Unwed Teenage Mothers: An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Ton of Cure

A problem that impacts many segments of our society today can be directly traced to unwed adolescent girls giving birth. This article details the consequences and impact such births have on our nation as a whole, and explores ways to prevent the pregnancies rather than merely offering up more coping solutions once such teenage girls become pregnant.     

Knowledge and the Prediction of Behavior: The Role of Information Accuracy in the Theory of Planned Behavior

The usefulness of a combined protection motivation and self-efficacy theory as a model of health enhancement was investigated via a persuasive communications paradigm. Self-efficacy expectancy, outcome expectancy (i.e., perceived response efficacy) and outcome value (i.e., perceived social value) of a health-enhancing behavior were manipulated. As predicted, both self-efficacy expectancy and response efficacy had significant main effects on subjects' intentions to perform the health-enhancing behavior. Outcome value had no significant effect on behavioral intentions. Correlational data indicated that response efficacy was the best single predictor of intentions and that self-efficacy expectancy was also a significant predictor of intentions. Outcome value added no predictability. These results support the utility of the combined protection motivation and self-efficacy theory as a model of health enhancement.     

Change in sleep symptoms across Cognitive Processing Therapy and Prolonged Exposure: A longitudinal perspective

Sleep disturbance is a core component in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although cognitive-behavioral treatments for PTSD reduce the severity of sleep symptoms, they do not lead to complete remission. The present study examines the impact of Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE) on subjective measures of sleep disturbance from treatment randomization through long-term follow-up (LTFU). Participants were 171 female rape victims with PTSD who were randomly assigned to CPT, PE, or Minimal Attention (MA). After 6-weeks, the MA group was randomized to CPT or PE. Sleep symptoms were assessed at baseline, post-MA, post-treatment, 3-months, 9-months and LTFU using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and nightmare and insomnia items from the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale. Change in sleep during MA, from pre- to post-treatment for CPT and PE, and from post-treatment through LTFU was assessed using piecewise hierarchical linear modeling with the intent-to-treat sample. Controlling for medication, sleep improved during CPT and PE compared to MA, and treatment gains were maintained through LTFU. CPT and PE were equally efficacious and improvements persist over LTFU, yet, neither produced remission of sleep disturbance. Overall, sleep symptoms do not remit and may warrant sleep-specific treatments.     

A Brief Educational Attainment Scale for Clinical Use

Abstract

La Grande Guerre. Catalogue raisonné des estampes, originaux, affiches illustrées, imageries, vignettes, cartes postales, médailles, bons de monnaies, timbres, etc., du 1er Aout 1914 au 31 Décembre, 1915. Préface de Georges Cain. Tome premier. Collection Henri Leblanc. Destiné à l'Etat. Paris, Emile-Paul Frères, 1916. 434 p. Reviewed By Louis N. Wilson     

Effect of interaction type on the characteristics of pet-directed speech in female dog owners

Recent studies focusing on the interspecific communicative interactions between humans and dogs show that owners use a special speech register when addressing their dog. This register, called pet-directed speech (PDS), has prosodic and syntactic features similar to that of infant-directed speech (IDS). While IDS prosody is known to vary according to the context of the communication with babies, we still know little about the way owners adjust acoustic and verbal PDS features according to the type of interaction with their dog. The aim of the study was therefore to explore whether the characteristics of women’s speech depend on the nature of interaction with their dog. We recorded 34 adult women interacting with their dog in four conditions: before a brief separation, after reuniting, during play and while giving commands. Our results show that before separation women used a low pitch, few modulations, high intensity variations and very few affective sentences. In contrast, the reunion interactions were characterized by a very high pitch, few imperatives and a high frequency of affectionate nicknames. During play, women used mainly questions and attention-getting devices. Finally when commanding, women mainly used imperatives as well as attention-getting devices. Thus, like mothers using IDS, female owners adapt the verbal as well as the non-verbal characteristics of their PDS to the nature of the interaction with their dog, suggesting that the intended function of these vocal utterances remains to provide dogs with information about their intentions and emotions.     

Long Lives and Old Age Poverty: Social Stratification and Life-Course Institutionalization in Switzerland

This article combines an inter- and an intra-cohort perspective to study economic vulnerability in old age. The theoretical background is given through the combination of a social stratification framework and an institutional perspective emphasizing life course policies. At the macro level, the increase in overall education levels and the implementation of a pension system were the driving forces of the strong decrease in old age poverty over the last three decades. At an individual level, the pathway from low education early in life to economic hardship after retirement is most prominent, corresponding to a social stratification and cumulative disadvantage view.     

Temporal precision and the capacity of auditory–verbal short-term memory

The capacity of serially ordered auditory–verbal short-term memory (AVSTM) is sensitive to the timing of the material to be stored, and both temporal processing and AVSTM capacity are implicated in the development of language. We developed a novel “rehearsal-probe” task to investigate the relationship between temporal precision and the capacity to remember serial order. Participants listened to a sub-span sequence of spoken digits and silently rehearsed the items and their timing during an unfilled retention interval. After an unpredictable delay, a tone prompted report of the item being rehearsed at that moment. An initial experiment showed cyclic distributions of item responses over time, with peaks preserving serial order and broad, overlapping tails. The spread of the response distributions increased with additional memory load and correlated negatively with participants’ auditory digit spans. A second study replicated the negative correlation and demonstrated its specificity to AVSTM by controlling for differences in visuo-spatial STM and nonverbal IQ. The results are consistent with the idea that a common resource underpins both the temporal precision and capacity of AVSTM. The rehearsal-probe task may provide a valuable tool for investigating links between temporal processing and AVSTM capacity in the context of speech and language abilities.     

Children Exposed to Marital Conflict Exhibit More Disordered Eating Behaviors: Child Emotional Insecurity and Anxiety as Mechanisms of Risk

Disordered eating in children is a major public health concern, as it is precursor to clinical eating disorders and obesity. However, little is known about the potential causes of child disordered eating. The current study examined marital conflict as a predictor of disordered eating in a sample of children aged 5–12 years, from the perspective of emotional security theory. Ninety five children and their parents in the Southeast United States participated in the study. We found that marital conflict was associated with higher levels of restrained eating, emotional eating and external eating behaviors controlling for demographics and parental feeding practices. Further, we examined the possible pathways between marital conflict and child disordered eating and found that marital conflict was related to greater child emotional insecurity about the family, which was associated with greater child anxiety, which were then related to disordered eating. In addition to serving as a secondary pathway linking emotional insecurity to child disordered eating, anxiety also significantly directly mediated the association between marital conflict and all three types of disordered eating: restrained eating, emotional eating and external eating in children. Next we examined if parental feeding practices (food monitoring, food restriction and parental pressure to eat) moderate the relation between marital conflict and child disordered eating. Parental pressure to eat was negatively associated with child disordered eating under higher marital conflict. The current study highlights the importance of marital conflict and child emotional security as precursors of child disordered eating.     

Dropped on the way to the top: Gender and managerial derailment

We attempt to make sense of ongoing gender disparities in the upper ranks of organizations by examining gender bias in leaders’ assessments of managers’ derailment potential. In a large managerial sample (Study 1: N ～ 12,500), we found that ineffective interpersonal behaviors were slightly less frequent among female managers but slightly more damaging to women than men when present. Evidence of bias was not found in performance evaluations but emerged when leaders were asked about derailment potential in the future. We replicated this pattern of effects in a second large managerial sample (Study 2: N ～ 35,500) and in two experimental studies (Studies 3 and 4) in which gender and interpersonal behaviors were manipulated. In Study 4, we also showed that when supervisors believe that a manager might derail in the future, they tend to withdraw mentoring support and sponsorship, which are especially critical for women's career advancement. Our research highlights the importance of leaders’ perceptions of derailment potential—which differ from evaluations of performance or promotability—both because they appear to be subject to stereotype‐based gender bias and because they have important implications for the mentoring and sponsorship that male and female managers receive.     

Paving the Way: The Distinctive Mentoring Style of Janet Taylor Spence

Janet Taylor Spence (1923–2015), a major figure in American psychology, made seminal scientific contributions to the fields of anxiety and gender psychology. In this essay, the authors, both former Spence students, weave a tapestry of her teaching and mentoring by using as the threads Spence’s reflections on her professional life, the authors’ personal experiences with Spence, and findings from the relevant career literature. Three areas of teaching and mentoring are used to illustrate Spence’s distinctive yet highly effective style of mentoring: (a) modeling and insisting on careful thinking, (b) serving as an intentional role model, and (c) assisting in negotiating the hazards of academia. A conceptual explanation is provided for each area, together with specific examples illustrating how Spence employed these strategies.