Psychological and Sociocultural Adaptation of Children Adopted from Russia and their Associations with Pre-Adoption Risk Factors and Parenting

We investigated academic and behavioral outcomes of internationally adopted children and the associations between these outcomes and age at adoption, time spent in the adoptive family, and parenting. At two time points (T1 and T2, ~15 months apart), we examined early academic skills (school readiness), and parent-reported behavioral adjustment (internalizing and externalizing behavior) and adaptive functioning of a sample of 75 children (45.9% boys, mean age?=?5.17 years) adopted from Russia into US families. We also collected parents’ self-assessments of their parenting at T1. Children who were adopted at a younger age showed higher levels of early academic skills. Correlations between age at adoption and other outcomes were overall small and mostly non-significant. However, adoptees’ academic and behavioral progress differed notably in several respects. Specifically, adoptees improved in early academic skills over time, whereas, as a group, their adaptive functioning and behavioral adjustment remained stable within the normal range. Early academic skills were not related to behavioral adjustment at each time point and over time. The time spent in the adoptive family was positively related to early academic skills at T2. Whereas outcomes showed little to no relation to parenting as reported by mother and father separately, higher discrepancies between mothers' and fathers' reports of positive parenting were related to higher levels of behavioral symptoms and lower levels of adaptive skills at T2. These differential results may be explained in part by drawing upon the notion of dissociated domains of psychological and sociocultural adaptation and acculturation, outlined in the immigration literature. These results also bring to light the possible importance of between-parent consistency in parenting for adoptees’ behavioral outcomes.     

Evaluation of Violence Prevention Approaches Among Early Adolescents: Moderating Effects of Disability Status and Gender

High prevalence rates of aggression during adolescence and associated adjustment difficulties for perpetrators and victims highlight the need for effective violence prevention programs. School-based prevention programs are advantageous as they occur in a key setting for youths' social and emotional development. The current study compared the efficacy of a combined universal violence prevention approach that included individual-level skill-building (i.e., lessons from Second Step) and school environment (i.e., Olweus Bullying Prevention Program; OBPP) interventions to OBPP alone. Participants were 231 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders (ages 11–15; M?=?12.6, SD?=?1.0) in middle school (48?% male, 67?% African American). A total of 14 classrooms were randomly assigned to the combined intervention (seven) or OBPP only comparison (seven) condition, split evenly across grades. Intervention effects were moderated by disability status and gender. Among students without disabilities those who received the combined intervention reported greater increases in anger regulation coping skills than those in the comparison condition. In contrast, among youth with disabilities greater increases in teacher-rated social skills were found for students in the combined intervention than students in the comparison condition at posttest. Gender-moderated effects included greater decreases in teacher ratings of externalizing problems and bullying behaviors for boys in the combined intervention versus the comparison condition at posttest. Study results inform school-based violence prevention programs and are discussed along with implications.     

The effect of motion at encoding and retrieval for same- and other-race face recognition

In an experimental study, we assessed the role of motion when encoding and recognizing unfamiliar faces, using an old/new recognition memory paradigm. Our findings revealed a clear advantage for learning unfamiliar faces moving non-rigidly, compared with static faces. This advantage for motion was found with both same- and other-race faces. Furthermore, results indicate that it is more important that the face is learnt in motion than recognized from a moving clip. Interestingly, despite a reliable other-race effect being revealed, participants were able to utilize motion information exhibited by other-race faces in a manner akin to the motion advantage found for same-race faces. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the nature of the stored face representations, considering whether the facilitative role found here can be explained by factors other than motion per se.     

