Family Functioning and Coping Behaviors in Parents of Children with Autism

We analyzed family dynamics and coping behaviors of parents with a child with an autistic spectrum disorder. Previous research suggests that moderate levels of cohesion and adaptability are associated with higher levels of positive coping, and that the more coping strategies a family implements, the greater their satisfaction with family functioning. Using a family systems approach, the relationships among the familial variables of cohesion, adaptability, and social support were evaluated for their contributions to coping in the family unit. We also compared the responses of mothers and fathers. Surprisingly, for these parents of children with autism, those who rated their family as enmeshed implemented more positive coping strategies than did those from other cohesion styles. This finding suggests that the enmeshed style may be more adaptive for a family that encounters extreme challenges. Notably, mothers and fathers agreed on all variables except for perception of social support from family and friends. Mothers perceived more social support from family and friends. The results lead to several interesting suggestions for future research.     

Films for eliciting emotional states in children

Standardized sets of films have been shown to be effective for eliciting emotional states in adults, but no comparable validated stimuli are available for children. We therefore examined the effects of three pre-selected film clips each of 3-min duration in eliciting a pleasant, neutral and unpleasant emotional state in 297 children aged between 6 and 12 years. After the films were presented on a video projector, affective ratings were obtained with the Self-Assessment-Manikin on the emotional dimensions of valence and arousal. Increasing pleasure ratings were observed from the unpleasant to the neutral to the pleasant film. Associated arousal ratings were stronger for the unpleasant and pleasant films compared to the neutral film. Overall, results showed successful elicitation of targeted emotional states only marginally influenced by age, gender or prior experience with the films. The use of these films is therefore suggested for future studies on emotions in children.     

Word lists for testing cognitive biases toward body shape among men and women

The present study developed word lists describing three categories of body build—fat, thin, and muscular— for use in investigating cognitive risk factors for body dissatisfaction. Fifty-one men and 51 women rated the categorization, valence, and familiarity of 284 body-related adjectives in order to develop the final lists. The normative frequency of each of the 284 words was determined using an index of American English. The final 19- to 26-item word lists were constructed so that the average number of syllables, word length, word frequency, and mean percentage of categorization agreement were comparable. The availability of these word lists will facilitate future cognitive research into a key risk factor for eating disorders.     

Strategies of self‐regulation in goal attainment versus goal maintenance

We propose that there exists an important difference between attainment and maintenance in terms of the goal pursuit strategies for which they call. Specifically, we propose that goal attainment calls for the use of eager approach strategies, whereas goal maintenance calls for the use of vigilant avoidance strategies. We distinguish between attainment versus maintenance as two different goal pursuit conditions on the one hand, and promotion versus prevention focus as two different self‐regulatory concerns on the other hand. We then use insights from Regulatory Fit Theory to make predictions concerning the interactive effects of these two motivational dimensions on outcome valuations. Consistent with our proposal about attainment and maintenance, we found that participants in a promotion focus valued the outcome of an attainment task more than did participants in a prevention focus, whereas the opposite was true for a maintenance task. Implications for maintenance‐related phenomena such as belief perseverance effects are subsequently discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Disturbed coarticulation in apraxia of speech: acoustic evidence

The results of a recent perceptual study (W. Ziegler & D. von Cramon, 1985, Anticipatory coarticulation in a patient with apraxia of speech. Brain and Language 26, 117-130) provided evidence for disturbed coarticulation in verbal apraxia. Further support for this finding is now provided by acoustic analyses. Formant frequencies and LP reflection coefficients were chosen to assess anticipatory vowel-to-vowel coarticulation and vowel anticipation in stop consonants, respectively. These parameters revealed a lack of coarticulatory cohesion in the speech of a patient suffering from verbal apraxia, explainable by a consistent delay in the initiation of anticipatory vowel gestures. The findings are discussed with respect to prosodic features and to theoretical and clinical concepts of verbal apraxia.     

Do infants reach for perceived objects? A reply to Stiles-Davis

Stiles-Davis proposes that the infants in our experiments (Hofsten & Spelke, 1985) did not reach for perceived objects in order to manipulate them, but rather touched perceived surfaces in order to explore their boundaries. Her commentary raises questions about infants' perception of the boundaries, the unity, and the manipulability of objects. More deeply, it raises the question of what an object is for an infant. We consider each of these questions in turn, in light of our own findings and those of other studies of object-directed reaching, object perception, and the object concept. We suggest that young infants organize the visual world into entities that are bounded, unitary, and manipulable and that infants endow those entities with the core properties of physical objects.     

Text recall in adulthood: The roles of text imagery and orienting tasks

Summary Three experiments were conducted to investigate dual-code theory and the levels-of-processing approach in discourse processing. Three concrete and three abstract tests were constructed to be equivalent in the degree to which they were perceived as concrete vs. abstract. All experiments presented concrete and abstract texts under three orienting tasks. Results of the first experiment showed main effects for both text concreteness and orienting tasks and an interaction that can be described by the lack of a difference between the recall rates for the concrete and the abstract texts under the intentional-learning condition. In the second experiment, longer texts were used and a second trial was introduced. The interaction was not replicated. There were main effects for concreteness, orienting tasks, and trials. The third experiment replicated Experiment 2 with subjects in their late 40s and over 70. Main effects were obtained as before. Age interacted with both orienting task and concreteness, indicating that older adults gain less than middle-aged adults from intentional-learning instructions and benefit less from highly concrete texts. The discussion focuses on the relation of Materials and Subjects as factors to dual-code theory and levels of processing approach.     

The role of binocular information in ball catching

The role of binocular vision in a ball-catching task involving spatial uncertainty was examined in three experiments. In all three experiments, subjects' catching performance was evaluated during monocular and binocular viewing, in normal room lighting and in complete darkness with a luminescent ball. Subjects' performance was found to be significantly better with binocular than with monocular vision, especially under normal lighting conditions. In the second and third experiments, catching performance was evaluated in the presence of minimal visual frames, consisting of a series of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). In Experiment 2, the visual frame consisted of a single plane of LEDs, whereas in Experiment 3, the visual frame consisted of two planes of LEDs. Catching performance was found to be significantly better with the visual frame than in complete darkness, but this was true only for binocular viewing. This result supports the hypothesis that binocular convergence is used to scale perceived space and that this information enables subjects to contact the ball successfully. It was further found that postural sway varied between lighting conditions and that less sway was accompanied by higher performance. There was no effect of binocular viewing in this respect. In general, the results suggest two additive effects of viewing conditions: a direct effect of binocular vision on ball catching and an indirect effect of lighting on postural stability, which, in turn, affects catching performance.