Assessing the Key to Effective Coaching in Parent–Child Interaction Therapy: The Therapist-Parent Interaction Coding System

This paper describes the initial evaluation of the Therapist-Parent Interaction Coding System (TPICS), a measure of in vivo therapist coaching for the evidence-based behavioral parent training intervention, parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT). Sixty-one video-recorded treatment sessions were coded with the TPICS to investigate (1) the variety of coaching techniques PCIT therapists use in the early stage of treatment, (2) whether parent skill-level guides a therapist’s coaching style and frequency, and (3) whether coaching mediates changes in parents’ skill levels from one session to the next. Results found that the TPICS captured a range of coaching techniques, and that parent skill-level prior to coaching did relate to therapists’ use of in vivo feedback. Therapists’ responsive coaching (e.g., praise to parents) was a partial mediator of change in parenting behavior from one session to the next for specific child-centered parenting skills; whereas directive coaching (e.g., modeling) did not relate to change. The TPICS demonstrates promise as a measure of coaching during PCIT with good reliability scores and initial evidence of construct validity.     

Incidental anger and the desire to evaluate

Our results indicate that people experiencing incidental anger are more likely than people in neutral and other emotional states to prefer to perform evaluative tasks, even though their anger may bias the evaluations they make. Induced anger increased participants’ desire to evaluate others’ ideas (Experiment 1) and made the evaluations of those ideas more negative in valence (Experiment 2). Anger increased the appeal of evaluating ideas when evaluations were expected to be largely negative but not when evaluations were expected to be positive (Experiments 3 and 4). Mediation analyses revealed that this willingness to evaluate when angry stems from a belief that evaluating others can leave angry people in a positive mood. Because people are often free to decide when to perform the tasks required of them, this tendency may have implications for how and when ideas are evaluated.     

What's new? Children prefer novelty in referent selection

Determining the referent of a novel name is a critical task for young language learners. The majority of studies on children’s referent selection focus on manipulating the sources of information (linguistic, contextual and pragmatic) that children can use to solve the referent mapping problem. Here, we take a step back and explore how children’s endogenous biases towards novelty and their own familiarity with novel objects influence their performance in such a task. We familiarized 2-year-old children with previously novel objects. Then, on novel name referent selection trials children were asked to select the referent from three novel objects: two previously seen and one completely novel object. Children demonstrated a clear bias to select the most novel object. A second experiment controls for pragmatic responding and replicates this finding. We conclude, therefore, that children’s referent selection is biased by previous exposure and children’s endogenous bias to novelty.     

Cross-cultural temperamental differences in infants, children, and adults in the United States of America and Finland

Cross-cultural differences in temperament were investigated between infants (n = 131, 84 Finns), children (n = 653, 427 Finns), and adults (n = 759, 538 Finns) from the United States of America and Finland. Participants from both cultures completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire, Childhood Behavior Questionnaire and the Adult Temperament Questionnaire. Across all ages, Americans received higher ratings on temperamental fearfulness than Finnish individuals, and also demonstrated higher levels of other negative affects at several time points. During infancy and adulthood, Finns tended to score higher on positive affect and elements of temperamental effortful control. Gender differences consistent with prior studies emerged cross-culturally, and were found to be more pronounced in the US during childhood and in Finland during adulthood.     

Vocabulary and automatic attention: The relation between novel words and gaze dynamics in noun generalization

Words direct visual attention in infants, children, and adults, presumably by activating representations of referents that then direct attention to matching stimuli in the visual scene. Novel, unknown, words have also been shown to direct attention, likely via the activation of more general representations of naming events. To examine the critical issue of how novel words and visual attention interact to support word learning we coded frame-by-frame the gaze of 17- to 31-month-old children (n = 66, 38 females) while generalizing novel nouns. We replicate prior findings of more attention to shape when generalizing novel nouns, and a relation to vocabulary development. However, we also find that following a naming event, children who produce fewer nouns take longer to look at the objects they eventually select and make more transitions between objects before making a generalization decision. Children who produce more nouns look to the objects they eventually select more quickly following the naming event and make fewer looking transitions. We discuss these findings in the context of prior proposals regarding children's few-shot category learning, and a developmental cascade of multiple perceptual, cognitive, and word-learning processes that may operate in cases of both typical development and language delay.

