Promoting beliefs in the inalienability of human rights by attributing uniquely human emotions through multiple categorization

The combination of multiple categorization (i.e., the use of multiple criteria to define others) and human identity—the superordinate group of human beings—has recently been highlighted as a method to reduce implicit (i.e., attribution of secondary emotions) and explicit (i.e., attribution of human rights) dehumanization toward Blacks.

In two studies aimed to replicate such evidence the mediating role of secondary emotions in explaining the impact of multiple and human categorization in reducing dehumanization was assessed. The role of implicit cognition, such as attribution of secondary emotions in leading people to attribute human rights to minorities, is discussed.     

Verbal Working Memory as a Longitudinal Mechanism of Vocabulary Problems in Preschoolers with ADHD

Elucidation of early potential risk factors of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is important to allow for early identification of ADHD and targeted early intervention for children with ADHD. Delayed language skills, particularly poor vocabulary, is an early-developing potential risk factor that is thought to be involved in developmental pathways to ADHD; however, mechanisms explaining the relationship between poor vocabulary skills and ADHD symptoms are unclear and warrant investigation. The present study examines the relationship between poor vocabulary skills and ADHD symptoms by testing cognitive mechanisms, namely verbal working memory (WM), that might account for this link. Participants were 109 young children between the ages of three and six and their primary caregivers. Diagnostic information on ADHD symptoms was available from parents and teachers/daycare providers via standardized rating forms. Vocabulary skills and WM were measured through child performance on laboratory tasks. Mediation analyses found poor verbal working memory significantly partially explained the vocabulary-ADHD association for both parent and teacher-rated ADHD symptoms. Further, effects of verbal WM on the association between poor vocabulary and increased ADHD symptoms largely held at one-year follow-up. Development of early interventions targeting verbal WM may be a promising new direction for early ADHD intervention work.     

Influence of Multiple Traumatic Event Types on Mental Health Outcomes: Does Count Matter?

The experience of potentially traumatizing events (PTEs) may be associated with conflicting outcomes: individuals may experience greater psychological distress (dose-response theory), or individuals may become more resilient against repeated PTEs (stress-inoculation theory). With limited empirical data comparing these theories, we examined the relationships between the count of lifetime PTE types and psychological outcomes [posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, impaired distress tolerance] using linear and quadratic regressions. A linear relationship would support the dose-response theory, and a quadratic relationship would support the stress-inoculation theory. We also explored whether there was a threshold number of PTE types fostering resiliency before an increase of distressing outcomes. The sample included 123 (68.30% female) treatment-seeking patients at a community mental health center participating in a larger study (Contractor et al. in Psychiatry Research, 252, 252215–252222, 2017). Linear regression results indicated number of PTE types significantly predicted increasing PTSD and depression severity and distress tolerance difficulties. Quadratic regression model results were not significant. ROC analyses indicated exposure to at least 3.5 PTE types predicted PTSD with moderate accuracy. In conclusion, the dose-response theory was supported, with results indicating there may be a threshold count of lifetime PTE types (> 3) influencing traumatic stress outcomes.     

FOCUS on the Family Caregiver: A Problem‐Solving Training Intervention

Problem‐solving interventions have documented effectiveness in treating distress among a variety of clientele. The authors discuss the application of training in social problem solving with family caregivers of persons who have incurred severe physical disabilities. Specifically, the authors outline training procedures (i.e., Project FOCUS) that enable counselors to assist family caregivers in developing effective problem‐solving skills that may translate to increased wellness for each caregiver, and by extension, their care recipients.     

Women's Spiritualities: Resource for Mission

What are the distinguishing features of women's spiritualities, what informs women's spiritualities and practice? This paper attends to the transformative elements that women's spiritualities potentially offer to the task of mission. Mary and her song in Luke 1 are explored in order to plumb something of the depth of the spirituality of Mary and her song and Mary in her role as woman, as co‐worker with God to redeem and transform the world.     

Growing up Faster, Feeling Older: Hardship in Childhood and Adolescence

We examine whether hardship while growing up shapes subjective age identity, as well as three types of experiences through which it may occur. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that hardship in several domains during childhood and adolescence is associated with feeling relatively older and self-identifying as an adult in the late teens and twenties. Specifically, young people who as adolescents felt unsafe in their schools or neighborhoods, witnessed or were victims of violence, had fewer economic resources in the household, and lived in certain family structures, reported older subjective ages (by one or both measures). We find no evidence that hardship's association with subjective age is mediated by work responsibilities in adolescence or by anticipating a very curtailed life span, but entering adult roles earlier mediates or partially mediates many of these relationships.     

Egocentric-updating during navigation facilitates episodic memory retrieval

Influential models suggest that spatial processing is essential for episodic memory [O’Keefe, J., & Nadel, L. (1978). The hippocampus as a cognitive map. London: Oxford University Press]. However, although several types of spatial relations exist, such as allocentric (i.e. object-to-object relations), egocentric (i.e. static object-to-self relations) or egocentric updated on navigation information (i.e. self-to-environment relations in a dynamic way), usually only allocentric representations are described as potentially subserving episodic memory [Nadel, L., & Moscovitch, M. (1998). Hippocampal contributions to cortical plasticity. Neuropharmacology, 37(4-5), 431-439]. This study proposes to confront the allocentric representation hypothesis with an egocentric updated with self-motion representation hypothesis. In the present study, we explored retrieval performance in relation to these two types of spatial processing levels during learning. Episodic remembering has been assessed through Remember responses in a recall and in a recognition task, combined with a “Remember-Know-Guess” paradigm [Gardiner, J. M. (2001). Episodic memory and autonoetic consciousness: A first-person approach. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 356(1413), 1351-1361] to assess the autonoetic level of responses. Our results show that retrieval performance was significantly higher when encoding was performed in the egocentric-updated condition. Although egocentric updated with self-motion and allocentric representations are not mutually exclusive, these results suggest that egocentric updating processing facilitates remember responses more than allocentric processing. The results are discussed according to Burgess and colleagues’ model of episodic memory [Burgess, N., Becker, S., King, J. A., & O’Keefe, J. (2001). Memory for events and their spatial context: models and experiments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 356(1413), 1493-1503].     

Infant visual habituation

The use of visual habituation in the study of infant cognition and learning is reviewed. This article traces the history of the technique, underlying theory, and procedural variation in its measurement. In addition, we review empirical findings with respect to the cognitive processes that presumably contribute to habituation, studies of developmental course and long-term prediction, as well as recent attempts to address or explain the phenomenon of visual habituation through the use of mathematical or quantitative models. The review ends with an appeal for a return to the study of habituation per se as a valid measure of infant learning, rather than relegating the phenomenon to its use as a technique for familiarizing infants in procedures testing for discrimination or recognition.     

Maternal Emotion Socialization and the Development of Inhibitory Control in an Emotional Condition

Although several studies have implicated parental socialization in children's development of multiple executive functions, little is known about how parenting may predict inhibitory control when emotion is involved. In this study, 42 children completed two tasks with their mothers at 3.5 years. Maternal emotion language was coded during a storybook task, and maternal scaffolding was coded during a puzzle task. At 3.5 and 4 years, children's inhibitory control was assessed with Day–Night and Happy–Sad card games, Stroop‐like tasks that differ in that the latter contains emotion content. Accuracy and latency on Happy–Sad were predicted by maternal emotion language but not scaffolding. In contrast, latency on Day–Night was predicted by scaffolding but not emotion language. This shows context‐specificity in the links between parenting and cognitive control, such that emotion socialization predicted children's performance in an emotional context only, while more general scaffolding behaviours predicted inhibitory control in the non‐emotional condition. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.