The effect of mechanical context on attentional cost in unimanual coordination

The purpose of this study was to address the attentional cost of sensorimotor coordination by determining if changes to the mechanical context of movement would influence the ability to attend and respond to an alternate stimulus. Nine right-handed participants performed rhythmic pronation and supination movements of the forearm in time with an auditory metronome. A secondary task, consisting of a pedal response to visual probe stimuli, was employed to infer the attentional cost of the coordination task. When the axis-of-rotation (AOR) was placed below the long axis of the forearm, the average time to react (RT) to the probe stimuli was greater for the supinate-on-the-beat condition than for the pronate-on-the-beat condition. Conversely, with the AOR above the forearm, RT for the pronate-on-the-beat pattern was greater than that for the supinate-on-the-beat pattern. Thus, changing the mechanical context of an upper limb coordination task altered the central processing cost required to maintain pattern stability. This finding provides further evidence that the attentional resources required to produce a particular movement are determined by the ease with which the action is executed by the sensorimotor system.     

Distressed Mothers and Their Infants Use a Less Efficient Timing Mechanism in Creating Expectancies of Each Other’s Looking Patterns

The prediction of events and the creation of expectancies about their time course is a crucial aspect of an infant's mental life, but temporal mechanisms underlying these predictions are obscure. Scalar timing, in which the ratio of mean durations to their standard deviations is held constant, enables a person to use an estimate of the mean for its standard deviation. It is one efficient mechanism that may facilitate predictability and the creation of expectancies in mother-infant interaction. We illustrate this mechanism with the dyadic gaze rhythm of mother and infant looking at and looking away from each other's faces. Two groups of Hi- and Lo-Distress mothers were created using self-reported depression, anxiety, self-criticism and childhood experiences. Lo-Distress infants (controls) used scalar timing 100% of the time, about double that of Hi-Distress infants. Lo-Distress mothers used scalar timing about nine times as much as Hi-Distress mothers. The diminished use of scalar timing patterns in Hi-Distress mothers and infants may make the anticipation of each other's gaze patterns more difficult for both partners.     

The lntergenerational transmission of family violence: The long-term effects of aggressive behavior

This paper examines the contention that family violence is passed down from generation to generation. The sample was primarily nonclinical and was composed of 14 clients of community guidance clinics and 82 members of a randomly selected control group. The primary hypothesis that individuals who are exposed to a high degree of physical punishment as children are more likely to resort to family violence as adults was supported. Studies of the modeling of aggression were examined to suggest factors which may mediate the hypothesized relationship. It was found that respondents who had grown up in an environment characterized by either low family warmth or high stress in combination with exposure to a high degree of parental punishment were more likely to use physical punishment in their own families. Also, family violence was more likely to be transmitted in same-sex rather than cross-sex linkages.     

Associations in the course of personality disorders and Axis I disorders over time

In this study, the authors examined time-varying associations between schizotypal (STPD), borderline (BPD), avoidant (AVPD), or obsessive-compulsive (OCPD) personality disorders and co-occurring Axis I disorders in 544 adult participants from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study. The authors tested predictions of specific longitudinal associations derived from a model of crosscutting psychobiological dimensions (L. J. Siever & K. L. Davis, 1991) with participants with the relevant Axis I disorders. The authors assessed participants at baseline and at 6-, 12-, and 24-month follow-up evaluations. BPD showed significant longitudinal associations with major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. AVPD was significantly associated with anxiety disorders (specifically social phobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder). Two of the four personality disorders under examination (STPD and OCPD) showed little or no association with Axis I disorders.     

Socio-economic health inequalities: Their origins and implications

Abstract

Evidence attests to substantial variations in health contingent on socioeconomic position. It is argued that these effects cannot be dismissed as artefact nor can they be explained, in the main, by either social selection or an unequal distribution of accepted behavioural risk factors among different social groups. The most likely explanation would seem to be social causation. However, it is continuing social and material inequality that appears most implicated; accounts which locate the effects in childhood social and material causes are far less compelling. The persistence of socioeconomic health differentials into the materially better-off social strata and the possible determining role of relative as well as absolute living standards suggest that psychological, in addition to material, variables are likely to be involved. Isolating the key psychological variables and identifying the nature of their influences will not be easy tasks, although social relations, psychological stress, uplifts, and control have emerged as possible candidates. However, psychological mediators of this sort most probably constitute surface rather than basic causes. Socio-economic inequality, it is contended, remains the basic cause, and, as such, the proper target for intervention. Psychological interventions are unlikely to yield much in the way of dividends in this context and indeed could inadvertently contribute to victim blaming.     

When to Use Broader Internalising and Externalising Subscales Instead of the Hypothesised Five Subscales on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ): Data from British Parents,Teachers and Children

The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a widely used child mental health questionnaire with five hypothesised subscales. There is theoretical and preliminary empirical support for combining the SDQ’s hypothesised emotional and peer subscales into an ‘internalizing’ subscale and the hypothesised behavioral and hyperactivity subscales into an ‘externalizing’ subscale (alongside the fifth prosocial subscale). We examine this using parent, teacher and youth SDQ data from a representative sample of 5–16 year olds in Britain (N = 18,222). Factor analyses generally supported second-order internalizing and externalizing factors, and the internalizing and externalizing subscales showed good convergent and discriminant validity across informants and with respect to clinical disorder. By contrast, discriminant validity was poorer between the emotional and peer subscales and between the behavioral, hyperactivity and prosocial subscales. This applied particularly to children with low scores on those subscales. We conclude that there are advantages to using the broader internalizing and externalizing SDQ subscales for analyses in low-risk samples, while retaining all five subscales when screening for disorder.     

Weight discrepancy and body appreciation among women in Poland and Britain

Previous studies have suggested that the process of transmigration has detrimental effects on the body image of migrants relative to women in the country of origin. In the present work, we examined the body image of Polish migrants in Britain (n = 153), Polish women in Poland (n = 153), and a comparison group of British White women (n = 110). Participants completed a measure of actual-ideal weight discrepancy and the Body Appreciation Scale (BAS). Contrary to hypotheses, our results showed that Polish women in Poland had significantly higher weight discrepancy than their counterparts in Britain. Further analyses showed that the BAS reduced to two dimensions among Polish participants, with Polish participants in Poland having significantly lower body appreciation than Polish migrants. We suggest that the sociocultural changes that have taken place in Eastern Europe may place women in that region at relatively high risk for developing negative body image.