Research Highlights

• Examined how novel words guide visual attention by coding frame-by-frame where children look when asked to generalize novel names.
• Gaze patterns differed with vocabulary size: children with smaller vocabularies attended to generalization targets more slowly and did more comparison than those with larger vocabularies.
• Demonstrates a relationship between vocabulary size and attention to object properties during naming.
• This work has implications for looking-based tests of early cognition, and our understanding of children's few-shot category learning.

     

In Search of the Virgin and Child in Egypt: Coptic Art in Specialized Encyclopedias

Abstract

This article examines a variety of specialized encyclopedias from several disciplines that can be used to introduce students to the topic of Coptic art. The reference works included here can be found in a variety of academic libraries, from Carnegie research institutions to learning resource centers in community libraries, and will help students develop the foundational knowledge necessary to approach more specific topics within Coptic art. Although students may be comfortable, with varying degrees of effectiveness, searching the online catalog or navigating library databases to find books and journal articles, they are, for the most part, unaware of the wealth of useful information found on the metaphorical reference shelves. It is here that librarians can serve a valuable role identifying specific reference titles that introduce students to scholarly texts on a myriad of topics.     

Empirical Correlates of Cosmopolitan Orientation: Etiology and Functions in a Worldwide Representative Sample

Psychology has begun contributing to social theory by providing empirical measures of actually existing cosmopolitanism that complements more purely theoretical conceptions of the construct common in philosophy and sociology. Drawing from two waves of research on representative adult samples from 19 countries (N = 8740), metric invariance was found for the three factors of cosmopolitan orientation (COS): cultural openness (CO), global prosociality (GP), and respect for cultural diversity (RCD). In terms of etiology, among Wave 1 measures, the personality factor of agreeableness was the best predictor of the cosmopolitan factors of GP and RCD at Wave 2, whereas openness of personality best predicted CO. Wave 1 measures of education, political liberalism, and self-reported social status independently also explained a small amount of variance in COS. Functionally, COS was shown to predict less prejudice against immigrants, and more support for global civil society, even after controlling for social dominance orientation. All three COS factors independently predicted better attitudes towards immigrants. GP was the best predictor of trust in the United Nations, whereas RCD was the best predictor of support for environmental protection. The three-factor model of COS appears well-calibrated for assessing actually existing cosmopolitanism across cultures.     

A Closer Look at Life Goals Across Adulthood: Applying a Developmental Perspective to Content,Dynamics, and Outcomes of Goal Importance and Goal Attainability

It is well established that goals energize and direct behaviour across the lifespan. To better understand how goals are embedded in people's lives across adulthood, the present research examined life goals' content (health, personal growth, prosocial engagement, social relations, status, work), dynamics (interplay between goal importance and goal attainability), and outcomes (subjective well‐being) from a developmental perspective. We argue that people rate those goals as important and attainable that enable them to master developmental tasks, that they adapt their goals to personal capacities, and that goals predict subjective well‐being after 2 and 4 years. The sample included 973 individuals (18–92 years old, M = 43.00 years) of whom 637 participated 2 years later and 573 participated 4 years later. Goal importance and well‐being were assessed at all occasions and goal attainability at the first two occasions. Results indicated that age was negatively associated with importance and attainability of personal‐growth, status, and work goals but positively associated with importance and attainability of prosocial‐engagement goals. The association between goal importance and attainability was largely bidirectional over time; and goal attainability, rather than goal importance, was positively linked to later well‐being. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of adult lifespan development. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology