Bidirectional Effects of Parenting Quality and Child Externalizing Behavior in Predominantly Single Parent, Under-Resourced African American Families

This study investigates the bidirectional perspective of parent–child effects by examining the extent to which parenting quality predicted child externalizing behavior and vice versa. Data was collected over four time points from primary caregivers and early school age children in low-income, primarily single parent homes (N = 249, mean age of children at Time 1 = 6.41 years). Parenting quality was operationalized as primary caregiver perceptions of positive parenting, effectiveness of parenting discipline, parenting efficacy and satisfaction. Child externalizing behavior data was captured via an assessment of the frequency of externalizing behavior as reported by caregivers. We hypothesized that parenting quality and child externalizing behavior would remain stable over time and that a bidirectional relationship would be present. Data was analyzed using structural equation modeling and results indicated that child externalizing behavior predicted subsequent parenting quality, and parenting quality predicted subsequent child externalizing. Specifically, our research team found that the influence of child externalizing behavior on parenting quality decreased with time, while the influence of parenting quality on child externalizing behavior increased with time. Overall results reveal the complex transactional influences of child externalizing behavior and parenting quality in our sample. Findings support the notion that parenting quality and child externalizing behavior are interactive processes which might best be handled by continual assessment and which may be potentially strong targets for interventions.     

Loneliness in the Daily Lives of Young Adults: Testing a Socio‐cognitive Model

A socio‐cognitive model of loneliness states that lonely people are characterized by two characteristics, hypersensitivity to social threat and hyposensitivity to social reward. However, these characteristics have not yet been examined in the daily lives of young adults. Therefore, the main aim of the present study was to examine these two characteristics in young adults and whether relationship status, living situation, and type of company moderated the relationship between sensitivity to threat and reward and feelings of loneliness. The Experience Sampling Method was used, and data were collected among 219 first‐year college students (M age = 19.60, 91% female). Participants filled out questionnaires on their smartphone at five random time points per day, on 11 consecutive days. Multilevel analyses showed support for hypersensitivity to social threat, in that students high in loneliness were more negatively affected by negative perceptions of company. Results for hyposensitivity to social reward were in the opposite direction; students high in loneliness were more positively affected by positive perceptions of company than students low in loneliness. These relations were not moderated by relationship status or living situation. Our findings may indicate that loneliness serves as a motivational state that increases susceptibility to the environment in order to restore social relationships. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Learning to program in LISP

We have gathered protocols of subjects in their first 30 hours of learning LISP. The processes by which subjects write LISP functions to meet problem specifications has been modeled in a simulation program called GRAPES (Goal Restricted Production System). The GRAPES system embodies the goal-restricted architecture for production systems as specified in the ACT* theory (Anderson, 1983). We compare our simulation to human protocols on a number of problems. GRAPES simulates the top-down, depth-first flow of control exhibited by subjects and produces code very similar to subject code. Special attention is given to modeling student solutions by analogy, how students learn from doing, and how failures of working memory affect the course of problem-solving. Of major concern is the process by which GRAPES compiles operators in solving one problem to facilitate the solution of later problems.     

Relationships between magical thinking,obsessive‐compulsiveness and other forms of anxiety in a sample of non‐clinical children

Despite the obvious phenomenological similarities between magical thinking and obsessive‐compulsiveness, the relationship between them has been the subject of few empirical investigations in samples of children. The present study aimed to examine the relationship between a general epistemic stance towards magical causation and tendencies towards obsessive‐compulsiveness in a non‐clinical sample of schoolchildren. One‐hundred and two children, aged between 5 and 10 years (48 boys and 54 girls), completed questionnaire measures designed to assess magical thinking, obsessive‐compulsiveness, and other forms of anxiety. School teachers completed a measure of strengths and difficulties for each child. General belief in magical causation was correlated with all types of anxiety, not just obsessive‐compulsiveness, with significant correlations shown for boys in the sample, but not girls. General belief in magical causation contributed little to the prediction of obsessive‐compulsiveness beyond general anxiety. In this study, a general epistemic stance towards magical causation did not differentiate obsessive‐compulsiveness from other anxiety dimensions. The findings are considered in the context of developmental theories of magical and scientific causal reasoning.