Adult Attachment Styles, the Desire to Have Children, and Working Models of Parenthood

ABSTRACT College students who had yet to marry and begin a family were asked about their desire to have children and their beliefs and expectations about themselves as parents (Study 1) and the characteristics of their prospective children (Study 2). Persons with more avoidant and anxious-ambivalent models of close adult relationships harbored more negative models of parent-hood and parent-child relationships. These findings indicate that working models of parenting and parent-child relationships form well before marriage and the birth of children and that these models are systematically associated with attachment styles in adult relationships. The findings also suggest ways in which insecure attachments between child and parent may be influenced by the caregiver's models of parenting and parent-child relationships.     

Responsibility Attributions for Drunken Behavior: The Role of Expectancy Violation1

Research on attributions about drunken aggression has suggested that intoxication serves to excuse the aggressor while increasing blame to the victim. In this study, we examined subjects' responses to a scenario depicting a violent interaction in which intoxication of aggressor and victim, victim's behavior, and aggressor's previous violent background were varied. We predicted that to the extent that the violent act violated the expectations of the observer, alcohol intoxication would serve to decrease dispositional and responsibility attributions to the aggressor. Instead, the findings showed that alcohol use led to increased attributions of causality, blame, and responsibility for both aggressor and victim. The results are discussed in terms of both attribution theory and societal factors influencing the acceptability of excuses involving alcohol.     

MATERNITY LEAVE AND WOMEN'S MENTAL HEALTH

The Wisconsin Maternity Leave and Health Study addresses an important policy issue, parental leave, by investigating the work status, maternity leave, and mental health of 570 women. In the longitudinal design, the women, all of whom were living with a husband or partner, were interviewed during the fifth month of pregnancy, 1 month postpartum, and 4 months postpartum. At 4 months postpartum, full-time workers, part-time workers, and homemakers did not differ in depression or anger, but full-time workers showed elevated anxiety compared with the other two groups. In multiple regression analyses, length of leave interacted significantly with marital concerns when predicting depression; women who took a short leave (6 weeks or less) and were high on marital concerns had the highest depression scores. Short maternity leave can be conceptualized as a risk factor that, when combined with other risk factors such as marital concerns, places women at greater risk for depression.     

The mediating role of anxiety in self-reported somatic complaints of depressed adolescents

This study examined the mediating role of anxiety in the self-reports of somatic complaints in 96 depressed adolescent inpatients. Sixty-four subjects with major depressive episodes and comorbid anxiety disorders (MDE-A) determined from the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-Revised (DICA-R) reported significantly more somatic complaints than 32 adolescents having major depressive episodes without comorbid anxiety (MDE). An analysis of covariance demonstrated that, with anxiety symptoms controlled, MDE and MDE-A groups did not differ significantly in somatic complaints. A hierarchical multiple-regression analysis revealed that, with demographic and anxiety symptoms controlled, depressive symptoms did not contribute to the explanation or prediction of somatic complaints. The results suggest that anxious, but not depressive symptoms, are independently associated with somatic complaints. The results are discussed in light of new affective models of psychopathology.     

Accreditation Standards for University and College Counseling Centers

The accreditation standards outlined in the article are used by the International Association of Counseling Services, Inc., as the basis for the formal accreditation of college and university counseling programs throughout the United States and Canada. They reflect the program elements and practice standards that are deemed essential in a counseling center that provides high-quality services to students.     

The effect of token reinforcement on McCarthy Scale performance for white preschoolers of low and high social position

In Study 1, the effect of making tokens contingent on correct performance of low social position preschoolers on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilitieswas examined. Preschoolers in a token reinforcement group scored significantly higher (mean=8 IQ points) than subjects in a control group. In Study 2, the effect of tokens on McCarthyresults was examined as a function of social position in a 2×2 design. The high social position control group scored significantly above the low social position control. The low social position token reinforcement group, however, performed as well as both the high social position control and token reinforcement groups. Use of systematic reinforcement contingencies to reduce test error is discussed.     

Neurobehavioral deficits,adolescent traumatic brain injury,and transition to college

Outcome following traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been frequently evaluated for adults, although there has been minimal research on adolescents with TBI. It has been argued that TBI sequelae may be more difficult for adolescents to adjust to given developmental changes in physical (puberty), interpersonal (self-concept), and environmental domains (transition to college). In addition, it is commonly acknowledged that moderator variables such as psychiatric history, family functioning, substance use, and sexuality impact functional outcome following TBI, although it is often difficult to objectively evaluate these variables. The current study examined relationships among TBI-related deficits, moderator variables, and academic outcomes for six adolescents transitioning to college. The findings suggest that it may not be appropriate to predict functional outcome based solely on objective neuropsychological results. However, moderator variables appear to have a more direct relationship with outcome, depending on the moderator variable and the individual.     

What can prosody tell a parser?

In this paper, I consider how a sentence processor might use specific prosodic cues at various points in the processing of particular sentences containing (at least temporary) syntactic ambiguity. In principle, the usefulness of prosodic information depends on what a given cluster of prosodic cues typically signifies, and on which syntactic options exist for a given string: in only some instances can prosodic information provide useful disambiguating information.This work was supported by Grant #DC-01409, a Research and Training Grant funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders to the National Center for Neurogenic Communication Disorders, University of Arizona. I wish to thank Andrew Barss for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Tasks and timing in the perception of linguistic anomaly

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the relative timing of syntactic and pragmatic anomaly detection during sentence processing. Experiment 1 was an eye movement study. Experiment 2 employed a dual-task paradigm with compressed speech input, to put the processing routines under time pressure. Experiment 3 used compressed speech input in an anomaly monitoring task. The outcomes of these experiments suggest that there is little or no delay in pragmatic processing relative to syntactic processing in the comprehension of unambiguous sentences. This narrows the possible explanations for any delays that are observed in the use of pragmatic information for ambiguity resolution.The research reported in this paper was supported by Program Project Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories from the National Institutes of Child and Human Development, and in part by a grant to Stephen Crain and Donald Shankweiler from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation. We thank Jacques Mehler and Gerry Altmann for helpful information about speech compression algorithms. We are especially grateful to Ignatius Mattingly for his generous expert advice on speech compression and design of the experimental materials, and also for recording all the speech stimuli. Julie Boland, Brian McElree, Janet Nicol, and Martin Pickering provided very helpful advice on an earlier draft.