A Framework for Intervention in Marital Conflicts over Family Finances: A View from Africa

One chief source of marital distress and pathology in today's Africa is the issue of which way to go on the sensitive matter of how to control and manage the family's finances, and who, of the two parties in a given marriage, is to contribute what to the upkeep of that marriage. This problem results from the collapse of the traditional African family economics which saw the husband as the chief breadwinner of the family and the wife, the director of the general family services, and the emergence in its place these days, of wage-earning family households. Here, a total crisis that arises is where the two parties concerned fail to introduce equity-based considerations in the settlement of the tension presented. In that case, the danger to be faced is the development of polarization and hassles to destabilize the family. This paper presents a research report suggesting how this danger can be averted.     

Attachment's Links With Adolescents' Social Emotions: The Roles of Negative Emotionality and Emotion Regulation

Recent research has attempted to explain the mechanisms through which parental attachment affects social and emotional outcomes (e.g., Burnette, Taylor, Worthington, &; Forsyth, 2007 Burnette, J.L., Taylor, K.W., Worthington, E.L., &; Forsyth, D.R. (2007). Attachment and trait forgivingness: The mediating role of angry rumination. Personality and Individual Differences, 42, 1585–1596. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2006.10.033[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Panfile &; Laible, 2012 Panfile, T.M., &; Laible, D.J. (2012). Attachment security and child's empathy: The mediating role of emotion regulation. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 58, 1–21. doi:10.1353/mpq.2012.0003[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The authors’ goal was to examine negative emotionality and emotion regulation as mediators of the associations that attachment has with empathy, forgiveness, guilt, and jealousy. One hundred forty-eight adolescents reported their parental attachment security, general levels of negative emotionality and abilities to regulate emotional responses, and tendencies to feel empathy, forgiveness, guilt, and jealousy. Results revealed that attachment security was associated with higher levels of empathy, forgiveness, and guilt, but lower levels of jealousy. In addition, emotion regulation mediated the links attachment shared with both empathy and guilt, such that higher levels of attachment security were linked with greater levels of emotion regulation, which led to greater levels of empathy and guilt. Alternatively, negative emotionality mediated the links attachment shared with both forgiveness and jealousy, such that higher levels of attachment security were associated with lower levels of negative emotionality, which in turn was linked to lower levels of forgiveness and higher levels of jealousy. This study provides a general picture of how attachment security may play a role in shaping an individual's levels of social emotions.     

Rorschach Indices of Perceptual and Conceptual Disorganization

Figure drawings were obtained from 97 preadolescent males who differed in self and behavioral assessments of self-esteem. These subjects had been selected from a much larger sample and represented five different types of self-esteem. The figure drawings were scored for 15 variables, dealing with formal characteristics, content, and global-interpretations of the total drawings. Five significant differences were obtained, with the content and global-interpretative categories proving more differentiating between self-esteem groups than did the formal characteristics. Behavioral expressions of self-esteem were more associated with figure drawing characteristics than were subjective evaluations. Discussion focuses on the nature of self-concept and self-esteem in children as a sensorimotor rather than symbolic expression.     

Personality Patterns in Adolescence as Portrayed by the Rorschach Ink-Blot Method: III. The “Erlebnistypus” (A Normative Study)

The effect of bigram cues on the solution of five-letter monosyllabic and bisyllabic solution-word anagrams was investigated. This was accomplished through the construction of anagrams with and without solution-word bigrams for both monosyllable and bisyllable words. The results revealed that the monosyllabic words were significantly easier to solve when bigram cues were provided, but that there was no difference between the two types of words when bigram cues were not present in the anagrams. Furthermore, no advantage was observed in the solution of bisyllable words even when the bigram in the anagram was also a syllable of the solution word. It was concluded that the facilitating effect of a bigram cue seems to be peculiar to monosyllabic words, and that the result appears to be a function of an initial solution process that favors a single-syllable response.     

A computerized test of self-control predicts classroom behavior

We assessed choices on a computerized test of self-control (CTSC) for a group of children with features of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a group of controls. Thirty boys participated in the study. Fifteen of the children had been rated by their parents as hyperactive and inattentive, and 15 were age- and gender-matched controls in the same classroom. The children were observed in the classroom for three consecutive mornings, and data were collected on their activity levels and attention. The CTSC consisted of two tasks. In the delay condition, children chose to receive three rewards after a delay of 60 s or one reward immediately. In the task-difficulty condition, the children chose to complete a difficult math problem and receive three rewards or complete an easier problem for one reward. The children with ADHD features made more impulsive choices than their peers during both conditions, and these choices correlated with measures of their activity and attention in the classroom.     

Early receptive and productive language skills in preterm and full-term 8-month-old infants

Early receptive and productive language skills were examined for preterm low birthweight infants and full-term normal birthweight infants from middle-class homes. Nineteen preterm infants and 19 full-term infants were observed in a laboratory setting at the gestationally corrected age of 8 months. To avoid the frequent confound between prematurity and low socioeconomic status, mothers of the two groups of infants were matched on educational levels. Regression analyses were used to assess the relative influence of infant cognitive skills, infant sociability, infant birth status, and the mothers' language input as possible predictors of infant receptive language and vocal behavior. Receptive language skills were associated with higher cognitive performance, greater sociability, and preterm birth. Productive language skills were associated with higher cognitive performance. On the basis of this research, the prognosis for language development in preterm infants raised in middle-class homes appears to be excellent.This research was aided by Social and Behavioral Sciences Research grant No. 12-11 from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation and supported by DHHS Grant HD03352. Computing was provided by the Waisman Center Computing Facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Donna Boylan, Sue DaPra, Maria Kleczewski, Michal Rubin, Susan Silverber, and Paula VanLaanan assisted with data collection.     

Effects of documentary and fictional television formats on children's acquisition of schemata for unfamiliar occupations

Children's acquisition of real-world role schemata from factual and fictional television was tested experimentally in two studies. In study 1, 144 second- and fifth-graders saw a drama and a documentary about a caterer or a film director. In study 2, 125 fifth-graders saw the caterer tapes under conditions of high or low attentional involvement. Role schemata about real caterers or directors were measured by free response, frequency ratings, and multiple choice questions. Children acquired schemata about real occupations from bath documentary and fictional programs. On some measures, their schemata were influenced more by documentary than by fiction, but that difference faded slightly after a month. Level of involvement did not reduce the difference between real and fictional videos. Children learn social role schemata from both fictional and factual television, but they acquire more schema information from real than from fictional TV, at least when fiction is signaled by obvious cues (e.g., comedy) or when it is not percieved as socially realistic.     

Factor structure and psychometric characteristics of the beck depression inventory-II

The present study evaluated the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996) in the nonclinical sample of 230 young adults. The BDI-II is a revised version of the BDI-IA. We evaluated the fit of three alternative models to the sample data, using confirmatory factor analysis. Results provided support for the fit of the oblique three-factor model. The BDI-II and factor scales had satisfactory coefficient alpha indices. We obtained gender differences on the BDI-II item, total, and factor scale scores. We examined the relations of the BDI-II with demographic variables and with other self-report measures of social desirability, anxiety, depression, stress, and self-esteem. We also examined the issue of whether specific self-report measures of anxiety and depression assess separate or different constructs. We discuss the limitations of the present study.