Parent-Offspring Transmission of Internalizing and Sensory over-Responsivity Symptoms in Adolescence

Reactions to sensory experiences are an overlooked correlate of affective regulation, despite the importance of bodily states on psychological processes. Children who display sensory over-responsivity (i.e., adverse reactions to typical sensations) are at greater risk for developing affective disorders. We extended this literature to adolescents and their middle-aged parents. Participants in a birth record-based study of families of adolescent twins (N = 506 families; 1012 adolescents; 53% female) completed a subset of items from the Adult Sensory Profile. We derived adolescent self-reported internalizing disorder symptoms and parent affective diagnoses from structured diagnostic interviews. Structural equation models tested the relationship between parent sensory over-responsivity symptoms and affective diagnoses and their adolescent offspring’s sensory over-responsivity and internalizing symptoms. Adolescent sensory over-responsivity symptoms were correlated with internalizing disorder symptoms. Parents with a diagnosis of anxiety or depression (mothers only) reported more frequent SOR symptoms than parents without a diagnosis. Parent depression was significantly related to adolescent sensory over-responsivity symptoms, over and above parent sensory over-responsivity symptoms (β = 0.26, p < 0.001 for mothers; β = 0.13, p = 0.004 for fathers). Father alcohol abuse/dependency also predicted offspring sensory over-responsivity symptoms. Offspring of parents with affective disorders were at additional risk for sensory dysregulation via parents’ influence on offspring internalizing problems.     

Team Reasoning and the Rational Choice of Payoff-Dominant Outcomes in Games

Topoi - Standard game theory cannot explain the selection of payoff-dominant outcomes that are best for all players in common-interest games. Theories of team reasoning can explain why such...     

When Self-Worth Depends on Social Media Feedback: Associations with Psychological Well-Being

Sex Roles - Social media have become primary forms of social communication and means to maintain social connections among young adult women. Although social connectedness generally has a positive...     

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Reconciling Deflationary Semantics with Correspondence Intuitions

This paper has three main concerns. First, it proposes a deflationary theory of the concept of truth, arguing thatthe concept can be explicitly defined in terms of substitutionalquantification. Second, it attempts to describe and explainthe intuitions that have traditionally been thought tofavor correspondence theories of truth over deflationarytheories. And third, it argues that these intuitions areultimately compatible with deflationism, maintaining,among other things, that the relation of semantic correspondence can itself be characterized in terms ofsubstitutional quantification.     

The psychometric function: II. Bootstrap-based confidence intervals and sampling.

The psychometric function relates an observer's performance to an independent variable, usually a physical quantity of an experimental stimulus. Even if a model is successfully fit to the data and its goodness of fit is acceptable, experimenters require an estimate of the variability of the parameters to assess whether differences across conditions are significant. Accurate estimates of variability are difficult to obtain, however, given the typically small size of psychophysical data sets: Traditional statistical techniques are only asymptotically correct and can be shown to be unreliable in some common situations. Here and in our companion paper (Wichmann & Hill, 2001), we suggest alternative statistical techniques based on Monte Carlo resampling methods. The present paper's principal topic is the estimation of the variability of fitted parameters and derived quantities, such as thresholds and slopes. First, we outline the basic bootstrap procedure and argue in favor of the parametric, as opposed to the nonparametric, bootstrap. Second, we describe how the bootstrap bridging assumption, on which the validity of the procedure depends, can be tested. Third, we show how one's choice of sampling scheme (the placement of sample points on the stimulus axis) strongly affects the reliability of bootstrap confidence intervals, and we make recommendations on how to sample the psychometric function efficiently. Fourth, we show that, under certain circumstances, the (arbitrary) choice of the distribution function can exert an unwanted influence on the size of the bootstrap confidence intervals obtained, and we make recommendations on how to avoid this influence. Finally, we introduce improved confidence intervals (bias corrected and accelerated) that improve on the parametric and percentile-based bootstrap confidence intervals previously used. Software implementing our methods is available.     

The Role of Religion and Spirituality in Mental and Physical Health

An increased interest in the effects of religion and spirituality on health is apparent in the psychological and medical literature. Although religion in particular was thought, in the past, to have a predominantly negative influence on health, recent research suggests this relationship is more complex. This article reviews the literature on the impact of religion and spirituality on physical and mental health, concluding that the influence is largely beneficial. Mechanisms for the positive effect of religion and spirituality are proposed.     

Stereotype change and prejudice reduction: short‐ and long‐term evaluation of a cross–cultural awareness programme

The present study reports an evaluation of an applied prejudice reduction intervention. Previous research has indicated that such programmes achieve limited success. The programme evaluated was an in‐house anti‐racist education programme aimed at reducing prejudice towards Aboriginal Australians. The target audience were employees of a large public service organization. Knowledge of, prejudice towards, and stereotyping of Aboriginal Australians were assessed before commencing the programme to establish a baseline. Changes in these variables were assessed immediately after completing the programme, and again 3 months after completing the programme. The programme had pronounced effects immediately after completion: there was a significant increase in knowledge and significant decrease in prejudice and negative stereotyping. However, 3 months later, there was no significant difference to baseline levels of prejudice and stereotyping. Knowledge remained significantly higher than at baseline 3 months after completing the programme. High prejudice participants alone experienced a significant, long‐term decrease in old‐fashioned racism. It is concluded that further research must be done to develop more successful strategies of prejudice reduction and stereotype change that are also applicable to ‘real world’ contexts. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding inference as a source of knowledge: children's ability to evaluate the certainty of deduction, perception, and guessing

Three experiments investigated children's understanding of inference as a source of knowledge. Children observed a puppet make a statement about the color of one of two hidden toys after the puppet (a) looked directly at the toy (looking), (b) looked at the other toy (inference), or (c) looked at neither toy (guessing). Most 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds did not rate the puppet as being more certain of the toy's color after the puppet looked directly at it or inferred its color than they did after the puppet guessed its color. Most 8 and 9-year-olds distinguished inference and looking from guessing. The tendency to explain the puppet's knowledge by referring to inference increased with age. Children who referred to inference in their explanations were more likely to judge deductive inference as more certain than guessing.