Imagining Disability Futurities

This article explores twelve short narrative films created by women and trans people living with disabilities and embodied differences. Produced through Project Re?Vision, these micro documentaries uncover the cultures and temporalities of bodies of difference by foregrounding themes of multiple histories: body, disability, maternal, medical, and/or scientific histories; and divergent futurities: contradictory, surprising, unpredictable, opaque, and/or generative futures. We engage with Alison Kafer's call to theorize disability futurity by wrestling with the ways in which “the future” is normatively deployed in the service of able‐bodiedness and able‐mindedness (Kafer 2013 ), a deployment used to render bodies of difference as sites of “no future” (Edelman 2004 ). By re‐storying embodied difference, the storytellers illuminate ongoing processes of remaking their bodily selves in ways that respond to the past and provide possibilities for different futures; these orientations may be configured as “dis‐topias” based not on progress, but on new pathways for living, uncovered not through evoking the familiar imaginaries of curing, eliminating, or overcoming disability, but through incorporating experiences of embodied difference into time. These temporalities gesture toward new kinds of futures, giving us glimpses of ways of cripping time, of cripping ways of being/becoming in time, and of radically re‐presencing disability in futurity.     

Lifespan aging and belief reasoning: Influences of executive function and social cue decoding

Older adults often perform poorly on Theory of Mind (ToM) tests that require understanding of others’ beliefs and intentions. The course and specificity of age changes in belief reasoning across the adult lifespan is unclear, as is the cause of the age effects. Cognitive and neuropsychological models predict that two types of processing might influence age differences in belief reasoning: executive functioning and social cue detection. In the current study we assessed 129 adults aged between 18 and 86 on novel measures of ToM (video clips and verbal vignettes), which manipulated whether true or false belief reasoning was required. On both video and verbal tasks, older adults (aged 65–88) had specific impairments in false belief reasoning, but showed no such problem in performing true belief tasks. Middle-aged adults (aged 40–64) generally performed as well as the younger adults (aged 18–39). Difficulties in updating information in working memory (but not inhibitory problems) partially mediated the age differences in false belief reasoning. Also, the ability to decode biological motion, indexing social cue detection, partially mediated age-related variance in the ability to interpret false beliefs. These results indicate that age differences in decoding social cues and updating information in memory may be important influences on the specific problems encountered when reasoning about false beliefs in old age.     

Blind spots in the search for happiness: Implicit attitudes and nonverbal leakage predict affective forecasting errors

We investigated implicit knowledge and affective forecasting, reasoning that although conscious evaluations are available to people when predicting their future emotional responses, nonconscious evaluations are not. However, these automatically-activated evaluations should contribute to in-the-moment emotional experiences, and thus they should account for misforecasts (i.e., discrepancies between affective forecasts and actual experiences). We conducted two studies to explore affective misforecasts, using food items as stimuli. In Study 1, participants' implicit attitudes (but not their explicit attitudes) predicted misforecasts of food enjoyment, supporting the role of nonconscious evaluations in affective forecasting errors. In Study 2, we examined participants' facial expressions (another index of nonconscious evaluation) upon the presentation of food items, and we found that these nonverbal behaviors predicted affective misforecasts as well. In sum, although nonconscious evaluations are unavailable when anticipating the future, they may contribute to one's in-the-moment experiences and thus serve as blind spots in affective forecasting.     

Personality neglect. The unforeseen impact of personal dispositions on emotional life

The present research provides the first evidence that people neglect their own personalities when they envision their future emotional lives. In Study 1, students ignored the impact of their dispositional happiness in predicting how they would feel 2 weeks after receiving grades. Yet dispositional happiness played an important role in shaping actual emotional experiences. Similarly, exhibiting personality neglect, participants in Study 2 overlooked their trait levels of neuroticism and optimism when forecasting their reaction to Barack Obama's election, though these personality dimensions were related to their actual emotional reactions. Because they overlooked the influence of their own dispositions, individuals incorrectly predicted their future feelings. Ironically, as a result of this personality neglect, more optimistic individuals were less likely to see their emotional future in an overly rosy light, whereas more neurotic individuals were more likely to overestimate the pleasure that the future would bring.     

Grafting Orchids and Ugly: Theatre, Disability and Arts-Based Health Research

Theatre-based health policy research is an emerging field, and this article investigates the work of one of its leaders. In 2005, prominent medical geneticist and playwright Jeff Nisker and his collaborators produced Orchids, his play concerning pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, to research theatre as a tool for engaging citizens in health policy development. Juxtaposing Orchids with a concurrent disability theatre production in Vancouver entitled Ugly, I argue that disability theatre suggests important means for building inclusiveness in this kind of research and complicates Nisker’s own call for international guidelines to delimit how journalists, playwrights, filmmakers, physicians and other media authors share genetics-based narratives in public.     

