Family-of-Origin Factors and Physical Teen Dating Violence Victimization and Perpetration: A Meta-Analysis

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The purpose of this meta-analysis is to explore the relationship between family-of-origin factors (i.e., attachment, witnessing inter-parental violence,...     

FOCUSING ON PARTICIPANTS

This article presents a model developed and assessed by a women's health research team to enhance sensitivity and increase readability of a survey to be used with community-based women. The survey consisted of quantitative measures of AIDS-related attitudes and behaviors, developed and used with traditional-aged college populations, and included questions of a highly personal nature. In Study 1, 30 women with English reading levels of third grade and above from two targeted community populations completed a survey in two waves of focus groups and gave feedback about readability, length, format, content, emotional responses, truthfulness in responding, and opinions about the research. Problem areas and changes that made the survey more readable, understandable, emotionally sensitive, and effective are reviewed. In Study 2, pre- and postmodification versions of nine scales are compared in 430 traditional-aged college women (pre) and 793 community-based women (post), the latter broken into subsamples for more refined comparisons. Results of five psychometric analyses demonstrate that psychometric integrity does not have to be hurt by such changes. In addition, this process illustrates how researchers can gain a better understanding of participants and their reactions to the research process through qualitative research methods.     

Intrusion-based reasoning and depression: Cross-sectional and prospective relationships

Intrusion-based reasoning refers to the tendency to form interpretations about oneself or a situation based on the occurrence of a negative intrusive autobiographical memory. Intrusion-based reasoning characterises post-traumatic stress disorder, but has not yet been investigated in depression. We report two studies that aimed to investigate this. In Study 1 both high (n = 42) and low (n = 28) dysphoric participants demonstrated intrusion-based reasoning. High-dysphoric individuals engaged in self-referent intrusion-based reasoning to a greater extent than did low-dysphoric participants. In Study 2 there were no significant differences in intrusion-based reasoning between currently depressed (n = 27) and non-depressed (n = 51) participants, and intrusion-based reasoning did not predict depressive symptoms at 6-month follow-up. Interestingly, previously (n = 26) but not currently (n = 27) depressed participants engaged in intrusion-based reasoning to a greater extent than never-depressed participants (n = 25), indicating the possibility that intrusion-based reasoning may serve as a “scar” from previous episodes. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Gender-role orientation and body image in women and men: The moderating influence of neuroticism

This study examined the effects of gender-role orientation on aspects of body image satisfaction in a group of primarily Caucasian young women and men. It also examined whether neuroticism—a broad, higher-order dimension of personality—functioned additively or interactively with gender-role orientation in the prediction of body image. Similar to previous research, masculinity was related to positive body image in women. For men, results were in the opposite direction. Femininity, and not masculinity, was related to body satisfaction. Of particular interest were the findings that neuroticism interacted both with masculinity in women and femininity in men in predicting positive ratings of attractiveness. In both cases, the positive relationship between gender-role orientation and attractiveness only existed at low levels of neuroticism. As neuroticism increased, the relationship diminished; there was no relationship at all at high levels of neuroticism. Results are discussed in terms of the differential significance of gender-role orientation for body esteem in women and men, and with respect to the moderating influence of personality factors.     

A review of existing measures of attentional biases in body image and eating disorders research

Cognitive theories emphasise the important role of attentional biases in the development and maintenance of body image issues and eating pathology. A wealth of research has been conducted to examine attentional biases toward body‐related information among individuals with eating pathology. However, there is considerable variability in the methods that have been used to measure attention and, importantly, these methods tap into different attentional processes. Given the multifaceted nature of attention, it is important for researchers to select the right tools to test their hypotheses. This review critically evaluates the attentional measures that have been used in previous research, primarily the modified Stroop task, dot probe task, visual search task, and eyetracking. The strengths and limitations of each measure will be discussed in order to provide a guide for researchers to further investigate the attentional mechanisms underlying body image issues and eating disorders. Overall, we recommend that researchers use a combination of eyetracking technology and specific reaction‐time measures that target the specific attentional mechanism of interest.     

Using Retrieval Cues to Attenuate Return of Fear in Individuals With Public Speaking Anxiety

Even after successful exposure, relapse is not uncommon. Based on the retrieval model of fear extinction (e.g., Vervliet, Craske, & Hermans, 2013), return of fear can occur after exposure due to an elapse of time (spontaneous recovery) or change in context (contextual renewal). The use of external salient stimuli presented throughout extinction (i.e., retrieval cues [RCs]) has been suggested as a potential solution to this problem (Bouton, 2002). The current study examined whether RCs attenuated return of fear in individuals with public speaking anxiety. Sixty-five participants completed a brief exposure while presented with two RC stimuli aimed at a variety of senses (visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory). Later, half the participants were tested for return of fear in a context different from the exposure context, and the other half in the same context. Half of each context group were presented with the same cues as in exposure, while the other half were not. Return of fear due to an elapse of time, change in context, and effects of RCs were evaluated on subjective, behavioral, and physiological measures of anxiety. Although contextual renewal was not observed, results supported effects of RCs in reducing spontaneous recovery on behavioral and physiological measures of anxiety. There was also evidence that participants who were reminded of feeling anxious during exposure by the RCs benefited more from using them at follow-up, whereas those who perceived the cues as comforting (safety signals) benefited less. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Comparative difficulty and the strategic regulation of accuracy: The impact of test-list context on monitoring and meta-metacognition

A growing body of research has shown that context manipulations can have little or no impact on accuracy performance, yet still significantly influence metacognitive performance. For example, participants in a test-list context paradigm study one list of words with a medium levels-of-processing task and a second word list with either a shallow or deep task: Recognition for medium words does not differ across conditions, however medium words are significantly more likely to be labeled as “remembered” (vs. merely familiar) if they had been studied with a shallow word list (Bodner & Lindsay, 2003). The goal of the current studies was to extend the test-list context paradigm to strategic regulation (report/withhold recognition test), and broaden it to incorporate different types of stimuli (i.e., face stimuli in place of a medium word list). The paradigm also was modified to include separate answer (studied/new) confidence and decision (report/withhold) confidence ratings at test. Results showed that context did not impact recognition accuracy for faces across the context conditions, however participants were more likely to report (i.e., volunteer) their face responses if they had studied the shallow word list. The results also demonstrated a difference between answer confidence and decision confidence, and the pattern of this difference depended on whether responses were reported or withheld (Experiment 1). Overall, the data are presented as support for the functional account of memory, which views memory states as inferential and attributional rather than static categories.