptive behavior, or even the perception of accessibility to contraception. Providing information on sexuality, partner relationships, and where contraception can be obtained does not appear to have any effect on sexual activity. Receiving information on pregnancy prevention and obtaining contraceptives was found to be related to contraceptive use. Although less dramatic, information about partner relationships and sexuality produced increases in contraceptive use.     

Differences in decision-making development between expert and novice invasion game players

This cross-sectional study investigated the differences between young expert soccer players' (n = 55) and novice players' (n = 74) decision-making ability during performance of invasion games (ages: 7-8, 9-10, 11-12, and 13-14 years). Decision-making ability was assessed in invasion games that were appropriately modified for age and expertise. Games were modified to meet the developmental needs and previous learning of the participants, so interference between motor execution and decision making was minimized. Game performance was videotaped, and measures of cognitive components were developed from observational analysis. Decision making was measured at two levels: (a) decision making restricted to the selection of the technical-tactical skills (passing, moving with the ball, getting free, marking, tackling, double teaming, and interception) and (b) decision making in the adaptation to the tactical context of the game. Expert players remained superior in decision-making ability when variation in skill execution was controlled. Decision-making differences between levels of expertise decreased with age with regard to the first level (skill selection) and increased with age in relation to the second level (tactical-context adaptation). Findings are discussed in terms of implications for instructional focus and task design.     

Social Disconnection and Hazardous Drinking Mediate the Link Between Perfectionistic Attitudes and Depressive Symptoms

According to the perfectionism social disconnection model (PSDM), perfectionism leads to social disconnection (e.g., isolation, loneliness, and alienation) which brings about depressive symptoms. The present study extended the PSDM by testing a dual-pathway mediation model wherein social disconnection and hazardous drinking were hypothesized to explain why perfectionistic attitudes (e.g., intense self-criticism, evaluative concerns, and unrealistic goal-setting) result in depressive symptoms. A sample of 216 college students participated. The present study utilized a cross-sectional design and self-report questionnaires. The hypothesized model fit the data well, with social disconnection and hazardous drinking mediating the perfectionistic attitudes-depressive symptoms link. Students high in perfectionistic attitudes report feeling isolated, lonely, and alienated. To escape this powerful sense of not belonging, these students turn to alcohol in a self-destructive way. Suffering from the ill effects of social disconnection and hazardous drinking, students high in perfectionistic attitudes are vulnerable to depressive symptoms.     

Disclosure of Genetic Research Results to Members of a Founder Population

There is currently extensive discussion and debate in the literature on how, when, and to whom genetic research results should be returned (see Genetics in Medicine, April 2012 issue). Here, we describe our experience in disclosing genetic information on Mendelian disorders discovered during the course of our research in the Hutterites. We first assessed attitudes toward the disclosure of carrier results, which revealed that many individuals wanted carrier information and that many intended to use the information in family planning. Based on this information, we developed a pilot study to test and disclose cystic fibrosis (CF) carrier status. Next, a larger scale project was developed in order to disclose genetic research results for 14 diseases to those interested in receiving the information. We developed brochures, offered a live interactive educational program, conducted a consent process, and disclosed results in letters mailed to the consented individuals. Overall, ~80 % of individuals who participated in the educational program signed consent forms for the release of their results for 14 diseases. We describe our experience with returning individual genetic research results to participants in a population-based research study.     

What Is Social Construction?

In this paper I discuss the question of what it means to say that a property is socially constructed. I focus on an influential project that many social constructivists are engaged in, namely, arguing against the inevitability of a trait, and I examine several recent characterizations of social construction, with the aim of assessing which one is more suited to the task.     

A prelearning manipulation falsifies a pure associational deficit account of retrieval shift during skill acquisition

Older adults adopt memory-based response strategies during consistent practice more slowly and less completely than younger adults. In two experiments, participants either prelearned all, half, or none of the noun-pair stimuli prior to the completion of a standard noun-pair lookup task. Higher proportions of prelearning generally led to a faster and more complete strategic shift from visual scanning to memory retrieval during the lookup task, and a strong prelearning criterion for all items eliminated the age-related slowing of retrieval shift. However, the 50% prelearned condition resulted in strategy shift that was inconsistent with simple mechanistic associative learning, revealing a strategic set that was retrieval-avoidant in older adults.