Maternal coping strategies and emotional distress: results of an early intervention program for low birth weight young children

Several questions were examined with Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) data (N = 843). Are effects of intervention services found for maternal emotional distress and coping strategies, and are these effects different for different groups of mothers? Do maternal distress, coping, and life events moderate (or mediate) the intervention effects reported earlier for children's test scores and behavior problems (IHDP, 1990)? The intervention reduced maternal distress, especially for women with less than a high school education. Maternal distress did not moderate or mediate the influence of the intervention on child outcomes. Maternal coping was not influenced by the intervention and did not moderate the influence of the intervention on child outcomes. Life events moderated the influence of the intervention on children's test scores; the intervention was more effective for children whose mothers had fewer life events.     

Participation and Attrition in a Coping Skills Intervention for Adolescent Girls with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

The current study examined factors associated with adolescent and parent participation in a coping skills intervention for adolescent girls with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and examined factors associated with attrition related to intermittent missing data. Thirty-one adolescent girls with IBD and their parents enrolled in the intervention. Psychosocial and disease factors related to participation in the 6-week web component of the coping skills intervention were examined as were baseline group differences between those who provided post-treatment data and those who did not. Adolescents experiencing more difficulties related to their disease and psychosocial functioning participated less in the web component of the treatment intervention. Families who attrited had higher baseline levels of parental catastrophic thoughts, parenting stress, and adolescent depression. Families experiencing greater levels of psychological and disease-related difficulties may be at risk for low participation and eventual dropout from pediatric IBD psychological treatment interventions.     

Context Matters for Social-Emotional Learning: Examining Variation in Program Impact by Dimensions of School Climate

This paper examines whether three dimensions of school climate—leadership, accountability, and safety/respect—moderated the impacts of the INSIGHTS program on students’ social‐emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes. Twenty‐two urban schools and N = 435 low‐income racial/ethnic minority students were enrolled in the study and received intervention services across the course of 2 years, in both kindergarten and first grade. Intervention effects on math and reading achievement were larger for students enrolled in schools with lower overall levels of leadership, accountability, and safety/respect at baseline. Program impacts on disruptive behaviors were greater in schools with lower levels of accountability at baseline; impacts on sustained attention were greater in schools with lower levels of safety/respect at baseline. Implications for Social‐Emotional Learning program implementation, replication, and scale‐up are discussed.     

The three-factor structure of the Eysenck personality inventory revealed by a two-step confirmatory procedure

Evidence for the existence of the assumed three-subscale structure of the Eysenck Personality Inventory has been persistent but tenuous. It was suggested that a substantial reason for this may be the discrepancy between the numbers of items in the Lie (L) scale (9 items) and those in the other two scales [Neuroticism (N) and Extraversion (E)] which have 24 items in each. A two-step confirmatory procedure to circumvent this problem was proposed, involving a two-factor analysis of the Neuroticism and Extraversion items, followed by a three-factor analysis of equal numbers of N, E and L scale items. An analysis of the responses of 386 undergraduates demonstrating the proposed procedure revealed in the first step, quite unequivocally, the presence of Neuroticism and Extraversion factors, and in the second step, a third factor clearly congruent with the L scale.     

Even better than the real thing: Alternative outcome bias affects decision judgements and decision regret

Three experiments demonstrated that decisions resulting in considerable amounts of profit, but missed alternative outcomes of greater profits, were rated lower in quality and produced more regret than did decisions that returned lesser (or equal) amounts of profit but either did not miss or missed only slightly better alternatives. These effects were mediated by upward counterfactuals and moderated by participants’ orientation to the decision context. That decision evaluations were affected by the availability and magnitude of alternative outcomes rather than the positivity of actual outcomes is counter to the outcome bias effect—a bias in which decisions are rated more positively when they led to more positive outcomes (despite a priori probabilities associated with the decision outcomes). Experiment 3 demonstrated that these effects represent a bias that occurs even when it is clear that the process by which decisions were made followed rational decision processes. This research suggests that when alternative worlds are even better than the desirable outcomes experienced, affect and cognition may be more strongly linked to the magnitude of alternative realities than to obtained outcomes.