Risks and Outcomes Associated with Disorganized/Controlling Patterns of Attachment at Age Three in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development

Disorganized/controlling attachment in preschool has been found to be associated with maternal and child maladjustment, making it of keen interest in the study of psychopathology. Additional work is needed, however, to better understand disorganized/controlling attachment occurring as early as age three. The primary aims of this study were to evaluate risk factors and outcomes associated with disorganized/controlling behavior at age three and to evaluate the risk factors and outcomes differentiating the four subtypes of disorganized/controlling attachment. Analyses were conducted with the first two phases of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a prospective study of 1,364 children from birth. At 36 months of age, across the attachment-relevant domains of maternal well-being, mother-child interactions, and child social adaptation, the disorganized/controlling group evidenced the most maladaptive patterns in comparison to both secure and insecure-organized groups. At 54 months of age, the disorganized/controlling group displayed the highest levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, as rated by mothers and teachers, and the lowest quality relationships with teachers. Significant differences found among the disorganized/controlling subtypes indicated that the behaviorally disorganized and controlling-punitive subtypes had more maladaptive patterns across variables than did the controlling-caregiving and controlling-mixed subtypes.     

Predicting substance use behavior among South African adolescents: The role of leisure experiences across time

Using seven waves of data, collected twice a year from the 8th through the 11th grades in a low-resource community in Cape Town, South Africa, we aimed to describe the developmental trends in three specific leisure experiences (leisure boredom, new leisure interests, and healthy leisure) and substance use (cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana) behaviors and to investigate the ways in which changes in leisure experiences predict changes in substance use behaviors over time. Results indicated that adolescents' substance use increased significantly across adolescence, but that leisure experiences remained fairly stable over time. We also found that adolescent leisure experiences predicted baseline substance use and that changes in leisure experiences predicted changes in substance use behaviors over time, with leisure boredom emerging as the most consistent and strongest predictor of alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana use. Implications for interventions that target time use and leisure experiences are discussed.     

Impulsivity and Alcohol Use Coping Motives in a Trauma-Exposed Sample: The Mediating Role of Distress Tolerance

The present investigation examined the mediating role of distress tolerance in the association between impulsivity and alcohol use coping motives among trauma-exposed individuals. Participants were 86 adults (64.3% women; M(age) = 23.4, SD = 9.3) who met the DSM-IV-TR posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) criterion A for at least one traumatic life event and endorsed alcohol use in the past month. Distress tolerance at least partially mediated the association between impulsivity and alcohol use coping motives, after controlling for the variance explained by PTSD symptom severity and alcohol use problems. Clinical implications and future directions related to this line of inquiry are presented and discussed.     

Effect of familiarity and viewpoint on face recognition in chimpanzees

Numerous studies have shown that familiarity strongly influences how well humans recognize faces. This is particularly true when faces are encountered across a change in viewpoint. In this situation, recognition may be accomplished by matching partial or incomplete information about a face to a stored representation of the known individual, whereas such representations are not available for unknown faces. Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, share many of the same behavioral specializations for face processing as humans, but the influence of familiarity and viewpoint have never been compared in the same study. Here, we examined the ability of chimpanzees to match the faces of familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics in their frontal and 3/4 views using a computerized task. Results showed that, while chimpanzees were able to accurately match both familiar and unfamiliar faces in their frontal orientations, performance was significantly impaired only when unfamiliar faces were presented across a change in viewpoint. Therefore, like in humans, face processing in chimpanzees appears to be sensitive to individual familiarity. We propose that familiarization is a robust mechanism for strengthening the representation of faces and has been conserved in primates to achieve efficient individual recognition over a range of natural viewing conditions.     

Military Marriages: The Aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Deployments

An examination of how members of military marriages were affected by and adapted to OIF/OEF deployment found three themes: communicating to stay connected, emotional and marital intimacy, and managing change. The findings demonstrate the nuanced and subtle nature of deployment-related challenges. While open and frequent communication was important in the adaptation process, communication was not synonymous with transparency. Unshared stories created a void that prevented couples from confiding in and supporting their partners. Although wives maintained their marriages by restraining sexual desires and over-extending their responsibilities post-deployment, these behaviors had a negative effect on marital quality. Clinical and research implications are discussed.     

