Self-Portraits: Possible Selves in European-American,Chilean, Japanese and Japanese-American Cultural Contexts

Possible selves of students from European-American (EA), Chilean (CH), Japanese-American (JA), and Japanese (JN) cultural contexts were analyzed, revealing differences in the emphasis given to various content themes. EA possible selves focus on intrapersonal themes (i.e., “fear being dependent”), consistent with cultural emphases on uniqueness and independent development. In JN, JA and CH contexts, career and education themes dominate possible selves, consistent with particularly strong cultural emphasis on professional and academic accomplishments. The cultural contexts also differ in their predominant configurations of possible selves—EA and CH possible selves often show balance (expected and feared selves of similar theme but opposing valence, i.e., “expect to graduate from college” and “fear dropping out of college”) while JN and JA selves more frequently match (expected and feared selves of similar thematic content and valence, i.e., “expect to be idle” and “fear being idle”).     

The Relationships Among Grief Experience,Problem-Solving Appraisal,and Depression: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Research has consistently shown a relationship between problem-solving appraisal and depressive symptoms. This study expands that research by including grief symptomatology as a variable. A college student sample completed the Problem-Solving inventory, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Revised Grief Experience Inventory. Consistent with hypotheses, those individuals who had experienced the death of a close loved one within the previous 5 years reported significantly higher levels of grief and depression than those who had not experienced such a loss. However, the group that had experienced the death of a close loved one did not report significantly worse problem-solving scores than the group that did not. This study also examined the relationships among problem-solving appraisal, depressive symptoms, and grief symptoms within the subsample that had experienced the loss of a close loved one within the previous 5 years. Consistent with predictions, grief symptoms were associated with depressive symptoms and self-appraised ineffective problem solving. The results of this study extend the research on grief and mourning. Also, the results expand our understanding of the grief process by providing preliminary evidence for the role of problem solving in this process     

Individual Variation in Psychological and Psychomotor Symptoms Following Smoking Cessation: The Implications for Treatment

Some commonly experienced signs and symptoms occur during abstinence from tobacco, but specific signs and symptoms and their intensity vary greatly from individual to individual. The aim of this study was to re-examine psychological and psychomotor symptoms in smokers in the general population, and to explore the individual variation in these. Quitting smokers (n = 123) reported their experiences pre- and post-cessation, on a questionnaire developed for the study. Analysis of variance and frequency analysis showed significant decreases between pre- and post-cessation on positive experiences (F = 9.81, p<0.0001) but no significant change on negative experiences, suggesting a loss of pleasure rather than increased negative affect upon quitting. The variance of the pre- to post-cessation difference score suggested wide variation in the reporting of withdrawal symptoms. These results lead us to consider the implications for treatment, using cognitive therapies and moderating the significant emphasis that is at present put on withdrawal.     

Individual Differences in Personality Conducive to Engagement in Aggression and Violence

This paper examined empirically the value of a conceptual model in which emotional stability and agreeableness contribute to engagement in aggression and violence (EAV) indirectly through irritability, hostile rumination and moral disengagement. Three hundred and forty young adults (130 male and 190 female) participated in the study. The average age of participants was 21 at time 1 and 25 at time 2. Findings attested to the role of basic traits (i.e. agreeableness and emotional stability) and specific personality dispositions (i.e. irritability and hostile rumination) in predisposing to EAV and to the pivotal role of moral disengagement in giving access to aggressive and violent conduct. In particular, the mediational model attested to the pivotal role of emotional stability and agreeableness in contributing directly to both hostile rumination and irritability and indirectly to moral disengagement, and to EAV. Agreeableness and hostile rumination contribute to moral disengagement that plays a key role in mediating the relations of all examined variables with EAV. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Concept of Identification in Threat Assessment

Identification is one of eight warning behaviors—superordinate patterns of accelerating risk—that are theorized to correlate with targeted violence, and have some empirical validation. It is characterized by one or more of five characteristics: pseudo-commando behavior, evidence of a warrior mentality, a close association with weapons or other military or law enforcement paraphernalia, wanting to imitate and often surmount previous attackers or assassins, or believing oneself to be an agent to advance a particular cause or belief system. The authors briefly explore the history of the psychology of identification, its current usage, and its application to threat assessment. Four cases are used to illustrate identification as both a process and a product, and a likely motive for targeted violence in some subjects. Its operational relevance for threat assessment is suggested. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Positional character frequency and word spacing facilitate the acquisition of novel words during Chinese children's reading

