Self-help efforts in a squatter community: Implications for addressing contemporary homelessness

This analysis addresses the nature of contemporary homelessness in the United States, the historical foundations of the shelter system, and survival strategies utilized by homeless persons in meeting their physical, social, and psychological needs. A framework that examines the degree of publicness/privateness and permanency/temporariness of spaces utilized by homeless persons is applied to a case study of a self-help squatter community living on an empty lot in New York City. By looking at the members of the group, their relationship to their neighbors and the local community, and their approaches in dealing with their needs, an assessment is made of this labor-intensive, self-help effort for providing shelter. Implications of self-help approaches are related to policy development and further research.     

Sex-role orientation and relationship development in same-sex dyads

The purpose of the present study was to assess the relationship between sex-role identity, behavioral interaction, and interpersonal attraction in an initial extended encounter. Eighty-two female subjects identified as either feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated participated in the study in same-sex dyads. The design contrasted three different dyad types: (a) feminine-feminine; (b) androgynous-androgynous; and (c) undifferentiated-undifferentiated. Each dyad completed an initial 5-min unstructured interaction, a 10-min getting-acquainted exercise, and a final 5-min unstructured interaction. Results of the combined initial and final unstructured interactions indicated greater interpersonal attraction between androgynous as compared with undifferentiated and feminine dyad types. During the interactions, androgynous individuals talked, looked at, and gestured to one another longer than did nonandrogynous individuals. There were, however, no significant differences between the feminine and undifferentiated dyads in interpersonal attraction or behavioral interaction. Discussion of the results emphasized the need to examine further the relationship between sex-role identity, behavioral interaction, and attraction in interpersonal encounters.     

Trajectories of Response to Treatments in Children with ADHD and Word Reading Difficulties

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - This study investigated patterns of response to intervention in children with co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and...     

Characteristics of Preschoolers with Lower Perceived Competence

The goal of the present study was to identify preschool children with "age-inappropriate" less positive self-perceptions, and to explore their parental and peer relationships as compared to their classmates with "age normal" self-perceptions. Participants were n = 127 preschool children (Mage = 54.98 mos., SD = 8.21). Data were collected from multiple sources including parental ratings, child self-reports, and teacher ratings. Results indicated that as compared to their peers, children with less positive self-perceptions demonstrated more internalizing problems (i.e., loneliness, social-withdrawal), were more excluded by peers, and had mothers with less positive parenting styles. Results are discussed in terms of the implications of poorer self-perceptions in early childhood.     

Preschoolers' Understanding of Simple and Complex Emotions: Links with Gender and Language

In this study we assessed individual differences among preschoolers' emotion understanding, verbal ability, and gender role behavior. Fifty-three children (M = 3 years, 5 months; 26 girls, 27 boys) participated in task that used puppets to assess their understanding of simple (happy, sad) and complex emotions (proud, embarrassed) and a standard vocabulary task. Parents completed a questionnaire on the frequency of their children's gender-typed behavior. Results indicated positive associations between children's total emotion understanding and both general verbal ability (particularly for boys) and parents' perceptions of stereotypic feminine behaviors. Gender analysis revealed that, independent of vocabulary ability, girls scored higher than boys on emotion labeling and understanding of complex emotions, especially the concept of pride. Results are discussed in relation to individual differences and effects of sociocultural context.     

The role of pictorial convention in haptic picture perception

An investigation of tactile picture perception is reported. Blindfolded sighted subjects explored either 'line drawings' or 'textured' tactile pictures produced on Zytex swell paper. All pictures were 'two-dimensional', that is they depicted only one object face and so did not represent a third dimension. Both picture sets represented the same objects. Results revealed that the textured pictures, in which solid surfaces of depicted objects were uniformly textured, were recognised more often than tactile line drawings, in which surfaces of objects were simply bounded by lines. There were no significant correlations between imagery ability (visual, cutaneous, or kinaesthetic) and picture recognition success. Texture may be a form of 'uniform connectedness' (Palmer and Rock 1994 Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 1 29-55) or 'common region' (Palmer 1992 Cognitive Psychology 24 436-447), highlighting the global characteristics of stimuli. We argue that textured pictures may encourage the haptic system to take a more globally oriented approach to tactile picture perception, benefiting recognition.     

The brain basis of the phonological deficit in dyslexia is independent of IQ

Although the role of IQ in developmental dyslexia remains ambiguous, the dominant clinical and research approaches rely on a definition of dyslexia that requires reading skill to be significantly below the level expected given an individual's IQ. In the study reported here, we used functional MRI (fMRI) to examine whether differences in brain activation during phonological processing that are characteristic of dyslexia were similar or dissimilar in children with poor reading ability who had high IQ scores (discrepant readers) and in children with poor reading ability who had low IQ scores (nondiscrepant readers). In two independent samples including a total of 131 children, using univariate and multivariate pattern analyses, we found that discrepant and nondiscrepant poor readers exhibited similar patterns of reduced activation in brain areas such as left parietotemporal and occipitotemporal regions. These results converge with behavioral evidence indicating that, regardless of IQ, poor readers have similar kinds of reading difficulties in relation to phonological processing.     

Growing Up in Violent Communities: Do Family Conflict and Gender Moderate Impacts on Adolescents’ Psychosocial Development?

This study examined the moderating effects of family conflict and gender on the relationship between community violence and psychosocial development at age 18. The study sample consisted of 728 children and families who were part of the Infant Health and Development Program study of low-birth-weight, pre-term infants. In this sample, adolescent psychosocial outcomes were predicted by community violence differently for male and female children and based on their experiences of conflict at home. For male children, being in a high conflict family as a child exacerbated the negative effects of community violence such that internalizing problems (depression and anxiety) and risk-taking behaviors increased as community violence increased, while being in a low conflict family protected the child against the negative impacts of the community. For female adolescents, there were no moderating effects of family conflict on the relationship between community violence and externalizing problems. Moderating effects for internalizing problems demonstrated that being in low conflict families did not serve as protection against community violence for girls as was demonstrated for boys. These findings demonstrate the long-term effects of community violence on child development, highlighting the importance of gender and family context in the development of internalizing and externalizing problems.     

Prime time news: The influence of primed positive and negative emotion on susceptibility to false memories

We examined the relation between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation using a novel paradigm, the ambiguous stimuli affective priming (ASAP) paradigm. Participants (N = 88) viewed ambiguous neutral images primed either at encoding or retrieval to be interpreted as either highly positive or negative (or neutral/not primed). After viewing the images, they either were asked misleading or non-leading questions. Following a delay, memory accuracy for the original images was assessed. Results indicated that any emotional priming at encoding led to a higher susceptibility to misinformation relative to priming at recall. In particular, inducing a negative interpretation of the image at encoding led to an increased susceptibility of false memories for major misinformation (an entire object not actually present in the scene). In contrast, this pattern was reversed when priming was used at recall; a negative reinterpretation of the image decreased memory distortion relative to unprimed images. These findings suggest that, with precise experimental control, the experience of emotion at event encoding, in particular, is implicated in false memory susceptibility.     

Gender Neutral Names: Don't Be So Sure!

Males and females were asked to rate the gender neutrality of familiar and unfamiliar names in order to identify gender neutral names for training and research purposes. A large group of non-traditional students and a group of practicing managers provided responses to a series of names. Two follow-up studies were also conducted to provide replication and verification. Initially, 26 familiar and 21 unfamiliar names were studied although in the final study that was expanded to include nine more familiar names. The most neutral names identified were Pat, Terry, Chris, and Lee.