Modeling trait and state variation using multilevel factor analysis with PANAS daily diary data

This study used daily diary data to model trait and state Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA) using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). Data were collected from 364 college students over five days. Intraclass correlation coefficients suggested approximately equal amounts of variability at the trait and state levels. Multilevel factor analysis revealed that the model specifying two correlated factors (PA, NA) and correlated uniqueness terms among redundant items provided the best fit. Trait and state PA and NA were generally associated with stress, anxiety, depression, and three types of self-esteem (performance, academic, social). The coefficients describing these relationships differed somewhat, suggesting that trait and state measurement may have different predictive utility.     

False-positive tangible outcomes of functional analyses

Functional analysis (FA) methodology is the most precise method for identifying variables that maintain problem behavior. Occasionally, however, results of an FA may be influenced by idiosyncratic sensitivity to aspects of the assessment conditions. For example, data from several studies suggest that inclusion of a tangible condition during an FA may be prone to a false-positive outcome, although the extent to which tangible reinforcement routinely produces such outcomes is unknown. We examined susceptibility to tangible reinforcement by determining whether a new response was acquired more readily when exposed to a tangible contingency relative to others commonly used in an FA (Study 1), and whether problem behavior known not to have a social function nevertheless emerged when exposed to tangible reinforcement (Study 2). Results indicated that inclusion of items in the tangible condition should be done with care and that selection should be based on those items typically found in the individual's environment.     

Religion,Religiousness, and Narrative: Decoding Women's Practices in Senegalese Islamic Reform

Martin Riesebrodt argues that his theory of religion can help explain religion's enduring power in the contemporary globalizing and secularizing world. Although he emphasizes the necessity of objective categories for theorizing religion's purpose, adherents’ narratives about their religious practices reveal lived relationships between ideal‐typical liturgical texts (which help comprise religion) and their appropriations of them for navigating rapidly changing social contexts (religiousness). The validity of Riesebrodt's approach for explaining religion in empirical settings is demonstrated by using ethnographic interviews of Muslim reformist women in Dakar, Senegal. These female adherents’ discourses on the practices of veiling, prayer, and preaching the uniqueness of God highlight the ways religion's directives operate in a dialectical relationship with a religiousness that encompasses their dual efforts to achieve closeness to God and overtly critique other Muslim groups, contemporary urban life, and the state.     

Father locus of control and child emotional and behavioral outcomes: a prospective study

In a prospective longitudinal study the authors examined the associations between parent locus of control of reinforcement (LOCR), measured before the birth of a child, and behavioral-emotional outcomes in that child at age 7 years. A total of 307 couples completed questionnaires regarding their emotional status and LOCR at their first prenatal care appointment. When their children turned 7 years old, teachers completed questionnaires regarding each participating child's behavior. Findings indicate significant associations between fathers' prenatal LOCR and child outcomes, particularly hyperactivity in sons. Hyperactivity and behavioral-emotional problems in girls, in contrast, were better predicted by maternal prenatal emotional distress. Results provide evidence that paternal and maternal characteristics that predate the birth of a child relate to later behavioral outcomes in that child. Implications for prevention of child psychopathology are discussed.     

Personality retesting for managing intentional distortion

Self-report personality questionnaires often contain validity scales designed to flag individuals who intentionally distort their responses toward a more favorable characterization of themselves. Yet, there are no clear directives on how scores on these scales should be used by administrators when making high-stakes decisions about respondents. Two studies were conducted to investigate whether administrator-initiated retesting of flagged individuals represents a viable response to managing intentional distortion on personality questionnaires. We explored the effectiveness of retesting by considering whether retest responses are more accurate representations of a flagged individual's personality characteristics. A comparison of retest scores to a baseline measure of personality indicated that such scores were more accurate. Retesting should only work as a strategy for dealing with intentional distortion when individuals choose to respond more accurately the second time. Thus, we further explored the emotional reaction to being asked to retest as one possible explanation of why individuals who engage in intentional distortion respond more accurately upon retest.