Parenting Sensitivity,Parental Depression and Child Health: The Mediational Role of Parental Self-Efficacy

This paper discusses the theoretical role of parental self-efficacy, or parents' beliefs in their competence and effectiveness in the parental role, as a mediator of relations between parent–child risk and parental sensitivity. Evidence is marshalled from studies of parenting in the contexts of maternal depression and child health risk to support the premise that parent–child characteristics affect parental sensitivity indirectly via their more direct impact on parental feelings of efficacy, and that parenting efficacy represents the ‘final common pathway’ in the prediction of parenting sensitivity. Also considered in this working model are specific social-contextual factors as independent contributors to parenting efficacy and as possible moderators of relations between parent–child characteristics and self-efficacy. Implications for intervention are discussed. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Letter Therapy: A Model for Enhancing Counseling Intervention

Based on 15 letters between a counselor and a female client, this article outlines and discusses a unique letter therapy process, which is loosely adapted from the Morita Therapy approach to counseling. The five-step Letter therapy approach consists of 1) opening up, 2) focusing on life themes, 3) redirecting toward strengths, 4) reinforcing actions, and 5) affirming a positive attitude toward life. Letter writing has the potential of being used by counselors either in conjunction with face-to-face counseling or as a separate therapeutic method.     

Interval estimation for linear functions of medians in within-subjects and mixed designs

The currently available distribution-free confidence interval for a difference of medians in a within-subjects design requires an unrealistic assumption of identical distribution shapes. A confidence interval for a general linear function of medians is proposed for within-subjects designs that do not assume identical distribution shapes. The proposed method can be combined with a method for linear functions of independent medians to provide a confidence interval for a linear function of medians in mixed designs. Simulation results show that the proposed methods have good small-sample properties under a wide range of conditions. The proposed methods are illustrated with examples, and R functions that implement the new methods are provided.     

Exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories promotes prejudice which spreads across groups

This research experimentally examined the effects of exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories on prejudice and discrimination. Study 1 (N = 166) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories concerning immigrants to Britain from the European Union (vs. anti-conspiracy material or a control) exacerbated prejudice towards this group. Study 2 (N = 173) found the same effect in a different intergroup context – exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people (vs. anti-conspiracy material or a control) increased prejudice towards this group and reduced participants’ willingness to vote for a Jewish political candidate. Finally, Study 3 (N = 114) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people not only increased prejudice towards this group but was indirectly associated with increased prejudice towards a number of secondary outgroups (e.g., Asians, Arabs, Americans, Irish, Australians). The current research suggests that conspiracy theories may have potentially damaging and widespread consequences for intergroup relations.     

Unfolding Relations among Mindful Parenting,Recurrent Conflict,and Adolescents’ Externalizing and Internalizing Problems

The current study examined unfolding relations among mothers’ mindful parenting, parent–adolescent recurrent conflict, and adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing problems. In a community sample of 117 families (31% black, Asian, American Indian, or Latino), parents and adolescents (52% female; average age = 12.13 years) were followed over 15 months. Parents answered questions about mindful parenting and recurrent conflict, and adolescents reported on their own externalizing and internalizing problems. Path analyses indicated that higher levels of mindful parenting were significantly related to lower levels of recurrent conflict 2–3 months later, controlling for previous levels of recurrent conflict. Moreover, lower levels of recurrent conflict were significantly related to lower levels of externalizing problems and internalizing problems 1 year later, controlling for previous levels of those problems. Subgroup analyses indicated that relations were comparable across subgroups defined by adolescent gender, race, parent marital status, and family financial strain. The effects of mindful parenting were robust even after accounting for other indicators of positive and supportive parenting, namely inductive reasoning and warmth in the parent–adolescent relationship. These findings highlight the potential of mindful parenting to improve family interactions and adolescent adjustment.     

Reducing risky behavior with habit reversal: A review of behavioral strategies to reduce habitual hand-to-head behavior

Habit reversal training (HRT) has been a mainstay of behavior analysts' repertoire for nearly the last 50 years. HRT has been effective in treating a host of repetitive behavior problems. In the face of the current coronavirus pandemic, HRT has practical public health importance as a possible intervention for reducing hand-to-head behaviors that increase the risk of viral infection. The current paper provides a brief review of HRT for hand-to-head habits that is designed for a broad audience and concludes with practical suggestions, based on HRT, for reducing face-touching behaviors.     

