Adverse Housing Conditions and Early‐Onset Delinquency

Housing constitutes an important health resource for children. Research has revealed that, when housing conditions are unfavorable, they can interfere with child health, academic performance, and cognition. Little to no research, however, has considered whether adverse housing conditions and early‐onset delinquency are significantly associated with one another. This study explores the associations between structural and non‐structural housing conditions and delinquent involvement during childhood. Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) were employed in this study. Each adverse housing condition was significantly associated with early‐onset delinquency. Even so, disarray and deterioration were only significantly linked to early delinquent involvement in the presence of health/safety hazards. The predicted probability of early‐onset delinquency among children exposed to housing risks in the presence of health/safety hazards was nearly three times as large as the predicted probability of early‐onset delinquency among children exposed only to disarray and/or deterioration, and nearly four times as large as the predicted probability of early‐onset delinquency among children exposed to none of the adverse housing conditions. The findings suggest that minimizing housing‐related health/safety hazards among at‐risk subsets of the population may help to alleviate other important public health concerns—particularly early‐onset delinquency. Addressing household health/safety hazards may represent a fruitful avenue for public health programs aimed at the prevention of early‐onset delinquency.     

Effects of Attachment on Coping Efficacy,Career Decision Self‐Efficacy,and Life Satisfaction

This study examined attachment, self‐efficacy variables, and life satisfaction of 583 undergraduate students. The type of analysis used was structural equation modeling. Findings indicated that students with greater avoidant and anxious attachment patterns reported lower levels of career decision self‐efficacy and coping efficacy, which then had a positive relationship with life satisfaction. Implications for theory, research, and practice were provided.     

Exploring the suffix effect in serial visuospatial short-term memory

The suffix effect—the loss of recency induced by a redundant end-of-list item—was studied in a visuospatial serial recall task involving the memory for the position of dots on a screen. A visuospatial suffix markedly impaired recall of the last to-be-remembered dot. The impact on recall was roughly of equal magnitude whether the suffix shared attributes with the to-be-remembered dots (Experiment 1) or was visually distinct (Experiments 2 and 3). Although the presence of a tone suffix also impaired serial memory for the last items in the sequence, the impact of a visuospatial suffix was more marked, implying a specific as well as a possible general effect of suffix in the visuospatial domain (Experiment 4). The suffix effect seems not to be a phenomenon confined to verbal material but rather a universal phenomenon possibly related to grouping.     

Do Early Difficult Temperament and Harsh Parenting Differentially Predict Reactive and Proactive Aggression?

The goal of this study was to examine the links between difficult temperament (i.e., negative emotionality) and harsh parental discipline during toddlerhood, and reactive and proactive aggression in kindergarten. These links were assessed on a longitudinal population-based study of 1516 boys and girls followed longitudinally from the age of 17 months through the age of 72 months. Two possible models were tested to examine the interplay between negative emotionality and harsh parenting in predicting later reactive aggression compared to proactive aggression. The first was an additive model where both aspects make unique contributions in predicting later reactive aggression. The second model was an interactive model where harsh parenting exacerbates the link between negative emotionality and reactive aggression. Results showed a specific contribution of negative emotionality to reactive aggression. The results relative to harsh parenting are more mixed but nonetheless in line with developmental models stressing different pathways to reactive and proactive aggression.     

Attentional modulation of the visual motion aftereffect has a central cognitive locus: evidence of interference by the postcategorical on the precategorical

An attentionally demanding task undertaken during adaptation to motion reduces the duration of the subsequent motion aftereffect (A. Chaudhuri, 1990). Previous studies have suggested that this effect is intramodal in character, reflecting the selective deployment of visual attention. The present study demonstrates that nonvisual tasks, performed concurrently with motion adaptation, can significantly reduce the duration of the ensuing aftereffect. Three experiments converge on the conclusionthat postcategorical processes can influence otherwise unrelated concurrent precategorical processes. The experiments also show that neither perceptual input nor motor output components of the attentional task are responsible for the subsequent reduction in motion of aftereffect. The results suggest a reappraisal of findings in this area and of the general distinction between perception and cognition.     

