Depression and quality of informal care: a longitudinal investigation of caregiving stressors

This research examined longitudinal associations between caregiving stressors, caregiver depression, and quality of care. Informal caregivers of elderly care recipients were interviewed at baseline (N = 310) and again one year later (N = 213). Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that increases in caregiving stressors (i.e., caregiver physical health symptoms, caregiver activity restriction, and care recipient controlling and manipulative behavior) were related to increased caregiver depression. In turn, increased caregiver depression and decreased caregiver respectful behavior predicted increases in potentially harmful behavior. These results extend previous cross-sectional findings and indicate that changes in caregiving stressors, caregiver depression, and caregiver respect over time may signal that intervention is warranted in order to forestall or prevent poor quality of care.     

Attachment Insecurity and Perceived Partner Suffering as Predictors of Personal Distress

This study examined the extent to which perceptions of partner suffering mediate the association between attachment insecurity (anxiety and avoidance) and personal distress among spouses of older adults with osteoarthritis. Fifty-three spouses watched two videos of targets (their partner and an opposite sex stranger) perform a pain-eliciting household task, and spouses were asked to rate their own distress and perceptions of the targets' pain. Spouses also completed self-report measures of trait attachment. Results revealed that attachment anxiety was associated with greater personal distress in reaction to the partner's suffering, and heightened perceptions of partner pain mediated this association. Avoidant attachment was associated with less distress in reaction to the partner's suffering, but not with less perceived pain. The results of this study identify an important mechanism linking attachment insecurity and heightened distress responses when observing the suffering of a significant other.     

The Dynamics of Indexical Belief

Indexical beliefs pose a special problem for standard theories of Bayesian updating. Sometimes we are uncertain about our location in time and space. How are we to update our beliefs in situations like these? In a stepwise fashion, I develop a constraint on the dynamics of indexical belief. As an application, the suggested constraint is brought to bear on the Sleeping Beauty problem.     

From understanding others' needs to prosocial action: Motor and social abilities promote infants' helping

In the present study, we test the main hypothesis that infants' understanding of others' needs translates into helping behavior, when critical motor and social competencies have emerged, early in the second year. We assessed the understanding of others' needs in an eye‐tracking paradigm and the helping behavior of 10‐ (n = 41) and 16‐month‐olds (n = 37). Furthermore, we assessed the motor and social abilities of 16‐month‐olds. Critically, while infants understood others' needs already at 10 months, fine motor and social interaction skills moderated the link between infants' prosocial understanding and helping behavior at 16 months. This provides first evidence that infants' helping behavior relates to their understanding of others' needs. Furthermore, we found that fine motor, gross motor, and social interaction skills predicted early helping behavior by themselves. These findings highlight that the emergence of infants' helping behavior is the result of a developmental system that includes infants' understanding of others' needs and also their motor and social competencies. The link between infants' understanding of others' needs and their early helpful actions provide further support for the prosocial nature of early helping behavior.     

Going beyond the evidence: abstract laws and preschoolers' responses to anomalous data

Given minimal evidence about novel objects, children might learn only relationships among the specific entities, or they might make a more abstract inference, positing classes of entities and the relations that hold among those classes. Here we show that preschoolers (mean: 57 months) can use sparse data about perceptually unique objects to infer abstract physical causal laws. These newly inferred abstract laws were robust to potentially anomalous evidence; in the face of apparent counter-evidence, children (correctly) posited the existence of an unobserved object rather than revise the abstract laws. This suggests that children's ability to learn robust, abstract principles does not depend on extensive prior experience but can occur rapidly, on-line, and in tandem with inferences about specific relations.     

Expectancy confirmation in spite of disconfirming evidence: The case of price increases due to the introduction of the Euro

People in Germany overwhelmingly believe that the Euro introduction caused an overall price increase, however, no such increase actually took place. To investigate whether this disparity could be based on biased perceptions of the average price trend, four studies were conducted. Participants received two menus from a restaurant (one ‘old’ menu with German Mark (DM) prices and one ‘new’ menu with Euro prices) and were asked to estimate the price trend (in per cent). In all of these studies, price trend judgements were biased towards rising prices. If the prices had in fact been raised, the magnitude of this price increase was overestimated. If the prices had remained stable, significant price increases were perceived. And if the prices had fallen, they were perceived as having remained stable. The bias was systematically related to participants' expectations concerning price increases. A ‘selective outcome correction’ hypothesis proved to best fit the data: incorrect calculation outcomes that are in line with one's expectations are overlooked, whereas incorrect inconsistent outcomes are detected and corrected. The results imply that expectations can influence judgements even when clear disconfirming evidence is available that can be compared with an objective standard, thus leaving no room for interpretation. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Feedlot veterinarians' moral and instrumental beliefs regarding antimicrobial use in feedlot cattle

This cross‐sectional survey research study examined the role moral beliefs play in predicting behavioural beliefs and attitudes and the role that subjective norms play in predicting moral beliefs. Using a self‐administered questionnaire, one hundred and three feedlot veterinarians completed measures of behavioural beliefs, referent others, perceived constraints and moral beliefs regarding recommendations to use antimicrobials in four situations (i.e. acutely sick cattle, chronically sick cattle, at‐risk cattle and high‐risk cattle). Regression analysis and F‐tests indicate moral beliefs as contributing significant increases in R² to models predicting behavioural beliefs regarding antimicrobial use in each situation. In addition, subjective norms contribute a significant increase in R² in models predicting moral beliefs in each of the four situations. The results indicate the effects of moral beliefs on behavioural beliefs are somewhat contingent on the condition; that is the level of risk associated with treating cattle with antimicrobials, the level of risk of not doing so, and the effectiveness of the antimicrobial in situations such as acute illness or being at‐risk of illness. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.