Factors associated with responses to sexual harassment and satisfaction with outcome

This study examined contextual and behavioral factors and types of responses to sexual harassment in relation to harassed employees' satisfaction with the outcome of sexual harassment situations. Subjects were 105 male and female faculty and staff members (89.5% Caucasian; 5.7% multiethnic/multicultural; 4.8% unspecified) employed by a midwestern university who reported experiencing unwanted sexual attention on the job. Results undicated that employees responded more strongly to unwanted sexual behavior if they perceived it as sexual harassment and if they perceived their work climate as encouraging the problem. Harassed employees' gender, power, and perceptions of the work climate were all associated with their satisfaction with the situation outcome. Although making a formal or informal complaint was not associated with greater satisfaction, talking to the harasser without using aggressive communication strategies increased the likelihood of a satisfactory outcome for the employee. Talking to family or friends, a response used by women more often than men, was associated with dissatisfaction. Suggestions for further research are discussed.This research was primarily funded by the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The authors gratefully acknowledge the research assistance of Jami Winters, Gena Ritter, Sarah Holmes, Kim Gangwish, and Mary Lou Costanzo.     

Mentors' Influence on Mexican American Students' Career and Educational Development

Effects of mentoring on Mexican American high school students' career aspirations were examined. Results indicated most students had a mentor, and mentors were most helpful through role modeling, verbal encouragement, personal support, and providing career guidance. Gender differences were found on several outcome variables but were not detected based on sex or ethnic match, or the presence of a mentor. Los efectos de mentoring en estudiantes mexicanos de la high school en aspiraciones de carrera se examinaron. Los resultados indicaron la mayoría de los estudiantes tuvieron un mentor, y mentores eran muy útiles por el papel que modela, el ánimo verbal, apoyo personal, y proporcionar la guía vocacional. Las diferencias del género se encontraron en varias variables del resultado pero no fueron discernidas basado en la presencia de y del sexo o el igual étnico con un mentor.     

Atypicalities in sleep and semantic consolidation in autism

Sleep is known to support the neocortical consolidation of declarative memory, including the acquisition of new language. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often characterized by both sleep and language learning difficulties, but few studies have explored a potential connection between the two. Here, 54 children with and without ASD (matched on age, nonverbal ability and vocabulary) were taught nine rare animal names (e.g., pipa). Memory was assessed via definitions, naming and speeded semantic decision tasks immediately after learning (pre‐sleep), the next day (post‐sleep, with a night of polysomnography between pre‐ and post‐sleep tests) and roughly 1 month later (follow‐up). Both groups showed comparable performance at pre‐test and similar levels of overnight change on all tasks; but at follow‐up children with ASD showed significantly greater forgetting of the unique features of the new animals (e.g., pipa is a flat frog). Children with ASD had significantly lower central non‐rapid eye movement (NREM) sigma power. Associations between spindle properties and overnight changes in speeded semantic decisions differed by group. For the TD group, spindle duration predicted overnight changes in responses to novel animals but not familiar animals, reinforcing a role for sleep in the stabilization of new semantic knowledge. For the ASD group, sigma power and spindle duration were associated with improvements in responses to novel and particularly familiar animals, perhaps reflecting more general sleep‐associated improvements in task performance. Plausibly, microstructural sleep atypicalities in children with ASD and differences in how information is prioritized for consolidation may lead to cumulative consolidation difficulties, compromising the quality of newly formed semantic representations in long‐term memory.     

Gender-Typing of Children’s Toys: Causes,Consequences, and Correlates

Gender differences in children’s toy interests and play behaviors are large and may lead to gender differentiation of physical, cognitive, and social development among children. In this Special Issue, we gather together cutting-edge research on the factors that affect gender differences in children’s toy interests, how subtle gender-related messages affect children’s performance and behaviors, and how adults create these gender-related messages and affect children’s interests. We illustrate themes found in the current literature, but also comment on issues that need to be addressed by future research. We also identify points of intervention in which stereotypes about toys and gender differentiated play behaviors and toy interests can be reduced in an effort to promote greater diversity of children’s play.     

Perspective taking in referring to objects behind versus in front of an observer: Frames of reference,intraindividual consistency,and response latencies

Speakers of English and German typically adopt the reflection variant of the relative frame of reference (FoR) in order to describe how nonoriented objects that are located in front of them are related to one another. Little is known, however, about how they proceed in dorsal settings, with objects located in their back. In this article, we explore the turn hypothesis, which assumes a (mental) 180° turn of the observer to face the objects, converting the dorsal into a frontal situation, so that the preferred FoR variant for frontal settings can be applied. To elicit spatial references, we used photographs that showed an observer and two objects either in the observer's visual field (frontal condition) or in the observer's back (dorsal condition). The observer was looking either in the same direction as the referencing individual (aligned perspectives) or in the opposite direction (vis-à-vis perspective). Data from two experiments show that while participants do adopt the observer's perspective, their references in dorsal settings are incompatible with the turn hypothesis. Analyses of response latencies indicate additional cognitive costs for establishing a FoR for the very first item in the dorsal condition as compared to the frontal condition, but fast adaption for subsequent items, and high intraindividual consistency in FoR choice in both conditions. Maintaining the assumption that references in dorsal settings should be compatible with the variant of the relative FoR adopted in frontal settings, participants’ references can be explained by assuming a backward projection that gets by without a (mental) turn of the observer.     

The Role of Child Personality in Effects of Psychologically Controlling Parenting: An Examination at the Level of Daily Fluctuations

Research increasingly demonstrates the detrimental effects of psychologically controlling parenting on children's adjustment. An important and practically relevant question is whether some children are more vulnerable for the effects of psychologically controlling parenting. In the current diary study, we investigated whether daily psychologically controlling parenting relates to children's daily externalizing and internalizing problems and whether these associations depend on child personality. A total of 206 children (M age = 9.93 years; 46.6% female) along with their mothers and fathers (M age = 40.30 and 42.40 years) participated in this multi‐informant diary study. All three family members filled out a diary each day for seven days. Multilevel analyses indicated that daily maternal and paternal psychological control were positively related to daily externalizing and internalizing problems, a pattern that was fairly consistent across informants. Out of the 35 interactions tested, only three turned out to be significant. Overall, the limited number of interactions suggests that psychologically controlling parenting is generally detrimental to children's daily functioning. Still, children differ somewhat in their susceptibility to the effect of psychologically controlling parenting. © 2018 European Association of Personality Psychology     

The help-seeking orientations of Latino and non-Latino urban high school students: a critical-sociological investigation

This study focuses on the help-seeking orientations of low-status Latino adolescents. Help-seeking orientation is defined as a person's proclivity to resolve personal and academic problems through the seeking of social support (i.e., coping by seeking help). This article presents a selected review of the literature on key social antecedents of people's help-seeking orientation. It also presents an emerging sociological framework for recasting this social psychological phenomenon as an important mediating link between the systematic forces of class, race, and gender and the life chances of low-status youth. The authors report on a cross-sectional study of three measures of adolescent help-seeking orientation, based on a questionnaire survey of one urban high school in the southwestern United States. Measures of social class, gender, age, English-language proficiency, and academic performance were examined for their independent predictive value. The authors also tested for differential effects across three student groups: Spanish-dominant Latinos, English-proficient Latinos, and non-Latinos. Gender and academic performance emerged as the most salient predictors, suggesting that low-achieving males are particularly prone to withdraw from vital sources of support. Latino immigrants with little English proficiency also revealed signs of a negative or conflictive orientation toward help seeking, reporting low degrees of interpersonal openness and a low desire for academic support.