A Preliminary Study of COVID-19-related Stressors,Parenting Stress,and Parental Psychological Well-being Among Parents of School-age Children

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial health, social, and economic effects on families. Consequent lockdowns and school closures heightened the burden on...     

Reconsolidation of a context long-term memory in the terrestrial snail requires protein synthesis

We investigated the influence of the protein synthesis blocker anisomycin on contextual memory in the terrestrial snail Helix. Prior to the training session, the behavioral responses in two contexts were similar. Two days after a session of electric shocks (5 d) in one context only, the context conditioning was observed as the significant difference of behavioral response amplitudes in two contexts. On the day following testing of context learning, a session of "reminding" was performed, immediately after which the snails were injected with anisomycin or vehicle. Testing of long-term context memory has shown that only anisomycin injections impaired the context conditioning. In control series, the snails were injected after the training session with anisomycin/saline without reminding, and no impairment of the long-term context memory was observed, while injection of anisomycin during the training session completely abolished the long-term memory. No effects of anisomycin on the short-term memory were observed. Surprisingly, injection of anisomycin after the reminding combined with reinforcing stimuli elicited no effect on the context memory. Differences between single-trial and multisession learning are discussed.     

Attachment representations in adults with congenital blindness: association with maternal interactive behaviors during childhood

This study explores how maternal interactive behaviors experienced during the childhood of adults with congenital blindness are associated with their subsequent development and personality. Many researchers have found a high frequency of maternal directiveness and overprotection in sighted mother-congenitally blind child relationships. One open question is whether these behaviors may have negative effects on congenitally blind children's subsequent development, or whether they may have a functionally adaptive-strategic role. The purpose of this study was to discriminate between the two hypotheses. This objective was pursued by adopting the theory of attachment and administering the Adult Attachment Interview to 15 participants with congenital blindness. Results suggested that directive and overprotective maternal behaviors are experienced by the persons with congenital blindness as encouraging and functional as long as they are accompanied by an affective, loving, and supportive attitude. Results did not support the hypothesis that directive and overprotective maternal interactive behaviors have a necessarily negative effect on the development of persons with congenital blindness.     

Gastroesophageal reflux disease: attachment style and parental bonding

The attachment styles and parental bonding of 72 patients (M age= 45.3 yr., SD=13.5) suffering from Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease were compared with those of 105 healthy subjects (M age =44.9 yr., SD = 5.8). A clinical interview and two questionnaires, the Attachment Style Questionnaire and the Parental Bonding Instrument, showed that the scores on the ASQ Confidence subscale were significantly lower in the clinical group. Similar results were obtained for the Discomfort with Closeness subscale in the subsample with Pure Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. The results indicate Insecure Attachment in the clinical sample. The results obtained from the Parental Bonding Instrument indicate that scores on the Protection Mother scale were significantly higher in the clinical subjects, suggesting a Low Care-High Protection combination (Affectiveless Control), at least for patients with pure Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. These characteristics can be considered important factors in the tendency to somatization. The symptoms may have a paradoxically normalising function while the patient shows an emotional detachment towards intimate relationships. The illness appears to act as a bond through which the relationship with the caregivers is maintained.     

Level-ordering does not constrain children's ungrammatical compounds

English-speaking children typically avoid using regular plurals in novel grammatical deverbal compounds as in rat eater but allow irregular plurals as in mice eater (Gordon, 19985). To explain these data, it has been argued that level-ordering model constrains the production of morphologically complex words, including those with which children have had little to no experience. If level-ordering can be supported, children should avoid regular plurals in their ungrammatical deverbal compounds like a breaker-bottle. Seventy-two English-speaking children were included in the present study, 36 from Britain and 36 from Canada. The results showed that 50% of the children who produced ungrammatical compounds included regular plurals in the compounds they produced. Conversely, none of the children who produced grammatical compounds included regular plurals. These results indicate that level-ordering does not constrain children's production of ungrammatical compounds. These results raise the possibility that level-ordering may not be a valid constraint of children's compounding in general.     

Attentional biases for negative interpersonal stimuli in clinical depression

An information-processing paradigm was used to examine attentional biases in clinically depressed participants, participants with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and nonpsychiatric control participants for faces expressing sadness, anger, and happiness. Faces were presented for 1000 ms, at which point depressed participants had directed their attention selectively to depression-relevant (i.e., sad) faces. This attentional bias was specific to the emotion of sadness; the depressed participants did not exhibit attentional biases to the angry or happy faces. This bias was also specific to depression; at 1000 ms, participants with GAD were not attending selectively to sad, happy, or anxiety-relevant (i.e., angry) faces. Implications of these findings for both the cognitive and the interpersonal functioning of depressed individuals are discussed and directions for future research are advanced.     

Adaptation of the MSCI for the measurement of cohesion in Spanish young soccer players

This work describes the Spanish adaptation and studies the psychometric properties of Yukelson, Weinberg, and Jackson's Multidimensional Sport Cohesion Instrument (MSCI) with a sample of 173 soccer players. The Spanish version is composed of 22 items grouped in four factors: quality of teamwork (performance aspects), attraction to the group, valued roles and quality of teamwork (interpersonal relationships), that accounted for 53.30% of the total variance. Reliability coefficients (Cronbach's Alphas) for the factors ranged from .84 (factor 1) to .56 (factor 4). Suggestions are made for future research on the validity of the scale, mainly in terms of convergence with other multidimensional measures of sport cohesion.