The Communities That Care (CTC) Family Attachment Scale: Measurement Invariance Across Family Structures

Familial protective factors are an integral part of prevention approaches aimed at problematic behaviour in adolescents. However, there is scarce evidence on the role of familial protective factors in families deviating from the two-parent family configuration. For evaluating targeted (preventive) interventions, a reliable and valid measurement of familial protective factors is crucial. We investigated the factor structure of the Communities That Care (CTC) Family Attachment Scale and tested its measurement invariance in different family structures. Adolescents (n?=?2.459, grades 6–11) from Lower Saxony, Germany filled in the German version of the CTC Youth Survey. Our analyses focused on the CTC Family Attachment Scale measuring the adolescent’s attachment to the mother and the father with six items. We evaluated the postulated unidimensional structure of the scale by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and tested the measurement invariance using multigroup factor analyses across different family structures (two-parent family/single-parent family). We used SPSS V.23 and the R packages lavaan and semTools. The two-factor solution for the CTC Family Attachment Scale with one factor representing attachment to the mother and one indicating attachment to the father had an adequate model fit in the total sample (χ²(5)?=?29.938; p?<?.001; CFI?=?.996; TLI?=?.988; RMSEA?=?.050, SRMR?=?.019). This two-factor solution of the CTC Family Attachment Scale showed strong measurement invariance regarding adolescents living in a two-parent family vs. those living with a single parent. The two-factor CTC Family Attachment Scale appears to be a suitable measure to assess family attachment in both two-parent and single-parent families with German adolescents.     

Development and Feasibility of a Group Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Fear of Cancer Recurrence

This paper describes the development, content, and preliminary results of a group cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for fear of cancer recurrence (FCR). A manualized CBT intervention was developed and offered to 38 patients with various cancer types and stages in two hospitals. Four weekly group CBT sessions were administered by two licensed psychologists as part of routine care. Patients completed self-report scales before the first treatment session and, a second time, 1 month after the last session.Overall, 33 patients had clinical levels of FCR at baseline. The participants’ satisfaction toward the group CBT for FCR was high. Significant reductions on the total score and most subscales of the Fear of Cancer Recurrence Inventory (FCRI) were observed, as well as significant improvements on most of the other psychological variables measured (i.e., insomnia, anxiety, depression, dysfunctional beliefs about cancer, and intolerance of uncertainty). In addition, 52% of the patients with clinical levels of FCR (FCRI-severity subscale score ≥ 13) at baseline no longer reached this clinical threshold at posttreatment.These preliminary results suggest that our group CBT for FCR is well accepted and feasible, and shows promising efficacy for decreasing FCR and improving other psychological variables among cancer patients. The next step is to investigate the efficacy of this minimal intervention in larger and controlled clinical trials, as well as its usefulness as part of a stepped care approach.This low-cost intervention is easy to implement in various clinical settings and has a strong potential to help large numbers of patients with FCR.     

What if they are right? Network approval,expectations, and relationship maintenance behaviors

This study drew on uncertainty reduction and decision‐making theories to investigate how perceptions of approval of romantic relationships from family and friends can influence romantic partners' dynamics. Using a dyadic approach, the authors examined whether expectations of a partner's behavior in the relationship mediated the associations between perceived social network approval and relationship maintenance behaviors in a sample of 137 couples. The actor–partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) was applied. Results showed that women's and men's perceptions of approval from their own and their partner's network were associated with their own level of expectations of their partner's behaviors. In turn, women's and men's expectations were associated with their own and their partner's maintenance behaviors.     

Non-binary youth: Access to gender-affirming primary health care

ABSTRACT

Background: Transgender (trans) youth who identify outside the gender binary are a growing subpopulation. In this article, we document differences in access to gender-affirming health care between binary and non-binary identified trans youth and explore ways of meeting the health needs of non-binary youth within primary care settings.

Methods: The Canadian Trans Youth Health Survey is a national online survey of trans youth, 14–25 years, conducted in 2013–2014. Among the 839 participants who responded to gender identity items in the survey, 41% identified as non-binary. We compared demographic, health outcome, and health care access responses between non-binary and binary (trans girls/women and trans boys/men) youth.

Results: Non-binary and binary youth were similar in most demographics, including age, geographic distribution, and ethnocultural backgrounds, however a larger proportion (82%) of non-binary youth were assigned female at birth. Older non-binary youth (aged 19–25) were significantly more likely to forego needed healthcare than older binary youth; no significant differences were found between younger (14–18) non-binary and binary youth in foregoing healthcare. Overall, non-binary youth (13%) were significantly less likely than binary youth (52%) to access hormone therapy, but they were more likely than binary youth to report experiencing barriers to accessing hormone therapy when needed.

