Heightened sensitivity to facial expressions of emotion in borderline personality disorder

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have been hypothesized to exhibit significant problems associated with emotional sensitivity. The current study examined emotional sensitivity (i.e., low threshold for recognition of emotional stimuli) in BPD by comparing 20 individuals with BPD and 20 normal controls on their accuracy in identifying emotional expressions. Results demonstrated that, as facial expressions morphed from neutral to maximum intensity, participants with BPD correctly identified facial affect at an earlier stage than did healthy controls. Participants with BPD were more sensitive than healthy controls in identifying emotional expressions in general, regardless of valence. These findings could not be explained by participants with BPD responding faster with more errors. Overall, results appear to support the contention that heightened emotional sensitivity may be a core feature of BPD.     

Violence and minority youth: the effects of risk and asset factors on fighting among African American children and adolescents

This cross-sectional study examined risk and asset factors thought to be associated with fighting among a sample of 1,642 African American children and adolescents in a central Alabama school district. Results show that poor grades, parental abuse, and gang affiliation were significant risk factors associated with higher frequency of fighting. Results also show that parental monitoring and being happy at school were associated with lower frequency of fighting, suggesting the importance of continued support for outreach to parents and further efforts to reduce or eliminate the community factors that promote proliferation of gangs. Programs, either for an entire community or a school system within a community, must be sensitive to the specific risks, assets, and outcomes of that environment so that prevention and intervention are sensitive to cultural, environmental, and demographic distinctions in target populations.     

Proactive personality and the successful job search: a field investigation with college graduates

The current article tests a model of proactive personality and job search success with a sample of 180 graduating college students. Using structural equation modeling, the authors tested a theoretical model that specified the relations among proactive personality, job search self-efficacy, job search behaviors, job search effort, and job search outcomes. Job seekers were surveyed at 2 separate points in time, once 3-4 months prior to graduation and once 2-3 months following graduation. The results suggest that proactive personality (a) significantly influenced the success of college graduates' job search, (b) was partially mediated through job search self-efficacy and job search behavior, and (c) was independent of self-esteem and conscientiousness. The findings are discussed in terms of their general implications for understanding the nature of the process through which distal personality factors, such as proactive personality, affect the nature and success of an individual's job search.     

Verbal coding and the storage of form-position associations in visual-spatial short-term memory

Short-term memory for form-position associations was assessed using an object relocation task. Participants attempted to remember the positions of either three or five Japanese Kanji characters, presented on a computer monitor. Following a short blank interval, participants were presented with 2 alternative Kanji, only 1 of which was present in the initial stimulus, and the set of locations occupied in the initial stimulus. They attempted to select the correct item and relocate it back to its original position. The proportion of correct item selections showed effects of both articulatory suppression and memory load. In contrast, the conditional probability of location given a correct item selection showed an effect of load but no effect of suppression. These results are consistent with the proposal that access to visual memory is aided by verbal recoding, but that there is no verbal contribution to memory for the association between form and position.     

Beyond the optimal contact strategy: a reality check for the contact hypothesis

The contact hypothesis proposes that interaction between members of different groups reduces intergroup prejudice if--and only if--certain optimal conditions are present. For over 50 years, research using this framework has explored the boundary conditions for ideal contact and has guided interventions to promote desegregation. Although supporting the contact hypothesis in principle, the authors critique some research practices that have come to dominate the field: (a) the prioritizing of the study of interactions occurring under rarefied conditions, (b) the reformulation of lay understandings of contact in terms of a generic typology of ideal dimensions, and (c) the use of shifts in personal prejudice as the primary measure of outcome. The authors argue that these practices have limited the contact hypothesis both as an explanation of the intergroup dynamics of desegregation and as a framework for promoting social psychological change. In so arguing, the authors look toward a complementary program of research on contact and desegregation.     

Gender-typed play and amniotic testosterone

Sex differences in play are apparent in a number of mammalian species, including humans. Prenatal testosterone may contribute to these differences. The authors report the first attempt to correlate gender-typed play in a normative sample of humans with measurements of amniotic testosterone (aT). Testosterone was measured in the amniotic fluid of 53 children (31 boys and 22 girls). A strong sex difference was observed in aT and, at ages 4.75 to 5.8 years, on a modified version of the Child Game Participation Questionnaire. Hierarchical regression analyses on the entire group and within-sex correlations suggested that variations in aT did not contribute to individual differences in game participation as reported by the mother. A critique of explanations for this finding is presented.     

Family ties: constructing family time in low-income families

"Family time" is reflected in the process of building and fortifying family relationships. Whereas such time, free of obligatory work, school, and family maintenance activities, is purchased by many families using discretionary income, we explore how low-income mothers make time for and give meaning to focused engagement and relationship development with their children within time constraints idiosyncratic to being poor and relying on welfare. Longitudinal ethnographic data from 61 low-income African American, European American, and Latina American mothers were analyzed to understand how mothers construct family time during daily activities such as talking, play, and meals. We also identify unique cultural factors that shape family time for low-income families, such as changing temporal orientations, centrality of television time, and emotional burdens due to poverty. Implications for family therapy are also discussed.     

Resource slack and propensity to discount delayed investments of time versus money

The authors demonstrate that people discount delayed outcomes as a result of perceived changes over time in supplies of slack. Slack is the perceived surplus of a given resource available to complete a focal task. The present research shows that, in general, people expect slack for time to be greater in the future than in the present. Typically, this expectation of growth of slack in the future is more pronounced for time than for money. In 7 experiments, the authors demonstrate that systematic temporal shifts of perceived slack determine the extent and the pattern of delay discounting, including hyperbolic discounting. They use this framework to explain differential propensity to delay investments and receipts of time and money.     

Factors responsible for performance on the day–night task: response set or semantics?

In a recent study Diamond, Kirkham and Amso (2002) obtained evidence consistent with the claim that the day-night task requires inhibition because the picture and its corresponding conflicting response are semantically related. In their study children responded more accurately in a dog-pig condition (see /day picture/ say "dog"; see /night picture/ say "pig") than the standard day-night condition (see /day picture/ say "night"; see /night picture/ say "day"). However, there is another effect that may have made the day-night condition harder than the dog-pig condition: the response set effect. In the day-night condition the names of the two stimuli ("day" and "night") and the two corresponding conflicting responses ("night" and "day") are from the same response set: both "day" and "night". In the dog-pig condition the names of the stimuli ("day", "night") and the corresponding responses ("dog", "pig") are from a different response set. In two experiments (Experiment 1 with 4-year-olds (n = 25); Experiment 2 with , 4-, 5-, 7- and 11-year-olds (n = 81)) children were tested on four experimental conditions that enabled the effects of semantics and response set to be separated. Overall, our data suggest that response set is a major factor in creating the inhibitory demands of the day-night task in children of all ages. Results are discussed in relation to other inhibitory tasks.