The Relationship between Temperamental Negative Affect,Effortful Control,and Sensory Regulation: A New Look

Temperamental negative affectivity (NA) and effortful control (EC) have long been of interest to psychologists, but sensory regulation (SR) has received less attention. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the present study reexamined the Rothbart model of EC and NA using the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; M.K. Rothbart, S.A. Ahadi, K.L. Hershy, & P. Fisher, 2001), along with alternative models of EC, NA, and SR using the CBQ and Short Sensory Profile. The results failed to replicate the Rothbart model of EC and NA, which includes SR within the EC and NA factors. A good fit was found for a three‐factor model (EC, NA, and SR) that was replicated in a holdout sample. A three‐factor model also showed a good fit when EC, NA, and SR items similar to symptoms of behavior problems were eliminated.     

The Development and Validation of a Family Wellbeing Index for Hong Kong Chinese Families

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Family wellbeing is studied worldwide. However, there is a dearth of studies on the wellbeing of families in Chinese societies such as Hong Kong, nor is there...     

Goal complexes: Integrating achievement goals as standards and self-attributed motives as reasons underlying goal pursuit

Goal complexes, which are formed by pairing standards of competence strivings with their underlying reasons, are essential to an understanding of achievement goal regulation. This paper examines goal complexes that cross other-approach and other-avoidance goals with the approach-avoidance dimensions of Big Three motives as underlying reasons. 220 undergraduates participated in Study 1 which developed and validated the Self-Attributed Motive Scale to measure hope of success, fear of failure, hope of affiliation, fear of rejection, hope of power, and fear of loss of power. Additionally, 235 undergraduates participated in Study 2 where goal complexes were created by crossing the motive items developed in Study 1 with other-approach and other-avoidance goals. The predictive utility of the resultant goal complexes was examined in relation to positive well-being (positive learning-related emotions and engagement), negative well-being (negative learning-related emotions and burnout), and academic buoyancy. The contributions of the studies to the self-attributed motive and goal complex literatures are discussed.

     

Positive and extensive intergroup contact in the past buffers against the disproportionate impact of negative contact in the present

Negative (vs positive) intergroup contact may have a disproportionately large impact on intergroup relations because of valence‐salience effects, whereby negative contact causes higher category salience (Paolini, Harwood, & Rubin, 2010). One correlational and three experimental studies in three conflict areas (Northern Ireland, Arizona's border area, and Cyprus; Ns = 405, 83, 76, and 91) tested the moderation of these valence‐salience effects by individuals' histories of outgroup contact. Consistent with a perceived fit principle valence‐salience effects of face‐to‐face, television‐mediated, and imagined contact held among individuals with negative or limited histories of outgroup contact; these effects were significantly reduced or nonsignificant among individuals with positive or extensive past outgroup contact. These moderation effects suggest that positive and diverse intergroup contact in the past buffers against the harmful effects of negative contact experiences in the present, thus limiting the potential for negative spiralling of intergroup relations. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dimensions of Oppositional Defiant Disorder in Young Children: Heterotypic Continuity with Anxiety and Depression

There are distinct dimensions of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) that have been associated with symptoms of other disorders (heterotypic continuity). The present study compared the heterotypic continuity of a two-factor (Pitt-2) model and the three-factor model incorporated into DSM-5 with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Participants were a diverse community sample of 796 children (38.8 % minority, 49.1 % boys) assessed at ages 4, 5 and 6 years. Symptoms were assessed with the dimensional scales of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children-Young Child version and the Child Symptom Inventory. Dimensions of both the two- and three-factor DSM-5 models were associated with later symptoms of anxiety and depression. The association, however, was weak when accounting for initial levels of internalizing symptoms: thus there was little evidence for the unique contributions of ODD dimensions to symptoms of subsequent internalizing disorders for either model.     

Approach-avoidance,attentional and evaluation biases in hair pulling disorder and their relationship with symptom severity

The present study examined approach-avoidance, attentional and evaluation biases in Hair Pulling Disorder (HPD). Although none of the tasks showed indications of biased action tendencies in response to hair pulling-related pictures, or biased attention for hair pulling-related words, we found that patients were slower to react to hair pulling-related stimuli than to neutral stimuli. This slowing down may indicate that patients are ambivalent towards hair pulling. This “ambivalence” positively correlated with HPD symptom severity, but only on one of the three severity measures we assessed. Concerning action tendencies towards hair pulling-related words, patients were, however, faster to react to hair pulling-related words when compared to words related to resisting hair pulling. Future research is needed to disentangle this ambivalent response pattern in HPD.     

Category-length and category-strength effects using images of scenes

Global matching models have provided an important theoretical framework for recognition memory. Key predictions of this class of models are that (1) increasing the number of occurrences in a study list of some items affects the performance on other items (list-strength effect) and that (2) adding new items results in a deterioration of performance on the other items (list-length effect). Experimental confirmation of these predictions has been difficult, and the results have been inconsistent. A review of the existing literature, however, suggests that robust length and strength effects do occur when sufficiently similar hard-to-label items are used. In an effort to investigate this further, we had participants study lists containing one or more members of visual scene categories (bathrooms, beaches, etc.). Experiments 1 and 2 replicated and extended previous findings showing that the study of additional category members decreased accuracy, providing confirmation of the category-length effect. Experiment 3 showed that repeating some category members decreased the accuracy of nonrepeated members, providing evidence for a category-strength effect. Experiment 4 eliminated a potential challenge to these results. Taken together, these findings provide robust support for global matching models of recognition memory. The overall list lengths, the category sizes, and the number of repetitions used demonstrated that scene categories are well-suited to testing the fundamental assumptions of global matching models. These include (A) interference from memories for similar items and contexts, (B) nondestructive interference, and (C) that conjunctive information is made available through a matching operation.