Does partisan media make a pawn of mistrust? Institutional trust and preventive COVID-19 health behaviors in a polarized pandemic

In a rapidly developing crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, people are often faced with contradictory or changing information and must determine what sources to trust. Across five time points (N = 5902) we examine how trust in various sources predicts COVID-19 health behaviors. Trust in experts and national news predicted more engagement with most health behaviors from April 2020 to March 2022 and trust in Fox news, which often positioned itself as counter to the mainstream on COVID-19, predicted less engagement. However, we also examined a particular public health behavior (masking) before and after the CDC announcement recommending masks on 3 April 2020 (which reversed earlier expert advice discouraging masks for the general public). Prior to the announcement, trust in experts predicted less mask-wearing while trust in Fox News predicted more. These relationships disappeared in the next 4 days following the announcement and reversed in the 2 years that follow, and emerged for vaccination in the later time points. We also examine how the media trusted by Democrats and Republicans predicts trust in experts and in turn health behaviors. Broadly we consider how the increasingly fragmented epistemic environment has implications for polarization on matters of public health.     

Gender differences in optimism,loss aversion and attitudes towards risk

Systematic differences in the attitudes of men and women towards risk is well established. In this paper, we investigate the joint role of two prominent psychological characteristics in explaining this difference. Our starting point is that risk assessments can be thought of, in general terms, to combine beliefs about the probability of negative outcomes occurring with a subjective valuation of how painful that negative outcome would be. Exploiting large-scale panel data from the United Kingdom, we find that gender differences in financial optimism and financial loss aversion – the stronger psychological response to monetary losses than monetary gains – explain a substantial proportion of the parallel gender difference in willingness to take risks. This result prevails even after controlling for the Big Five personality traits, suggesting that the prominent psychological characteristics capture different aspects of behaviour than the Big Five.     

Links between social and linguistic processing of speech in preschool children with autism: behavioral and electrophysiological measures

Data on typically developing children suggest a link between social interaction and language learning, a finding of interest both to theories of language and theories of autism. In this study, we examined social and linguistic processing of speech in preschool children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing chronologically matched (TDCA) and mental age matched (TDMA) children. The social measure was an auditory preference test that pitted 'motherese' speech samples against non-speech analogs of the same signals. The linguistic measure was phonetic discrimination assessed with mismatch negativity (MMN), an event-related potential (ERP). As a group, children with ASD differed from controls by: (a) demonstrating a preference for the non-speech analog signals, and (b) failing to show a significant MMN in response to a syllable change. When ASD children were divided into subgroups based on auditory preference, and the ERP data reanalyzed, ASD children who preferred non-speech still failed to show an MMN, whereas ASD children who preferred motherese did not differ from the controls. The data support the hypothesis of an association between social and linguistic processing in children with ASD.     

The level and nature of autistic intelligence

Autistics are presumed to be characterized by cognitive impairment, and their cognitive strengths (e.g., in Block Design performance) are frequently interpreted as low-level by-products of high-level deficits, not as direct manifestations of intelligence. Recent attempts to identify the neuroanatomical and neurofunctional signature of autism have been positioned on this universal, but untested, assumption. We therefore assessed a broad sample of 38 autistic children on the preeminent test of fluid intelligence, Raven's Progressive Matrices. Their scores were, on average, 30 percentile points, and in some cases more than 70 percentile points, higher than their scores on the Wechsler scales of intelligence. Typically developing control children showed no such discrepancy, and a similar contrast was observed when a sample of autistic adults was compared with a sample of nonautistic adults. We conclude that intelligence has been underestimated in autistics.     

Providing a Transcultural Genetic Counseling Service in the UK

This paper uses a broad definition of culture to explore the practice of transcultural genetic counseling through three case studies. The first case involves a White genetic counselor seeing an Asian family, the second, an Asian genetic counselor seeing an Asian family and the third, a hearing genetic counselor seeing a culturally Deaf client. Boundaries, transference and countertransference reactions are considered within each transcultural encounter and the author of each case reflects in detail on their role in the client interaction and their impact on the transcultural dynamic. The cases are used to illustrate some cultural beliefs or characteristics that may challenge the genetic counselor’s expectations. The value of identifying and interpreting these differences to facilitate useful clinical work is considered. The paper debates, where possible, whether it is helpful to culturally match genetic counselor and client.     

The role of frontal lobe functioning in the development of infant self-regulatory behavior.

In the last two decades, there has been tremendous growth in two fields of study related to human infant development: (1) the development of neural processes during the early postnatal years and (2) the development of self-regulatory behavior. In an attempt to stimulate research on the relation between early brain development and self-regulatory processes, several hypotheses pertaining to the role of frontal lobe functioning in the development of emotion regulation during infancy are proposed. The results of a study of the relation between frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and emotional behavior of 21-month-old infants are reported. It was found that increases in frontal lobe activation were associated with increases in emotional arousal, while EEG activity recorded from the parietal region showed either a reciprocal pattern of activation or did not change as a function of level of emotional arousal. These results provide evidence for the specialized role of the frontal lobe in mediating emotional behavior during infancy.     

Resource Document on Access to Firearms by People with Mental Disorders

The American Psychiatric Association, (“APA”), with more than 36,000 members at present, is the Nation's leading organization of physicians who specialize in psychiatry. APA provides for education and advocacy and develops policy through Position Statements. It promotes enhanced knowledge of particular topics relevant to psychiatric practice and patient care through Resource Documents. Since 1993, the APA has developed various positions and resource materials related to firearms and mental illness, incorporating evolving themes as new issues emerge. This paper reflects the APA's 2014 Resource Document on “Access to Firearms by People with Mental Disorders.” This article is derived from work done on behalf of American Psychiatric Association and remains the property of APA. It has been altered only in response to the requirements of peer review. Copyright © 2015 American Psychiatric Association. Published with permission (original adopted by the American Psychiatric Association 2014).     

The Association Between Childhood Maltreatment and Coping Strategies: The Indirect Effect Through Attachment

Maladaptive coping strategies represent a potentially treatable component of psychopathologies associated with childhood abuse and neglect. Coping strategies are relatively stable constructs that may be viewed as trait-like behavioral manifestations of larger, albeit less accessible, intra- and interpersonal processes, such as activation of the attachment system. The authors investigated a potential mediational pathway from childhood maltreatment (in the form of physical and emotional abuse experiences) to coping strategies developed in emerging adulthood through attachment organization in a sample of undergraduate psychology research participants at a public Midwestern university (N = 225). Avoidant attachment patterns helped to explain the relationship between increased instances of childhood maltreatment and a decreased use of adaptive coping strategies. Further, both anxious and avoidant attachment mediated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and an increased use of maladaptive coping. By utilizing an attachment theory–informed approach as an explanatory guide, researchers and clinicians may be better able to conceptualize, study, and treat complex cases by understanding the underlying relationships between childhood maltreatment, attachment, and coping.