Accentuating the positive: The gendered identities of male problem‐drinkers,and the questions these pose for the counselling profession

Background: Few published studies have addressed the male experience of alcohol dependency. Aim: This paper seeks to address this deficiency and to highlight aspects of the male experience relevant to the counselling and psychotherapy profession. Methods: Six men in recovery from alcohol dependency participated in semi‐structured interviews. Findings: A grounded theory analysis elicited five core categories, Beginning to Drink, Paying for Gain with Pain, Reaching Rock Bottom, Struggling to Recover and Leading a New Life. Despite the pain they had experienced, participants' narratives were matter‐of‐fact and goal‐oriented. Low self‐esteem was expressed indirectly. Conclusions: These findings are consistent with socialisation models of alcoholism. Counsellors, and the wider profession, must be alert for the male under‐reporting of emotional distress.     

The importance of mutual positive expressivity in social adjustment: understanding the role of peers and gender

The relations between young children's mutual (reciprocated) and overall positive emotion (PE) with same- and other-gender peers and their social adjustment were explored. Children's PE and peers' PE were observed across the preschool year during peer interactions (N = 166; 46% girls; M age = 52 months). Results revealed that girls and boys had similar frequencies of overall PE and mutual PE when interacting with same-gender peers, but girls were marginally higher compared with boys in overall and mutual PE when interacting with other-gender peers. Girls and boys did not have greater rates of either type of PE after controlling for gender segregation during same- or other-gender interactions. Using structural equation modeling, children's mutual PE, regardless of their gender, positively predicted indicators of positive adjustment (e.g., prosocial behavior, cooperation) and negatively predicted indicators of negative adjustment (e.g., hyperactivity, disruption, exclusion by peers). Children's overall PE did not predict either type of adjustment. Findings support the importance of mutual PE for children's development.     

Information content and reward processing in the human striatum during performance of a declarative memory task

Negative feedback can signal poor performance, but it also provides information that can help learners reach the goal of task mastery. The primary aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that the amount of information provided by negative feedback during a paired-associate learning task influences feedback-related processing in the caudate nucleus. To do this, we manipulated the number of response options: With two options, positive and negative feedback provide equal amounts of information, whereas with four options, positive feedback provides more information than does negative feedback. We found that positive and negative feedback activated the caudate similarly when there were two response options. With four options, the caudate’s response to negative feedback was reduced. A secondary goal was to investigate the link between brain-based measures of feedback-related processing and behavioral indices of learning. Analysis of the posttest measures showed that trials with positive feedback were associated with higher posttest confidence ratings. Additionally, when positive feedback was delivered, caudate activity was greater for trials with high than with low posttest confidence. This experiment demonstrated the context sensitivity of feedback processing and provided evidence that feedback processing in the striatum can contribute to the strengthening of the representations available within declarative memory.     

The neural bases of distracter-resistant working memory

A major difference between humans and other animals is our capacity to maintain information in working memory (WM) while performing secondary tasks, which enables sustained, complex cognition. A common assumption is that the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) is critical for WM performance in the presence of distracters, but direct evidence is scarce. We assessed the relationship between fMRI activity and WM performance within subjects, with performance matched across distracter and no-distracter conditions. Activity in the ventrolateral PFC during WM encoding and maintenance positively predicted performance in both conditions, whereas activity in the presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA) predicted performance only under distraction. Other parts of the dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFCs predicted performance only in the no-distracter condition. These findings challenge a lateral-PFC-centered view of distracter resistance, and suggest that the lateral PFC supports a type of WM representation that is efficient for dealing with task-irrelevant input but is, nonetheless, easily disrupted by dual-task demands.     

Reduced visual feature binding in the near-hand space

Growing evidence suggests that visual information is processed differently in the near-hand space, relative to the space far from the hands. To account for the existing literature, we recently proposed that the costs and benefits of hand proximity may be due to differential contributions of the action-oriented magnocellular (M) and the perception-oriented parvocellular (P) pathways. Evidence suggests that, relative to the space far from the hands, in near-hand space the contribution of the M pathway increases while the contribution of the P pathway decreases. The present study tested an important consequence of this account for visual representation. Given the P pathway’s role in feeding regions in which visual representations of unified objects (with bound features) are formed, we predicted that hand proximity would reduce feature binding. Consistent with this prediction, two experiments revealed signs of reduced feature binding in the near-hand space, relative to the far-hand space. We propose that the higher contribution of the M pathway, along with the reduced contribution of the P pathway, shifts visual perception away from an object-based perceptual mode toward a feature-based mode. These results are discussed in light of the distinction between action-oriented and perception-oriented vision.     

