Predictors of Partner Engagement in PTSD Treatment

A telephone survey was conducted to identify predictors of treatment engagement in 83 cohabitating female partners of 83 Vietnam theater veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The survey assessed veterans for their trauma history and PTSD symptoms. Partners were assessed for caregiver burden, patient–partner involvement, PTSD treatment engagement, self-efficacy relating to PTSD, beliefs about benefits of PTSD treatment, and PTSD treatment barriers. Significant predictors of partner PTSD treatment engagement were the couple’s income, patient–partner involvement, and partner caregiver burden. These findings have implications for family interventions that may increase partner PTSD treatment engagement and improve PTSD treatment outcome.     

The relationship between gender,perceived career barriers,and occupational aspirations

The relationships between college student gender, perceived career barriers, and occupational aspirations were examined. Participants were 314 students located in the southeastern United States. Overall, college women reported higher levels of occupational aspirations than college men. While occupational aspirations were not correlated with perceived career barriers for women or men, women reported anticipating more barriers to their career advancement than their male peers. Perceived career barriers and the interaction between gender and perceived career barriers predicted occupational aspirations after controlling for gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and year in school. The relationship between occupational aspirations and the interaction between gender and perceived career barriers in college‐age adults enhances our understanding of occupational aspirations.     

Sibling association and occupational interests

The effect of the composition and size of family on the subject and career interests of girls of above-average ability in a secondary school were examined. The main finding was that girls with order brothers or from larger families tend to express artistic occupational interests. This is explained in terms of the family socialisation theories of Parsons and Bales.     

Teaching by Examples: Implications for the Process of Category Acquisition

A new paradigm, the 'teaching-by-examples' paradigm, was used to shed new light on the process of category acquisition. In four experiments ( n = 90, 90, 115, 117), manipulating the variables of category structure, status of non-target category, learning mode, and teaching mode, participants first learned a category and then taught it to someone else. High agreement between participants on the teaching sequences was found across conditions, and a typical sequence was identified for each category structure. The typical participant-produced sequences startedwith several ideal positive cases, followed by anideal negative case and then borderline cases. The efficiency of such sequences for teaching was tested in another experiment ( n = 60), in which they were compared with sequences emphasizing category borders and sequences emphasizing each dimension separately. The typical participant-produced sequences induced the most efficient learning. It is proposed that the pattern of performance may provide a rich source of data for testing and fine-tuning models of category acquisition.     

Personality Traits as Potential Susceptibility Markers: Differential Susceptibility to Support Among Parents

In this study, we examined whether parents are differentially susceptible to support from their spouse and adolescent child depending on their personality traits, and whether differences in susceptibility to support among parents, in turn, are linked to the quality of support parents give to their children. Participants in this three‐wave longitudinal study were 288 two‐parent Dutch families with an adolescent child. Fathers were on average 43.9 years old (SD = 3.7 years), mothers were 41.7 years old (SD = 3.3 years), and adolescents (50% girls) were 14.5 years old (SD = 0.8 years). We found that the association between support from children toward their parents and subsequent support from parents toward their children was more pronounced for parents high on Openness, for better and for worse. Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Emotional Stability did not emerge as markers of differences in susceptibility. Also, parents did not differ in their susceptibility to support from their spouse, nor were differences in susceptibility found a year later when using data from a third wave. We found very modest support for differential susceptibility, only for Openness, and depending on the source of perceived support and on the timing of measurement.