Christian Churches and the Prevention of Preadolescent Aggression and Violence in Puerto Rico: Regional Leaders’ Perspective

Journal of Religion and Health - Preadolescents’ involvement in religious congregations may serve as a distal protective factor against aggression. Interviews were conducted to...     

Religion and Spirituality among American Indian,South Asian,Black, Hispanic/Latina,and White Women in the Study on Stress,Spirituality, and Health

Social scientists have increasingly recognized the lack of diversity in survey research on American religion, resulting in a dearth of data on religion and spirituality (R/S) in understudied racial and ethnic groups. At the same time, epidemiological studies have increasingly diversified their racial and ethnic representation, but have collected few R/S measures to date. With a particular focus on American Indian and South Asian women (in addition to Blacks, Hispanic/Latinas, and white women), this study introduces a new effort among religion and epidemiology researchers, the Study on Stress, Spirituality, and Health. This multicohort study provides some of the first estimates of R/S beliefs and practices among American Indians and U.S. South Asians, and offers new insight into salient beliefs and practices of diverse racial/ethnic and religious communities.     

Do Smarter People Employ Better Decision Strategies? The Influence of Intelligence on Adaptive Use of the Recognition Heuristic

Within the adaptive toolbox approach, it has repeatedly been shown that, on average, people tend to adapt their decision strategies to the decision context. Building upon these results, we investigated whether individuals systematically differ in their ability to successfully adapt to the situation when applying the fast‐and‐frugal recognition heuristic (RH). In decisions between recognized and unrecognized choice objects, individuals can base their choices solely on recognition, as predicted by the RH, or they can use further knowledge retrieved from memory. Since intelligence has been conceived as the ability to successfully adapt to different situations, we expected intelligence to influence the degree of adaptive use of the RH. To test this hypothesis, we first re‐analyzed data that referred to a decision domain for which RH‐use is known to perform well. As expected, individual RH‐use increased with general intelligence. Next, we designed an experiment addressing individual RH‐use in two new decision domains, one domain for which RH‐use was less effective than knowledge‐use and another domain for which both strategies were about equally effective. In addition, we tested whether fluid or crystallized intelligence best predicts adaptive use of the RH. RH‐use was found to decrease with fluid but not crystallized intelligence when RH‐use was less effective than use of further knowledge. In contrast, there was no significant association between either type of intelligence and RH‐use when none of the two strategies was optimal. We conclude that adaptive use versus non‐use of the RH is moderated by fluid intelligence. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Electroencephalogram and heart rate measures of working memory at 5 and 10 months of age

We recorded electroencephalogram (EEG; 6-9 Hz) and heart rate (HR) from infants at 5 and 10 months of age during baseline and performance on the looking A-not-B task of infant working memory (WM). Longitudinal baseline-to-task comparisons revealed WM-related increases in EEG power (all electrodes) and EEG coherence (medial frontal-occipital electrode pairs) at both ages. WM-related decreases in HR were only present at 5 months, and WM-related increases in EEG coherence became more localized by 10 months. Regression analyses revealed that baseline-to-task changes in psychophysiology accounted for variability in WM performance at 10 but not 5 months. HR and EEG power (medial frontal and lateral frontal electrodes) were unique predictors of variability in 10-month WM performance. These findings are discussed in relation to frontal lobe development and represent the first comprehensive longitudinal analysis of age-related changes in the behavioral and psychophysiological correlates of WM.     

Changing the System by Changing the Workforce: Employing Consumers to Increase Access, Cultural Diversity, and Engagement

Services to families have traditionally been delivered in a medical model. This presents challenges including workforce shortages, lack of cultural diversity, lack of training in strength-based work, and difficulty in successfully engaging and retaining families in the therapy process. The system of care (SOC) effort has worked to establish formal roles for caregivers in SOC to improve services. This paper provides an example of one community's efforts to change the SOC by expanding the roles available to caregivers in creating systems change. It describes the model developed by Communities of Care (CoC), a SOC in Central Massachusetts, and its evolution over a 10 year period. First person accounts by system partners, caregivers hired into professional roles as well as a family receiving services, demonstrate how hiring caregivers at all levels can change systems and change lives, not only for those being served but for the caregiver/professionals doing the work. It also demonstrates, however, that change at the system level is incremental, takes time, and can be fleeting unless an ongoing effort is made to support and sustain those changes.     

Object perception in 5-month-old infants of clinically depressed and nondepressed mothers

Five-month-old infants of clinically depressed and nondepressed mothers were familiarized to a wholly novel object and afterward tested for their discrimination of the same object presented in the familiar and in a novel perspective. Infants in both groups were adequately familiarized, but infants of clinically depressed mothers failed to discriminate between novel and familiar views of the object, whereas infants of nondepressed mothers successfully discriminated. The difference in discrimination between infants of depressed and nondepressed mothers is discussed in light of infants' differential object processing and maternal sociodemographics, mind-mindedness, depression, stress, and interaction styles that may moderate opportunities for infants to learn about their world or influence the development of their perceptuocognitive capacities.     

Exploring the Impact of Attachment Anxiety and Avoidance on the Perception of Couple Conflict

Attachment anxiety and avoidance have been shown to affect how an individual processes social information such as facial expressions. Previous work has not explored perception of couple relationships. The current study had 39 individuals observe images and videos of couples in conflict. Results suggest that individuals with higher attachment anxiety perceived more intensity in negative interactions/affect and less positive interactions/affect in the couples they observed. Implications for therapy, clinical supervision, and family life education are discussed.     

Evidence for the Syndrome of Nonverbal Learning Disabilities in Children with Brain Tumors

This study examined the predicted utility of the Nonverbal Learning Disabilities syndrome (NLD) (Rourke, 1995) for characterizing neurocognitive and psychosocial outcomes in 123 children with brain tumors. Children with brain tumors were found to be at high risk of having a specific academic deficit, particularly in arithmetic. Children with arithmetic deficit evidenced a higher rate of impairment on nonverbal tasks than on verbal tasks, whereas children with reading deficit evidenced a higher rate of impairment on verbal tasks than on nonverbal tasks. However, significant differences between children with arithmetic and reading deficits were not found for all of the component features of the NLD syndrome, and arithmetic deficit was not related to treatment with irradiation.     

Association between maternal sensitivity and externalizing behavior from preschool to preadolescence

Using data from the longitudinal NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1364), this study examined the association between mothers' sensitivity and children's externalizing behavior from preschool to preadolescence. Externalizing behavior declined on average across this period with a slowing of this decline around middle childhood. Maternal sensitivity remained relatively stable on average, and there was significant variation across mothers. A decrease in maternal sensitivity from ages 3 to 11 was related to an increase in externalizing behavior from ages 4 to 12. A model-based test of the direction of the effect suggested that the association between changes in maternal sensitivity and externalizing behavior from ages 4 to 11 was driven by child effects on mothers and not vice-versa. Between late preschool age and preadolescence, the behavior problems of children appear to strongly influence the sensitive support of mothers. Practical implications were discussed in light of these findings.