Will you confess to what I did? Close relationships and in-group membership facilitate voluntary blame-taking

To learn more about why people falsely confess without external pressure, we examined voluntary blame-taking in three experiments. Drawing from theories of prosocial behavior and social identity, we investigated whether participants' blame-taking is influenced by (a) their relationship with the guilty person (Experiment 1) and (b) the group membership of the person asking to take the blame (Experiments 2a and 2b). In Experiment 1, participants (N = 130) considered whether they would take the blame for a small traffic violation for their best friend and a stranger in a vignette-scenario. As expected, intended blame-taking rates were higher for their best friend (60.8%) than for a stranger (8.5%). Reported reasons for taking the blame included reciprocity and empathy. In Experiments 2a and 2b (Ns = 60; 89), we tested actual blame-taking behavior in two field experiments, using a new experimental paradigm. An experimenter approached participants and asked them to commit insurance fraud for a broken camera. Participants who shared the same group as the person in need were more willing to take the blame (47%-48%) than participants who were from a different group (21%-23%). The most frequently listed reason for taking the blame was empathy. Implications for the occurrence of voluntary blame-taking behavior to protect someone else are discussed.     

Classification and differentiation of bladder and bowel related anxieties: A socio-cognitive exploration

Current Psychology - The current study aimed to explore the validity of a single, self-report measure for bladder and bowel anxieties (Bladder and Bowel Anxiety Grouping Item; BABAGI), using two...     

Constant Time Delay and System of Least Prompts: Efficiency and Child Preference

Prompting procedures are effective for teaching skills, but limited comparative data exist to guide practitioners to select the best procedures for individuals. This study compared efficiency of two prompting procedures—constant time delay (CTD) and system of least prompts (SLP)—to teach expressive identification of 32 targets to 10 preschoolers with and without disabilities. To assess efficiency differences between conditions and analyze changes in learning over time, we used adapted alternating treatments designs in the measurement context of cumulative records. CTD was more efficient for five children, SLP was more efficient for three children, and results were inconclusive for two children. We measured children’s choices between procedures via simultaneous treatments designs, to assess child preference and whether preferences and efficiency aligned. Preference outcomes were mixed and did not consistently align with efficiency. We used exploratory analyses to assess whether child characteristics moderated outcomes. Children for whom CTD was more efficient had significantly fewer sessions to mastery, non-significantly fewer errors, and non-significantly higher developmental assessment scores, compared to children for whom SLP was more efficient.

     

National Norms and Correlates of the PHQ-8 and GAD-7 in Parents of School-age Children

Anxiety and depressive disorders are global public health concerns, and research suggests that these disorders are common in parents and can adversely influence family functioning. However, little is known about normative levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms in parents of school-age children. The present study reports on generalized anxiety and depressive symptoms in 1570 parents and guardians of a nationally representative sample of children ages five to twelve years using two widely used and validated questionnaires: the eight-item variant of the Patient Health Questionnaire depression scale (PHQ-8) and the seven-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder scale (GAD-7). Moderate to severe levels of generalized anxiety symptoms were reported in 12.7% of the total sample and moderate to severe levels of depressive symptoms were reported in 14.1% of the sample; 17.7% of the sample reported moderate to severe levels of either generalized anxiety or depressive symptoms. This percentage was higher for females, younger parents and guardians, and parents and guardians reporting lower household incomes. These data, collected online in early 2018, may be useful for researchers and clinicians studying and treating anxiety and depression in parents. Further, these data provide a baseline for researchers currently studying the impact of changes related to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (e.g., school closures) on the mental health of parents of school-age children.

     

Beyond trigger warnings: Toward a trauma‐informed andragogy for the graduate theological classroom*

Although development of trauma‐informed pedagogy for elementary and secondary classrooms has developed significantly, a dearth of resources for trauma‐informed andragogy in graduate theological classrooms remains. Theological classrooms are a unique context in which many students and professors carry experiences of trauma with them. This article makes the case for the need for a trauma‐informed andragogical model for the graduate theological classroom by: discussing the pervasiveness of trauma; providing definitions of key terms that need to be understood for elaborating a trauma‐informed andragogy; recommending trauma‐informed principles for course design and class‐session planning based in safety, trust, choice, collaboration, and empowerment; and identifying a few next steps for cultivating trauma‐informed classrooms and institutions at the graduate level.     

‘Believe in me,and I will too’: a study of how teachers’ expectations instilled confidence in Grade 10 students

Social Psychology of Education - Teacher expectation research has continued to establish an association between what teachers expect of their students and what students accomplish academically....     

Disrupted memory inhibition in dementia of Alzheimer’s type

Cognitive inhibition has been suggested to deteriorate in Alzheimer’s disease. While numerous studies with different experimental paradigms found evidence on impaired inhibition in attention and memory, evidence in favour of intact memory inhibition has been reported with regard to the phenomenon of retrieval-induced forgetting (Moulin et al., 2002). Here, we adapted the previously used paradigm in order to reduce the contribution of non-inhibitory processes and examined whether retrieval-induced forgetting could still be observed in a sample of participants with diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease. In contrast to the previous finding, we found that retrieval-induced forgetting only occurred in an age-matched control group. These results suggest that inhibitory deficits in Alzheimer’s disease also generalize to memory inhibition that resolves interference occurring during retrieval, whereas effects of retrieval-induced forgetting may still occur when non-inhibitory causes, such as, blocking by previously retrieved content, are not precluded.     

Conversation Orientation Moderates the Relationship between Information Sharing of Medically Assisted Reproduction and Child Adjustment

Parents who experienced infertility have increasingly used medically assisted reproduction (MAR) to add children to their families over the past few decades. These parents will need to decide if they will tell their children about being conceived using MAR. Although MAR information sharing operates within family contexts, little is known about the role of conversation orientation—one family contextual factor—in child outcomes associated with MAR information sharing in middle childhood. Derived from the Family Communication Patterns Theory, this study proposes that conversation orientation moderates the associations between MAR information sharing and children's psychosocial adjustment. This proposal was tested using a sample of 81 6- to 12-year-old MAR-conceived children from 55 families and a structured observational measure of conversation orientation. Multiple regression analyses showed that MAR information sharing interacted with conversation orientation to influence children's behavioral and attention problems but not emotional problems. In families with high conversation orientation, MAR information sharing was not significantly associated with children's behavioral and attention problems. In families with low conversation orientation, MAR information sharing was significantly associated with an increase in children's behavioral and attention problems. Results of this exploratory study demonstrate the potential significance of general communication orientation in understanding child outcomes of MAR information sharing and highlight the needed family context nuances in MAR research.