Parents’ postnatal depressive symptoms and their children's academic attainment at 16 years: Pathways of risk transmission

The aim of the study was to examine whether parents’ increased postnatal depressive symptoms predicted children's academic attainment over time and whether the parent–child relationship, children's prior academic attainment, and mental health mediated this association. We conducted secondary analyses on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children data (12,607 mothers, 9,456 fathers). Each parent completed the Edinburgh-Postnatal Depression Scale at 8 weeks after the child's birth (predictor) and a questionnaire about the mother–child and father–child relationship at 7 years and 1 month (mediator). The children's mental health problems were assessed with the teacher version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire at 10–11 years (mediator). We used data on the children's academic attainment on UK Key Stage 1 (5–7 years; mediator) and Key Stage 4 (General Certificate of Secondary Education 16 years) (outcome). We adjusted for the parents’ education, and child gender and cognitive ability. The results revealed that parents’ depressive symptoms at 8 weeks predicted lower academic performance in children at 16 years. Mothers’ postnatal depressive symptoms had an indirect effect through children's mental health problems on academic outcomes at 16 years via negative mother–child relationship, and prior academic attainment. There was a significant negative indirect effect of fathers’ postnatal depressive symptoms on academic attainment at 16 years via negative father–child relationship on child mental health. The findings suggest that the family environment (parental mental health and parent–child relationship) and children's mental health should be potential targets for support programmes for children of depressed parents.     

Utilizing in-vivo feedback for caregiver training of pediatric feeding protocols

Researchers have used multicomponent behavioral skills training packages including written and verbal instructions, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback when teaching caregivers to implement pediatric feeding treatment protocols (e.g., Anderson & McMillan, 2001; Seiverling et al., 2012). Some investigators have shown that fewer behavioral skills training components may be necessary for effective training (e.g., Mueller et al., 2003; Pangborn et al., 2013). We examined the use of in-vivo feedback following written instructions to train caregivers to implement pediatric feeding treatment protocols using a multiple baseline design across 3 caregiver dyads. Correct implementation of the feeding treatment procedures was low during baseline (written instructions only), increased with only the addition of in-vivo feedback, and remained high during follow-up sessions for all caregivers. Results are discussed in terms of clinical implications and caregiver satisfaction.     

Why and for whom does the pressure to help hurt others? Affective and cognitive mechanisms linking helping pressure to workplace deviance

Scholars are paying increasing attention to the “dark side” of citizenship behavior. One aspect of this dark side that has received relatively scant attention is “helping pressure”—an employee's perception that s/he is being encouraged to, or otherwise feels that s/he should, enact helping behavior at work. Drawing from theory associated with work stress, we examine affective and cognitive mechanisms that potentially explain why helping pressure, counterintuitively, may lead employees to engage in deviant behavior instead. Beyond examining these possible mechanisms, we also answer calls to identify a potential buffer to these effects. Drawing from self-determination theory, we examine how an employee's intrinsic motivation for citizenship may lessen the deleterious consequences of helping pressure at work. In two studies (a within-individual experience-sampling study and a two-wave between-individual study), we find consistent evidence that helping pressure has a positive indirect relationship with deviant behavior through increased negative affect. Further, we find evidence that intrinsic motivation for citizenship weakens the positive relationship of helping pressure with negative affect, buffering the indirect effect on subsequent deviant behavior. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the study of helping pressure at work are discussed.     

A double-edged sword: How social diversity affects trust in representatives via perceived competence and warmth

Previous research has claimed that diversity erodes trust, even though the empirical evidence is mixed and restricted to ethnic neighborhood diversity. Against the backdrop of increasing diversity within the political sphere and concurrently declining political trust, we examined the impact of social diversity on trust in groups of political representatives. In two experiments (N₁ = 109, N₂ = 248) we tested how the diversity of political parties affected citizens’ trust in them. In line with predictions of the stereotype content model, diverse parties were perceived as warmer and less competent than non-diverse parties (Experiments 1–2). Additionally, party diversity was perceived as having more benefits, but also involving more threats (Experiment 2). Consequently, diversity had both positive (via warmth and benefits) and negative (via competence and threats) indirect effects on trust. These results help to untangle previously mixed, for the most part non-experimental, findings of the relationship between diversity and trust.     

Inward- and Outward-Directed Violence in the Lives of Urban Minority Adults Followed from Middle School into Their Thirties

This study explores connections between inward-directed violence and outward-directed violence using data from the Reach for Health sample, which was originally recruited in the 1990s from three middle schools in economically distressed, predominantly African American neighborhoods of New York City. Now in their thirties, participants (N = 595) completed surveys assessing current suicidal thoughts and behaviors as well as other violence involvements, including intimate partner violence victimization and perpetration. About 10% of males and females reported any suicidal ideation or attempt in the past 12 months. In logistic regression analyses adjusting for sociodemographics, prior reports of feeling blue in middle school (OR: 1.12, CI: 1.02–4.39) and young adult suicidality (OR: 2.54, CI: 1.30–4.95) are significantly related to later suicidality. So are concurrent aggressive behaviors, including reports of physical fighting outside the home (OR: 2.70, CI: 1.29–5.67) and IPV perpetration (OR: 2.09, CI: 1.11–3.94). Neither IPV victimization nor witnessing neighborhood violence is correlated. Findings shed light on the persistence of suicidality in the lives of those who come of age, and often remain, in communities with high levels of poverty, and confirm linkages of suicidality with externally directed aggression. Life-stage interventions are needed to counter the interwoven causes and consequences of multiple forms of violence.     

Possession and Applicability of Signature Character Strengths: What Is Essential for Well-Being,Work Engagement,and Burnout?

Signature character strengths can foster health-related outcomes in work and private life, thus being particularly important for endangered occupational groups like physicians. However, situational circumstances need to allow character strengths demonstration (applicability) first to enable their application. Therefore, this study addresses the role of (1) applicability of signature character strengths in work and private life beyond their possession and (2) relationships with well-being, work engagement, and burnout dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment). Hospital physicians (N = 274) completed an online survey examining their signature character strengths and applicability, well-being, work engagement, and burnout dimensions. The top-five individual signature character strengths were fairness, honesty, judgment, kindness, and love. Hierarchical multiple linear regressions revealed that the possession as well as the applicability of signature character strengths was important in work and private life, but to different degrees. Possessing fairness, honesty, or kindness indicated significant positive relations with subjective well-being, whereas judgment and kindness seemed to negatively interact with reduced personal accomplishment. Hospital physicians’ applicability of fairness, honesty, judgment, and love was particularly essential for their psychological well-being and work engagement, whereas the applicability of fairness (reduced personal accomplishment) and judgment (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization) at work interacted negatively with the respective outcomes. Therefore, creating awareness for individual signature character strengths as well as providing applicability in hospitals and private life could be a promising approach to improve physicians’ well-being and consequently patient care as well as the performance of the health-care system in general.

     

Psychometric Characteristics of the German Values in Action Inventory of Strengths 120-Item Short Form

The original Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) is an international 240 item validated self-report questionnaire measuring character strengths. A validated and reliable English 120-item short form (VIA-120) is available. However, there is limited information about the psychometric properties of the German VIA-120. This article addresses this gap and reports the reliability, validity and comparability of the German VIA-120 with the German VIA-240 version. Two independent samples were recruited: a general population sample (N = 1073, Sample 1) and a sample consisting of medical students and physicians (N = 685, Sample 2). Internal consistency of the VIA-120-scales ranged from α = .58 (modesty) to α = .87 (spirituality) in Sample 1 and α = .63 (honesty) to α = .90 (spirituality) in Sample 2. Intercorrelations between the scales of the 120-item version and the original 240-Items version (Sample 1) ranged from r = .52 (hope) to r = .89 (prudence). Criterion validity with the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and the Brief Inventory of Thriving (BIT) was demonstrated. The comparison of the factor structure between the original and the short form showed a good convergence (Tucker’s Phi .93–.99 Sample 1, .95–.98 Sample 2). Overall, the German VIA-120 was reliable, showed good convergence with the German VIA-240 and thus presents a similar level of validity for the assessment of character strengths. This study provides the first indication that the VIA 120 short form is comparable regarding the validity and reliability of the original VIA 240-item version indicating its potential to be used in large scale research studies.

     

Influence of practice on response-selection and response-implementation processes involved in the response-interference effect

In a choice reaction-time task, the response-interference effect is an increase in reaction times when the two possible responses are from the same hand compared to when the two possible responses are from different hands [Psychonomic Science 2 (1965) 55-56; Human Motor Control, Academic Press, San Diego, CA, 1991]. Although the influence of practice on other reaction-time effects (i.e., the complexity effect and precuing) has been examined, research evaluating the influence of practice on the response-interference effect is limited. Therefore, two experiments were conducted to determine the influence of practice on the response-interference effect. In Experiment 1, a bilateral transfer task was used to assess the influence of practice on the response-selection processes associated with the response-interference effect. The practice results indicated decreased reaction times, but did not influence the response-interference effect. In Experiment 2, a priming task was used to assess the influence of practice on response-implementation processes associated with the response-interference effect. The reaction time results indicated a change in the response-interference effect. The results of these two experiments suggest that with only two fingers on response keys, practice alters the mechanical constraints affecting the response-implementation processes and thereby decreases the response-interference effect.     

The persistence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder into young adulthood as a function of reporting source and definition of disorder

This study examined the persistence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) into young adulthood using hyperactive (N = 147) and community control (N = 71) children evaluated at ages 19-25 years. ADHD was rare in both groups (5% vs. 0%) based on self-report but was substantially higher using parent reports (46% vs. 1.4%). Using a developmentally referenced criterion (+2 SD), prevalence remained low for self-reports (12% vs. 10%) but rose further for parent reports (66% vs. 8%). Parent reports were more strongly associated with major life activities than were self-reports. Recollections of childhood ADHD showed moderate correlations with actual parent ratings collected in childd hood, which suggests some validity for such recollections. The authors conclude that previous follow-up studies that relied on self-reports might have substantially underestimated the persistence of ADHD into adulthood.     

Effects of acoustic degradation on syntactic processing: implications for the nature of the resource system used in language processing

This study investigated the effect of noise masking on on-line syntactic processing. Ninety college students were tested on measures of working memory and on-line sentence comprehension. Subjects were divided equally into three listening conditions: no noise masking, -3 dB signal-to-noise ratio (S:N), -4.5 dB S:N. The auditory moving windows (AMW) paradigm was used to measure on-line sentence processing. In the AMW paradigm, subjects pressed a button for the successive presentation of each phrase in two types of sentences (syntactically simple and complex), and listening times were recorded for each phrase. Previous studies have shown that the verb in the more complex sentence type is the most capacity demanding portion of the sentence. Listening times were longer overall with increased noise masking, and listening times were longer overall at the verb of the harder sentence type. However, the increase at the verb was not larger with increased noise masking. All three groups showed similar effects of syntactic structure in the on-line data. The on-line syntactic effects were not due to problems in word recognition. Correlational analyses did not indicate a relationship between the increase in processing time at the capacity demanding region of the harder sentence types and any of the measures of working memory capacity in any of the three listening conditions. Results indicate that on-line sentence processing is not affected by noise masking if lexical access (e.g., word recognition) remains intact.