Cognitively-Based Compassion Training for parents reduces cortisol in infants and young children

This study tests a group-based secular contemplative practice intervention, Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), with parents of young children. We report on a randomized controlled preliminary efficacy study. Certified teachers administered CBCT for 20 hr across 8 to 10 weeks in two cohorts of parents with infants and young children. The intervention group was compared to a waitlist control group. Thirty-nine parents and their children, who ranged in age from 4 months to 5 years, were evaluated at pre- and postintervention (n = 25 intervention, n = 14 waitlist control) on hair cortisol concentration. Parents also completed self-administered questionnaires at both time points regarding demographics, physical symptoms of stress, parenting stress, self-compassion, and mindfulness. Children of parents in the CBCT group experienced significant decreases in cortisol at the postintervention assessment, as compared with the control group. However, parent cortisol and self-report measures did not significantly change other than a small effect on clinical levels of parenting stress. CBCT may be a positive new way to intervene with parents to lower infants’ and young children's cumulative physiological stress.     

SKIPing Together: A Motor Competence Intervention Promotes Gender-Integrated Friendships for Young Children

Sex Roles - Young children typically report primarily same-gender friendships across childhood. However, there is growing awareness of the benefits of gender-integrated friendships and gender...     

The Impact of Comprehensive Community Initiatives on Population-Level Child,Youth, and Family Outcomes: A Systematic Review

Comprehensive community initiatives (CCIs) represent a popular method for creating systemic change, yet there is a dearth of evidence on their effectiveness (Zaff, Pufall Jones, Donlan, Lin, & Anderson, 2016). This article presents a systematic review of the evidence on the population-level impact of CCIs, focusing specifically on documented effects from studies using an experimental or quasi-experimental design. Of 1,947 articles identified through a database and hand search, 25 articles examining six different CCIs—most of which employed prevention science frameworks—met the review inclusion criteria. The results of this review show that CCIs can strengthen protective factors and reduce risk factors, delay initiation of and reduce substance use, and reduce the likelihood of, and delay engagement in, violent and/or delinquent behaviors. Impacts have been documented as soon as one year after initial intervention, and as early as 7^th grade, with effects sustained as long as seven years post-intervention, and as late as a year post-high school. However, relative to the prevalence of CCIs as a practical intervention, the evidence base is small, potentially dated, and focused on a narrow set of outcomes and populations. Recommendations for interpreting the evidence base are discussed, including methodological limitations and implications for future work.     

Relationship (in)security is central to the sources and outcomes of sexist attitudes

Ambivalent sexism theory recognizes that sexist attitudes maintain gender inequalities via sociocultural and close relationship processes. This review advances established work on sociocultural processes by showing how people's need for relationship security is also central to the sources and functions of sexism. Men's hostile sexism—overtly derogatory attitudes toward women—involves insecurities about women exploiting men's relational dependence. Accordingly, men's hostile sexism predicts relational aggression when their dependence on partners is risky. Men's benevolent sexism—patronizing and protective attitudes toward women—offers men relationship security by idealizing traditional gender roles in romantic relationships. Benevolent sexism also appeals to women who seek the security of a devoted partner, but requires women to invest in their relationship at the expense of their independence. Our relationship science perspective reveals that romantic (in)security is critical to why people adopt sexist attitudes and why sexist attitudes create differential costs and benefits for women and men.     

RAGING WITH THE TRUTH: Condemnation and Concealment in the Poetry of Blake and Hill

An analysis of Geoffrey Hill's lyric poem about William Blake illuminates the relations between art, prophecy, and imperial politics across more than two centuries. Hill's poem responds to David V. Erdman's argument that Blake was resolutely, if ineffectually and sometimes secretly, opposed to war. It also establishes Hill's own cryptic but definite resistance to contemporary war and warmongers, while it mourns poetry's public powerlessness to halt the violent competition for material resources. Ignored by the majority, poetry fails to bring about the ethical social change that poets often envision. The layering of perspectives (Hill the poet and scholar writing about Erdman the scholar, who is explicating Blake the poet and artist) allows for a multidimensional interpretation of the role of poets and prophetic poetry. Despite their fury at society's deafness and greed, and frustration at their own incapacities, poets—because if they are great poets, they are prophets, too—continue to speak to their audiences about the problems of this world and about the better worlds that can be imagined. Hill's text obliquely teaches how the small success of a great poem can provide a minor note of consolation as it objects to terror and tyranny.     

