Predicting abuse in adolescent dating relationships over 1 year: the role of child maltreatment and trauma

Three mediators of the relationship between childhood maltreatment and dating violence perpetration during midadolescence (i.e., trauma-related symptoms, attitudes justifying dating violence, and empathy and self-efficacy in dating relationships) were tested over 1 year with a sample of students from 10 high schools (N = 1,317). Trauma-related symptoms had a significant cross-time effect on predicting incidents of dating violence for both boys and girls. Attitudes and empathy and self-efficacy did not predict dating violence over time, although they were correlated with such behavior at both time points. Child maltreatment is a distal risk factor for adolescent dating violence, and trauma-related symptoms act as a significant mediator of this relationship. The importance of longitudinal methodology that separates correlates from predictors is discussed.     

The Relative Influence of Client Characteristics on the Process and Outcomes of Premarital Counseling: A Survey of Providers

To explore the influence of client characteristics in premarital counseling, a five factor model is presented that includes the social context, family-of-origin influences, individual characteristics, couple interactional processes, and motivation for attending premarital counseling. The findings demonstrate that providers believe that many client characteristics influence the degree to which couples benefit from premarital counseling. Providers rated the influence of the client characteristic factors in the following order (from most to least influential): couple interactional processes, family-of-origin influences, individual characteristics, motivation for premarital counseling, and the social context. Recommendations for future theory development, practice, and research are discussed.The findings presented in this article were part of the authors doctoral dissertation at the University of Florida.     

Infants perceiving and acting on the eyes: tests of an evolutionary hypothesis

It has been hypothesized that an evolutionarily ancient mechanism underlies the ability of human infants to detect and act upon the direction of eye gaze of another human face. However, the evidence from behavioral studies with infants is also consistent with a more domain-general system responsive to the lateral motion of stimuli regardless of whether or not eyes are involved. To address this issue three experiments with 4-month-old infants are reported that utilize a standard face-cueing paradigm. In the first experiment an inverted face was used to investigate whether the motion of the pupils elicits the cueing effect regardless of the surrounding face context. In the second experiment pupil motion and eye gaze direction were opposed, allowing us to assess their relative importance. In a third experiment, a more complex gaze shift sequence allowed us to analyse the importance of beginning with a period of mutual gaze. Overall, the results were consistent with the importance of the perceived direction of motion of pupils. However, to be effective in cueing spatial locations this motion needs to be preceded by a period of direct mutual gaze (eye contact). We suggest that evolution results in information-processing biases that shape and constrain the outcome of individual development to eventually result in adult adaptive specializations.     

A dog's got personality: a cross-species comparative approach to personality judgments in dogs and humans

This research offers a blueprint for how a cross-species comparative approach can be realized empirically. In a single design, parallel procedures and instruments were used in 2 species, dogs (Canis familiaris) and humans (Homo sapiens), to test whether personality differences exist and can be judged in dogs as accurately as in humans. Personality judgments of humans and dogs were compared on 3 accuracy criteria: internal consistency, consensus, and correspondence. Results showed that, on all 3 criteria, judgments of dogs were as accurate as judgments of humans. These findings are consistent with the evolutionary continuity hypothesis and suggest an important conclusion not widely considered by either personality or animal researchers: Personality differences do exist and can be measured in animals other than humans.     

Locomotion,incidental learning,and the selection

In three experiments, we examined the effects of locomotion and incidental learning on the formation of spatial memories. Participants learned the locations of objects in a room and then made judgments of relative direction, using their memories (e.g., "Imagine you are standing at the clock, facing the jar. Point to the book"). The experiments manipulated the number of headings experienced, the amount of interaction with the objects, and whether the participants were informed that their memories of the layout would be tested. When participants were required to maintain a constant body orientation during learning (Experiment 1), they represented the layout in terms of a single reference direction parallel to that orientation. When they were allowed to move freely in the room (Experiment 2), they seemed to use two orthogonal reference axes aligned with the walls of the enclosing room. Extensive movement under incidental learning conditions (Experiment 3) yielded a mixture of these two encoding strategies across participants. There was no evidence that locomotion, interaction with objects, or incidental learning led to the formation of spatial memories that differed from those formed from static viewing.     

