Males' Reactions to Participating in Research on Dating Violence Victimization and Childhood Abuse

Childhood abuse and dating violence victimization are prevalent and devastating problems. Although there has been an abundance of research on these topics in recent years, researchers and institutional review boards often struggle with determining whether asking respondents questions on previous violence will result in increased emotional distress or other negative research outcomes. Empirical data are therefore needed that examine the research reactions of individuals who participate in research on childhood abuse and dating violence. This study examined this topic among a sample of male college students (N?=?193). Results showed that victims of childhood sexual abuse had more negative emotional reactions and victims of physical dating violence had more negative perceived drawbacks to research participation than nonvictims. However, victims and nonvictims did not differ on positive research reactions. These findings suggest that there are few differences between victims and nonvictims on research reactions.     

Aggression in the Laboratory: Problems with the Validity of the Modified Taylor Competitive Reaction Time Test as a Measure of Aggression in Media Violence Studies

Many laboratory studies of aggression use a measure known as the modified Taylor Competitive Reaction Time Test (TCRTT), for which validation studies are lacking. Using sound blasts administered by the participant against a fictional human opponent, the TCRTT also allows for multiple methods of measuring aggression. The validity of the TCRTT was tested in 53 college student participants. Participants took a self-report measure of aggressiveness as well as neuropsychological measures of frontal lobe functioning predictive of aggression. Results were not supportive of the TCRTT's validity and indicated concerns regarding the use of the TCRTT as a measure of aggression. Results suggest that labaratory studies of media violence using the TCRTT are of questionable validity.     

Sole Expression: A Trauma-Informed Dance Intervention

The primary treatment for individuals who have encountered violence and/or abuse is trauma-focused cognitive and behavioral modalities. However, these therapeutic approaches are not always effective for youth who have encountered this type of trauma. Trauma is often communicated through the body via physical ailments, particularly when words are insufficient to capture an individual’s experience or when adequate processing of the trauma is not possible due to profound stress. Dance offers an alternative form of therapy that can address “where” the trauma is held, relieve tension, and restore a sense of ownership with one’s body and mind. In this article, we discuss the development of Sole Expression, a trauma-informed hip-hop dance program for youth who have experienced abuse and/or exposure to violence. We provide an overview of establishing the team, securing funding, trauma training, program curriculum, and the related research. We conclude with recommendations for best practices that benefit both practitioners and the young people served.     

Unsegmented text delays word identification: Evidence from a survival analysis of fixation durations

The present study employed distributional analyses of fixation times to examine the impact of removing spaces between words during reading. Specifically, we presented high and low frequency target words in a normal text condition that contained spaces (e.g., “John decided to sell the table in the garage sale”) and in an unsegmented text condition that contained random numbers instead of spaces (e.g., “John4decided8to5sell9the7table2in3the9garage6sale”). The unsegmented text condition produced larger word frequency effects relative to the normal text condition for the gaze duration and total time measures (for similar findings, see Rayner, Fischer, & Pollatsek, 1998), which indicates that removing spaces can impact the word identification stage of reading. To further examine the effect of spacing on word identification, we used distributional analyses of first-fixation durations to contrast the time course of word frequency effects in the normal versus the unsegmented text conditions. In replication of prior findings (Reingold, Reichle, Glaholt, & Sheridan, 2012; Staub, White, Drieghe, Hollway, & Rayner, 2010), ex-Gaussian fitting revealed that the word frequency variable impacted both the shift and the skew of the distributions, and this pattern of results occurred for both the normal and unsegmented text conditions. In addition, a survival analysis technique revealed a later time course of word frequency effects in the unsegmented relative to the normal condition, such that the earliest discernible influence of word frequency was 112 ms from the start of fixation in the normal text condition, and 152 ms in the unsegmented text condition. This delay in the temporal onset of word frequency effects in the unsegmented text condition strongly suggests that removing spaces delays the word identification stage of reading. Possible underlying mechanisms are discussed, including lateral masking and word segmentation.     

Frontolimbic neural circuitry at 6 months predicts individual differences in joint attention at 9 months

Elucidating the neural basis of joint attention in infancy promises to yield important insights into the development of language and social cognition, and directly informs developmental models of autism. We describe a new method for evaluating responding to joint attention performance in infancy that highlights the 9‐ to 10‐month period as a time interval of maximal individual differences. We then demonstrate that fractional anisotropy in the right uncinate fasciculus, a white matter fiber bundle connecting the amygdala to the ventral‐medial prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal pole, measured in 6‐month‐olds predicts individual differences in responding to joint attention at 9 months of age. The white matter microstructure of the right uncinate was not related to receptive language ability at 9 months. These findings suggest that the development of core nonverbal social communication skills in infancy is largely supported by preceding developments within right lateralized frontotemporal brain systems.     

