The Unique Influences of Parental Divorce and Parental Conflict on Emerging Adults in Romantic Relationships

Parental divorce and parental conflict influence children across multiple domains, including risk of divorce in their own marriages. However, parental conflict and divorce, both separately and the interaction between the two, have not often been studied in premarital relationships, especially when considering possible mechanisms mediating these effects. In a large sample of emerging adults (N = 353), we show that when the most plausible mediating mechanisms are simultaneously considered, only relational commitment mediates the influence of parental conflict on outcomes. Parental conflict in the absence of divorce was associated with less commitment and, in turn, less relationship satisfaction and stability in emerging adult children’s romantic relationships, whereas parental conflict was unrelated to outcomes for children whose parents divorced. Implications for theory and preventive interventions are discussed.     

The Life Satisfaction of Dual-Earner Mothers and Fathers: Does Flexible Scheduling Matter?

Work and family scholarship emphasizes flexible scheduling policies as a key solution to the challenges faced by workers navigating the work–family interface. Despite making life easier for workers, very little research has considered how such policies relate to life satisfaction, especially in terms of how gender comes into play. This study examines how both the availability of flexible scheduling options and the actual use of such policies are differentially related to the life satisfaction of dual-earner mothers and fathers. To address this research question, we use data from the National Study of the Changing Workforce conducted in the United States (N = 211 dual-earner fathers and 284 dual-earner mothers). Results show that flexible scheduling availability is unrelated to the life satisfaction of fathers and mothers. In contrast, flexible scheduling use is significantly and positively related to life satisfaction for dual-earner mothers, but negatively related to the life satisfaction of dual-earner fathers. Explanations for these findings are discussed.     

Telling tales in school: extended contact interventions in the classroom

Extended contact has demonstrated its effectiveness in promoting more positive intergroup attitudes among children in previous experimental research. The current project evaluates the use of extended contact interventions involving story‐telling in two novel school settings: the United States (N = 213) and Italy (N = 222) among children aged 5–12 years. Findings indicate support for the effectiveness of the interventions in these two locations among younger minority and majority children but call into question the durability of positive outcomes. Applications and implications are discussed.     

A comparison of children with serious emotional disturbance served in residential and school settings

The National Adolescent and Child Treatment Study (NACTS) was designed to study children identified and served by the public mental health and special education systems as seriously emotionally disturbed. Children (N=812) and their parents (N=740) participated in the first wave of data collection in this longitudinal study. Subjects lived in six states, with approximately half in psychiatric residential treatment centers and the other half in public school special education programs. A multi-method, multi-source methodology was employed. The sample is characterized by externalizing problems, poor adaptive functioning, and substantial academic deficits. Residential children were more likely to have blended families, were more likely to have previously received residential treatment, and had higher rates of conduct disorder, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder, as measured by the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children. The two groups did not differ on intelligence, age of onset, or rates of schizophrenia or depression. The data suggest the presence of greater at-risk factors in the residential group and different paths of entry into special education and residential treatment programs.     

Satiation or availability? Effects of attention,memory, and imagery on the perception of ambiguous figures

The prolonged-inspection technique has been used to demonstrate effects of satiation on the perception of ambiguous figures. We propose that the inspection phase, in which subjects view an unambiguous version of the stimulus prior to observing the ambiguous figure, does not create neural fatigue but rather provides a context in which the alternative percept is apprehended and gains perceptual strength through processes such as imagination or memory. The consequent availability of the alternative organization drives the perceptual phenomena that have been thought to reflect satiation. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that (1) preexperimental exposure to the target figures and (2) allocation of attention to the-inspection figures-were both necessary in order to obtain results similar to those predicted by the satiation model. In Experiment 2, we obtained similar results, finding that effects of prior inspection were greater the greater the amount and availability of information regarding the alternative percept during the inspection phase. Subjects who generated visual images of the noninspected alternative during inspection yielded results comparable to those from subjects to whom both versions were presented isuaily.     

STIMULUS CHARACTERISTICS WITHIN DIRECTIVES: EFFECTS ON ACCURACY OF TASK COMPLETION

Three experiments were conducted in an outpatient setting with young children who had been referred for treatment of noncompliant behavior and who had coexisting receptive language or receptive vocabulary difficulties. Experiment 1 studied differential responding of the participants to a brief hierarchical directive analysis (least‐to‐most complex stimulus prompts) to identify directives that functioned as discriminative stimuli for accurate responding. Experiment 1 identified distinct patterns of accurate responding relative to manipulation of directive stimulus characteristics. Experiment 2 demonstrated that directives identified as effective or ineffective in obtaining stimulus control of accurate responding during Experiment 1 continued to control accurate responding across play activities and academic tasks. Experiment 3 probed effects of the interaction between the type of directive (effective vs. ineffective) and the reinforcement contingency (differential reinforcement for attempts vs. differential reinforcement for accurate responses) on accurate task completion and disruptive behavior. Results suggested that behavioral escalation from inaccurate responding to disruptive behavior occurred only when ineffective directives were combined with differential reinforcement for accurate task completion. The overall results are discussed in terms of developing a methodology for identifying stimulus characteristics of directives that affect accurate responding.     

