Reconsidering the attribution-adjustment relation following a major negative event: coping with the loss of a child

Field studies have not yet conclusively established how attributions affect adjustment to unanticipated traumatic events. This may be due, in part, to the adoption of several untested assumptions in most prior research. It has usually been assumed that attributional issues are important to people who experience a traumatic event, that such concern is adaptive, and that specific attributions (e.g., self-blame) influence subsequent adjustment. These assumptions were tested with longitudinal data collected over 18 months from 124 parents whose child died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. By 3 weeks postloss, 45% of parents were not concerned with attributional issues. These parents were less distressed and less likely to blame themselves or others for the death. Longitudinal analyses did not support the assumption that attributions influence subsequent adjustment. Rather, attributions to onself or others appear to be symptomatic of distress.     

Children of depressed parents: an integrative review

This article reviews the various literatures on the adjustment of children of depressed parents, difficulties in parenting and parent-child interaction in these families, and contextual factors that may play a role in child adjustment and parent depression. First, issues arising from the recurrent, episodic, heterogeneous nature of depression are discussed. Second, studies on the adjustment of children with a depressed parent are summarized. Early studies that used depressed parents as controls for schizophrenic parents found equivalent risk for child disturbance. Subsequent studies using better-defined samples of depressed parents found that these children were at risk for a full range of adjustment problems and at specific risk for clinical depression. Third, the parenting difficulties of depressed parents are described and explanatory models of child adjustment problems are outlined. Contextual factors, particularly marital distress, remain viable alternative explanations for both child and parenting problems. Fourth, important gaps in the literature are identified, and a consistent, if unintentional, "mother-bashing" quality in the existing literature is noted. Given the limitations in knowledge, large-scale, long-term, longitudinal studies would be premature at this time.     

Control of responding by sound location in monkeys: rapid acquisition in darkness.

Rapid control of responding by sound location is obtained in squirrel monkeys when sound stimuli are presented from one of two loudspeakers, each one adjacent to a response key. With this arrangement of loudspeakers and response keys, squirrel monkeys quickly learn to respond on the key near the source of the sound stimulus, and this pattern is the same whether or not responses near the sound source are differentially reinforcedmthis result may depend on a pre-experimental tendency in squirrel monkeys to orient head and eyes toward a sound, which would lead the animal to look at the response key in front of the loudspeaker producing the sound. The present experiment sought to determine whether visual stimuli are necessary for rapid control of responding by sound location. Two monkeys were trained in darkness in a sound-localization task similar to that described above. Results were similar to those obtained from animals trained in light, indicating that visual stimuli are not required for rapid acquisition of sound-localization behavior in monkeys.     

Racial differences in self-disclosure of suicidal ideation and reasons for living: implications for training

Racial differences in suicidal self-disclosure and reasons for living were investigated in 2 separate studies. In Study 1, a random sample of archival client and therapist intake data from a university counseling center for 1 year was examined, and results indicate that ethnic minority clients do not self-disclose suicidal ideation as readily as their nonethnic minority peers. In addition, a significantly higher number of ethnic minority clients were deemed "hidden ideators" because their suicidal ideation only became evident when a counselor performed a suicide risk assessment. Only 1 of the 36 ethnic minority clients with suicidal ideation in the sample voluntarily self-disclosed this ideation at intake without an assessment by the therapist. Study 2 used the Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL) and compared African American and European American college students from an introductory psychology course. The RFL is a useful instrument to compare potential race differences in reasons people report for choosing not to kill themselves, because it does not require respondents to self-disclose (or to have) current suicidal ideation. The results from Study 2 indicate European Americans report fewer reasons for choosing not to kill themselves than their African American peers and that African Americans scored significantly higher than European Americans on the moral objections and survival and coping beliefs subscales of the RFL. Implications for training counselors in suicide risk assessment, prevention, and treatment with ethnic minorities are discussed.     

Rejection Sensitivity and Executive Control: Joint predictors of Borderline Personality features

Two studies tested the hypothesis that rejection sensitivity (RS) and executive control (EC) jointly predict borderline personality (BP) features. We expected high RS to be related to increased vulnerability for BP features specifically in people who also had difficulties in executive control (EC). Study 1 tested this hypothesis using a sample of college students (N = 379) whereas Study 2 (N = 104) was conducted using a community sample of adults. Both studies operationalized EC by a self-report measure. For a subsample in Study 2 (N = 80), ability to delay gratification at age 4 was also used as an early behavioral precursor of EC in adulthood. In both studies, high RS was associated with increased BP features among people low in self-reported EC. Among those high in self-reported EC, the relationship between RS and BP features was attenuated. Study 2 found parallel findings using preschool delay ability as a behavioral index of EC. These findings suggest that EC may protect high RS people against BP features.     

Rejection sensitivity and disruption of attention by social threat cues

Two studies tested the hypothesis that Rejection Sensitivity (RS) increases vulnerability to disruption of attention by social threat cues, as would be consistent with prior evidence that it motivates individuals to prioritize detecting and managing potential rejection at a cost to other personal and interpersonal goals. In Study 1, RS predicted disruption of ongoing goal-directed attention by social threat but not negative words in an Emotional Stroop task. In Study 2, RS predicted attentional avoidance of threatening but not pleasant faces in a Visual Probe task. Threat-avoidant attention was also associated with features of borderline personality disorder. This research extends understanding of processes by which RS contributes to a self-perpetuating cycle of interpersonal problems and distress.     

Types of food aversions: animal, vegetable, and texture

Despite a growing body of research investigating the origins and effects of food aversions, few research instruments have been developed to measure aversions to specific types or categories of food. Undergraduates (N = 209) responded to a series of food aversion questionnaires. The results suggest that people tend to be averse to 2 types of foods (vegetables and meats or fats) and to the texture and taste of certain foods (e.g., oysters). Aversions were slightly more prevalent among women than among men and were correlated with lower educational levels. The authors provide a means of advancing future research on this problem by reliably identifying 3 categories of food aversions. Future researchers should evaluate additional food categories and expand the focus on food aversions beyond the current concern with learned avoidance of specific food items.     

It Just Doesn’t Feel Right: OCD and the ‘Scaling Up’ Problem

The ‘scaling up’ objection says non-representational ecological-enactive accounts will be unable to explain ‘representation hungry’     

Delay discounting of different outcomes: Review and theory

Steep delay discounting is characterized by a preference for small immediate outcomes relative to larger delayed outcomes and is predictive of drug abuse, risky sexual behaviors, and other maladaptive behaviors. Nancy M. Petry was a pioneer in delay discounting research who demonstrated that people discount delayed monetary gains less steeply than they discount substances with abuse liability. Subsequent research found steep discounting for not only drugs, but other nonmonetary outcomes such as food, sex, and health. In this systematic review, we evaluate the hypotheses proposed to explain differences in discounting as a function of the type of outcome and explore the trait- and state-like nature of delay discounting. We found overwhelming evidence for the state-like quality of delay discounting: Consistent with Petry and others' work, nonmonetary outcomes are discounted more steeply than monetary outcomes. We propose two hypotheses that together may account for this effect: Decreasing Future Preference and Decreasing Future Worth. We also found clear evidence that delay discounting has trait-like qualities: People who steeply discount monetary outcomes steeply discount nonmonetary outcomes as well. The implication is that changing delay discounting for one outcome could change discounting for other outcomes.