An exploration into the influence of academic and social values, procrastination, and perceived school belongingness on academic performance

The results of a structural equation model showed that a tendency to procrastinate, assessed early in college students’ first term, was positively related to social values, assessed as concerns over social exclusion, but was negatively related to academic task values and grade goal-setting. The results suggest that procrastination may be a partial mediator of the influence of academic and social values on perceived school belongingness. In addition, the tendency to procrastinate had a direct negative relationship with self-regulatory self-efficacy and perceived school belongingness and was positively related to perceived stress near the end of the term. There was also a statistically significant negative total effect of procrastination on performance-approach and mastery-approach goal orientation and end-of-term grade point average (GPA). Statistically significant positive total effects of performance-approach and mastery-approach achievement goal orientations on GPA were found. However, while a statistically significant direct positive effect of performance-approach orientation on GPA was found, a direct relationship between mastery-approach orientation and GPA was not statistically significant.     

Elevation easier than plan for sighted and early-blind adults in a perspective-taking task

Plans show shapes of objects from above, and represent both their left–right order and their order in the z-dimension (the distance of the objects). Elevations show only the vertical shapes of objects arranged from left to right. Plans, having more spatial information, may be more difficult for participants to construct. Results from a study with sighted, sighted-blindfolded, and early-blind participants on Piaget's perspective-taking three-mountain task support this hypothesis. The plan task was judged more difficult than the elevation task even when participants performed with the same level of accuracy on both tasks. In visual and tactile tasks, amount of spatial-order information may determine difficulty, rather than plan versus elevation per se.     

The influence of parafoveal typographical errors on eye movements in reading

Three experiments are reported, examining the effects of a typographical error in parafoveal vision on aspects of foveal inspection time and saccade targeting. All the experiments involved reading for comprehension. A contingent presentation procedure ensured that typographical errors were restored to their correct form before they were viewed in foveal vision: They were never available for foveal processing. In Experiment 1, the error was formed by replacing the first letter of the target word with a second occurrence of its second letter, producing an illegal nonword. This manipulation had no significant effect on foveal inspection time, but lowered the probability that a short word (“de” or “du”) prior to the target would be skipped. In Experiment 2 the familiarity of the target's initial letters was maintained constant across conditions. This manipulation removed the target 1 skipping effect, suggesting that the outcome of Experiment 1 was due to orthographic rather than lexical illegality, but revealed shorter foveal inspection times as a function of the presence of the error. Experiment 3 manipulated lexical and sublexical properties of the parafoveal typing error. Properties of the parafoveal error again influenced prior foveal inspection times. The pattern of results suggested that the determining properties were sublexical rather than lexical. The results as a whole are incompatible with a view of information processing in reading in which foveal processing remains immune from concurrent parafoveal influences.     

Effects of Exposure to Physique Slides on the Emotional Responses of Men and Women

The purpose of this study was to examine high and low body dissatisfied (BD) men's and women's in-task emotional responses to the acute exposure of sex-specific physique slides of the aesthetic ideal (i.e., ideal slides) and themselves (i.e., self-slides). Participants were 35 male and 30 female university students who reported their immediate in-task emotional responses (i.e., pleasure and arousal) to viewing the self- and ideal slides. It was found that the (a) high BD women reported the least amount of pleasure while viewing the self- and ideal slides; (b) women reported less pleasure while viewing the self-slides than did the men; (c) The high BD group reported less pleasure while viewing the self- vs. the ideal slides than did the low BD group, and (d) the high BD men reported the most arousal of any of the groups while viewing the self- and ideal slides. The differing emotional responses of the men and women and the high and low BD groups to viewing the self- vs. ideal slides are discussed, and future research directions are suggested.     

Symptoms of depression,relational quality,and loneliness in dating relationships

This study tested the hypothesis that symptoms of depression are negatively related to relational quality, which in turn is negatively related to feelings of loneliness among members of dating couples. Potential sex differences in the magnitude of association between depressive symptoms and relational quality, and potential emotional contagion of depressive symptoms within dyads, were also explored. One hundred and one dating couples completed the Oral History Interview along with other measures of relational quality, depressive symptoms, and loneliness. Results for both males and females indicated that depressive symptoms were negatively associated with relational quality and that relational quality was negatively associated with loneliness. The association between symptoms of depression and poor relational quality was similar for females and males. There was no evidence suggestive of emotional contagion in these dating couples. Implications of these findings and their potential limitations are discussed.