Trajectory of risky decision making for potential gains and losses from ages 5 to 85

The ability to make advantageous decisions in the face of uncertainty is an essential human skill, yet the development of such abilities over the lifespan is still not well understood. In the current study, from childhood through older adulthood, we tracked the developmental trajectory of risk taking for gains and losses, and expected value (EV) sensitivity in risky choices. In the gain domain, risk‐taking decreased consistently across the lifespan. In the loss domain, risk‐taking was relatively constant across ages, a result we attribute to the pervasiveness of loss aversion. EV sensitivity showed an inverted‐U‐shaped function, increasing from childhood to adulthood but then decreasing for the elderly, which occurred for both risky gains and risky losses. This finding is consistent with neuropsychological and neuroanatomical evidence concerning the role of the frontal lobe in decision making, which is relatively late to develop during childhood but may degrade earlier in the later years. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A bad taste in the mouth: gustatory disgust influences moral judgment

Can sweet-tasting substances trigger kind, favorable judgments about other people? What about substances that are disgusting and bitter? Various studies have linked physical disgust to moral disgust, but despite the rich and sometimes striking findings these studies have yielded, no research has explored morality in conjunction with taste, which can vary greatly and may differentially affect cognition. The research reported here tested the effects of taste perception on moral judgments. After consuming a sweet beverage, a bitter beverage, or water, participants rated a variety of moral transgressions. Results showed that taste perception significantly affected moral judgments, such that physical disgust (induced via a bitter taste) elicited feelings of moral disgust. Further, this effect was more pronounced in participants with politically conservative views than in participants with politically liberal views. Taken together, these differential findings suggest that embodied gustatory experiences may affect moral processing more than previously thought.     

A Comparison of Population-Averaged and Cluster-Specific Approaches in the Context of Unequal Probabilities of Selection

Sampling designs of large-scale survey studies are typically complex, involving multiple design features such as clustering and unequal probabilities of selection. Single-level (i.e., population-averaged) methods that use adjusted variance estimators and multilevel (i.e., cluster-specific) methods provide two alternatives for modeling clustered data. Although the literature comparing these methods is vast, comparisons have been limited to the context in which all sampling units are selected with equal probabilities (thus circumventing the need for sampling weights). The goal of this study was to determine under what conditions single-level and multilevel estimators outperform one another in the context of a two-stage sampling design with unequal probabilities of selection. Monte Carlo simulation methods were used to evaluate the impact of several factors, including population model, informativeness of the design, distribution of the outcome variable, intraclass correlation coefficient, cluster size, and estimation method. Results indicated that the unweighted estimators performed similarly across conditions, whereas the weighted single-level estimators tended to outperform the weighted multilevel estimators, particularly under nonideal sample conditions. Multilevel weight approximation methods did not perform well when the design was informative. An empirical example is provided to demonstrate how researchers might investigate the implications of the simulation results in practice.     

Idiom Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children

This study examines the effect of familiarity, context, and linguistic convention on idiom comprehension in Mandarin speaking children. Two experiments (a comprehension task followed by a comprehension task coupled with a metapragmatic task) were administered to test participants in three age groups (6 and 9-year-olds, and an adult control group). Laval (Journal of Pragmatics 35(2):723–739, 2003) showed that familiarity had an effect on idiom comprehension for French 9-year-olds. However, our finding showed that familiarity was important for 6-year-old Chinese children when a context was not given. Abkarian et al. (Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 35:580–587, 1992) claimed that context has little or no effect on comprehension for children under 6. Our results show that context has an effect on 6-year-old children’s understanding of idioms in a different way. Overall, our major research findings are: (1) Familiarity first appeared in responses at age 6. (2) Context played an important role in idiom comprehension and had different effects on different age groups. (3) Linguistic convention starts from age 6 on, and a significant effect took place at the age of 9. (4) Metapragmatic knowledge showed at the age of 6 and could surface even younger. As context and linguistic convention have a substantial effect on the comprehension of idioms, it is necessary to take them into account to explain language functioning and communicative situations.     

A Case Series of Family-Based Therapy for Weight Restoration in Young Adults with Anorexia Nervosa

This case series aims to examine the preliminary efficacy, acceptability and feasibility of Family-Based Treatment to promote weight restoration in young adults with anorexia nervosa. Four young adults with sub/threshold anorexia nervosa were provided 11–20 sessions of Family-Based Treatment for young adults with pre-, post- and follow-up assessments. At post- and follow-up, 3/4 participants were in the normal weight range, 3/4 were in the non-clinical range on the Eating Disorders Examination and reported being not/mildly depressed. At post-treatment, 2/4 were in the good psychosocial functioning range and by follow-up, 3/4 were in this range. These results suggest that Family-Based Treatment for young adults with anorexia nervosa is a promising treatment.