Intergenerational Transmission of Emotion Dysregulation Through Parental Invalidation of Emotions: Implications for Adolescent Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors

We examined parent emotion dysregulation as part of a model of family emotion-related processes and adolescent psychopathology. Participants were 80 parent–adolescent dyads (mean age = 13.6; 79 % African-American and 17 % Caucasian) with diverse family composition and socioeconomic status. Parent and adolescent dyads self-reported on their emotion regulation difficulties and adolescents reported on their perceptions of parent invalidation (i.e., punishment and neglect) of emotions and their own internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Results showed that parents who reported higher levels of emotion dysregulation tended to invalidate their adolescent’s emotional expressions more often, which in turn related to higher levels of adolescent emotion dysregulation. Additionally, adolescent-reported emotion dysregulation mediated the relation between parent invalidation of emotions and adolescent internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Potential applied implications are discussed.     

BOOK REVIEWS

This paper deals with the traumatic departures of Jews from Morocco during the 1950s and 1960s. The issue is analyzed through a set of diverse oral narrations. The study is based on several interviews conducted both among Jews who left Morocco and Muslims still living in the city of Meknes. The repression of the memory by Muslims of two young Jews murdered in 1967 in Meknes is questioned. In fact, although the perceptions concerning the Jews' departure differs according to the interviewee's social class, a common feeling appears to be shared by different societal sectors regarding this specific issue, which still comes across as a sensitive one today. The representation of Jews traditionally depicted as “fearful” and “weak” turns into “courageous” and “strong” during the Six‐Day War. This new representation perturbed the Muslim population, which seemed to be unable to deal with the new status Jews were acquiring. In fact, emigration was commonly considered to betray a lack of virility. The paper argues that the unexpected departure of an historic component of Moroccan society has left an open wound in Morocco. Even the memory of the “events” by the Jewish population appears to be fragmented into ambiguous constructions, leading, on the one hand, to perceptions of fear and uncertainty and, on the other, to images of affectionate relationships and intense nostalgia.     

Assessing crossmodal matching of abstract auditory and visual stimuli in posterior superior temporal sulcus with MEG

Associating crossmodal auditory and visual stimuli is an important component of perception, with the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) hypothesized to support this. However, recent evidence has argued that the pSTS serves to associate two stimuli irrespective of modality. To examine the contribution of pSTS to crossmodal recognition, participants (N = 13) learned 12 abstract, non-linguistic pairs of stimuli over 3 weeks. These paired associates comprised four types: auditory–visual (AV), auditory–auditory (AA), visual–auditory (VA), and visual–visual (VV). At week four, participants were scanned using magnetoencephalography (MEG) while performing a correct/incorrect judgment on pairs of items. Using an implementation of synthetic aperture magnetometry that computes real statistics across trials (SAMspm), we directly contrasted crossmodal (AV and VA) with unimodal (AA and VV) pairs from stimulus-onset to 2 s in theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (9–15 Hz), beta (16–30 Hz), and gamma (31–50 Hz) frequencies. We found pSTS showed greater desynchronization in the beta frequency for crossmodal compared with unimodal trials, suggesting greater activity during the crossmodal pairs, which was not influenced by congruency of the paired stimuli. Using a sliding window SAM analysis, we found the timing of this difference began in a window from 250 to 750 ms after stimulus-onset. Further, when we directly contrasted all sub-types of paired associates from stimulus-onset to 2 s, we found that pSTS seemed to respond to dynamic, auditory stimuli, rather than crossmodal stimuli per se. These findings support an early role for pSTS in the processing of dynamic, auditory stimuli, and do not support claims that pSTS is responsible for associating two stimuli irrespective of their modality.     

Factor Structure of the Dissociative Experiences Scale: An Examination Across Sexual Assault Status

The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) has a long history within the literature, with conflicting reports concerning its underlying components and stability across different samples. This study examined the DES factor structure using advanced analytic procedures. Additionally, the impact of sexual victimization on the underlying components of the DES was explored, in order to examine whether sexual trauma influenced the scale’s structure. In Study 1, exploratory factor analysis suggested the possibility of either a 1- or 2-factor structure in DES data obtained from an unselected sample of college females. Comparison of these models using an independent validation sample in Study 2 observed a clear advantage of a 2-factor structure. Study 3 explored whether sexual assault status influenced the structure of the 2-factor DES model, using samples drawn from Studies 1 and 2. A multiple group confirmatory factor analysis supported a robust 2-factor structure for the DES irrespective of sexual assault status.     

Consuming experience: Why affective forecasters overestimate comparative value

The hedonic value of an outcome can be influenced by the alternatives to which it is compared, which is why people expect to be happier with outcomes that maximize comparative value (e.g., the best of several mediocre alternatives) than with outcomes that maximize absolute value (e.g., the worst of several excellent alternatives). The results of five experiments suggest that affective forecasters overestimate the importance of comparative value because forecasters do not realize that comparison requires cognitive resources, and that experiences consume more cognitive resources than do forecasts. In other words, because forecasters overestimate the extent to which they will be able to think about what they did not get while experiencing what they got.     

Implicit learning of fifth- and sixth-order sequential probabilities

Serial reaction time (SRT) task studies have established that people can implicitly learn sequential contingencies as complex as fourth-order probabilities. The present study examined people’s ability to learn fifth-order (Experiment 1) and sixth-order (Experiment 2) probabilities. Remarkably, people learned fifth- and sixth-order probabilities. This suggests that the implicit sequence learning mechanism can operate over a range of at least seven sequence elements.     

Incremental Validity of Components of Mindfulness in the Prediction of Satisfaction with Life and Depression

Self-report measures of mindfulness have consistently demonstrated positive relationships with well-being and inverse relationships with depression symptoms. The goal of this study was to extend the existing literature to include a test of the incremental validity of the components of mindfulness (as measured by the four factors of the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills [KIMS]; Baer et al. Assessment, 11, 191–206, 2004) and the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown and Ryan Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 822–848, 2003) in the prediction of satisfaction with life (relative to self-esteem) and depression (relative to negative cognitions) among a sample of 365 college students. Results revealed only KIMS Observe accounted for a significant amount variance relative to self-esteem in the prediction of satisfaction with life, and in the prediction of depression symptoms, only KIMS Accept without Judgment accounted for a significant amount of variance relative to negative cognitions. These results are discussed in relation to the measurement of mindfulness and methods used to assess the validity of these scales.     

Measurement of External Shame: An Inside View

The aims of this study were to investigate the construct validity of the Other as Shamer scale (OAS) using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and to examine the psychometric properties of its Italian version in a sample of 687 nonclinical individuals. The CFA results indicated that the hypothesized hierarchical model (with 1 higher order factor and 3 first-order factors) was the best fitting solution. Cronbach's alpha indexes, as well as test–retest stability, provided satisfactory results. Correlations of the OAS total score and its subscales with the Beck Depression Inventory–II (rs = .30–.48) and the Teate Depression Inventory (rs = .32–.45) were both substantial and significant (p < .01). Receiver operating characteristic curves were constructed to indicate sensitivity and specificity of the OAS and its subscales when determining those nonclinical subjects who met clinical thresholds for depression symptoms. A series of cutoff scores for the OAS scale and its subscales was developed, with sensitivity values between .70 and .62, and specificity values between .71 and .62, indicating good to fair discrimination between the 2 groups (depressed vs. nondepressed). The theoretical and practical implications of these results were discussed.