Intergenerational studies of parenting and the transfer of risk from parent to child

This review describes a recent approach to studying the intergenerational processes that place families and children at risk for a broad variety of social, behavioral, and health problems. Intergenerational studies typically involve two (or more) generations of participants, observed over time. These projects are utilized to study the origins and early determinants of parenting behavior and of other environmental, health, and social conditions that place young offspring at risk for continuing behavioral, cognitive, and health problems. Convergent findings, across a broad range of research populations in several countries, suggest that problematic parenting develops in part through learning the behavior modeled by one's own parents. In addition, problematic parenting seems to be an extension of an individual's early style of aggressive and problematic social behavior. Parents with a history of childhood aggression, in particular, tend to have continuing social, behavioral, and health difficulties, as do their offspring. Conversely, parental involvement, cognitive stimulation, warmth, and nurturance appear to have important protective effects for offspring. Finally, educational achievement appears to be a powerful buffer against problematic parenting and a wide variety of difficult family circumstances, protecting families against the transfer of risk between generations.     

Adolescents’ Endorsement of Communal and Agentic Conflict-Management Strategies with Friends and Romantic Partners

To investigate contextual influences on gender differences and similarities, we compared adolescents’ endorsement of gender-typed communal/other-focused and agentic/self-focused conflict-management strategies in three relationship contexts: same-gender friends, other-gender friends, and other-gender heterosexual romantic partners. Our 2 Participant Gender (between-subjects) × 3 Relationship Context (within-subjects) mixed factorial design addressed whether findings of prior research (Keener and Strough 2017) with college-aged participants would generalize to adolescents. Participants (n?=?103; 47 male adolescents; 56 female adolescents, 14–17 years-old) from the U.S. South Atlantic and Middle Atlantic regions read nine hypothetical conflict scenarios (three per each relationship context) and rated their likelihood of using gender-typed strategies. Young women and men endorsed communal and agentic strategies significantly more in same- and other-gender friendships than in romantic relationships. Across all three relationship contexts, young women reported using significantly more agentic strategies than young men did. In contrast to previous research on college students (Keener and Strough 2017), the predicted Participant Gender x Relationship Context interaction was not significant in the present study. Our findings suggest that developmental processes such as age differences in gender socialization and lack of experience with romantic relationships might explain why findings from college students did not generalize to adolescents.

     

Prevention of the degraded-contingency effect by signalling training trials

Presentation of unsignalled unconditioned stimuli (USs) interspersed among Pavlovian excitatory conditioning trials weakens conditioned responding to a target conditioned stimulus (CS; Rescorla, 1968). However, signalling these intertrial USs with another cue (a cover stimulus) has been shown to alleviate this degraded-contingency effect (e.g. Durlach, 1982, 1983). In contrast to signalling the inter-trial USs, the present experiments examined the effect on the degraded-contingency effect of signalling the target CS-US pairings. Experiment 1, using parameters selected to avoid overshadowing, found that consistently presenting a cover stimulus immediately prior to the target CS-US pairings during degraded-contingency training alleviated the degraded-contingency effect. Experiment 2 examined the underlying mechanism responsible for this cover-stimulus effect through posttraining associative inflation of the cover stimulus or the context, and found that inflation of the cover stimulus attenuated responding to the target CS (i.e. empirical retrospective revaluation). The results are discussed in terms of various acquisition- and expression-focused models of acquired responding.     

Computer‐Mediated Communication Effects on Disclosure,Impressions, and Interpersonal Evaluations: Getting to Know One Another a Bit at a Time

This investigation examined how computer‐mediated communication (CMC) partners exchange personal information in initial interactions, focusing on the effects of communication channels on self‐disclosure, question‐asking, and uncertainty reduction. Unacquainted individuals (N = 158) met either face‐to‐face or via CMC. Computer‐mediated interactants exhibited a greater proportion of more direct and intimate uncertainty reduction behaviors than unmediated participants did, and demonstrated significantly greater gains in attributional confidence over the course of the conversations. The use of direct strategies by mediated interactants resulted in judgments of greater conversational effectiveness by partners. Results illuminate some microstructures previously asserted but unverified within social information processing theory (Walther, 1992), and extend uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975) to CMC interaction.     

Self-Affirmation Reduces Biased Processing of Health-Risk Information

An experiment tested whether a positive experience (the endorsement and recall of one's past acts of kindness) would reduce biased processing of self-relevant health-risk information. Women college students (N = 66) who reported high or low levels of daily caffeine use were exposed to both risk-confirming and risk-disconfirming information about the link between caffeine consumption and fibrocystic breast disease (FBD). Participants were randomly assigned to complete an affirmation of their kindness via questionnaire or to a no-affirmation condition. Results indicated that the affirmation manipulation made frequent caffeine drinkers more open, less biased processors of risk-related information. Relative to frequent caffeine drinkers who did not affirm their kindness, frequent caffeine drinkers in the affirmation condition oriented more quickly to the risk-confirming information, rated the risk-confirming information as more convincing than the risk-disconfirming information, and recalled less risk-disconfirming information at a 1-week follow-up. They also reported greater perceived personal control over reducing their level of caffeine consumption. Although frequent caffeine drinkers in the affirmation condition initially reported lower intentions to reduce their caffeine consumption, there was no evidence that they were less likely to decrease their caffeine consumption at the follow-up. The possibility that positive beliefs and experiences function as self-regulatory resources among people confronting threats to health and well-being is discussed.     

Psychological Variables Associated with Pain Perceptions Among Individuals with Chronic Spinal Cord Injury Pain

Structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships between selected psychological variables and pain perceptions in 103 individuals experiencing chronic pain following traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI). Previous studies have suggested strong relationships between psychological variables and chronic SCI pain, but further delineation of such relationships is needed in order ultimately to develop more effective pain management strategies for individuals afflicted with such pain. Anger was found to be significantly related to perceptions of pain (p < .05), but neither guilt nor anger suppression was significantly associated with perceived pain. Internal health locus of control was associated with decreased pain perceptions (p < .05), but there was no significant relationship between internal health locus of control and anger. Punishing responses from significant others to pain complaints were related to feelings of guilt (p < .05) and perceived pain (p < .05), but this relationship was not mediated by guilt.