Commentary on Guild et al. (2020): The Importance of Well-Designed Intervention Studies for Advancing Attachment Theory and its Clinical Applications

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Guild and colleagues (this issue) report results of a long-term follow up after a randomized trial of the effectiveness of an...     

Inhibitory control and set shifting describe different pathways from behavioral inhibition to socially anxious behavior

Individuals with a behaviorally inhibited (BI) temperament are more likely to develop social anxiety. However, the mechanisms by which socially anxious behavior emerges from BI are unclear. Variation in different forms of top‐down control, specifically executive functions (EF), may play distinct roles and characterize differential pathways to social anxiety. Here 291 children were assessed for BI in toddlerhood (ages 2 and 3), parent‐reported inhibitory control and set shifting during middle childhood (age 7), and multidimensional assessment of socially anxious behavior completed during late childhood and early adolescence (ages 9 and 12). Structural equation modeling revealed that early variation in BI predicted the development of socially anxious behavior through either higher levels of parent‐reported inhibitory control or lower levels of parent‐reported set shifting. These data reinforce the notion that top‐down control does not uniformly influence relations between temperament and socially anxious behavior. These data suggest novel approaches to thinking about the role of EFs and social anxiety outcomes as children approach adolescence.     

Measuring socioeconomic status: reliability and preliminary validity for different approaches

This study investigated issues related to commonly used socioeconomic status (SES) measures in 140 participants from three cities (Atlanta, Boston, and Toronto) in two countries (United States and Canada). Measures of SES were two from the United States (four-factor Hollingshead scale, Nakao and Treas scale) and one from Canada (Blishen, Carroll, and Moore scale). Reliability was examined both within (interrater agreement) and across (intermeasure agreement) measures. Interrater reliability and classification agreement was high for the total sample (ranger = .86 to .91), as were intermeasure correlations and classification agreement (range r = .81 to .88). The weakest agreement across measures was found when families had one wage earner who was female. Validity data for these SES measures with academic and intellectual measures also were obtained. Some support for a simplified approach to measuring SES was found. Implications of these findings for the use of SES in social and behavioral science research are discussed.     

Development of Body Modification and Excessive Exercise Scales for adolescents

The present study was designed to develop a Body Modification Scale (BMS) to measure body change among adolescents and to modify an Excessive Exercise Scale (EES) into a shorter form for adolescents. Two hundred and twenty-one girls and 192 boys from Grades 7 to 10 completed the BMS and the EES. Factor analysis revealed three identical factors for the BMS for girls and boys: weight loss, weight gain, and muscle mass. Two identical factors for girls and boys were also revealed for the EES. Both factor structures were further validated on a separate sample of 286 adolescents (140 girls, 146 boys). The BMS and EES demonstrated excellent reliability (alpha > .86) and high test-retest reliability (alpha > .82) over 1 month. Good concurrent validity was also found for the weight loss factor of the BMS. These findings demonstrate the utility of these two scales for use with adolescents.     

Speaking for Ourselves: Feminist Methods and Community Psychology

Although feminist and community psychology share a number of epistemological and methodological perspectives that guide their respective theories and research practices, it has been argued that community psychology has not fully integrated a feminist perspective into the discipline. This paper examines how community psychology and feminist research methods might combine to help us better understand women's experiences without essentializing or universalizing those experiences. The authors offer a series of suggested directions for feminist research that may also prove promising for community psychology. Particular attention is paid to feminist social constructionist approaches insofar as they address the complex relationship between epistemology and methodology.     

Cholinergic agents and the McCollough effect

The strength of the McCollough effect (ME), a pattern-contingent colour aftereffect, has been shown to be inversely related to acetylcholine, being significantly strengthened by (anticholinergic) scopolamine and weakened by (cholinergic) physostigmine delivered before adapting to the ME stimuli. The purpose of the present study was (i) to establish whether the effect of pre-adaptation scopolamine is linearly dose-dependent and (ii) to investigate the effects of scopolamine and physostigmine delivered between adaptation and testing. In experiment 1, ten healthy male volunteers who received placebo, or 0.6 mg, 1.2 mg, or 1.8 mg scopolamine before adapting to ME stimuli showed a significant linear dose-dependence over tests repeated from 10 to 70 min after adaptation. In experiment 2 twelve male volunteers adapted to ME stimuli and then received placebo, 1.2 mg oral scopolamine, or 0.75 mg subcutaneous physostigmine. On subsequent repeated testing, strength of the ME was increased by scopolamine and decreased by physostigmine relative to placebo. Both experiments were double-blind double-dummy repeated measures. These data support the view that the ME is a product of inhibitory mechanisms in the visual system rather than processes involved in associative learning.     

Line spacing in Mondrian paintings and computer-generated modifications

Students compared computer-generated pictures of which 1 had line spacing and orientation proportional to that in a Mondrian picture (Mondrian-like), and 9 had divergent line spacing (divergently spaced). Preference was above average for the Mondrian-like picture compared with that for the divergently spaced pictures. However, participants did not prefer the Mondrian-like picture to divergently spaced pictures that were preselected as aesthetically pleasing by other participants. The results of the present experiments suggest that a computer algorithm can be developed to modify a picture in a way that is comparable with the way in which humans modify a picture to obtain a preferred picture. If aesthetic appeal is used in the storage and retrieval of visual information, then the algorithm could provide a better understanding of human perceptual processes. The results are related to consistency of aesthetic judgments across participants, levels of processing, and apparent contrast effects.