Multicultural Connections: Using Stories to Transcend Cultural Boundaries in Supervision

Stories have long been used in various cultures and settings to help make meaning and enhance awareness. The authors describe how reflection on and discussion of myths and fairy tales in supervision may help transcend cultural boundaries and increase multicultural understanding. Las historias se han utilizado durante mucho tiempo en diversas culturas y escenarios para facilitar la comprensión de significado y aumentar el nivel de conciencia. Los autores describen cómo la reflexión y la discusión de mitos y cuentos en la supervisión pueden ayudar a trascender barreras culturales y elevar el entendimiento multicultural.     

Aspectual asymmetries in the mental representation of events: Role of lexical and grammatical aspect

Temporal information is important in the construction of situation models, and many languages make use of perfective and imperfective aspect markers to distinguish between completed situations (e.g., He made a cake) and ongoing situations (e.g., He is making a cake). Previous studies in which the effect of grammatical aspect has been examined have shown that perfective sentences are often processed more quickly than imperfective ones (e.g., Chan, Yap, Shirai, & Matthews, 2004; Madden & Zwaan, 2003; Yap et al., 2004; Yap et al., 2006). However, these studies used only accomplishment verbs (i.e., verbs with an inherent endpoint, such as bake a cake). The present study on the processing of Cantonese includes activity verbs (i.e., durative verbs with no inherent endpoint, such as play the piano), and the results indicate a strong interaction between lexical aspect (i.e., verb type) and grammatical aspect. That is, perfective sentences were processed more quickly with accomplishment verbs, consistent with previous findings, but imperfective sentences were processed more quickly with activity verbs. We suggest that these different aspectual asymmetries emerge as a result of the inherent associations between accomplishment verbs and the bounded features of perfective aspect and between activity verbs and the unbounded features of imperfective aspect. The sentence stimuli from this study may be downloaded from mc.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Claiming a moral minority, saccades help create a biased majority: Tracking eye movements to base rates in social predictions

How do people hold erroneous views about their own moral behavior? This study investigated the use of distributional information in self and social predictions by measuring eye movements to base rates. Across 15 scenarios, participants claimed moral superiority over a comparison peer by predicting that base rates would be less predictive of one’s own behaviors than a comparison peer’s. In support of the differential use of distributional information hypothesis, participants looked less often to base rate information when making self rather than social predictions. Eye movements mediated the relationship between target of the prediction and the strength of the relationship between base rates and behavioral likelihood estimates. Implications for self-deception in self and social judgment are discussed.     

French native speakers in the making: From language-general to language-specific voicing boundaries

By examining voice onset time (VOT) discrimination in 4- and 8-month-olds raised in a French-speaking environment, the current study addresses the question of the role played by linguistic experience in the reshaping of the initial perceptual abilities. Results showed that the language-general −30- and +30-ms VOT boundaries are better discriminated than the 0-ms boundary in 4-month-olds, whereas 8-month-olds better discriminate the 0-ms boundary. These data support explanations of speech development stressing the effects of both language-general boundaries and linguistic environment (attunement theory and coupling theory). Results also suggest that the acquisition of the adult voicing boundary (at 0 ms VOT in French vs. +30 ms VOT in English) is faster and more linear in French than in English. This latter aspect of the results might be related to differences in the consistency of VOT distributions of voiced and voiceless stops between languages.     

American Indian Youth: Personal,Familial, and Environmental Strengths

We present data from interviews with 401 youths on the relationship of personal, familial, and environmental strengths to the outcomes of urban and reservation American Indian youths. Urban youths consistently nominated more strengths than tribal youths, except in the area of tribal strengths. Quantitative data show how those strengths relate to their school success, daily functioning, mental health, and ethnic identity. Personal and familial strengths are related to positive school success and functioning. Environmental strengths demonstrate complex relationships in which tribal strengths are related to increased mental health problems and school strengths are related to fewer problems. The results of our study speak to the need to include multiple categories of different strengths in research and to focus on strengths as well as problems in clinical interventions.