Adolescent Perceptions of Parental Behaviors,Adolescent Self-Esteem,and Adolescent Depressed Mood

Using symbolic interaction, we developed a research model that proposed adolescent perceptions of parental support and psychological control would be related to adolescent depressed mood directly and indirectly through self-esteem. We tested the model using self-report questionnaire data from 161 adolescents living with both of their biological parents. To examine possible gender of adolescent differences, we tested two multigroup models separately for adolescents’ perceptions of mothers’ and fathers’ parental behaviors. Both the fathers’ and mothers’ models yielded (a) direct paths from self-esteem to depressed mood (for boys and girls), psychological control to depressed mood (for boys) and (b) an indirect path from support to self-esteem to depressed mood (for girls and boys) and an indirect path from psychological control to self-esteem to depressed mood (for girls). In addition, in the fathers’ model a significant direct path was found between fathers’ support and depressed mood (for girls).     

Taxometric analysis of the antisocial features scale of the personality assessment inventory in federal prison inmates

The Antisocial Features (ANT) scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) was subjected to taxometric analysis in a group of 2,135 federal prison inmates. Scores on the three ANT subscales-Antisocial Behaviors (ANT-A), Egocentricity (ANT-E), and Stimulus Seeking (ANT-S)-served as indicators in this study and were evaluated using the following taxometric procedures: mean above minus below a cut (MAMBAC), maximum eigenvalue (MAXEIG), and latent mode factor analysis (L-Mode). Objective and subjective evaluation of the results revealed consistent support for a dimensional interpretation of latent structure across the di ferent taxometric procedures as well as across gender, race, and security level. As a dimensional construct, antisocial personality disorder arranges respondents along one or more quantitative dimensions (degree of antisociality), rather than assigning them to qualitatively distinct categories (antisocial or not antisocial).     

The Obstacle is the Path: Overcoming Blocks to Homework Assignments in a Complex Presentation of Depression

There is increasing evidence to demonstrate that clients who complete homework assignments have a better outcome in cognitive therapy (Kazantzis, Deane, & Ronan, 2000). Most clinicians recognize that enabling clients to effectively utilize homework can be a major task in itself, particularly with disorders such as depression, where individuals find even the simplest daily tasks daunting. This article begins by highlighting the problem of changing any pattern of activity, and then explores the difficulties of engaging clients in homework when they present with persistent depression with secondary anxiety features.     

Drawing the net: internet identification, internet use, and the image of internet users.

Theory and research suggest that Internet identification may account for some of the gender divide in Internet use. Internet identification is a type of domain identification, and is inherently bound with images of those who use the Internet, a domain traditionally conceived as masculine. Combining the "draw an Internet user" test with an Internet identification scale, this study tests two hypotheses: participants drawing gender-concordant images will (i) identify with and (ii) use the Internet more than those drawing gender-discordant images. Participants were 371 students (121 males, 250 females) from three universities in the United Kingdom and Australia. The need to challenge masculinized images of the Internet is discussed.     

Childhood behavioral inhibition and the experience of social anxiety in American Indian adolescents

American Indian youth may be at increased risk for anxiety-related problems. Social anxiety is the most common form of anxiety experienced by adolescents, yet little research specific to American Indians has been conducted. Childhood temperament, especially behavioral inhibition (BI), has been identified as an important risk factor for social anxiety in other racial and ethnic groups. This study examined BI in relation to social anxiety in a cross-sectional community-based sample of 86 rural southeastern American Indian adolescents. Patterns of childhood BI suggested cultural variations in the way temperament relates to adolescent social anxiety. Specifically, nonsocially based fears in childhood were associated with social anxiety symptoms in adolescence, which is in contrast to previous findings in non American Indian samples that have suggested continuity between social inhibition in childhood and social anxiety in adolescence. It is recommended that major psychological risk factors, including temperament, be evaluated within the specific social and cultural context of the adolescent population of interest.     

Conditions for young infants' failure to perceive trajectory continuity

When viewing an event in which an object moves behind an occluder on part of its trajectory, 4-month-old infants perceive the trajectory as continuous only when time or distance out of sight is short. Little is known, however, about the conditions under which young infants perceive trajectories to be discontinuous. In the present studies we focus first on infants' perception of trajectories that change during a period of occlusion. Four-month-olds perceive discontinuity in trajectories that change in height or orientation while behind an occluder, and this is true even when a change in direction could be due to an invisible bouncing collision with a surface. Further experiments reveal that infants do not perceive diagonal linear trajectories as continuous across an occlusion unless the occluding and revealing edges are orthogonal to the path of movement. Implications for theories of perceptual and cognitive development are discussed.     

False memory in a short-term memory task

The Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) paradigm reliably elicits false memories for critical nonpresented words in recognition tasks. The present studies used a Sternberg (1966) task with DRM lists to determine whether false memories occur in short-term memory tasks and to assess the contribution of latency data in the measurement of false memories. Subjects studied three, five, or seven items from DRM lists and responded to a single probe (studied or nonstudied). In both experiments, critical lures were falsely recognized more often than nonpresented weak associates. Latency data indicated that correct rejections of critical lures were slower than correct rejections of weakly related items at all set sizes. False alarms to critical lures were slower than hits to list items. Latency data can distinguish veridical and false memories in a short-term memory task. Results are discussed in terms of activation-monitoring models of false memory.     

Initial Development and Validation of the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale–Adolescent Version

The factor structure of a new self-report scale, the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale–Adolescent version, was examined. Reliability and 2-week stability estimates of the domain scores and total score were calculated. Relationships of the domain and total scores with other well-being measures were examined as well as the impact of social desirability responding. Although additional development is necessary, results provided preliminary psychometric support for the MSLSS–A for research purposes.The usefulness of life satisfaction measures vis-à-vis the positive psychology movement (Seligman and Csikzentmihalyi, American Psychologist, 55(1): 5-14, 2000) is highlighted.     

Subjective Well-Being in Pediatric Oncology Patients

Using negative and positive measures of subjective well-being (SWB), we compared reports of 29 youth with cancer to a matched control sample of 29 youth. Youth with cancer did not differ from healthy controls on self-report measures of life satisfaction, hope, positive affect, or negative affect. Scores on measures of hope were positively correlated with time since diagnosis; none of the other SWB variables was significantly related to time since diagnosis. Except for negative affect, moderate correlations were found between parents’ reports of their own SWB and their youths’ self-reported SWB. Parents’ estimates of their youths’ SWB were also moderately associated with youth self-reports, except for negative affect. Parents of youth with cancer and their youth may use different criteria for reporting the nature and frequency of negative affect, but use similar criteria for reporting positive affect and other positive measures (hope, life satisfaction). Implications for more comprehensive assessments of the well-being of pediatric oncology patients are discussed.