Maternal gatekeeping, coparenting quality, and fathering behavior in families with infants

The present study examined the role of maternal gatekeeping behavior in relation to fathers' relative involvement and competence in child care in 97 families with infant children. Parents' beliefs about fathers' roles were assessed prior to their infant's birth. Parents' perceptions of maternal gatekeeping behavior (encouragement and criticism) and coparenting relationship quality were assessed at 3.5 months postpartum. The authors assessed fathers' relative involvement and competence in child care using a combination of parent report and observational measures. Results suggest that even after accounting for parents' beliefs about the paternal role and the overall quality of the coparenting relationship, greater maternal encouragement was associated with higher parent-reported relative father involvement. Moreover, maternal encouragement mediated the association between coparenting quality and reported relative father involvement. With respect to fathers' observed behavior, fathers' beliefs and parents' perceptions of coparenting relationship quality were relevant only when mothers engaged in low levels of criticism and high levels of encouragement, respectively. These findings are consistent with the notion that mothers may shape father involvement through their roles as "gatekeepers."     

Form effects on the estimation of students' oral reading fluency using DIBELS

This study examined the effects of passage and presentation order on progress monitoring assessments of oral reading fluency in 134 second grade students. The students were randomly assigned to read six one-minute passages in one of six fixed orders over a seven week period. The passages had been developed to be comparable based on readability formulas. Estimates of oral reading fluency varied across the six stories (67.9 to 93.9), but not as a function of presentation order. These passage effects altered the shape of growth trajectories and affected estimates of linear growth rates, but were shown to be removed when forms were equated. Explicit equating is essential to the development of equivalent forms, which can vary in difficulty despite high correlations across forms and apparent equivalence through readability indices.     

The structure and correlates of kanashibari.

The present research is an examination of the parameters and correlates of kanashibari, operationally defined as being unable to move upon awakening or before falling asleep. Nonclinical Japanese individuals (N = 720), 34% of whom reported an experience of kanashibari at least once, were administered D. I. Templer's (1970) Death Anxiety Scale, R. Brown's (1990) Locus of Control Scale, and a questionnaire devised by the authors to collect information about kanashibari. The results showed that the kanashibari experience was positively correlated with death anxiety, with being a woman, and with external-other locus of control; this last measure assessed the extent to which these individuals felt that their lives were determined by fate, good luck, or chance.     

Neurodevelopmental influences in the genesis and epigenesis of schizophrenia: An overview

The classical view of schizophrenia as a dementing disorder has recently been challenged by several findings pointing to a prenatal/perinatal origin of at least some of the brain abnormalities seen in these patients. This article reviews evidence from a number of different fields, including postmortem neuropathology, in vivo neuroimaging, developmental neuropsychology, and obstetric epidemiology in assessing the viability of a neurodevelopmental perspective of schizophrenia. Although the case for viewing schizophrenia as a neurodevelopmental condition is still circumstantial, and several gaps in this model remain, evidence from these diverse lines of inquiry converge to indicate at least a partial role of disturbances of brain development in the disorder's genesis and epigenesis.     

Gaze cuing and affective judgments of objects: I like what you look at

When we see another person look somewhere, we automatically attend to the same location in space. Thisjoint attention emerges early in life and has a great impact on social interactions in development and in everyday adult life. The direction of another’s gaze indicates what object is of current interest, which may be the target for a subsequent action. In this study, we found that objects that are looked at by other people are liked more than objects that do not receive the attention of other people (Experiment 1). This suggests that observing averted gaze can have an impact on the affective appraisals of objects in the environment. This liking effect was absent when an arrow was used to cue attention (Experiment 2). This underlines the importance of other people’s interactions with objects for generating our own impressions of such stimuli in the world.     

The coregulatory effects of emotionally focused therapy

This study examined the heart rate synchrony between a single couple in emotionally focused therapy (EFT) as a method of measuring coregulatory effects over the course of treatment. A clinician who is an EFT certified therapist, supervisor, and trainer administered all eight sessions in a private practice setting. Surrogate synchrony analysis assessed heart rate synchrony between partners, indicating that significant heart rate synchrony was more likely over time. Significant heart rate synchrony was more likely during sessions that focused on clients’ sharing attachment injuries, bonds, and longings with their partner compared to sessions more focused on cognitive processing of the relationship. Additionally, there were delays in heart rate synchrony that occurred between the couple, which may be indicative of the emotional processing speed of the empathic response of each partner. Understanding the physiological synchrony patterns between dyads in treatment could clarify the potential of coregulation in the therapeutic process.     

A Critical Test of the Waist-to-Hip-Ratio Hypothesis of Female Physical Attractiveness

Recent research has led to increasingly sophisticated conjectures as to the roles that genetic heritage, prior experience, and environmental context play in the production and maintenance of complex behaviors. The field of evolutionary psychology was born of such conjectures (Stanley, 1895) and now serves as a niche for a growing number of researchers (Buss, 1995; Kenrick, 1994). One of the more provocative lines of experimental research to emerge from this alembic derives from the linkage of evolutionary theories of human mate selection with definitions of physical attractiveness based on somatic characteristics that simultaneously signal attractiveness and predict reproductive potential (Buss, 1989). The waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) has been purportedly demonstrated to be a robust example of just such an invariant perceptual cue (e.g., Henss, 1995; Singh, 1993a). Here, we report that judgments of attractiveness and fecundity can be either unrelated or related, positively or negatively, to the WHR depending on waist size, hip size, and weight, and are thus inconsistent with the evolutionary argument that human physical attractiveness is fundamentally a sign of mate value.