Perceptions of Stress,Coping, and Intervention Preferences among Caregivers of Disadvantaged Children with Asthma

Asthma remains the most prevalent chronic illness among children. Despite the substantial body of literature examining children with asthma, few studies have examined parents’ perspectives of the condition and experiences of caregiver stress. Parents of children with chronic illnesses experience elevated stress and may have limited opportunities to cope with complex emotions while caring for children with asthma. Drawing from focus groups and interviews with African American and Hispanic parents of children with asthma, this qualitative study was conducted as part of a patient-centered engagement process to inform the refinement of an intervention aimed at reducing stress among parents of children with asthma. All data were transcribed and underwent three waves of inductive analysis. The content analysis indicated that the unpredictable nature of asthma and the caregiving burden associated with managing children’s asthma contributed to parents’ stress, and external contexts compounded the impact of these stressors. Parents also reported having difficulty identifying how they coped with stress and employed approaches to coping with stress that they applied intermittently but encountered several barriers to enacting known or available coping strategies. Analyses also revealed that parents desired a multimodal stress reduction intervention that emphasized building relationships, allowed for flexibility, and encouraged staff-parent communication. Whereas African American and Hispanic parents’ experiences of stress and coping strategies were similar, their preferences differed in regards to incorporating technology into the intervention, the credentials of facilitators, and the salience of language preferences. Understanding the complexities of stressors facing caregivers is important for developing interventions to support parents and children coping with asthma, and in particular when working with families from diverse backgrounds.     

Can Self-Reassurance Buffer against the Impact of Bullying? Effects on Body Shame and Disordered Eating in Adolescence

Bullying experiences are associated with body image and eating-related problems. Nonetheless, research on possible resilience factors is scant. The current study tested a path model examining the association between emotional memories of experiences of warmth and safeness, and self-reassuring abilities, and whether these abilities moderate the impact of bullying experiences on body image shame and eating psychopathology. We tested this model in a nonclinical sample of 609 adolescent girls aged 12–18 years. The examined model accounted for 22?% of body image shame variance and 51?% of eating psychopathology variance. Memories of warmth and safeness were significantly associated with self-reassurance, and negatively linked to body image shame and eating psychopathology. Self-reassurance significantly moderated the association between bullying experiences and both body image shame and eating psychopathology. The present findings suggest the relevance of assessing the quality of interpersonal experiences reported by adolescents and their potential association with self-reassuring abilities. Moreover, these results suggest that the ability to reassure and soothe the self may have a buffering effect against the negative impact of bullying experiences on adolescents’ body image and eating behaviors.     

Auditory attentional blink: masking the second target is necessary, delayed masking is sufficient.

When two target items (T1 and T2) are presented in rapid succession among fillers, processing T2 is often impaired. This phenomenon is known as the attentional blink (AB). Within the visual modality, this second-target deficit generally occurs only if T2 is masked by a trailing item. The current study was designed to examine whether masking of T2 also plays a critical role in the auditory AB. Results showed a reliable AB effect even when the item following T2 was replaced by silence. However, the AB deficit was abolished when T2 was the last presented stimulus. Our results suggest that, as in vision, T2 masking is necessary for the AB to take place in audition, but that masking is effective even when delayed, providing evidence that the phenomenon shares some functional mechanisms across sensory modalities.     

Sensory and Postural input in the Occurrence of a Gender Difference in Orienting Liquid Surfaces

The Psychological Record - In the water-level task, both spatial skill and physical knowledge contribute to representing the surface of a liquid as horizontal irrespective of the container’s...     

Self-Regulation in the Classroom: A Perspective on Assessment and Intervention

Il n’y a pas de définition simple et univoque du concept d’apprentissage autorégulé. Des théoriciens de psychologie de l’éducation ont réduit l’éventail des aptitudes des élèves à s’autoréguler en se focalisant sur le versant scolaire de l’éducation, à savoir l’acquisition des connaissances et les objectifs de réussite. Toutefois, le monde complexe de l’étude en classe engendre une situation où différents buts entrent en concurrence aux yeux des élèves. Le modèle d’autorégulation à double processus de Bookaerts montre que les deux objectifs que sont l’étude et le bien‐être interagissent. Nous estimons que lorsque les élèves ont accès à des stratégies autonomes bien au point se traduisant par de bonnes habitudes de travail, ils ont une plus grande probabilité de se motiver pour les études et de sauvegarder leur bien‐être quand une source de stress bloque l’apprentissage. There is no simple and straightforward definition of the construct of self‐regulated learning. Theorists in educational psychology have narrowed the scope of students’ capability to self‐regulate through a focus on the academic side of education, namely on learning and achievement goals. However, the messy world of classroom learning creates a situation in which different goals compete for students’ attention. Boekaerts’ dual processing self‐regulation model describes how learning goals interact with well‐being goals. We propose that when students have access to well‐refined volitional strategies manifested as good work habits, they are more likely to invest effort in learning and get off the well‐being track when a stressor blocks learning. Shifting definitions of SRL have led to changing measurement procedures; researchers moved away from decontextualised measures of SRL to domain‐specific measures and then on to context‐sensitive measures. The validity and reliability of the first generation of SR assessment has been limited and several issues remain. Recently, researchers have designed assessment packages including new instruments that better capture self‐regulation as a process (including for example traces of mental events, situational manipulations, and records of student work strategies). A combination of instruments is preferable over a single instrument for assessing self‐regulation as a process and the effects of interventions to improve students’ self‐regulatory capacity. At present, many sound SRL interventions exist and some general lessons can be learned about classroom intervention research.