Emotion Dysregulation and Eating Disorder Symptoms: Examining Distinct Associations and Interactions in Adolescents

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Emotion dysregulation has been posited as a key transdiagnostic factor of mental health difficulties, including eating disorders. However, how...     

Psychological Wellbeing,Dyadic Adjustment,and Parental Stress among Spanish Families during the COVID-19 Outbreak

Journal of Child and Family Studies - Due to COVID-19, many countries, like Spain, imposed lockdown on the entire population to prevent the virus from spreading. The purpose of this exploratory...     

Long-term response-stimulus associations can influence distractor-response bindings

Strong associations between target stimuli and responses usually facilitate fast and effortless reactions. The present study investigated whether long-term associations between distractor stimuli and responses modulate behavior. In particular, distractor stimuli can affect behavior due to distractor-based stimulus-response retrieval, a phenomenon called distractor-response binding: An ignored stimulus becomes temporarily associated with a response and retrieves it at stimulus repetition. In a flanker task, participants ignored left and right pointing arrows and responded to a target letter either with left and right (strongly associated) responses or with upper and lower (weakly associated) responses. Binding effects were modulated in dependence of the long-term association strength between distractors and responses. If the association was strong (arrows pointing left and right with left and right responses), binding effects emerged but only in case of compatible responses. If the long-term association between distractors and responses was weak (arrows pointing left and right with upper and lower responses), binding was weaker and not modulated by compatibility. In contrast, sequential compatibility effects were not modulated by association strength between distractor and response. The results indicate that existing long-term associations between stimuli responses may modulate the impact of an ignored stimulus on action control.     

From gains to losses: Age-related differences in decisions under risk in a non-monetary gambling task

Lifespan theory suggests a shift from a primary orientation towards attaining gains in young adulthood to preventing losses in older adulthood. The current research tested if this motivational shift is reflected in behavioural and emotional responses to risks in non-monetary gains and losses. Study 1 established in a sample of N = 168 younger (18–30 years) and older adults (65–79 years) that a non-monetary gambling task was experienced similarly by the age groups with respect to arousal and valence of the task, and the willingness to continue playing. In Study 2 (N = 83), differences between young (18–30 years) and older (64–85 years) adults’ risk-taking in this non-monetary gambling task with mixed gambles were tested while assessing physiological responses (event-related heart rate change) to gain and loss feedback. Behavioural – but not physiological – results confirm hypotheses derived from a lifespan motivational framework regarding age-differential effects of gains and losses.     

Forensic interviews with preschool children: An analysis of extended interviews in Norway (2015–2017)

This study examined the quality of forensic interviews conducted by specially trained police officers in the Norwegian Barnahus between 2015 and 2017, using the sequential interview (SI) model, a Norwegian version of the extended interview model that has not previously been studied. Two hundred and seven interviews of alleged abused preschool children (3–7 years old) were selected from around the country. Developmental trends in interview dynamics and the pattern of disclosure were analyzed. Analyses showed that the interviews were long but involved few open-ended and many suggestive questions, especially in interviews with the youngest children who did not disclose. Because similar findings were obtained in previous studies of Norwegian interviews not using this model, the findings suggest that the SI interview model does little to improve the formal quality of forensic interviews with very young children, and show the need to develop new forms of interviewer training which are more intensive than those currently employed.     

Inhibition in aging: What is preserved? What declines? A meta-analysis

Aging has been assumed to go along with deficient inhibitory processes in cognitive performance. According to this inhibition deficit hypothesis, older adults are less able to suppress or ignore irrelevant thoughts and actions than young adults are. This hypothesis has been investigated in a large number of studies. We conducted a meta-analysis to determine whether there is an inhibition deficit in older age and whether this deficit is general or task-specific. We selected 176 studies in which young and older adults were tested on tasks commonly assumed to measure inhibition (i.e., the color Stroop, flanker, Simon, stop-signal, go/no-go, global–local, positive and negative compatibility tasks, as well as the paradigm assessing n-2 repetition costs in task switching). For most tasks (i.e., the color Stroop, flanker, and local tasks, as well as the n-2 repetition costs), the results speak against an inhibition deficit in older age. Only in a few tasks (i.e., the go/no-go and stop-signal tasks), older adults showed impaired inhibition. Moreover, for four tasks (i.e., the Simon, global, positive and negative compatibility tasks), the results suggest that more studies are necessary to draw a firm conclusion. Together, the present findings call into question the hypothesis of a general inhibition deficit in older age.     

People with severe and profound intellectual disability: Nurse carer experiences in a South African setting

We explored nurse carer experiences with people with severe and profound intellectual disability in a care and rehabilitation centre in South Africa. Informants were a convenience sample of 10 nurses (females = 7; males = 3; mean years of service = 7.8, SD = 4.8 years). They completed an unstructured interview on their care provision experiences. The data were thematically analysed using Tesch’s method of open coding. Findings resulted in the following three themes to characterise the nurse carer experiences: compassion, person-centred care, and importance of parent involvement. Compassionate and person-centred care is fundamental to the establishment of a therapeutic relationship between nurse carers and people with severe and profound intellectual disability.     

What’s Your Style? Preliminary Validation of the Gaming Styles Questionnaire

Within-group differences amongst gamers must be considered when studying the psychological correlates of gameplay. A conceptual framework, whereby gaming may be treated as a means to other ends—such as coping with boredom or bonding with friends—or as an end in itself, was the basis upon which the Gaming Styles Questionnaire was developed. Factor analysis and criterion-group validity, based on data obtained from a heterogeneous sample of gamers, offered support to a continuum of gamers, ranging from those for whom gaming is a means to other ends to those for whom gaming is an end in itself. Although age did not correlate with gaming style, men’s endorsement of gaming as an end in itself was stronger than women’s.     

Incongruent Names: A Theme in the History of Chinese Philosophy

This essay is meant to shed light on a discourse that spans centuries and includes different voices. To be aware of such trans-textual resonances can add a level of historical understanding to the reading of philosophical texts. Specifically, we intend to demonstrate how the notion of the ineffable Dao 道, prominently expressed in the Daodejing 道德經, informs a long discourse on incongruent names (ming 名) in distinction to a mainstream paradigm that demands congruity between names and what they designate. Thereby, we trace the development of the idea of the ineffable Dao quite differently from modern mystical interpretations. We show how, in an early Chinese context, it first gives rise to a sociopolitical critique of the incongruity underlying socially constructed names in the Zhuangzi 莊子, then to a discourse on the incongruity between moral virtues and names in Xuanxue 玄學 philosophy, and eventually to Sengzhao’s 僧肇 claim that a perceived congruence of names with things does not entail actual congruence between names and reality.