Conclusions: Non-binary trans youth in Canada report challenges in accessing needed gender-affirming healthcare. Primary care providers are well-situated to integrate a broad range of gender-affirming care services into practice in order to address the unique needs of non-binary youth. Future research is warranted to explore experiences of non-binary youth related to barriers to care and to explore how services can be designed and delivered to better meet the needs of non-binary youth seeking gender-affirming primary care.     

Biotechnologies that empower transgender persons to self-actualize as individuals,partners, spouses,and parents are defining new ways to conceive a child: psychological considerations and ethical issues

Today, thanks to biomedical technologies advances, some persons with fertility issues can conceive. Transgender persons benefit also from these advances and can not only actualize their self-identified sexual identities but also experience parenthood. Based on clinical multidisciplinary seminars that gathered child psychiatrists and psychoanalysts interested in the fields of assisted reproduction technology (ART) and gender dysphoria, philosophers interested in bioethics, biologists interested in ART, and endocrinologists interested in pubertal suppression, we explore how new biotechnical advances, whether in gender transition or procreation, could create new ways to conceive a child possible. After reviewing the various medical/surgical techniques for physical gender transition and the current ART options, we discuss how these new ways for persons to self-actualize and to experience parenthood can not only improve the condition of transgender persons (and the human condition as a whole through greater equity) but also introduce some elements of change in the habitual patterns of thinking especially in France. Finally, we discuss the ethical issues that accompany the arrival of these children and provide creative solutions to help society handle, accept, and support the advances made in this area.     

Knowing when to respond: the role of visual information in conversational turn exchanges

When engaging in conversation, we efficiently go back and forth with our partner, organizing our contributions in reciprocal turn-taking behavior. Using multiple auditory and visual cues, we make online decisions about when it is the appropriate time to take our turn. In two experiments, we demonstrated, for the first time, that auditory and visual information serve complementary roles when making such turn-taking decisions. We presented clips of single utterances spoken by individuals engaged in conversations in audiovisual, auditory-only or visual-only modalities. These utterances occurred either right before a turn exchange (i.e., ‘Turn-Ends’) or right before the next sentence spoken by the same talker (i.e., ‘Turn-Continuations’). In Experiment 1, participants discriminated between Turn-Ends and Turn-Continuations in order to synchronize a button-press response to the moment the talker would stop speaking. We showed that participants were best at discriminating between Turn-Ends and Turn-Continuations in the audiovisual condition. However, in terms of response synchronization, participants were equally precise at timing their responses to a Turn-End in the audiovisual and auditory-only conditions, showing no advantage of visual information. In Experiment 2, we used a gating paradigm, where increasing segments of Turns-Ends and Turn-Continuations were presented, and participants predicted if a turn exchange would occur at the end of the sentence. We found an audiovisual advantage in detecting an upcoming turn early in the perception of a turn exchange. Together, these results suggest that visual information functions as an early signal indicating an upcoming turn exchange while auditory information is used to precisely time a response to the turn end.     

Chronic stress, cognitive functioning and mental health

This review aims to discuss the evidence supporting the link between chronic stress, cognitive function and mental health. Over the years, the associations between these concepts have been investigated in different populations. This review summarizes the findings that have emerged from older populations as well as from populations suffering from pathological aging, namely Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer's Disease. Although older adults are an interesting population to study in terms of chronic stress, other stress-related diseases can occur throughout the lifespan. The second section covers some of these stress-related diseases that have recently received a great deal of attention, namely burnout, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Given that chronic stress contributes to the development of certain pathologies by accelerating and/or exacerbating pre-existing vulnerabilities that vary from one individual to the other, the final section summarizes data obtained on potential variables contributing to the association between chronic stress and cognition.     

The acquisition of scientific knowledge: the influence of methods of questioning and analysis on the interpretation of children's conceptions of the earth

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non‐scientific ‘theories’ (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their knowledge lacks the coherence of mental models. The reasons for these contrasting views were tested by interviewing French children (N = 178) aged 5–11 years and varying the different methods used in previous research, namely the types of questions (open and forced‐choice), the form of representation (two‐dimensional pictures and three‐dimensional models), and the method of analysis (the mental model theorists' coding scheme and a statistical test for associations using MANOVA). Forced‐choice questions resulted in higher proportions of scientific answers than open questions, and children appeared to have naïve mental models of the Earth only when the mental model theorists' coding scheme was used. These findings support the view that children tend to have ‘fragments’ of scientific knowledge, and that naïve mental models of the Earth are methodological artifacts. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Participation des familles immigrantes à l’école: points de vue des parents congolais à Edmonton (Alberta)

Economic development in Alberta during the last decade has attracted a large number of immigrant families to the province. It is important to understand the role that immigrant parents play on the schooling process of their children. The objective of this study was to identify factors limiting the involvement of some immigrant parents in their children’s education. Field data describe how parents perceive their relationship with school teachers.