Family-expressed emotion,childhood-onset depression,and childhood-onset schizophrenia spectrum disorders: Is expressed emotion a nonspecific correlate of child psychopathology or a specific risk factor for depression?

Expressed emotion (EE) was examined, using the brief Five Minute Speech Sample measure, in families of (1) children with depressive disorders, (2) children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and (3) normal controls screened for the absence of psychiatric disorder. Consistent with the hypothesis of some specificity in the association between EE and the form of child disorder, rates of EE were significantly higher among families of depressed children compared to families of normal controls and families of children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Within the depressed group, the presence of a comorbid disruptive behavior disorder was associated with high levels of critical EE, underscoring the need to attend to comorbid patterns and subtypes of EE in future research.This research was supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of their Network on Risk and Protective Factors in the Major Mental Disorders. The authors wish to express their appreciation to Sybil Zaden and Ana Magana-Amato for their assistance coding the FMSS-EE data, to Gwen Gordon for her assistance with data analysis, and to the families participating in the project.     

Relationship‐based intervention with at‐risk mothers: Outcome in the first year of life

This study shows that a home‐visiting, relationship‐based intervention, as defined in the UCLA Family Development Project, affects certain areas of family functioning by the time an infant reaches 12 months. Within a randomized trial design, we compared two samples of mothers who were identified as at risk for inadequate parenting in the third trimester of pregnancy with their first child. The primary risk characteristics were poverty and a lack of support. Thirty‐one of these mothers experienced the intervention and thirty‐three did not. Mothers given the opportunity of a positive, trusting, and working relationship with a weekly home visitor as well as a mother–infant group scored significantly higher on measures of their experienced partner and family support. The intervention also made a significant impact on three critical social‐emotional mother–infant transactions in the first year of life. Thus, on a variety of indices including the responses to the Ainsworth Strange Situation, the children in the intervention group were more secure and their mothers more responsive to their needs. Children experiencing the intervention were also more autonomous and task oriented and were encouraged in this regard by their mothers. ©1999 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Marital adaptation,divorce, and parent–infant development: A prospective study

In this prospective study of divorce in the first 4 years of life we have shown that previous marital patterns anticipate the occurrence of divorce and influence the response to that event. Most of the divorces occurred in marriages that were consistently low in satisfaction or decreased in satisfaction from birth on. The family response to the event differed. The continuing effort at conflict resolution and the fact that differing levels of adjustment are reached at different time points are suggested by these reactions. For couples with an unsatisfactory marriage from late pregnancy through the first 2 years (consistently low), the immediate and sustained impact of divorce was to enhance the parent's responsiveness to the needs of their infant and the infant's expectation of being cared for. This was not true for couples decreasing from high to lower satisfaction in their adaptation. However, by child age 4, when all families had been divorced for 1 year, divorce versus no divorce was associated with a differential positive effect on teacher Q-sort ratings of the children for both marital patterns. Children who were from families where the parents were in conflict but did not divorce were more likely to externalize control, were more often uncontrolled, and were more anti- as opposed to prosocial. The implication of these findings are discussed. © 1997 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health     

Prebirth marital interactions and postbirth marital development

A considerable body of research supports the general statement that “couples who before the birth of their first child are characterized by positive mutuality, partner autonomy, and the ability to confront problems and regulate negative affect are responsive to the needs of their infants, promote their autonomy and have more secure and autonomous children, as seen throughout the first 4 years of life” (Heinicke, 1995). The implications for infant mental health are profound, but more needs to be known about what specific prebirth marital qualities interact with and anticipate postbirth marital and child functioning. This is a study of the association between the nature of the couple's prebirth interaction and their marital adaptation during the first 2 years of the child's life. Linking pre- and postbirth marital functioning, the frequency of negative affect and off-task scores, as well as the inability to resolve their issues in the prebirth marital interaction, anticipated a declining or consistently low postbirth marital adaptation.     

Mothers' emotional expressivity and children's behavior problems and social competence: mediation through children's regulation.

The relations between mothers' expressed positive and negative emotion and 55-79-month-olds' (76% European American) regulation, social competence, and adjustment were examined. Structural equation modeling was used to test the plausibility of the hypothesis that the effects of maternal expression of emotion on children's adjustment and social competence are mediated through children's dispositional regulation. Mothers' expressed emotions were assessed during interactions with their children and with maternal reports of emotions expressed in the family. Children's regulation, externalizing and internalizing problems. and social competence were rated by parents and teachers, and children's persistence was surreptitiously observed. There were unique effects of positive and negative maternal expressed emotion on children's regulation. and the relations of maternal expressed emotion to children's externalizing problem behaviors and social competence were mediated through children's regulation. Alternative models of causation were tested; a child-directed model in which maternal expressivity mediated the effects of child regulation on child outcomes did not fit the data as well.     

Executive turnover: the influence of dispersion and other pay system characteristics

Using tournament theory as a guiding theoretical framework, in this study, we assess the organizational implications of pay dispersion and other pay system characteristics on the likelihood of turnover among individual executives in organizational teams. Specifically, we estimate the effect of these pay system characteristics on executive turnover decisions. We use a multi-industry, multilevel data set composed of executives in publicly held firms to assess the effects of pay dispersion at the individual level. Consistent with previous findings, we find that pay dispersion is associated with an increased likelihood of executive turnover. In addition, we find that other pay characteristics also affect turnover, both directly and through a moderating effect on pay dispersion. Turnover is more likely when executives receive lower portions of overall top management team compensation and when they have more pay at risk. These conditions also moderate the relationship between pay dispersion and individual turnover decisions, as does receiving lower compensation relative to the market.     

Emotional arousal and gender differences in aggression: A meta‐analysis

This meta‐analysis investigated the possibility that gender differences in aggression, and the variability in these differences, are a function of gender differences in the regulation of arousal generated in emotionally evocative contexts. The sample of studies for this analysis was based on an exhaustive search of the relevant research reports from 1965–1999. Studies were excluded from the sample if they were case studies; investigated spousal/familial or societal violence, war, suicide, or political violence; involved clinical or deviant participants; included fewer than 10 participants; included all male, all female, all non‐Caucasian, or non‐US/non‐Canadian participants. Based on previous evidence that males may be more easily aroused by aggressive‐relevant emotional stimuli than females, and that males may have more difficulty regulating emotionally arousing states than females, we hypothesized that the magnitude of the gender differences in aggression would covary, in a nonlinear manner, with the emotional evocativeness of the study context. Consistent with our hypothesis, the magnitude of gender differences in aggression was relatively small in research contexts that appeared to produce no or large increments in emotional arousal and larger (favoring males) in contexts that appeared to produce small or medium increments in emotional arousal. Aggr. Behav. 28:366–393, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

The Dimensional Structure of the Perceived Behavioral Control Construct1

Following concerns in the literature about the conceptualization and operationalization of the perceived behavioral control (PBC) construct within the Theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1985, 1991). 2 studies were conducted to examine whether questionnaire items explicitly assessing perceived difficulty and perceived control issues would attract a different pattern of responses. In applications of the theory of planned behavior to the reduction of red meat consumption and the reduction of potato chip (French fries) consumption, Principal Components Analysis showed that items reflecting perceived difficulty and items reflecting perceived control loaded onto different components. Furthermore, measures of perceived difficulty and not measures of perceived control contributed independent predictive effects in multiple regressions of respondents' behavioral intentions to make the dietary changes.