The Value of Perception

This paper develops a form of transcendental naïve realism. According to naïve realism, veridical perceptual experiences are essentially relational. According to transcendental naïve realism, the naïve realist theory of perception is not just one theory of perception amongst others, to be established as an inference to the best explanation and assessed on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis that weighs performance along a number of different dimensions: for instance, fidelity to appearances, simplicity, systematicity, fit with scientific theories, and so on. Rather, naïve realism enjoys a special status in debates in the philosophy of perception because it represents part of the transcendental project of explaining how it is possible that perceptual experience has the distinctive characteristics it does. One of the potentially most interesting prospects of adopting a transcendental attitude towards naïve realism is that it promises to make the naïve realist theory of perception, in some sense, immune to falsification. This paper develops a modest form of transcendental naïve realism modelled loosely on the account of the reactive attitudes provided by Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, and suggests one way of understanding the claim that naïve realism is immune to falsification.     

Narrative access and production in preschoolers' false belief reasoning

False belief tests seem to show the apparent acquisition at around age 4 of an ability to understand the representational status of mind. In this article, preschoolers' performance on a false belief task was manipulated in terms of their grasp of its narrative base. Five experiments are reported in which 3-year-olds were helped to become familiar with the events that comprise the false belief procedure by going through a picture book version of the task, before being asked to judge the protagonist's mental state. In Experiment 1, children who had failed a traditional task succeeded if they narrated the book version back to the experimenter, particularly if they were fluent in their story recall. Experiment 2 showed that this success occurred either if the child recited the story or if she or he was taken through each page twice in succession. Experiment 3 combined the most effective procedures with a younger group of children (mean age 3;3) and revealed 95% success as long as they could recall the prerequisite events. Experiments 4 and 5 probed possible limiting conditions for success by inserting an extra episode in the story and changing the format of the test question. The results suggest that the structure of 3-year-olds' event memories is central to their poor performance in the traditional false belief task—a clear grasp of the false belief “narrative” is necessary for successful performance. When they are given the opportunity to link discrete events into a coherent narrative, they have no problem demonstrating an understanding of others' minds—being able to recount the narrative is sufficient for successful performance.     

Naloxone administration impairs autoshaped learning

Effects of naloxone on acquisition of autoshaped behavior were investigated. Rats deprived to 85% of free-feeding weights were trained to touch a retractable lever; delivery of a food pellet occurred on every trial following lever retraction. The lever was retracted immediately if a touch occurred within 15 s, or automatically after 15 s. Analyses were conducted on number and latencies of touches of the extended lever, nose-pokes (touches) directed at the retracted lever during intertrial intervals (a measure less constrained by ceiling effects than extended lever touches), and unconditioned exploratory rearing activity, measured as touches of a metal strip mounted above the grid floor of the apparatus. In an initial experiment, male Sprague-Dawley rats were given saline or naloxone (2.0 mg/kg, ip) 5 min before a training session of 12 trials. Two days later they were tested, in the absence of drug, in a session of 36 (three blocks of 12) trials. Naloxone depressed training levels of lever responding, in addition to slowing acquisition rate. No effect of naloxone was observed on rearing activity. Previous work showed that injection of saline 5 min before behavioral testing increases the rate of autoshaping compared to injections 30 min before (Messing & Sparber, 1984). Thus, effects of naloxone on acquisition of lever-directed behaviors may have been confounded by behavioral depressant effects and/or by an injection effect such a short time before testing. In a second experiment naloxone (0.5 or 2.0 mg/kg) was injected after five of seven training sessions (12 trials each) to male and female rats. A 6-s delay of reinforcement was inserted between lever retraction and food delivery, slowing acquisition rates and providing the opportunity to test the effects of naloxone throughout a multiple-session task. The low dose retarded acquisition of extended lever touching in both sexes; both doses retarded acquisition of interim lever touching in males. Thus, in some circumstances, post-training naloxone administration may impair learning. The results support the notion that low doses of naloxone may have agonist activity.