Do Social Connections and Hope Matter in Predicting Early Adolescent Violence?

We tested relationships between social connections, hope, and violence among young adolescents from socially distressed urban neighborhoods, and examined whether relationships between adolescents' family and school connectedness and violence involvement were mediated by hopefulness. Data were from middle school students involved in the Lead Peace demonstration study. The sample (N = 164) was 51.8% female; 42% African American, 28% Asian, 13% Hispanic, and 17% mixed race or other race; average age was 12.1 years; 46% reported physical fighting in the past year. In multivariate models, parent-family connectedness was protective against violence; school connectedness was marginally protective. Hopefulness was related to lower levels of violence. The relationship between school connectedness and violence was mediated by hopefulness; some evidence for mediation also existed in the family-parent connectedness and violence relationship. Findings warrant continued exploration of hopefulness as an important protective factor against violence involvement, and as a mediator in relationships between social connections and violence involvement.     

Learning expressive percussion performance under different visual feedback conditions

A study was conducted to test the effect of two different forms of real-time visual feedback on expressive percussion performance. Conservatory percussion students performed imitations of recorded teacher performances while receiving either high-level feedback on the expressive style of their performances, low-level feedback on the timing and dynamics of the performed notes, or no feedback. The high-level feedback was based on a Bayesian analysis of the performances, while the low-level feedback was based on the raw participant timing and dynamics data. Results indicated that neither form of feedback led to significantly smaller timing and dynamics errors. However, high-level feedback did lead to a higher proficiency in imitating the expressive style of the target performances, as indicated by a probabilistic measure of expressive style. We conclude that, while potentially disruptive to timing processes involved in music performance due to extraneous cognitive load, high-level visual feedback can improve participant imitations of expressive performance features.     

Walk on the bright side: physical activity and affect in major depressive disorder

Although prescribed exercise has been found to improve affect and reduce levels of depression, we do not know how self-initiated everyday physical activity influences levels of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) in depressed persons. Fifty-three individuals diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and 53 never-depressed controls participated in a seven-day experience sampling study. Participants were prompted randomly eight times per day and answered questions about their physical activity and affective state. Over the week, the two groups of participants did not differ in average level of physical activity. As expected, participants with MDD reported lower average PA and higher average NA than did never-depressed controls. Both participants with MDD and controls reported higher levels of PA at prompts after physical activity than at prompts after inactive periods; moreover, for both groups of participants, PA increased from a prompt after an inactive period to a subsequent prompt at which activity was reported. Depressed participants in particular showed a dose-response effect of physical activity on affect: longer duration and/or higher intensity of physical activity increased their PA significantly more than did short duration and/or lower intensity physical activity. Physical activity did not influence NA in either group. In contrast to previous treatment studies that examined the effects of prescribed structured exercise, this investigation showed that self-initiated physical activity influences PA. These findings also underscore the importance of distinguishing between PA and NA to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of physical activity on affect in MDD.     

Parenting Beliefs, Parental Stress, and Social Support Relationships

The present study built on prior research by examining the relationship of parental stress and social support to parenting beliefs and behaviors. A sample of 87 parents provided their views concerning the importance of parenting characteristics as well as their level of parental stress and perceived social support. These parents completed the Parent Behavior Importance Questionnaire-Revised, as well as the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form, and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Results reveal that, in general, less parenting stress was related to more positive parenting perceptions and more parenting stress was related to less positive parenting perceptions. Perceived social support was not found to moderate the relationship between parenting stress and parenting perceptions. This study extends prior research regarding parenting in relation to stress by adding the dimension of social support. There are substantial implications for parent education, professional practice, and research.     

Youth Experiences of Family Violence and Teen Dating Violence Perpetration: Cognitive and Emotional Mediators

This article describes a conceptual model of cognitive and emotional processes proposed to mediate the relation between youth exposure to family violence and teen dating violence perpetration. Explicit beliefs about violence, internal knowledge structures, and executive functioning are hypothesized as cognitive mediators, and their potential influences upon one another are described. Theory and research on the role of emotions and emotional processes in the relation between youths’ exposure to family violence and teen dating violence perpetration are also reviewed. We present an integrated model that highlights how emotions and emotional processes work in tandem with hypothesized cognitive mediators to predict teen dating violence.     

BUYING A BEAUTY STANDARD OR DREAMING OF A NEW LIFE? EXPECTATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH MEDIA IDEALS

This study explored college women's ideas regarding how their lives would change if their appearance were consistent with a media-supported female beauty ideal. Participants rated self-generated life changes they associated with looking like a media ideal in terms of likelihood and positivity. Women's tendency to link positive and likely life expectations with looking like the media ideal was significantly associated with both internalization of media ideals and appearance-related dissatisfaction. However, internalization fully mediated the relationship between expectations and appearance-related dissatisfaction. Results are discussed in terms of implications for understanding the nature of internalization and implications for the design of programs targeted at reducing appearance-related dissatisfaction and eating disordered behaviors.     

What is the question you need to answer? How consultation can prevent professional systems immobilizing families

Consultation to an outside agency is an important part of the work of departments of child and adolescent psychiatry. This article describes and illustrates one particular approach to such consultations based on the principles of structural family therapy. It is premised on the belief that outside agencies have the capacity to arrive at a decision which is in the best interest of their clients. To do this the agency needs to define what is the question they need an answer in order to make a decision regarding their client. The consultants' role is to clarify what decision the consul tee agency needs to make by following up the question, What is the question you need to answer? How this question is followed up is discussed.     

Therapeutic factors in two forms of inpatient group psychotherapy: Music therapy and verbal therapy

Therapeutic processes in one type of creative arts group psychotherapy, music therapy, were compared with verbal group psychotherapy. Sixty-one short-term inpatients ranked group psychotherapy curative factors and completed satisfaction ratings. Therapists rated 201 group therapy sessions— 109 music therapy and 92 verbal therapy. Statistical analysis revealed that patients highly valued both group formats. The mean curative factor rankings for both groups included cohesiveness, instillation of hope, and altruism among the most helpful factors. Therapists' ratings indicated qualitative differences between the two groups. Music therapy involved more therapeutic interaction among patients and emotional expression, whereas verbal therapy emphasized concrete problem solving.Supported in part by Biomedical Research Support Grant Program grant #S07-RR05755 from the Division of Research Resources, National Institutes of Health.     

Suicide and the contemporary woman: Are male and female suicide rates converging?

Nationwide statistics on White suicide rates for the years 1960–1978 are examined to assess whether the suicide rates of women are increasing relative to those of men. This is accomplished by calculating for the total population and for several age groupings the sex differential (SD), which is defined as the percentage of suicides which are female after adjustments are made for the sex distribution in the population. The data reveal that the SD narrowed from 1960–1967, held steady from 1968–1972, and then widened slightly from 1973–1978. The most important aspects of these trends are that (a) the narrowing of the SD is due more to declining suicide rates among older (over-40) males than to increasing female suicide rates, and (b) the narrowing of the SD and the small increases in female suicide rates occurred prior to 1970 and thus were earlier than would be expected on the basis of changing sex-role expectations. Post hoc explanations of these patterns refer to methodological factors and to changes in social integration resulting from a variety of sociohistorical factors.