Media violence exposure in aggressive and control adolescents: differences in self‐ and parent‐reported exposure to violence on television and in video games

The purpose of present study was to investigate differences in media violence exposure between groups of adolescents with and without Disruptive Behavior Disorders with Aggressive Features, using a case‐controlled design and multimethod assessment. Samples of 27 adolescents aged 13‐17 with Disruptive Behavior Disorder with Aggressive Features and 27 age‐gender‐IQ matched controls completed a semistructured interview about exposure to violence on television and video games; parents completed a corresponding questionnaire measure. Moderate intercorrelations were found between most self‐ and parent‐report television and video game violence exposure measures. Compared to control adolescents, adolescents with Disruptive Behavior Disorder with Aggressive Features had higher aggregate media violence exposure, higher exposure to video game violence, and higher parent‐reported exposure to television violence. Results show that adolescents and parents agree about the adolescent's level of media violence exposure, that exposure to violence on television tends to be accompanied by exposure to violence in video games, and that the association between media violence exposure and Disruptive Behavior Disorder with Aggressive Features is not due to a spurious effect of gender or IQ. Aggr. Behav. 31:000–000, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Psychometric Properties of Parent–Child (0–5 years) Interaction Outcome Measures as Used in Randomized Controlled Trials of Parent Programs: A Systematic Review

This systematic review sought to identify observational measures of parent–child interactions commonly implemented in parenting program research, and to assess the level of psychometric evidence available for their use with this age group. Two separate searches of the same databases were conducted; firstly, to identify eligible instruments, and secondly to identify studies reporting on the psychometric properties of the identified measures. Five commercial platforms hosting 19 electronic databases were searched from their inception to conducted search dates. Fourteen measures were identified from Search 1; a systematic search of randomized controlled trial evaluations of parenting programs. For Search 2, inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied to 1327 retrieved papers that described the development and/or validation of the 14 measures identified in Search 1. Seventeen articles met the inclusion criteria, resulting in five observational measures for the final review. Data were extracted and synthesized using the COSMIN rating system to describe the methodological quality of each article alongside the overall quality rating of the psychometric property reported for each measure using the Terwee checklist. Measure reliability was categorized into four domains (internal consistency, test-re-test, inter-rater, and intra-rater). Measure validity was categorized into four domains (content, structural, convergent/divergent, and discriminant). Results indicated that the majority of psychometric evidence related to children aged from birth the three with internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, and structural validity the most commonly reported properties, although this evidence was often weak. The findings suggest further validation of the included measures is required to establish acceptability for the whole target age group.

     

Body mass index,peer victimization,and body dissatisfaction across 7 years of childhood and adolescence: Evidence of moderated and mediated pathways

Numerous studies have reported that children and adolescents who are overweight are more likely to get bullied, yet the literature is replete with methodological limitations. We examined the transactional associations between peer victimization and body mass index (BMI), considering potential mediating (body dissatisfaction) and moderating (biological sex) factors. Participants (n = 631) came from the McMaster Teen Study, where students were assessed annually between Grades 5–11, approximately half were girls (53.9%), and the majority were white (76.4%). Peer victimization (from Grade 5) and body dissatisfaction (from Grade 6) were self‐reported by students, while parents reported their child's height and weight (from Grade 5). Cascade models were built up sequentially using path analysis across 2‐year increments (Grades 5, 7, 9, and 11). The final model had excellent fit to the data (χ² = 73.961, df = 66, p = 0.234). Grade 5 peer victimization had a direct effect on BMI across a 2‐year period in girls (b = 0.59, SE = 0.21, p = 0.005) and boys (b = 0.82, SE = 0.30, p = 0.006), and an indirect effect on BMI via body dissatisfaction across a 4‐year period (b = 0.074, 95% CI = 0.012–0.152, p = 0.036). At no point did BMI directly increase risk for peer victimization, yet there were indirect effects via body dissatisfaction among girls but not boys. Peer victimization and body dissatisfaction were proximally and longitudinally related at every time point and there was a transactional association in late‐adolescence among girls but not boys. Targeting modifiable factors in the social (peer victimization) and psychological (body dissatisfaction) domains may limit accelerated weight gain and the health risks associated with excess adiposity.     

Are you being served…? An unobtrusive experiment of affective influences on helping in a department store

Based on recent theories of affect and cognition, this unobtrusive field experiment predicted and found that induced positive mood improved real‐life customer service behaviors by less experienced sales staff, but had no effect on the behaviors of experienced long‐term staff in several department stores. Positive or negative mood was unobtrusively induced in sales staff in major department stores by a confederate. A second confederate, blind to the mood induction, then asked employees for help to locate a non‐existent item. The frequency and duration of helpful behaviors in response to the request was recorded. Consistent with Forgas' Affect Infusion Model (AIM), less experienced employees showed a significant mood‐congruent pattern in their responses helping more in a positive than in a negative mood. Long‐term employees who could rely on routine, direct access processing were not influenced by the mood induction. The implications of these findings for contemporary affect‐cognition theorizing and for everyday affective influences on interpersonal behaviors and customer service delivery are considered. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessing readiness for change in adolescents with eating disorders

The Readiness and Motivation Interview (RMI) is a semistructured interview measure of readiness and motivation to change that can be used for all eating disorder diagnoses. The RMI has demonstrated excellent psychometric properties and has both clinical and predictive utility in adult samples. This study examined the psychometric properties of the RMI in a younger population, namely, 12- to 18-year-old girls with eating disorders. Study participants (N = 65) completed the RMI and measures of convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity. Adolescents with eating disorders were able to conceptualize and articulate their readiness for change and to report the extent to which change efforts were for themselves versus for others. RMI readiness profiles across eating disorder symptom domains in adolescents were comparable to those in adults, with higher reported readiness to change binge eating than to change dietary restriction or compensatory strategies. Differences in internal consistency between adult and adolescent samples are discussed. Interviewing adolescents early in treatment about readiness may assist clinicians in forming an alliance with this difficult-to-engage population, while also providing valuable information for treatment planning.