MEDIATING ROLE OF MATERNAL SENSITIVITY: ENHANCING LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN AT‐RISK FAMILIES

Home‐visiting programs have gained increasing importance in family‐centered prevention and intervention. However, few studies have examined the mechanisms underlying early intervention treatment effects. The goal of this study is to analyze the mediating role of maternal sensitivity in enhancing language development with the home‐visiting program Parents as Teachers (PAT). Data were collected and analyzed within the ongoing, long‐term ZEPPELIN study, a randomized controlled trial with 251 participating at‐risk families. Via longitudinal mediation analysis, we examined whether effects of the PAT on receptive and expressive language outcomes at 24 and 36 months were mediated by maternal sensitivity at 12 months. Within a moderated mediation framework, we investigated whether the level of family psychosocial stress affects this mediation. Results showed that intervention effects on language outcomes are mediated by maternal sensitivity—weakly and through specific pathways. Moderation and moderated mediation analyses indicated that effects of the PAT and also specific mediation effects increase with the level of psychosocial stress. Implications of the results for practice are discussed.     

Retooling Techno-Moral Scenarios. A Revisited Technique for Exploring Alternative Regimes of Responsibility for Human Enhancement

The techno-moral scenarios (TMS) approach has been developed to explore the interplay between technology, society and morality. Focused on new and emerging sciences and technologies, techno-moral scenarios can be used to inform and enhance public deliberation on the desirability of socio-technical trajectories. The article presents an attempt to hybridise this scenario tool, complementing the focus on ethics with an explicit acknowledgement of the multiple meanings of responsibility and of the plurality of its regimes, i.e. the institutional arrangements presiding over the assumption and assignment of responsibilities. We call this integrated technique ‘rTMS’ to stress the continuity with the original technique and, at the same time, to highlight the additional element we aim to develop: responsibility. The article describes this approach and illustrates a loosely standardised procedure that can be used to organise and conduct public engagement workshops based on rTMS.     

Family Concerns and Involvement During Kindergarten Transition

The transition from preschool to formal schooling constitutes an important developmental milestone for children and their families. Very few empirical studies investigating the kindergarten transition for typically developing children have been published, and fewer have examined transition experiences from the perspective of caregivers. The aims of our study were to investigate: (1) parent concerns during transition, (2) perceived needs during transition, and (3) parent involvement in kindergarten preparation activities. Parents/caregivers of 86 general education students transitioning to kindergarten completed a survey assessing their concerns, needs, and involvement in transition preparation activities. Results suggest that although the majority of parents expressed few concerns regarding their child’s kindergarten transition, a subset (i.e., 27.9%) reported significant concerns. The areas of concern most often cited by families in this sample were socio-behavioral in nature. Parents in this sample expressed a desire for various types of information during transition. Parents most often reported engaging in low intensity transition practices characterized by generic forms of contact, rather than more individualized and intensive practices often cited in the literature as best practices. In addition, parent involvement in transition preparation activities differed by family socioeconomic status as well as district locale. This study offers practical suggestions and policy implications for coordinating family and school efforts during children’s kindergarten transition.     

Formation of semantic associations between subliminally presented face-word pairs

Recent evidence suggests that consciousness of encoding is not necessary for the rapid formation of new semantic associations. We investigated whether unconsciously formed associations are as semantically precise as would be expected for associations formed with consciousness of encoding during episodic memory formation. Pairs of faces and written occupations were presented subliminally for unconscious associative encoding. Five minutes later, the same faces were presented suprathreshold for the cued unconscious retrieval of face-occupation associations. Retrieval instructions required participants to classify the presented individuals according to their putative (1) regularity of income, (2) length of education, and (3) creativity value of occupational activity. The three instructions yielded more classifications consistent with a person’s occupation if the person had been subliminally presented with his written occupation versus a meaningless word (control condition). This suggests that consciousness is not necessary to encode, long-term store, and retrieve semantically precise associations between primarily unrelated items.     