Children's eye movements were recorded to examine the role of word spacing and positional character frequency on the process of Chinese lexical acquisition during reading. Three types of two-character novel pseudowords were constructed: words containing characters in positions in which they frequently occurred (congruent), words containing characters in positions they do not frequently occur in (incongruent) and words containing characters that do not have a strong position bias (balanced). There were two phases within the experiment, a learning phase and a test phase. There were also two learning groups: half the children read sentences in a word-spaced format and the other half read the sentences in an unspaced format during the learning phase. All the participants read normal, unspaced text at test. A benefit of word spacing was observed in the learning phase, but not at test. Also, facilitatory effects of positional character congruency were found both in the learning and test phase; however, this benefit was greatly reduced at test. Furthermore, we did not find any interaction between word spacing and positional character frequencies, indicating that these two types of cues affect lexical acquisition independently. With respect to theoretical accounts of lexical acquisition, we argue that word spacing might facilitate the very earliest stages of word learning by clearly demarking word boundary locations. In contrast, we argue that characters' positional frequencies might affect relatively later stages of word learning.     

Towards a Social-Structural Model for Understanding Current Disparities in Maori Health and Well-Being

Colonization has resulted in Maori occupying a vulnerable position in New Zealand society. Comparatively poor health, along with complex social and economic problems, is a reflection of this fundamental insecurity. This article aims to put forward a historical and developmental perspective for understanding some of the current health disparities experienced by Maori, by exploring the concepts of historical trauma, loss of land, and alternative theories of development from post-development theory.     

Review of State Medication Policies/Guidelines Regarding Psychotropic Medications in Public Schools

It is currently estimated that up to 6 million children take psychotropic medications for the treatment of mental health problems. The highest prevalence rates (50–76 %) are typically found among students with special needs, especially among those with ADHD and emotional disturbance. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 require medications be administered by schools whenever it is deemed necessary for the child to have access to educational services. However, these requirements do not extend to all students, nor do they provide guidance regarding the safest and most efficacious manner in which psychotropic medications should be administered. The authors reviewed existing state medication policies and guidelines to assess the level of guidance currently provided to school staff. Results showed the vast majority of states (48) provided guidance related to the administration of medications to students, with slightly fewer (44) states discussing required documentation procedures. Surprisingly, only 15 states addressed monitoring students for adverse side effects of medications, and even fewer (11) states specifically discussed psychotropic medication in their policies/guidelines. The vast majority (42) of states also addressed requirements for the safe and proper storage of medications, while slightly more than half of all states (31) provided any guidance regarding training of unlicensed personnel (e.g., secretaries) who frequently administer medications to students. The authors highlight several model guidelines/policies and review recommendations for best practice.     

Self-Regulation and Other Executive Functions Relationship to Pediatric OCD Severity and Treatment Outcome

The intersection of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and executive functioning (EF) in children and adolescents is an emerging topic in the current literature. Spurred by the consistent association between increased EF deficits and higher adult obsessive-compulsive severity, a few initial studies have replicated this relationship in pediatric OCD samples and also have found preliminary evidence that EF deficits are associated with worse response to first-line psychotherapeutic or psychopharmacological treatments for pediatric OCD. This study aimed to extend the literature by providing the first comprehensive investigation of how multiple EF domains, measured repeatedly over the course of treatment, impact pediatric obsessive-compulsive severity and response to multimodal treatment. Multi-level modeling results found that deficits in shifting, inhibition, emotional control, planning/organizing, monitoring and initiating all predicted higher average obsessive compulsive severity across treatment. Interestingly, out of the eight domains of EF investigated, only emotional control moderated treatment outcome such that those with worse emotional control experienced less of a reduction in obsessive-compulsive severity during treatment. The findings generally align with previous theories for the link between EF and OCD and indicate that emotional control has important implications in the treatment of pediatric OCD. In fact, emotional control may provide one explanation for why factors such as disgust sensitivity, oppositional behavior, and third-wave behavioral treatment techniques have all been linked to pediatric OCD treatment outcome. Future research should investigate augmentation strategies that target emotional control in children and adolescents.     

Tracking speakers’ false beliefs: is theory of mind available earlier for word learning?

Happé and Loth (2002) describe word learning as a 'privileged domain' in the development of a theory of mind. We test this claim in a series of experiments based on the Sally-Anne paradigm. Three- and 4-year-old children's ability to represent others' false beliefs was investigated in tasks that required the child either to predict the actions of a protagonist in a story or to learn the meaning of a new word used by the protagonist. Experiment 1 replicated previous findings of better performance in a false belief word-learning task compared to a false belief action-prediction task. However, systematic manipulation of the task parameters in Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that this performance discrepancy disappeared when tasks were equated in their 'referential pull' (Perner, Rendl & Garnham, 2007). We conclude that the notion of a precocious theory of mind for word learning is not required to explain dissociations in performance on false belief tasks.