Emotional Intelligence Profiles in College Students and Their Fathers’ and Mothers’ Parenting Practices

The present study has two objectives: first, to analyze whether the dimensions that make up emotional intelligence (attention, clarity, and repair) give rise to different profiles of university students, and secondly, to determine whether these different profiles are differentially associated with the parenting practices that students report with regard to their fathers and mothers. Results obtained indicate the existence of different profiles of college students. The profile that corresponds to adequate emotional skills presents a lower score in attention, but higher scores in clarity, and especially in mood repair. The other two profiles are inadequate, in the first case because a higher score in emotional attention is accompanied by low scores in mood repair, and in the second case because low scores are presented in all three dimensions. Likewise, we verified the existence of significant differences in the educational practices of parents, the adequate profile is characterized by greater use of parenting dimensions considered to be positive, and at the same time, lower scores on dimensions considered to be negative. One of the dysfunctional profiles is associated with higher scores in positive practices, and is also associated with higher scores in practices considered to produce a negative effect. The second dysfunctional profile is associated with higher scores on the dimensions considered to be negative and lower scores on positive dimensions.     

Parental Mediation of COVID-19 News and Children’s Emotion Regulation during Lockdown

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The COVID-19 outbreak resulted in a large amount of emotionally charged messaging that is believed to have a tremendous psychological impact, particularly on...     

Culturally-Modified Recruitment Strategies for Latino Families in Clinical Child Research: A Critical First Step

The goals of the current study were to develop and employ culturally-modified recruitment strategies utilizing flexibility and creativity to combat practical and cultural barriers to Latino participation in clinical child research, as well as to quantitatively examine individual and cultural factors related to the different recruitment strategies. In total, 45 Latino parents were successfully recruited and primarily included married mothers of Mexican origin with varied socioeconomic backgrounds. To address the first study goal, an initial culturally-modified recruitment strategy (i.e., postcard strategy, n = 23) was developed to combat both practical and cultural barriers; an augmented strategy (i.e., face-to-face strategy, n = 22) was later employed to further combat potential barriers. Unfortunately, neither strategy resulted in the desired sample size of 150 parents. To examine the second study goal, an exploratory, quantitative examination of individual and cultural factors related to the different strategies was conducted. In general, results suggested that there were differences in the demographics of the parents who responded to the different recruitment strategies, such that those recruited through the face-to-face strategy were more educated, more acculturated, and spoke more English than those recruited through the postcard strategy. Much needed future directions are discussed.     

Roles of dopamine D1 and D2 receptors in the acquisition and expression of fat-conditioned flavor preferences in rats

Sugars and fats elicit innate and learned flavor preferences with the latter mediated by flavor-flavor (orosensory) and flavor-nutrient (post-ingestive) processes. Systemic dopamine (DA) D1 (SCH23390: SCH) and D2 (raclopride: RAC), but not opioid antagonists blocked the acquisition and expression of flavor-flavor preferences conditioned by sugars. In addition, systemic D1, but not D2 or opioid antagonists blocked the acquisition of flavor-nutrient preferences conditioned by intragastric (IG) sugar infusions. Given that DA antagonists reduce fat intake, the present study examined whether systemic D1 or D2 antagonists altered the acquisition and/or expression of conditioned flavor preferences (CFP) produced by pairing one novel flavor (CS+, e.g., cherry) with a 3.5% corn oil (CO: fat) solution relative to another flavor (CS-, e.g., grape) paired with a 0.9% CO solution. In an expression study, food-restricted rats were trained to drink either flavored 3.5% or 0.9% CO solutions on alternate days. Subsequent two-bottle tests with the CS+ and CS- flavors mixed in 0.9% CO solutions occurred 0.5h after systemic administration of vehicle (VEH), SCH (50-800 nmol/kg) or RAC (50-800 nmol/kg). The rats displayed a robust CS+ preference following VEH treatment (87-88%) the expression of which was attenuated by treatment with moderate doses of RAC, and to a lesser degree, SCH. In an acquisition study, six groups of rats received VEH, SCH (25, 50, 200 nmol/kg) or RAC (50, 200 nmol/kg) 0.5 h prior to 1-bottle training trials with CS+ flavored 3.5% and CS- flavored 0.9% (CS-) CO solutions. A seventh Limited VEH group was trained with its training intakes limited to that of the SCH and RAC groups. Subsequent two-bottle tests were conducted with the CS+ and CS- flavors presented in 0.9% CO without injections. Significant and persistent CS+ preferences were observed in VEH (75-82%), Limited VEH (70-88%), SCH25 (75-84%), SCH50 (64-87%), SCH200 (78-91%) and RAC200 (74-91%) groups. In contrast, the group trained with RAC50 displayed a significant initial CS+ preference (76%) which declined over testing to 61%. These data indicate limited DA D1 and D2 receptor signaling involvement in the expression and acquisition of a fat-CFP relative to previous robust effects for sugar-CFP.     