Interpretability, validity, and the minimum important difference

Patient-reported outcomes are increasingly used as dependent variables in studies regarding the effectiveness of clinical interventions. But patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) do not provide intuitively meaningful data. For instance, it is not clear what a five point increase or decrease on a particular scale signifies. Establishing ‘interpretability’ involves making changes in outcomes meaningful. Attempts to interpret PROMs have led to the development of methods for identifying a minimum important difference (MID). In this paper, however, I draw on Charles Taylor’s distinction between weak and strong evaluations to suggest that identifying a MID, specifically, a MID that uses a patient-reported reference group, may not provide an adequate interpretation of these measures. Moreover, I argue that the difficulty with interpreting these measures is tied to a larger problem concerning their validity. If researchers wish to interpret PROMs, they may first need to know more about the constructs they attempt to measure, namely, quality of life.     

Choosing a patient-reported outcome measure

There has been much philosophical interest regarding the ‘hierarchy of evidence’ used to determine which study designs are of most value for reporting on questions of effectiveness, prognosis, and so on. There has been much less philosophical interest in the choice of outcome measures with which the results of, say, an RCT or a cohort study are presented. In this paper, we examine the FDA’s recently published guidelines for assessing the psychometric adequacy of patient-reported outcome measures. We focus on their recommendations for demonstrating content validity and also for how researchers should weigh up the sum of psychometric evidence when choosing these measures. We argue that questions regarding judgment and understanding meaning of these measures should play a more central role in determining their adequacy.     

Aging affects attunement in perceiving length by dynamic touch

Earlier studies have revealed age-dependent differences in perception by dynamic touch. In the present study, we examined whether the capacity to learn deteriorates with aging. Adopting an ecological approach to learning, the authors examined the process of attunement--that is, the changes in what informational variable is exploited. Young and elderly adults were trained to perceive the lengths of unseen, handheld rods. It was found that the capacity to attune declines with aging: Contrary to the young adults, the elderly proved unsuccessful in learning to detect the specifying informational variables. The fact that aging affects the capacity to attune sets a new line of research in the study of perception and perceptual-motor skills of elderly. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for the ongoing discussions on the ecological approach to learning.     

Do mindsets shape intentions to help those in need? Unravelling the paradoxical effects of mindsets of poverty on helping intentions

Poverty remains a pressing problem, with social support playing a crucial role in its reduction. Drawing on previous research on health-related mindsets, we propose that a growth mindset of poverty – that is, believing poverty can be changed – can have both positive and negative effects on helping intentions through increased outcome expectancy and blame, respectively. In three experiments, we found that a growth mindset of poverty is associated with increased outcome expectancy and blame, which, in parallel, mediate the relationship between mindsets and helping intentions. However, these contrary indirect effects negate each other, yielding a total null effect. Further, manipulating the relationship between mindset and outcome expectancy (but not blame) alters the relationship between mindset and helping intentions (Studies 2 and 3). By shedding light on the circumstances under which mindsets of poverty can diminish or amplify helping intentions, our research offers valuable insights for practitioners and charities dedicated to combating poverty.     

Effects of Sensory Deficit on Phalanx Force Deviation During Power Grip Post Stroke

The effect of sensory deficits on power grip force from individual phalanges was examined. The authors found that stroke survivors with sensory deficits (determined by the Semmes-Weinstein monofilament test) gripped with phalanx force directed more tangential to the object surface, than those without, although both groups had similar motor deficits (Chedoke-McMaster and Fugl-Meyer), grip strength, and skin friction. Altered grip force direction elevates risk of finger slippage against the object thus grip loss/object dropping, hindering activities of daily living. Altered grip force direction was associated with altered muscle activation patterns. In summary, the motor impairment level alone may not describe hand motor control in detail. Information about sensory deficits helps elucidate patients' hand motor control with functional relevance.