Objects and their locations in exogenous cuing

Anatomical, physiological, and behavioral studies provide support for separate object- and locationbased components of visual attention. Although studies of object-based components have usually involved voluntary attention, more recent evidence has suggested that objects may play an independent role in reflexiveexogenous orienting, at least at long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). In the present experiments, the role of objects in reflexive attentional orienting was investigated by developing a task in which location and object cuing could be separately examined for both short and long SOAs. Typical location cuing effects were obtained, indicating facilitation at short cue—target intervals and inhibition of return (IOR) at longer intervals. In contrast, object cuing resulted in facilitation for cued objects at long cue—target intervals and no object-based IOR. Interestingly, object cuing primarily affected targets at cued locations, and not those at uncued locations. Together, the experiments examine the interactive nature of objects and locations in exogenous orienting and seem most consistent with a location-mediated view of object-based orienting.     

Modern psychometrics for assessing achievement goal orientation: A Rasch analysis

Background A program of research is needed that assesses the psychometric properties of instruments designed to quantify students' achievement goal orientations to clarify inconsistencies across previous studies and to provide a stronger basis for future research. Aim We conducted traditional psychometric and modern Rasch‐model analyses of the Achievement Goals Questionnaire (AGQ, Elliot & McGregor, 2001 ) and the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Scale (PALS, Midgley et al., 2000 ) to provide an in‐depth analysis of the two most popular instruments in educational psychology. Samples and methods For Study 1, 217 undergraduate students enrolled in educational psychology courses participated. Thirty‐four were male and 181 were female (two did not respond). Participants completed the AGQ in the context of their educational psychology class. For Study 2, 126 undergraduate students enrolled in educational psychology courses participated. Thirty were male and 95 were female (one did not respond). Participants completed the PALS in the context of their educational psychology class. Results Traditional psychometric assessments of the AGQ and PALS replicated previous studies. For both, reliability estimates ranged from good to very good for raw subscale scores and fit for the models of goal orientations were good. Based on traditional psychometrics, the AGQ and PALS are valid and reliable indicators of achievement goals. Rasch analyses revealed that estimates of reliability for items were very good but respondent ability estimates varied from poor to good for both the AGQ and PALS. These findings indicate that items validly and reliably reflect a group's aggregate goal orientation, but using either instrument to characterize an individual's goal orientation is hazardous.     

Monolingual,bilingual, trilingual: infants' language experience influences the development of a word‐learning heuristic

How infants learn new words is a fundamental puzzle in language acquisition. To guide their word learning, infants exploit systematic word‐learning heuristics that allow them to link new words to likely referents. By 17 months, infants show a tendency to associate a novel noun with a novel object rather than a familiar one, a heuristic known as disambiguation. Yet, the developmental origins of this heuristic remain unknown. We compared disambiguation in 17‐ to 18‐month‐old infants from different language backgrounds to determine whether language experience influences its development, or whether disambiguation instead emerges as a result of maturation or social experience. Monolinguals showed strong use of disambiguation, bilinguals showed marginal use, and trilinguals showed no disambiguation. The number of languages being learned, but not vocabulary size, predicted performance. The results point to a key role for language experience in the development of disambiguation, and help to distinguish among theoretical accounts of its emergence.     

Measuring emotions during epistemic activities: the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales

Measurement instruments assessing multiple emotions during epistemic activities are largely lacking. We describe the construction and validation of the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scales, which measure surprise, curiosity, enjoyment, confusion, anxiety, frustration, and boredom occurring during epistemic cognitive activities. The instrument was tested in a multinational study of emotions during learning from conflicting texts (N?=?438 university students from the United States, Canada, and Germany). The findings document the reliability, internal validity, and external validity of the instrument. A seven-factor model best fit the data, suggesting that epistemically-related emotions should be conceptualised in terms of discrete emotion categories, and the scales showed metric invariance across the North American and German samples. Furthermore, emotion scores changed over time as a function of conflicting task information and related significantly to perceived task value and use of cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies.