Mentalization in children and mothers in the context of trauma: An initial study of the validity of the Child Reflective Functioning Scale

This study examined the validity of the Child Reflective Functioning Scale (CRFS: Ensink, Target, & Oandason, 2013, Child reflective functioning scale scoring manual: for application to the Child Attachment Interview. London, UK: Anna Freud Centre – University College London), a measure designed to assess reflective functioning (RF) or mentalization during middle childhood. Participants were 94 mother–child dyads divided into two subgroups; 46 dyads where children had histories of intrafamilial (n = 22 dyads) or extrafamilial (n = 24 dyads) sexual abuse, and a community control group composed of 48 mother–child dyads. RF of children and their mothers was assessed using videotaped and transcribed data gathered using the Child Attachment Interview and the Parent Development Interview (PDI: Slade, Aber, Bresi, Berger, & Kaplan, 2004, The parent development interview‐Revised. New York, NY: The City University of New York). The findings indicate that the CRFS proved reliable, with excellent intraclass correlation coefficients for general RF, as well as RF regarding self and others. Significant differences in RF were found between sexually abused children and the control group, and also between children who had experienced intrafamilial and extrafamilial sexual abuse. This provides support for the discriminant validity of the CRFS. Furthermore, maternal RF was associated with child RF. Both abuse and maternal RF made significant contributions to predicting children's RF regarding themselves, but child sexual abuse was the only variable that made a significant contribution to explaining variance in children's RF regarding others.     

Some views are better than others: evidence for a visual bias in object views self‐generated by toddlers

How objects are held determines how they are seen, and may thereby play an important developmental role in building visual object representations. Previous research suggests that toddlers, like adults, show themselves a disproportionate number of planar object views – that is, views in which the objects' axes of elongation are perpendicular or parallel to the line of sight. Here, three experiments address three explanations of this bias: (1) that the locations of interesting features of objects determine how they are held and thus how they are viewed; (2) that ease of holding determines object views; and (3) that there is a visual bias for planar views that exists independently of holding and of interesting surface properties. Children 18 to 24 months of age manually and visually explored novel objects (1) with interesting features centered in planar or ¾ views; (2) positioned inside Plexiglas boxes so that holding biased either planar or non‐planar views; and (3) positioned inside Plexiglas spheres, so that no object properties directly influenced holding. Results indicate a visual bias for planar views that is influenced by interesting surface properties and ease of holding, but that continues to exist even when these factors push for alternative views.     

The Contribution of Executive Function to Source Memory Development in Early Childhood

Age-related differences in episodic memory judgments assessing recall of fact information and the source of this information were examined. The role of executive function (EF) in supporting early episodic memory ability was also explored. Four- and 6-year-old children were taught 10 novel facts from two different sources (experimenter or puppet), and memory for both fact and source information was later tested. Measures of working memory, inhibitory control, and set shifting were obtained to produce an indicator of children's EF. Six-year-olds recalled more fact and source information than did 4-year-olds. Regression analyses revealed that age, language ability, and EF accounted for unique variance in children's fact recall and source recall performance. These findings suggest a link between episodic memory and EF, and we propose that developmental investigations should further explore this association.     

Mental Set Shifting in Childhood: The Role of Working Memory and Inhibitory Control

The role of working memory (WM) and inhibition in mental set shifting was examined from an individual difference perspective in children aged 5–14 years (N = 117). Using the Hearts and Flowers task the rationale of the present study was to directly test the theoretical assumption that mental set shifiting in childhood primarily builds on WM and inhibitory processes. Theoretical predictions about WM and inhibitory demands in the congruent and incongruent conditions of the Hearts and Flowers task were also considered because these blocks underlie relevant measures of set shifting. The findings show that both WM and inhibition (extracted as factors in confirmatory factor analysis) are important for set shifting but that this general association is driven by the link between these executive functions (EFs) and the goal‐representation aspect (i.e. global switch costs) of shifting, rather than to the actual switch‐implementation process (i.e. local switch costs). In addition, our findings are novel in showing that, despite a substantial correlation between the two EF components, it was the variance specific to WM and inhibition that was important for mental set shifting. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Social embodiment in directional stepping behavior

Embodiment theories emphasize the role played by sensory and motor processes in psychological states, such as social information processing. Motivated by this idea, we examined how whole-body postural behaviors couple to social affective cues, viz., pictures of smiling and angry faces. We adopted a Simon-like paradigm, whereby healthy female volunteers were asked to select and initiate a forward or backward step on a force plate in response to the gender of the poser (male/female), regardless of emotion. Detailed analysis of the spatiotemporal unfolding of the body center of pressure during the steps revealed that task-irrelevant emotion had no effect on the initiation times of the steps, i.e., there was no evidence of an affective Simon effect. An unexpected finding was that steps were initiated relatively slow in response to female angry faces. This Stroop-like effect suggests that postural behavior is influenced by whether certain stimulus features match or mismatch.     

Effects of Early Maternal Separation on Subsequent Reproductive and Behavioral Outcomes in Male Rats

To investigate effects of maternal separation on reproductive and behavioral outcomes, male Wistar rats were separated from their mothers daily for 3 hr (maternal separation; MS) or 0 hr (control) from postnatal day (PND) 1 to 14. Timing of puberty, reproductive parameters, hormone levels, and aggressive behaviors in juvenile and adult rats were examined. Contrary to expectations, there was no effect of maternal separation on any measure of aggression. However, maternal separation altered peripubertal testosterone secretion and increased mean day of preputial separation. In addition, adult MS males demonstrated less total sexual behavior. There was no difference in sperm counts or testosterone levels at necropsy on PND 56 or in adulthood, but seminal vesicle weights were increased in adult MS rats. These results suggest that early life stress may influence hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis development in males, at least during peripuberty.     

Consistent Partial Least Squares for Nonlinear Structural Equation Models

Partial Least Squares as applied to models with latent variables, measured indirectly by indicators, is well-known to be inconsistent. The linear compounds of indicators that PLS substitutes for the latent variables do not obey the equations that the latter satisfy. We propose simple, non-iterative corrections leading to consistent and asymptotically normal (CAN)-estimators for the loadings and for the correlations between the latent variables. Moreover, we show how to obtain CAN-estimators for the parameters of structural recursive systems of equations, containing linear and interaction terms, without the need to specify a particular joint distribution. If quadratic and higher order terms are included, the approach will produce CAN-estimators as well when predictor variables and error terms are jointly normal. We compare the adjusted PLS, denoted by PLSc, with Latent Moderated Structural Equations (LMS), using Monte Carlo studies and an empirical application.     

Daily hassles,their antecedents and outcomes among professional first responders: A systematic literature review

Occupational groups such as firefighters, military officers, paramedics and police officers are exposed to a combination of acute, severe and accumulated everyday stress. Drawing on the daily hassles perspective on stress, the aim was to synthesize existing research on daily hassles in professional first responder settings into a theoretical model. A systematic mixed studies review with an integrated design was undertaken. The selection process resulted in 40 articles meeting the inclusion criteria. The selected papers represented two literature reviews, one qualitative study, eight longitudinal studies and 29 cross‐sectional studies. Five superior categories emerged in the analysis: Individual antecedent and continuously framing factors, Environmental antecedent and continuously framing factors, Appraisal and coping processes, Daily hassles and Outcome. Suggestions for future research are presented.