Parent Perspectives on Child Health and Wellbeing in Same-Sex Families: Heteronormative Conflict and Resilience Building

Measurable aspects of child health and wellbeing for children in same-sex parented families show that these children develop well, overall. Increasingly however, it is understood that stigma can have a negative impact on their health within a same sex family context. The aim of this study is to understand how child health in same-sex parented families is constructed by same-sex attracted parents and what this teaches us about the impact of stigma on child health in this context. Families from across Australia were sampled from a larger study of child health and wellbeing. We used family interviews, which took place between January and August 2013. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes. We report on the data from 11 parents with 10 children. Families presented stories of heteronormative conflict that arose from their position in society. Through family constructs, gender assumptions, discrimination and challenging interactions with institutions this heteronormative conflict had a significant influence on child health, sometimes through the generation of broader familial stress. Resilience building was used by parents to construct a positive environment for child health by combating the lack of understanding and discrimination seen at a societal level. Resilience that is developed to combat stigma provides significant benefits, particularly in a heteronormative world where traditional assumptions about families dominate. The anticipation of stigma, and heteronormative pressures, can stimulate same-sex attracted parents to prepare their children for potential negativity. This should be supported through appropriate school programs and considered political leadership.     

Finding Motivation to Learn: Exploring Achievement Goals in California Community College CalWORKs Students

This study investigated the achievement goals and motivations of California Community College CalWORKs students in an effort to better support student success and persistence. This study was guided by three research questions: (1) What type of achievement goals do CalWORKs students enter with? (2) What are their rationales for these types of achievement goals? (3) How malleable are these achievement goals? Interviews with 48 participants focused on better understanding the relationship between achievement goal type and motivation changes while in college. Findings indicate that CalWORKs students enter college with a range of goal types, but formany changes in goal type led to more intrinsic motivation and ultimately persistence toward graduation and career goals. Findings from this study also reveal thatexperiences highlighting students' ability to be competent as learners while balancing other roles helped catalyze change in achievement goal type and/or rationale. The results of this study emphasize that CalWORKs students' achievement goals are malleable, and particular college experiences can facilitate students' movement toward more academically focused goals. More specifically, placing more focus on additional student support programs that can foster peer networking, faculty interactions, and additional career exploration opportunities can lead to change in academic persistence.     

Memory consolidation effects on memory stabilization and item integration in older adults

This study examined the differential effects of aging on consolidation processes that strengthen newly acquired memory traces in veridical form (memory stabilization) versus consolidation processes that are responsible for integrating these memory traces into an existing body of knowledge (item integration). Older adults learned 13 nonwords and were tested on their memory for the nonwords, and on whether these nonwords impacted upon processing of similar-sounding English words immediately and 24 hours later. Participants accurately recognized the nonwords immediately, but showed significant decreases in delayed recognition and recall. In comparison, the nonwords impacted upon processing of similar-sounding words only in the delayed test. Together, these findings suggest that memory consolidation processes may be more evident in item integration than memory stabilization processes for new declarative memories in older adults.     

Addressing Relationship Health Needs in Primary Care: Adapting the Marriage Checkup for Use in Medical Settings with Military Couples

The overall objective of this study was to pilot the Marriage Checkup (MC), a brief intervention for enhancing marital resiliency tailored to a military population, for use by internal behavioral health consultants (IBHCs) working in an integrated primary care clinic. The MC was revised to fit into the fast-paced environment of primary care (e.g., streamlined to fit within three 30-min appointments), and military-relevant material was added to the content. IBHCs working in primary care were then trained to offer the intervention. Thirty participants were enrolled in the study and completed a relationship checkup and one-month follow-up questionnaires. Analysis of post-test and one-month follow-up data showed statistically significant improvements in participants’ marital health compared to pre-treatment. The MC intervention appeared to be well received by both couples and IBHCs.     

Decomposing the relationship between cognitive functioning and self-referent memory beliefs in older adulthood: what’s memory got to do with it?

With advancing age, episodic memory performance shows marked declines along with concurrent reports of lower subjective memory beliefs. Given that normative age-related declines in episodic memory co-occur with declines in other cognitive domains, we examined the relationship between memory beliefs and multiple domains of cognitive functioning. Confirmatory bi-factor structural equation models were used to parse the shared and independent variance among factors representing episodic memory, psychomotor speed, and executive reasoning in one large cohort study (Senior Odyssey, N = 462), and replicated using another large cohort of healthy older adults (ACTIVE, N = 2802). Accounting for a general fluid cognitive functioning factor (comprised of the shared variance among measures of episodic memory, speed, and reasoning) attenuated the relationship between objective memory performance and subjective memory beliefs in both samples. Moreover, the general cognitive functioning factor was the strongest predictor of memory beliefs in both samples. These findings are consistent with the notion that dispositional memory beliefs may reflect perceptions of cognition more broadly. This may be one reason why memory beliefs have broad predictive validity for interventions that target fluid cognitive ability.     

