Parents’ experience of child contact within entrenched conflict families following separation and divorce: a qualitative study

Child contact arrangements with parents following separation and divorce are strongly endorsed for children in both public policy and law where safe, but can be difficult to sustain. Entrenched high-conflict post-separation relationships between parents can cause substantial emotional risks to children as well as impacting severely on parents’ mental health. This paper describes a qualitative study, aimed at examining parents’ experiences of contact arrangements post-separation, undertaken within a mixed methods random allocation study of therapeutic outcomes for parents in entrenched conflict over their children. Two established semi-structured interviews with 22 parents were jointly subjected to thematic analyses. A thematic analysis across interviews revealed three main themes: ‘Dealing with contact evokes extreme states of mind’ for parents; when speaking of contact, the child is ‘everywhere and nowhere’ in the parents’ minds; ‘the hardest thing about contact is dealing with my ex-partner’. These findings indicate the immense strain children and parents are under and shed much light on the desperate states of mind for parents, particularly the anxieties driving relentless child contact disputes. This paper may contribute to the understanding of parents’ experiences of contact arrangements post-separation, potentially providing important information which can inform best practice for professionals working with this population.     

Emotion perception from a componential perspective

The common conceptual understanding of emotion is that they are multi-componential, including subjective feelings, appraisals, psychophysiological activation, action tendencies, and motor expressions. Emotion perception, however, has traditionally been studied in terms of emotion labels, such as “happy”, which do not clearly indicate whether one, some, or all emotion components are perceived. We examine whether emotion percepts are multi-componential and extend previous research by using more ecologically valid, dynamic, and multimodal stimuli and an alternative response measure. The results demonstrate that observers can reliably infer multiple types of information (subjective feelings, appraisals, action tendencies, and social messages) from complex emotion expressions. Furthermore, this finding appears to be robust to changes in response items. The results are discussed in light of their implications for research on emotion perception.     

Assessing Reading Rate in the Primary Grades (1–3)

In this study we explore students' reading rates in grades 1–3. We begin with a short history of reading rate as an assessment measure in the early grades. Next, we share rate data from a recent study (N = 305) where children's contextual reading was assessed with a traditional passage-reading inventory. A comparison of our average grade-level rates with those rates reported in the DIBELS literature shows that they match closely. Finally, we introduce the concept of minimum grade-level rates, emphasizing its practical significance to teachers and researchers alike.     

Borderline personality disorder in an intermediate psychological therapies service

The intermediate psychological therapies service is provided for individuals referred with common mental health problems within the primary care psychological therapies service, but whose difficulties are longstanding and/or complex. The prevalence of borderline personality disorder (BPD) in intermediate psychological therapy services has not been researched to-date. The current study aimed to measure the prevalence of BPD amongst patients attending intermediate psychological therapies (n?=?63). The prevalence of BPD was established by identifying the number of patients who met DSM-IV criteria. BPD prevalence amongst patients attending an intermediate psychological therapy service was 37%. The high proportion of patients presenting with BPD indicates the potential need for staff training and supervision in how to manage such high levels of need at this service level. This is the first study to report prevalence rates of BPD specifically in an intermediate care psychological therapy service.     

Effect of anxiety on behavioural pattern separation in humans

Behavioural pattern separation (BPS), the ability to distinguish among similar stimuli based on subtle physical differences, has been used to study the mechanism underlying stimulus generalisation. Fear overgeneralisation is often observed in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders. However, the relationship between anxiety and BPS remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of anxiety (threat of shock) on BPS, which was assessed across separate encoding and retrieval sessions. Images were encoded/retrieved during blocks of threat or safety in a 2?×?2 factorial design. During retrieval, participants indicated whether images were new, old, or altered. Better accuracy was observed for altered images encoded during periods of threat compared to safety, but only if those images were also retrieved during periods of safety. These results suggest that overgeneralisation in anxiety may be due to altered pattern separation.     

The Contribution of Temperamental and Cognitive Factors to Childhood Anxiety Disorder Symptoms: A Closer Look at Negative Affect,Behavioral Inhibition,and Anxiety Sensitivity

This study examined the role of anxiety sensitivity as an explanatory variable in the link between two temperamental dimensions (i.e., behavioral inhibition and negative affect) and anxiety disorder symptom severity in a sample of children with anxiety disorders. Forty-four children (52?% African American) between 8 and 12 years of age and their mothers participated in this study. An assessment battery consisting of diagnostic interviews, questionnaires, and behavioral assessment of behavioral inhibition was administered. Findings revealed that anxiety sensitivity was a significant explanatory variable linking child self-reports of behavioral inhibition and negative affect to anxiety disorder symptom severity. For parent-completed measures, only direct effects of behavioral inhibition on anxiety disorder symptom severity were found. The clinical implications of our findings, including the importance and feasibility of anxiety sensitivity and behavioral inhibition assessments as part of routine clinical care of children with anxiety disorders are discussed, along with the limitations of our study.     

The Emotional Foundation of Political Cognition: The Impact of Extrinsic Anxiety on the Formation of Political Tolerance Judgments

Common sense recognizes emotion's ability to influence judgments. We argue that affective processes, in addition to generating feeling states, also influence how political cognition is manifested. Drawing on the theory of affective intelligence, we examine the role that anxiety plays in how and when people rely on predispositions and when they rely on contemporaneous information in making political tolerance judgments. We report on two experimental studies to test our arguments. In the first study we find that extrinsic anxiety generates a resistance response among subjects who hold a strong predisposition and a receptive response among those who do not. In the second study we present subjects with explicit "frames" exposing them to a pro- or anti-free speech message. We find that extrinsic anxiety enhances responsiveness to frames while an absence of anxiety diminishes the impact of these frames. Taken together these results show that affective processes shape how people make political judgments.