Resilience in adolescence: Gender differences two years after the earthquake of L’Aquila

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of L’Aquila earthquake (Italy) on Resilience and Coping 2 years after the earthquake in a high school sample. Three hundred and twenty-four male and female students exposed to the earthquake and 147 not-exposed have been assessed with the Resilience Scale for Adolescents (READ) and the Brief COPE. The two way ANOVAs for gender by exposure level to the distressing event showed statistically significant interactions with males exposed to the earthquake reporting consistently higher READ factor scores. Problem-focused but not emotion-focused coping strategies showed a similar pattern. These findings are compatible with a resilient ‘protective mechanism’ for males.     

Constrained Candecomp/Parafac via the Lasso

The Candecomp/Parafac (CP) model is a well-known tool for summarizing a three-way array by extracting a limited number of components. Unfortunately, in some cases, the model suffers from the so-called degeneracy, that is a solution with diverging and uninterpretable components. To avoid degeneracy, orthogonality constraints are usually applied to one of the component matrices. This solves the problem only from a technical point of view because the existence of orthogonal components underlying the data is not guaranteed. For this purpose, we consider some variants of the CP model where the orthogonality constraints are relaxed either by constraining only a pair, or a subset, of components or by stimulating the CP solution to be possibly orthogonal. We theoretically clarify that only the latter approach, based on the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator and named the CP-Lasso, is helpful in solving the degeneracy problem. The results of the application of CP-Lasso on simulated and real life data show its effectiveness.     

Deviant but desirable: Group variability and evaluation of atypical group members

Two studies investigated how group variability affects reactions to atypical group members. In Study 1 (N = 65) we manipulated group variability and found that an atypical group member was evaluated more positively when the group was heterogeneous than when the group was homogeneous. In Study 2 (N = 276) we also manipulated group value and found a significant interaction whereby an atypical group member was evaluated more positively when the group was homogeneous and group members valued heterogeneity, but was evaluated more negatively when the group was heterogeneous and group members valued homogeneity. The results suggest that deviant or atypical members will not inevitably be rejected by the group, but rather that reactions to deviance are shaped and guided by the dynamic relationship between how the group is perceived by its members and their ideological beliefs about what is good for the group.     

Midsagittal brain shape correlation with intelligence and cognitive performance

Brain shape might influence cognitive performance because of the relationships between functions, spatial organization, and differential volumetric development of cortical areas. Here we analyze the relationships between midsagittal brain shape variation and a set of basic psychological measures. Coordinates in 2D from 102 MRI-scanned young adult human brains were superimposed through a Procrustes approach, and the residual variation was regressed onto 21 cognitive tests performed by the same individuals. Most of the composite and specific variables (including general intelligence, working memory, attention, and executive functions) do not show meaningful correlations with midsagittal brain morphology. However, variables related to mental speed display subtle but consistent correlations with brain shape variation. Such correlations are small, suggesting that the influence of midsagittal brain geometry on individual cognitive performance is negligible. Nevertheless, this evidence can supply information on brain biology and evolution. Areas associated with the parietal cortex appear to be involved in relationships between brain geometry and mental speed. These areas have been associated with relevant endocranial differences between living and extinct humans, and are important as functional and structural components of brain organization. The limited correlation between brain geometry and mental speed among modern individuals might be more relevant when the large paleoneurological variation of the genus Homo is taken into account.