From the Editor

Journal of Medical Humanities -     

Risk and Resilience Factors for Mental Health among Transgender and Gender Nonconforming (TGNC) Youth: A Systematic Review

Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review - In recent years, there has been a proliferation of research regarding transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people. The stigma and legal...     

I don't fit,so I blame you?—Influence of regulatory focus and fit on emotion generation and regulation in single and group context

Person–environment interactions play a crucial role in the process of emotional experience. While Regulatory Focus Theory has been adopted to illustrate how some goal-oriented parts of this process might shape by proposing a regulatory fit between individual and environmental characteristics, whether this fit not only implies feeling “right” but feeling “good” or at least cope better, has not been tested empirically. In this study, we extend earlier research on the influence of the regulatory fit to the generation and regulation of emotions. We additionally emphasize the role of the context, by integrating current work on group-based emotion regulation in comparing single and group environments. We used a within-subjects design, with 2 (situational focus) × 2 (single/group environment) levels. Thirty-two male football players participated in one football-specific task per level. Emotional experience and cognitive regulation strategies were measured after each. Multilevel regression showed, that a regulatory fit predicted more passive-negative emotions in both the environments and more active-negative emotions in the group environments. The Regulatory fit predicted stronger use of functional regulation strategies in the single but less in the group environment. Group membership predicted stronger use of group-based regulation strategies and weaker use of other strategies—thus indicating further constraints and new ways to cope. We discuss the counter-intuitive results regarding emotional experience in the light of the athletic context as well as theoretical accounts of regulatory fit and its role in the moderating motivational intensity and the value assignment. Results regarding the influence of group membership are integrated into current research and we highlight the directions for future research.     

In whose interests? A response to Aaron Zimmerman’s Belief: A Pragmatic Picture

Philosophical Studies - I provide a brief précis of Aaron Zimmerman’s book, Belief: A Pragmatic Picture, then explore two possible problems for the view. The first concerns whether the...     

Relative effects of breastfeeding intention and practice on maternal responsiveness

Our objective was to examine the differential effects of antenatal breastfeeding intention (BI) and breastfeeding practice (BP) on maternal postnatal responsiveness. We conducted a secondary analysis of longitudinal data from a subsample of 962 mother–infant dyads from a U.K.-based birth cohort study the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Exposures were BI and BPs measured at 32 weeks of gestation and 18 months’ postpartum. The outcome was maternal responsiveness assessed at 12 months’ postpartum. We used logistic regression analyses unadjusted and adjusted for confounders. Intention to breastfeed was associated with increased odds of postnatal maternal responsiveness independent of BP, adjusted odds ratio (OR) = 2.34, 95% CI [1.42, 3.86]. There was no evidence that BP was an independent predictor of maternal responsiveness, OR = 0.93, 95% CI [0.55, 1.57]. Life-course epidemiology analyses demonstrated that maternal responsiveness is most positive when both BI and BP are present. This is the first population-based study to provide evidence that BI during pregnancy is more strongly associated with maternal postnatal responsiveness than is BP. Further research is needed to understand the determinants of BI in pregnancy and its relationships with maternal responsiveness.     

The academic outcomes of working memory and metacognitive strategy training in children: A double‐blind randomized controlled trial

Working memory training has been shown to improve performance on untrained working memory tasks in typically developing children, at least when compared to non‐adaptive training; however, there is little evidence that it improves academic outcomes. The lack of transfer to academic outcomes may be because children are only learning skills and strategies in a very narrow context, which they are unable to apply to other tasks. Metacognitive strategy interventions, which promote metacognitive awareness and teach children general strategies that can be used on a variety of tasks, may be a crucial missing link in this regard. In this double‐blind randomized controlled trial, 95 typically developing children aged 9–14 years were allocated to three cognitive training programmes that were conducted daily after‐school. One group received Cogmed working memory training, another group received concurrent Cogmed and metacognitive strategy training, and the control group received adaptive visual search training, which better controls for expectancy and motivation than non‐adaptive training. Children were assessed on four working memory tasks, reading comprehension, and mathematical reasoning before, immediately after, and 3 months after training. Working memory training improved working memory and mathematical reasoning relative to the control group. The improvements in working memory were maintained 3 months later, and these were significantly greater for the group that received metacognitive strategy training, compared to working memory training alone. Working memory training is a potentially effective educational intervention when provided in addition to school; however, future research will need to investigate ways to maintain academic improvements long term and to optimize metacognitive strategy training to promote far‐transfer. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/-7MML48ZFgw     

Attention,autonomic arousal,and personality in behaviorally disordered children

This study assessed the construct validity of the Revised Behavior Problem Checklist (RBPC) by measuring attention, autonomie arousal, and personality in 40 behaviorally disordered children aged 7 to 15 years. Conduct Disorder and Socialized Aggression subscales were characterized by high Psychoticism, Impulsivity, and Lie personality scores, by lower heart rate levels, and by more errors on a continuous performance reaction-time task. Conversely, Attention Problems, Anxiety Withdrawal, and Motor Excess were characterized by greater variability in reaction times. Conduct Disorder alone was related to an external locus of control, while only Attention Problems was characterized by low scores on the WISC Freedom from Distraction factor. These differential relationships suggest (a) support for the construct validity of the RBPC, (b) that antisocial behavior and hyperactivity/attention deficits are dissociated disorders, and (c) that hyperactivity/attention deficits may be characterized by fluctuations in the allocation of attentional resources rather than a core structural deficit in attention.     

Object perception and object naming in early development

Among our most fundamental capacities are those that allow us to perceive, categorize and name objects. Recently, controversy has surrounded the question of how young children learn names for objects, in particular, the relative roles of perception and higher-level world knowledge. It is well known that adults depend strongly on conceptual knowledge in a variety of categorization tasks, including object naming. We argue, however, that perception may play a special role in early object naming and, in particular, that certain kinds of world knowledge known to guide adult naming may come to guide naming only rather late in development. Building early mechanisms of naming on a perceptual foundation that may be encapsulated, and thus shut off from more reflective processes, may explain in part why young children can easily and rapidly learn names for things from the adults around them, despite the fact that adults and children may possess very different conceptual organizations.     

Generalizing everyday memory: Signs and handedness

Memory for frequently encountered road signs was investigated. In Experiment 1, the average level of recall of road sign features was found to be only 47%. In Experiment 2, more left-handed than righthanded people recalled that a walking figure faces right on one sign, whereas more right-handed than left-handed people recalled that a digging figure faces left on another sign. Performance thus reflected not a difference in level of mnemonic ability between left-handed and right-handed groups but instead the compatibility between group and task. In Experiment 3, participants were asked to draw any figure walking and any figure digging, with a pattern of results similar to that of Experiment 2. It is suggested that handedness effects in recall are mediated by motor imagery.