Coping self-efficacy and psychosocial well-being of marginalised South African youth

The aim of this study was to investigate coping self-efficacy and aspects of psychosocial well-being amongst youth from marginalised backgrounds. A total of 794 black South African marginalised youth (males = 54%, females = 46%, age range between 18 and 30 years) voluntarily participated in this cross-sectional study. The participants completed surveys of coping self-efficacy, mental health, and mood disorder. Structural equation modelling was applied to construct an explanatory model for coping self-efficacy and psychosocial well-being among the marginalised youth. The resulting structural model showed that coping self-efficacy significantly and positively predicted the emotional and psychological dimensions of psychosocial well-being among the youth. Psychosocial well-being was associated with of a lower risk for symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress in these marginalised young people.     

Temperament and problem solving in a population of adolescent guide dogs

It is often assumed that measures of temperament within individuals are more correlated to one another than to measures of problem solving. However, the exact relationship between temperament and problem-solving tasks remains unclear because large-scale studies have typically focused on each independently. To explore this relationship, we tested 119 prospective adolescent guide dogs on a battery of 11 temperament and problem-solving tasks. We then summarized the data using both confirmatory factor analysis and exploratory principal components analysis. Results of confirmatory analysis revealed that a priori separation of tests as measuring either temperament or problem solving led to weak results, poor model fit, some construct validity, and no predictive validity. In contrast, results of exploratory analysis were best summarized by principal components that mixed temperament and problem-solving traits. These components had both construct and predictive validity (i.e., association with success in the guide dog training program). We conclude that there is complex interplay between tasks of “temperament” and “problem solving” and that the study of both together will be more informative than approaches that consider either in isolation.     

Validation of a reflective thinking instrument for third-year undergraduate nursing students participating in high-fidelity simulation

Background: nursing students are required to think reflectively in both real and simulated clinical practice. Although the Reflective Thinking instrument is reliable in its measurement of reflective thinking, its validity is unknown. Method: confirmatory factor analysis was undertaken in an iterative manner within a non-equivalent control-group study to measure nursing students’ reflective thinking and satisfaction with high-fidelity simulation. The validity and reliability of the Reflective Thinking instrument was tested. Results: the resulting instrument consisted of 15 items across four factors. The final model was plausible as it demonstrated ‘goodness of fit’; however, it had neither convergent or discriminatory validity, nor reliability. Internal consistency was fair to reasonable for the four subscales. Conclusion: the testing of the Reflective Thinking instrument using confirmatory factor analysis is a vital initial step in the modification of this instrument. Further development using exploratory factor analysis will enhance the instrument’s relevance within high-fidelity simulation.     

A theoretical review of consumer priming: Prospective theory,retrospective theory,and the affective–behavioral–cognitive model

Primes are pervasive in marketing. Despite frequent use in practice, there has yet to be a framework to categorize priming techniques that is inclusive of measurement challenges and methods for administering primes as well as provides insight for researchers on how to think about and construct research using priming. Prior researchers have provided reviews of priming research, which have set the stage for discussions of priming theories and challenges of using primes in survey research. We build from their review and contribute in four ways by (i) reviewing priming theories rooted in both prospective and retrospective models of memory; (ii) developing a priming framework based on the ABC model of attitudes (affective, behavioral, and cognitive priming) that incorporates lexical priming, priming fluency effects, and methods for administering primes; (iii) addressing priming challenges including discrepancies between the priming method and measurement method; and (iv) positing the influence of personal characteristics on priming, such as the role of skepticism in assimilation and contrast effects. The final model is offered and elaborated upon as a guide for future research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Residual effects of emotion are reflected in enhanced visual activity after sleep

Research has investigated how sleep affects emotional memory and how emotion enhances visual processing, but these questions are typically asked by re-presenting an emotional stimulus at retrieval. For the first time, we investigate whether sleep affects neural activity during retrieval when the memory cue is a neutral context that was previously presented with either emotional or nonemotional content during encoding. Participants encoded scenes composed of a negative or neutral object on a neutral background either in the morning (preceding 12 hours awake; wake group) or evening (preceding 12 hours including a night of sleep; sleep group). At retrieval, participants viewed the backgrounds without their objects, distinguishing new backgrounds from those previously studied. Occipital activity was greater within the sleep group than the wake group specifically during the successful retrieval of neutral backgrounds that had been studied with negative (but not neutral) objects. Moreover, there was enhanced connectivity between the middle occipital gyrus and hippocampus following sleep. Within the sleep group, the percentage of REM sleep obtained correlated with activity in the middle occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus, and cuneus during the successful retrieval of neutral backgrounds previously paired with negative objects. These results confirm that emotion affects neural activity during retrieval even when the cues themselves are neutral, and demonstrate, for the first time, that this residual effect of emotion on visual activity is greater after sleep and may be maximized by REM sleep.