DOES USE OF TANGIBLE REWARDS WITH INDIVIDUAL CHILDREN AFFECT PEER OBSERVERS?1

The common assumption that employing tangible rewards with individual children will have adverse effects upon peer observers was studied in the preschool setting. Multiple-subject, multiple-baseline procedures were applied to two classes of children, aged 3.5 to 6 yr. In each group, three consecutive children with low base rates of in-seat behavior received a verbal contingency and food rewards for sitting, while peers (with either low or high rates of in-seat behavior) received neither food nor teacher attention for sitting. Peer reactions measured were in-seat behavior, aggression, nonaggressive disruptive behavior, and complaints. The procedures neither decreased the in-seat behavior of peer observers, nor increased their aggressive or disruptive behavior. On the contrary, peers with low base rates of sitting initially displayed an abrupt, but temporary, increase in sitting. Moreover, although no compensatory attention was delivered, all children exhibited improved sitting by the end of the study. Complaints, which consisted mainly of requests for rewards, decreased in frequency with successive program phases, and within each phase. It is suggested that the class improvement in sitting behavior and the absence of negative effects on observers may be partially due to the high frequency of attention the teacher maintained for other desired behavior and the lack of attention to children's complaints.     

Aggressor's response to the victim's facial expression of emotion

Male college students (N = 96) were met by an experimental confederate who either agreed or disagreed with their opinion. The subjects were then given an opportunity to deliver electric shock to the confederate (victim), who responded to the shock with a facial expression of anger, fear, joy, or neutrality. The opinion condition had no effect, but the victim's facial expressions were clearly perceived by the subjects and two of them significantly influenced the amount of shock delivered to the victim by the subjects. The expression of enjoyment (smile) increased aggression while that of anger decreased aggression. The effects of the fear and neutral expressions did not differ from each other, and neither had a consistent significant effect on the amount of shock administered by the subjects.     

Parenting Dimensions and Internalizing Difficulties in Italian and U.S. Emerging Adults: The Intervening Role of Autonomy and Relatedness

The present study examined the associations between emerging adults’ perceived parental psychological control and autonomy support, and their autonomy, relatedness and internalizing difficulties in Italy and the U.S. The participants included 494 Italian and 414 U.S. college students, between 18 and 28 years of age (Mean = 21.58, SD = 2.18). Our findings showed that dependency-oriented psychological control had no significant direct associations with autonomy, relatedness or internalizing difficulties. Moreover, the association between parental autonomy support and internalizing problems was fully intervened by autonomy and relatedness, whereas the association between achievement-oriented psychological control and anxiety and depressive symptoms was partially intervened by autonomy and relatedness. Finally, although parental psychological control and autonomy support had similar effects on maladjustment across the two countries, relatedness appeared to play a more central role as an intervening variable for anxiety in the Italian group than in the U.S. group. Overall, our findings highlighted the importance of examining parents’ contributions to emerging adults’ internalizing problems via autonomy support and psychological control across cultures.     

Bridging the HIV Divide: Stigma,Stories and Serodiscordant Sexuality in the Biomedical Age

At a time when advances in biomedicine have rendered people with HIV non-infectious under certain conditions, much public discourse on HIV remains stuck in a paradigm of ‘risk’, which does little to lessen the divide between people with and without HIV in society or challenge the way intimate relationships across this divide are typically stigmatised as undesirable and problematic. We rarely hear the stories of couples who live with mixed HIV statuses and how they themselves perceive and manage their so called ‘serodiscordance’. In this article, we examine such stories by mixed-status couples in Australia. In stark contrast to the dominant discourse, these couples invoked narratives of love, the everyday unimportance and manageability of HIV, and recent developments in HIV medicine, thereby challenging the way serodiscordant sexuality has been cast in public health research. Drawing on Ken Plummer’s work on hidden sexual stories, we consider not only the content of their stories, but the broader significance of stories to the world in which they are enacted, of storytelling as a rally for social and political recognition and legitimacy. Reflecting on our own role in the co-production of research stories, we argue that by moving marginalised sexual stories out of silence, stigmatised communities and researchers can conjointly and incrementally shape a new public discourse and new forms of ‘intimate citizenship’.     

Duty-Related Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in 911 Telecommunicators: The Roles of Childhood Trauma Exposure and Emotion-Focused Coping

A history of childhood trauma exposure has been linked to the development of posttraumatic stress symptoms in adulthood following new exposure. Unhealthy coping behaviors that could develop or be utilized in response to early trauma could lend themselves to psychological issues in adulthood. Emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies in relation to stressful duty-related situations are examined as indirect pathways through which childhood trauma exposure could be associated with duty-related posttraumatic stress symptoms in 911 telecommunicators (N = 808). Multiple mediation models revealed that 3 of the 4 emotion-focused coping strategies, but not the problem-focused strategies, functioned as significant mediators in the association between childhood exposure and duty-related posttraumatic stress symptoms. Pairwise comparisons showed that self-controlling and escape-avoidance strategies were the strongest pathways of the indirect childhood trauma exposure–posttraumatic stress symptoms association. Implications of results regarding coping in response to new traumatic events in adulthood and potential research and intervention directions are discussed.     

