The Relation of Exposure to Parental Criminal Activity,Arrest, and Sentencing to Children’s Maladjustment

We examined the psychosocial maladjustment of 32 children with an incarcerated parent from the child’s perspective as well as from the perspective of their caregiver. We focused on the relation between the incarcerated parent’s report of children’s exposure to parental criminal activity, arrest, and sentencing and caregivers’ and children’s self-reports of maladjustment. Results indicate that witnessing these events is associated with more behavior problems according to caregivers’ and children’s self-reports. Moreover, incarcerated parents’ reports of children’s exposure to these events predicted caregivers’ and children’s reports of maladjustment over a 6 month period. Our results also suggest that children with incarcerated mothers, in comparison to children with incarcerated fathers, are exposed to more of these events and may be experiencing greater maladjustment. Implications of these findings are discussed within a proactive context and the use of procedures that take children’s reactions to witnessing parental arrest and sentencing into consideration.     

The action dynamics of overcoming the truth

A convincing deceiver must act in discordance with their knowledge of the truth. To do so requires the deceiver to resolve competition between what is known to be true and what is intended to be false. We investigated the temporal signature of this competition by examining the action dynamics of arm movement while participants responded falsely or truthfully to autobiographical information. The participants answered no or yes by navigating a Nintendo Wii Remote to no and yes regions on a large projector screen. Trajectory analyses of the fine-grained arm movements show increased complexity in false responding relative to truthful responding, with the greatest difference in false yes answers. The dynamic motor movements also reveal greater strength of competition during the act of false responding, thereby extending traditional response time measures that capture latent competition alone. These results suggest that deceptive processes may be detectable when action is allowed to covary with thought. Supplemental figures and a list of the sentence stimuli may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Pharmacologic and Behavioral Withdrawal From Addictive Drugs

ABSTRACT— Recent theories suggest that drug withdrawal does not motivate drug use and relapse. However, data now show that withdrawal produces complex changes over time in at least two symptoms (i.e., negative affect and urges) that are highly predictive of relapse. Evidence suggests that falling levels of the drug in the blood and interruption of the drug self-administration ritual both affect these symptoms. Both of these forms of withdrawal motivate renewed drug use in addicted individuals.     

Wrestling with Masculinity: Messages about Manhood in the WWE

This study was designed to examine messages about manhood revealed by televised professional wrestling through content analyses of 118 World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) programs and pay-per-view events. Specifically, messages concerning masculinity and the way in which proof and assertion of manhood are accomplished were investigated and compared to the culturally ideal version of masculinity. Findings revealed that the messages imparted by the WWE about manhood support the dominant hegemonic form of masculinity, which emphasizes aggression and violence, emotional restraint, and success and achievement. Popular culture messages about manhood that emphasize hegemonic masculinity have implications for alternative expressions of masculinity and potential gender role socialization, which are discussed.     

Bias at the intersection of race and gender: Evidence from preschool‐aged children

There is ample evidence of racial and gender bias in young children, but thus far this evidence comes almost exclusively from children's responses to a single social category (either race or gender). Yet we are each simultaneously members of many social categories (including our race and gender). Among adults, racial and gender biases intersect: negative racial biases are expressed more strongly against males than females. Here, we consider the developmental origin of bias at the intersection of race and gender. Relying on both implicit and explicit measures, we assessed 4‐year‐old children's responses to target images of children who varied systematically in both race (Black and White) and gender (male and female). Children revealed a strong and consistent pro‐White bias. This racial bias was expressed more strongly for males than females: children's responses to Black boys were less positive than to Black girls, White boys or White girls. This outcome, which constitutes the earliest evidence of bias at the intersection of race and gender, underscores the importance of addressing bias in the first years of life.     

Contrast between what is expected and what occurs increases pigeon’s suboptimal choice

Animal Cognition - When pigeons are given a choice between 50% signaled reinforcement and 100% reinforcement they typically do not choose optimally, sometimes even preferring 50% reinforcement....     

Teaching a perspective‐taking component skill to children with autism in the natural environment

We evaluated procedures for teaching three children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder the perspective‐taking component skill of tacting what others are sensing across all five senses: see, taste, feel, hear, and smell. Using a multiple baseline across participants design, we evaluated a training package consisting of multiple exemplar training, reinforcement, and error correction. The treatment package was implemented in the natural environment and was effective for teaching participants to tact what others sensed. Generalization across untrained stimuli and people was observed from baseline to posttraining for all participants. We discuss how this component skill may be related to teaching further skills related to perspective taking such as tacting what others know, predicting future behavior based upon one's beliefs, and creating false beliefs in others for the purpose of adaptive deceptive behaviors such as keeping secrets, surprises, and bluffing during games.     

Does Narrative Feedback Enhance Children's Motor Learning in a Virtual Environment?

Augmented feedback has motivational and informational functions in motor learning, and is a key feature of practice in a virtual environment (VE). This study evaluated the impact of narrative (story-based) feedback as compared to standard feedback during practice of a novel task in a VE on typically developing children's motor learning, motivation and engagement. Thirty-eight children practiced navigating through a virtual path, receiving narrative or non-narrative feedback following each trial. All participants improved their performance on retention but not transfer, with no significant differences between groups. Self-reported engagement was associated with acquisition, retention and transfer for both groups. A narrative approach to feedback delivery did not offer an additive benefit; additional affective advantages of augmented feedback for motor learning in VEs should be explored.     

Interpersonal Subtypes Within Social Anxiety: The Identification of Distinct Social Features

Although social anxiety disorder is defined by anxiety-related symptoms, little research has focused on the interpersonal features of social anxiety. Prior studies (Cain, Pincus, & Grosse Holtforth, 2010; Kachin, Newman, & Pincus, 2001) identified distinct subgroups of socially anxious individuals' interpersonal circumplex problems that were blends of agency and communion, and yet inconsistencies remain. We predicted 2 distinct interpersonal subtypes would exist for individuals with high social anxiety, and that these social anxiety subtypes would differ on empathetic concern, paranoia, received peer victimization, perspective taking, and emotional suppression. From a sample of 175 undergraduate participants, 51 participants with high social anxiety were selected as above a clinical cutoff on the social phobia scale. Cluster analyses identified 2 interpersonal subtypes of socially anxious individuals: low hostility–high submissiveness (Cluster 1) and high hostility–high submissiveness (Cluster 2). Cluster 1 reported higher levels of empathetic concern, lower paranoia, less peer victimization, and lower emotional suppression compared to Cluster 2. There were no differences between subtypes on perspective taking or cognitive reappraisal. Findings are consistent with an interpersonal conceptualization of social anxiety, and provide evidence of distinct social features between these subtypes. Findings have implications for the etiology, classification, and treatment of social anxiety.     

Predictors of decision-making on the Iowa Gambling Task: independent effects of lifetime history of substance use disorders and performance on the Trail Making Test

Poor decision-making and executive function deficits are frequently observed in individuals with substance use disorders (SUDs), and executive deficits may contribute to poor decision-making in this population. This study examined the influence of lifetime history of an alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or polysubstance use disorder on decision-making as measured by the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) after controlling for executive ability, demographic characteristics, and current substance use. Participants (131 with lifetime history of SUD and 37 controls) completed the IGT and two neuropsychological tests: the Trail Making Test and the Controlled Oral Word Association Test. Control participants performed significantly better than those with a lifetime SUD history on the IGT, but performance on the neuropsychological tests was comparable for the two groups. A lifetime SUD diagnosis was associated with performance on the IGT after controlling for covariates, and Trail Making Test performance was associated with IGT performance in both SUD and control participants.