Health, wealth, and happiness: financial resources buffer subjective well-being after the onset of a disability

We examined the hypothesis that the relationship between financial status and subjective well-being, typically found to be very small in cross-sectional studies, is moderated by health status. Specifically, we predicted that wealth would buffer well-being after the onset of a disability. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal study of people at and approaching retirement age, we employed within-subjects analyses to test whether wealth measured prior to the onset of a disability protected participants' well-being from some of the negative effects of a new disability. We found support for this hypothesis: Participants who were above the median in total net worth reported a much smaller decline in well-being after a new disability than did participants who were below the median. We also found some evidence that the buffering effect of wealth faded with time, as below-median participants recovered some of their well-being.     

How long do the advantages of learning to read a transparent orthography last? An investigation of the reading skills and reading impairment of Welsh children at 10 years of age

Spencer and Hanley (2003) showed that Welsh-speaking children aged between 5 and 7 years who were learning to read Welsh (a transparent orthography) performed significantly better at reading both real words and nonwords than did English-speaking children living in Wales who were learning to read English (a deep orthography). In this study, the reading skills of these children were reexamined three years later, during their sixth year of formal reading instruction. The children learning to read English continued to perform poorly at reading low- and medium-frequency irregular words but no differences were observed in reading regular words or nonwords. These findings emphasize how long it takes to acquire a large sight vocabulary in English, but indicated that the reading skills of the majority of the English-speaking children had caught up with those of their Welsh-speaking counterparts. However, the poorest 25% of the English readers continued to perform much worse than the lowest performing 25% of Welsh readers on both words and nonwords. An underachieving tail of this kind was not observed in the reading performance of the Welsh-speaking group. Overall, these findings suggest that in the long term the detrimental effects of an opaque orthography are most damaging to the poorest readers.     

Not all gifts are good: The potential practical costs of motivated gifts

People rely on support from others to accomplish mundane and momentous tasks. When asking for assistance, is it beneficial to incentivize a helper by offering a motivated gift (i.e., a gift with the hope of getting support in return)? Six studies (N > 2,500) examine the frequency and potential costs of motivated gifts. In Study 1, a third of Americans indicated that they had given a motivated gift at least once, while nearly two‐thirds believed they had received one. In Studies 2a–d, most participants who imagined receiving a motivated gift before a favor request reported lower willingness to help and anticipated satisfaction from helping than participants who imagined simply being asked for a favor. Finally, Study 3 replicates these findings with actual help provided among friends in a laboratory setting. Findings suggest that motivated gifts are relatively common but may sometimes undermine the assistance that people hope to receive.     

Associations between prenatal substance exposure,prenatal violence victimization,unintended pregnancy,and trauma exposure in childhood in a clinical setting

Given the importance of early prevention and intervention strategies for children exposed to trauma, detection of early risk factors for exposure to traumatic events in childhood is critical. The present study examined associations between three known prenatal risk factors that characterize environmental instability in utero—prenatal substance exposure, prenatal violence victimization, and unintended pregnancy—and child exposure to interparental violence and other adverse experiences in a sample of 198 mother–child dyads (M child age = 44.48 months) referred to a hospital clinic for treatment following exposure to trauma. Prenatal substance and violence exposure were associated with child trauma exposure, and prenatal violence victimization was also associated with maternal severity ratings of traumatic exposures. Unintended pregnancy was not associated with child trauma exposure or severity. These findings expand our understanding of prenatal risk factors for trauma exposure in childhood and, specifically, highlight prenatal substance exposure and violence victimization as risk factors for subsequent exposure to trauma in early childhood. Results suggest that prenatal prevention and intervention programs should target reducing maternal substance use and in-utero exposure to violence.     

Elimination of the word length effect by irrelevant sound revisited

The word length effect refers to the tendency for lists of long words to be recalled less well than lists of short words. Theoretical and empirical objections are raised to a recent claim that irrelevant speech eliminates the word length effect (Neath, Suprenant, & LeCompte, 1998). A first experiment using a within-subjects design of adequate power (N = 65) fails to replicate their finding, showing instead that the word length effect is not differentially eliminated by speech as opposed to tones. In a second experiment, the effect of change (repeated vs. changing sounds) is shown to be additive to the effect of word length for both speech and nonspeech. Irrelevant speech and irrelevant tones have comparable effects on lists of short or lists of long words. These results are at variance with the feature model (e.g., Nairne, 1990).