Strong Hero or Violent Playboy? Portrayals of Masculinity in Children’s Animated Movies

Sex Roles - Given the significant influence of media on the development of children’s beliefs and attitudes regarding gender, it is important to investigate the portrayal of masculinity in...     

Differential cognitive substrates of verbal episodic memory performance in semantic variant primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer’s disease

Performance on neuropsychological measures of verbal memory requires cognitive abilities beyond memory. We examined the contribution of semantic knowledge in verbal episodic memory for semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) or Alzheimer’s disease (AD). 415 AD and 68 svPPA participants completed measures of episodic memory (visual and verbal) and semantic knowledge. A double dissociation existed visual recall predicted verbal recognition in AD, whereas semantic knowledge contributed to verbal recognition in svPPA.     

The development of the Children's Empathic Attitudes Questionnaire using classical and Rasch analyses

Empathic responding is implicated in antisocial behaviors such as bullying, sexual offending, and violent crime. Identifying children and adolescents at risk for antisocial behavior and evaluating interventions designed to address problem behaviors require valid and reliable measures. Definitional controversies and limited measurement models have hindered measurement. This study describes the development and analysis of the Children's Empathic Attitudes Questionnaire (CEAQ) using both classical and modern techniques. Rasch analyses provided probabilistic results over large item and person groups, enabling meaningful inferences from patterns of responses at the construct level. Analyses of fifth through seventh graders' responses to the final version of the CEAQ provide support for its reliability, validity, and functionality. Four meaningful item clusters were identified, each reflecting more cognitively advanced empathic attitudes. These analyses suggest that the CEAQ provides a theoretically sound, hierarchically meaningful measure of empathic attitudes that will be useful in identification and intervention with children and adolescents at risk for antisocial behavior.     

Mental health measurement among women veterans receiving co-located,collaborative care services

Routine use of measurement to identify patient concerns and track treatment progress is critical to high quality patient care. This is particularly relevant to the Primary Care Behavioral Health model, where rapid symptom assessment and effective referral management are critical to sustaining population-based care. However, research suggests that women who receive treatment in co-located collaborative care settings utilizing the PCBH model are less likely to be assessed with standard measures than men in these settings. The current study utilized regional retrospective data obtained from the Veterans Health Administration’s electronic medical record system to: (1) explore rates of mental health measurement for women receiving co-located collaborative care services (N = 1008); and (2) to identify predictors of mental health measurement in women veterans in these settings. Overall, only 8% of women had documentation of standard mental health measures. Measurement was predicted by diagnosis, facility size, length of care episode and care setting. Specifically, women diagnosed with depression were less likely than those with anxiety disorders to have standard mental health measurement documented. Several suggestions are offered to increase the quality of mental health care for women through regular use of measurement in integrated care settings.     

EARLY HEAD START FAMILIES’ EXPERIENCES WITH STRESS: UNDERSTANDING VARIATIONS WITHIN A HIGH‐RISK,LOW‐INCOME SAMPLE

The federal Early Head Start program provides a relevant context to examine families’ experiences with stress since participants qualify on the basis of poverty and risk. Building on previous research that has shown variations in demographic and economic risks even among qualifying families, we examined possible variations in families’ perceptions of stress. Family, parent, and child data were collected to measure stressors and risk across a variety of domains in families’ everyday lives, primarily from self‐report measures, but also including assay results from child cortisol samples. A cluster analysis was employed to examine potential differences among groups of Early Head Start families. Results showed that there were three distinct subgroups of families, with some families perceiving that they experienced very high levels of stress while others perceived much lower levels of stress despite also experiencing poverty and heightened risk. These findings have important implications in that they provide an initial step toward distinguishing differences in low‐income families’ experiences with stress, thereby informing interventions focused on promoting responsive caregiving as a possible mechanism to buffer the effects of family and social stressors on young children.     

Alexithymia Among Empirically Derived Subgroups of Chronic Back Pain Patients

A seeded duster analysis procedure was applied to the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) profiles of 102 male and 63 female back-pain patients. For both men and women, the resulting subgroups were found to correspond closely to similar subgroups obtained in several previous investigations. New data on the psychometric properties of the MMPI Alexithymia scales (Kleiger & Kinsman, 1980) are presented. Significant differences in alexithymia among empirically derived MMPI subgroups were found in the male sample only.     

The organisation of spatial and temporal relations in memory

Episodic memories are comprised of details of “where” and “when”; spatial and temporal relations, respectively. However, evidence from behavioural, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies has provided mixed interpretations about how memories for spatial and temporal relations are organised—they may be hierarchical, fully interactive, or independent. In the current study, we examined the interaction of memory for spatial and temporal relations. Using explicit reports and eye-tracking, we assessed younger and older adults’ memory for spatial and temporal relations of objects that were presented singly across time in unique spatial locations. Explicit change detection of spatial relations was affected by a change in temporal relations, but explicit change detection of temporal relations was not affected by a change in spatial relations. Younger and older adults showed eye movement evidence of incidental memory for temporal relations, but only younger adults showed eye movement evidence of incidental memory for spatial relations. Together, these findings point towards a hierarchical organisation of relational memory. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of the neural mechanisms that may support such a hierarchical organisation of memory.     

Syntactic development in children with hemispherectomy: the I-, D-, and C-systems

This study reports on functional morpheme (I, D, and C) production in the spontaneous speech of five pairs of children who have undergone hemispherectomy, matching each pair for etiology and age at symptom onset, surgery, and testing. Our results show that following left hemispherectomy (LH), children evidence a greater error rate in the use of functional category elements than their right hemispherectomy (RH) counterparts. Nevertheless, error rates are surprisingly low and comparable across groups. We interpret these results as (a) weak empirical evidence for a left hemisphere advantage in acquisition of functional structure, (b) strong support that functional structure is a property of all human grammars, and (c) strong support that each isolated developing hemisphere has the potential to acquire a grammar embodying and constrained by highly specific structural principles defining human language.