Assessing women's responses to sexual threat: validity of a virtual role-play procedure

This study evaluated the validity of a role-play procedure that uses virtual reality technology to assess women's responses to sexual threat. Forty-eight female undergraduate students were randomly assigned to either a standard, face-to-face role-play (RP) or a virtual role-play (VRP) of a sexually coercive situation. A multimethod assessment strategy was used to evaluate the efficacy of the role-play procedure in creating a realistic and immersive situation. Consistent with our hypotheses, women in the VRP condition exhibited greater negative affect and immersion than women in the RP condition. In addition, the level of assertive refusal in the VRP, but not the RP, condition differentiated between women with and without a prior history of sexual victimization. These findings provide evidence of the validity of a virtual role-play procedure for assessing women's responses in sexually threatening situations.     

Emotion dysregulation and adolescent psychopathology: a prospective study

Background

Emotion regulation deficits have been consistently linked to psychopathology in cross-sectional studies. However, the direction of the relationship between emotion regulation and psychopathology is unclear. This study examined the longitudinal and reciprocal relationships between emotion regulation deficits and psychopathology in adolescents.

Methods

Emotion dysregulation and symptomatology (depression, anxiety, aggressive behavior, and eating pathology) were assessed in a large, diverse sample of adolescents (N = 1065) at two time points separated by seven months. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the longitudinal and reciprocal relationships between emotion dysregulation and symptoms of psychopathology.

Results

The three distinct emotion processes examined here (emotional understanding, dysregulated expression of sadness and anger, and ruminative responses to distress) formed a unitary latent emotion dysregulation factor. Emotion dysregulation predicted increases in anxiety symptoms, aggressive behavior, and eating pathology after controlling for baseline symptoms but did not predict depressive symptoms. In contrast, none of the four types of psychopathology predicted increases in emotion dysregulation after controlling for baseline emotion dysregulation.

Conclusions

Emotion dysregulation appears to be an important transdiagnostic factor that increases risk for a wide range of psychopathology outcomes in adolescence. These results suggest targets for preventive interventions during this developmental period of risk.     

The relation between early mother–infant skin‐to‐skin contact and later maternal sensitivity in South African mothers of low birth weight infants

The relation between early mother–infant skin‐to‐skin contact (SSC) and mothers' subsequent sensitivity to their low birth weight infants was investigated in a study of 12 mother–infant dyads who participated in a South African randomized control study of early SSC. The dyads were visited in the home when infants were under 1 year. Amounts of SSC were taken from hospital records and home interviews. Videotapes of mother–infant interactions in the home were scored for maternal sensitivity on the Maternal Behavior Q‐Sort (D.R. Pederson, G. Moran, & S. Bento, 1999) and the Maternal Behavior subscale of the Nursing Child Assessment Teaching Scale (G. Sumner & A. Spietz, 1994). Amount of SSC in infants' first 24 hr correlated with amount of SSC through the first month. Amount of SSC in infants' first 24 hr independently accounted for maternal sensitivity on both measures, indicating that early mother–infant SSC predicted subsequent maternal sensitivity.     

Transculturals: Identifying the Invisible Minority

Transculturals spend their formative years in countries other than their country of origin. Specific issues addressed in this article are unique characteristics, prevalence rates, and developmental outcomes of transculturals. The author provides a culturally sensitive treatment model for transculturals, based on G. Roysircar's (2009) Multicultural Relationship Model. Los individuos transculturales pasan sus años formativos en un país distinto a su país de origen. Los asuntos específicos tratados en este artículo son sus características únicas, índices de prevalencia, y resultados de su desarrollo. El autor proporciona un modelo de tratamiento culturalmente sensible hacia los individuos transculturales, basado en el Modelo de Relaciones Multiculturales de G. Roysircar (2009).     