Working conditions,well-being,and job-related attitudes among call centre agents

A comparison of 234 call centre agents with 572 workers in traditional jobs with long lasting training revealed lower job control and task complexity/variety and higher uncertainty among call agents. However, time pressure, concentration demands, and work interruptions were lower in call agents. Within the call agent sample, controlling for negative affectivity and other working conditions, job control predicted intention to quit, and job complexity/variety predicted job satisfaction and affective commitment. Social stressors and task-related stressors predicted uniquely indicators of well-being and job-related attitudes. Furthermore, data confirm the role of emotional dissonance as a stressor in its own right, as it explained variance in irritated reactions and psychosomatic complaints beyond other working conditions. Results indicate that strong division of labour may be a rather general phenomenon in call centres. Therefore, working conditions of call agents require a redesign by means of job enrichment or—better—organization development. Moreover, measures of social stressors and emotional dissonance should be integrated routinely into stress-related job analyses in service jobs.     

The size coding of responses: The size of switches and the force feedback

We aimed to understand which factors have a functional role in the size coding of responses, either the size of the switches or the force required to trigger each switch. This question is of relevance because it allows a better understanding of processes underlying action coding. In each trial, participants saw a small or large object. Depending on its colour, the participants had to press one of two switches. In the “size” condition, the response device consisted of two switches of different visual size, but both required the same amount of force. In the “force-feedback” condition, the response device consisted in two switches of identical visual size, but one switch required more force than the other. We found a compatibility effect in the “size,” not in the “force-feedback” condition, supporting that the size-coding of responses would be due to the size of the switches.     

The role of cognitive factors in the pathogenesis of obsessive-compulsive symptoms: a prospective study

Cognitive models of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) posit that specific kinds of dysfunctional beliefs (e.g., pertaining to responsibility and the significance of intrusive thoughts) underlie the development of this disorder. The present study was designed to prospectively evaluate whether dysfunctional beliefs thought to underlie OCD act as a specific vulnerability factor in the pathogenesis of obsessive-compulsive symptomatology. Eighty-five individuals were prospectively followed over a period of time thought to be associated with an increased onset of OCD symptoms -- childbirth and the postpartum. The majority of these new mothers and fathers experienced intrusive infant-related thoughts and performed neutralizing behaviors similar to, but less severe than, those observed in OCD. Scores on a measure of dysfunctional beliefs thought to underlie OCD predicted the development of obsessive-compulsive symptoms after controlling for pre-existing OCD symptoms, anxiety, and depression. Dysfunctional beliefs also predicted the severity of checking, washing, and obsessional OCD symptom dimensions, but not neutralizing, ordering, or hoarding symptom dimensions. These data provide evidence for specific dysfunctional beliefs as risk factors in the development of some types of OCD symptoms.     

Predictors to Happiness in Primary Students: Positive Relationships or Academic Achievement

This study aimed to examine the role of positive relationships and academic achievement in predicting student well-being, i.e. subjective happiness. This study employed a longitudinal design with two waves of data collection on a sample of 786 primary school students in Hong Kong. Students completed questionnaires on parent-child relationship, teacher-student relationship, peer relationship, academic achievement, and happiness at the beginning and end of the school year. Path analysis was used for data analysis. The results indicated that Time 1 parent-child relationship and peer relationship were associated with Time 2 academic achievement, after controlling for Time 1 academic achievement. However, only Time 1 parent-child relationship was predictive of Time 2 happiness. Time 2 academic achievement was a mediator between Time 1 parent-child relationship and peer relationship and Time 2 happiness. Furthermore, girls reported higher levels of academic achievement when they perceived better peer relationship than did boys, and girls were happier when they had higher levels of academic achievement than were boys. The results suggested the need to put in place strategies to enhance parent-child relationship, peer relationship, and a harmonious classroom.

     

Neural substrates of the ‘low‐level’ system for speech articulation: Evidence from primary opercular syndrome

We describe a patient with progressive disorder of speech, without language impairment (opercular syndrome). Morphometric analysis confirmed asymmetric volume reduction of the precentral areas (>left). Diffusion imaging showed significant white matter changes in the left frontal lobe, with specific involvement of the left corticobulbar tract and connections between supplementary/pre‐supplementary motor areas and the frontal operculum (frontal aslant tract). We suggest that the organization of expressive language includes a ‘low level’ motor system principally distributed in the left hemisphere that shows specific susceptibility to neurodegeneration, distinct from neural systems subtending praxic, and cognitive aspects of language.