I Cannot Afford to Have a Life: Employee Adaptation to Feelings of Job Insecurity

This study examines the links between employee perceptions of job insecurity, the work–nonwork interface, and stress‐related outcomes. Drawing on an adaptation perspective, we expect employees feeling greater job insecurity to engage in adaptive work behaviors including less use of work–nonwork support programs and greater willingness to let work permeate into one's personal life, which in turn will associate with greater work–nonwork conflict and emotional exhaustion. Data were collected from employees within a large energy company at 2 points in time. Results support the model, offering important insights into employee behavioral responses to job insecurity and key mechanisms through which insecurity may foster diminished employee well‐being.     

Structured contexts and anaphoric dependencies

Sensitivity to the extra-linguistic context, as exhibited by indexical and demonstrative expressions, and sensitivity to the linguistic context, as exhibited by, for example, anaphoric uses of third person pronouns, are regularly regarded as different and independent phenomena. The data on indexicals, demonstratives, and third person pronouns, however, call for a more unified notion of context and of context sensitivity. This paper aims to develop such a unified picture by generalizing the notion of anaphora to encompass extra-linguistic context dependency and generalizing the notion of a structured discourse context so that contexts contain antecedents for expressions that refer to entities in the extra-linguistic context.     

Religion and Attitudes Toward Family Planning Issues Among US Adults

Although religion is an important influence on a variety of social attitudes, the relationship between religion and views on family planning remains underexplored, especially in terms of attitudes relating to public policy. Using data from a nationally-representative survey (N = 1,500) fielded in 1998, we examine the influence of religious affiliation, subcultural identification, and attendance on three aspects of attitudes toward contraception in the public sphere. Specifically, we explore opinions regarding the public consequences of contraception and the responsibility for making contraception available as part of health care services in the United States. More frequent religious attendance is linked to less-approving opinions about contraception and less support for its provision by the US government and health insurers. Catholic affiliation is not consistently associated with the examined opinions, and we find mixed results for conservative Protestants. Including religious subcultural identities yields additional information, with born-again Christians reporting less positive opinions about the consequences of contraceptive availability, while evangelical identity is linked to negative views on policy aimed at increasing access to family planning services. These findings contribute to knowledge about the relationship between religion and attitudes toward policy-relevant aspects of contraception, as well as the broader social influences of religious subcultural identification.     

The Relationship Between Sluggish Cognitive Tempo and Impairment in Children With and Without ADHD

This study examined impairment in multiple domains of functioning in children with and without ADHD who present with high or low levels of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) while taking into account the total symptom ratings of ADHD. Participants were 584 children in kindergarten through eighth grade (55.7 % male, 91.7 % Caucasian), drawn from five archival datasets. Two, 2 (SCT groups: high and low) x 3 (ADHD Status: ADHD-I, ADHD-C, and non-ADHD) MANCOVAs were conducted with the total ADHD symptom ratings and child age as covariates. One MANCOVA was conducted on scores on the teacher Impairment Rating Scale (IRS; Fabiano et al. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 35:369–385, 2006) and the other on the 6 scores on the parent IRS. The results indicated that the presence of SCT symptoms was associated with greater functional impairment at home according to parent report while it was associated with less functional impairment at school according to teacher report. Thus, the relationship between SCT symptoms and impairment differs depending on the informant and the context in which impairment is evaluated.     

Motivational profiles and achievement: A prospective study testing potential mediators

The purpose of the study was to examine students’ motivational profile at the beginning of a College program and to test whether these profiles were associated with students’ achievement through their relations with behaviors adopted during the semester. A prospective design with two time points of data collection was conducted in first-year students enrolled in a French University. Motivations were assessed at the beginning of the semester (510 participants at Time 1), and study strategies and temporal resources devoted to academics at the end of it (301 participants at Time 2). Administrative records were used to check for persistence in the program and to assess achievement. Cluster analyses revealed five distinct profiles: additive; self-determined; moderate; low; non self-determined. Furthermore, motivational profile was linked to final grade through the partial mediation of the percentage of classes attended. As a whole, students with a self-determined profile demonstrated the best academic adjustment, whereas those with a low or non self-determined profile displayed the poorest outcomes.