The nature and treatment of stuttering as revealed by fMRI A within- and between-group comparison

This article reviews some of our recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of stuttering. Using event-related fMRI experiments, we investigated brain activation during speech production. Results of three studies comparing persons who stutter (PWS) and persons who do not stutter (PWNS) are outlined. Their findings point to a region in the right frontal operculum (RFO) that was consistently implicated in stuttering. During overt reading and before fluency shaping therapy, PWS showed higher and more distributed neuronal activation than PWNS. Immediately after therapy differential activations were even more distributed and left sided. They extended to frontal, temporal, and parietal regions, anterior cingulate, insula, and putamen. These over-activations were slightly reduced and again more right sided two years after therapy. Left frontal deactivations remained stable over two years of observation, and therefore possibly indicate a dysfunction. After therapy, we noted higher activations in persons who stutter moderately than in those who stutter severely. These activations might reflect patterns of compensation. We discuss why these findings suggest that fluency-inducing techniques might synchronize a disturbed signal transmission between auditory, speech motor planning, and motor areas.

Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to: (1) identify regions of brain activations and deactivations specific for PWS; (2) describe brain activation changes induced by fluency shaping therapy; and (3) discuss the correlation between stuttering severity and brain activation.     

Event-related brain potential markers of high-language proficiency in adults

The central issue addressed is whether there are electrophysiological markers for high-language proficiency in adults. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in 19 young adults who demonstrated either "normal" or "high" language proficiency. ERPs were obtained during a sentence-processing task and analyzed for specific response components elicited by different word types. The ERPs in the normal and high-language proficiency groups were similar for early sensory related processing but differed in the later components thought to be more closely related to lexical access and post-lexical processing. The findings for the ERP waveforms suggest that adults with high-language proficiency show slightly faster lexical access over left anterior brain regions for closed class items, and a reduced reliance on contextual information contained in sentences.     

Fostering group identification and creativity in diverse groups: the role of individuation and self-verification

A longitudinal study examined the interplay of identity negotiation processes and diversity in small groups of master's of business administration (MBA) students. When perceivers formed relatively positive impressions of other group members, higher diversity predicted more individuation of targets. When perceivers formed relatively neutral impressions of other group members, however, higher diversity predicted less individuation of targets. Individuation at the outset of the semester predicted self-verification effects several weeks later, and self-verification, in turn, predicted group identification and creative task performance. The authors conclude that contrary to self-categorization theory, fostering individuation and self-verification in diverse groups may maximize group identification and productivity.     

Impaired processing of prosodic and musical patterns after right hemisphere damage

The distinction between the processing of musical information and segmental speech information (i.e., consonants and vowels) has been much explored. In contrast, the relationship between the processing of music and prosodic speech information (e.g., intonation) has been largely ignored. We report an assessment of prosodic perception for an amateur musician, KB, who became amusic following a right-hemisphere stroke. Relative to matched controls, KB's segmental speech perception was preserved. However, KB was unable to discriminate pitch or rhythm patterns in linguistic or musical stimuli. He was also impaired on prosodic perception tasks (e.g., discriminating statements from questions). Results are discussed in terms of common neural mechanisms that may underlie the processing of some aspects of both music and speech prosody.     

Age,acculturation, cultural adjustment,and mental health symptoms of Chinese,Korean, and Japanese immigrant youths

This study of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean immigrant junior high and high school students (N = 319) investigated the association between age, acculturation, cultural adjustment difficulties, and general mental health concerns. Hierarchical regression analyses determined that among all of the independent variables, age, acculturation, and cultural adjustment difficulties had significant predictive effects on mental health symptoms. Implications for theory, research, and practice are addressed, particularly as they relate to developmental issues among immigrant youths.