A Comparison of Taped Problems With and Without a Brief Post-Treatment Assessment on Multiplication Fluency

An adapted alternating treatments design was used to compare the effectiveness of a taped-problems (TP) intervention with TP and an additional immediate assessment (TP + AIA) on the multiplication fluency of six fifth-grade students. During TP, the students listened to a tape playing a series of multiplication problems and answers three times. Students were instructed to try to beat the tape by writing each answer before they heard it on the tape. The interval between each problem and answer was varied as the problems were repeated. For the TP + AIA condition, immediately after completing TP, students completed an extra assessment sheet consisting of the same problems heard on the tape. Results showed increases in math-fact fluency across both treatment sets of problems (TP and TP + AIA) and a control set of problems. However, results varied across students and only two of the students showed meaningful gains when the TP was supplemented with the AIA. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Posttraumatic Growth in Young Adults Who Experienced Serious Childhood Illness: A Mixed-Methods Approach

Sixty young adult survivors of a serious childhood illness completed quantitative and qualitative measures assessing the relationship between specific disease and distress factors and posttraumatic growth (PTG). Individuals who had recovered from their illness reported greater growth than those who were currently experiencing their illness. The regression model accounted for 47% of the variance in PTG, with perceived severity, illness status, and posttraumatic stress symptoms emerging as significant predictors. Qualitative analyses identified salient positive and negative factors associated with having had an illness, such as a positive shift in perspective and frequent medical requirements. Being past the daily demands of illness management may allow for greater PTG. Realization of positive aspects of having had an illness may require prompting.     

NATURALISTIC METHODOLOGY IN AN EMERGING SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY: LOTZE AND FECHNER IN THE BALANCE

The development of a methodologically naturalistic approach to physiological and experimental psychology in the nineteenth century was not primarily driven by a naturalistic agenda. The work of R. Hermann Lotze and G. T. Fechner help to illustrate this claim. I examine a selected set of central commitments in each thinkers philosophical outlook, particularly regarding the human soul and the nature of God, that departed strongly from a reductionist materialism. Yet, each contributed significantly to the formation of experimental and physiological psychology. Their work was influenced substantively by their respective philosophical commitments. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the merits of their specific proposals, Fechner's psychophysics and Lotze's local sign hypothesis respectively, did not depend upon sharing their metaphysical views regarding the human soul or the nature of God. A moderate, but significant, distinction between the contexts of discovery and of justification aids in understanding this balancing act.     

Color preferences in gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Color plays an important biological role in the lives of many animals, with some species exhibiting preferences for certain colors over others. This study explored the color preferences of two species of ape, which, like humans, possess trichromatic color vision. Six western lowland gorillas, and six chimpanzees, housed in Belfast Zoological Gardens, were exposed to three stimuli (cloths, boxes, sheets of acetate) in red, blue, and green. Six stimuli of the same nature, in each of the three colors, were provided to both species for 5 days per stimulus. The amount of interest that the animals showed toward each stimulus of each color was recorded for 1 hr. Results showed that the apes, both when analyzed as two separate groups, and when assessed collectively, showed significant color preferences, paying significantly less attention to the red-, than to the blue- or green-colored stimuli. The animals' interest in the blue- and green-colored stimuli did not differ significantly. Overall, the findings suggest that gorillas and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, may harbor color preferences comparable to those of humans and other species.     

Correction to: Closed but Not Protected: Excess Deaths Among the Amish and Mennonites During the COVID‑19 Pandemic

Journal of Religion and Health -     

Complexity effects on the children's gambling task

The children's gambling task (CGT [Kerr, A., & Zelazo, P. D. (2004). Development of “Hot” executive function: The children's gambling task. Brain and Cognition, 55, 148–157]) involves integrating information about losses and gains to maximize winnings when selecting cards from two decks. Both cognitive complexity and control (CCC) theory and relational complexity (RC) theory attribute younger children's difficulty to task complexity. In CCC theory, identification of the advantageous deck requires formulation of a higher-order rule so that gains and losses can be considered in contradistinction. According to RC theory, it entails processing the ternary relation linking three variables (deck, magnitude of gain, magnitude of loss). We designed two less complex binary-relational versions in which either loss or gain varied across decks, with the other held constant. The three closely matched versions were administered to 3–5-year-olds. Consistent with complexity explanations, children in all age groups selected cards from the advantageous deck in the binary-relational versions, but only 5-year-olds did so on the ternary-relational CGT.