Correction to: Organizational Benefits of Onboarding Contingent Workers: an Anchoring Model Approach

Journal of Business and Psychology -     

Sexual Orientation as Gendered to the Everyday Perceiver

Sex Roles - We present an integrated interdisciplinary review of people’s tendency to perceive sexual orientation as a fundamentally gendered phenomenon. We draw from psychology and other...     

Anti-Racism Strategies in Pediatric Psychology: Using STYLE Can Help Children Overcome Adverse Experiences With Police

Black children are exposed to police violence at alarming rates. Such stress impacts development and treatment of physical health problems. In the current discourse, we introduce STYLE (Self-examination, Talk about community-police relations and racism, Yield space and time to anti-racism work, Learn about how structural racism impacts child health, Evaluate policies and practices through an anti-racism lens). STYLE offers a framework through which professionals in pediatric psychology can engage in anti-racist work across contexts from clinical care to academic and advocacy settings. Pediatric psychologists have a responsibility to be on the frontline as interventionists, educators, researchers, organizers, and advocates for racial justice through anti-racism practices. The current paper introduces STYLE in clinical care, community service, training/supervision, and academic and advocacy contexts. Case examples are provided. Professionals in pediatric psychology must first focus on changing their STYLE to promote individual and infrastructural change consistent with anti-racism work.

     

Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (Concentration Deficit Disorder?): Current Status, Future Directions, and a Plea to Change the Name

Symptoms of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) have been recognized for nearly 30 years as comprising a semi-independent set(s) of symptoms from the inattentive (IN) and hyperactive-impulsive (HI) symptoms involved in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It has only been within the past decade that research focusing specifically on SCT symptoms and on samples of SCT cases chosen independently from ADHD samples has increased so as to address the question of whether SCT is a distinct condition from ADHD or other disorders. All but two of these studies have focused on children but the two extant large scale studies on adults have replicated those findings. This Commentary highlights not only those findings concerning SCT that appear to be relatively robust, but also those patterns that appear to be emerging yet in need of further research to corroborate their association with SCT, as well as those barely or unexplored areas that may deserve more research. Evidence to date, including the many findings in this special issue, is nearing a critical mass that likely supports the conclusion that SCT is a distinct disorder of attention from ADHD, yet one that may overlap with it in about half of all cases. SCT has unique symptom dimensions and comorbidities from ADHD, probably distinct though lesser domains of impairment and demographic correlates, and perhaps unique cognitive deficits, causes and life course risks. These latter areas, however, are in need of substantially more research as is SCT in adults and treatments specifically designed for cases of SCT. Meanwhile, the name of the condition is premature, implying a known cognitive deficit that is as yet unknown, and is proving derogatory and offensive to patients, leading this author to recommend a change to Concentration Deficit Disorder.     

Assessing Recall in Mothers’ Retrospective Reports: Concerns Over Children’s Speech and Language Development

Retrospective recall about children’s symptoms is used to establish early developmental patterns in clinical practice and is also utilised in child psychopathology research. Some studies have indicated that the accuracy of retrospective recall is influenced by life events. Our hypothesis was that an intervention: speech and language therapy, would adversely affect the accuracy of parent recall of early concerns about their child’s speech and language development. Mothers (n?=?5,390) reported on their child’s speech development (child male to female ratio = 50:50) when their children were aged 18 or 30 months, and also reported on these early concerns retrospectively, 10 years later, when their children were 13 years old. Overall reliability of retrospective recall was good, 86 % of respondents accurately recalling their earlier concerns. As hypothesised, however, the speech and language intervention was strongly associated with inaccurate retrospective recall about concerns in the early years (Relative Risk Ratio = 19.03; 95 % CI:14.78–24.48). Attendance at speech therapy was associated with increased recall of concerns that were not reported at the time. The study suggests caution is required when interpreting retrospective reports of abnormal child development as recall may be influenced by intervening events.     

Visual field dependence as a navigational strategy

Visual perception is an important component of environmental navigation. Previous research has revealed large individual differences in navigational strategies (i.e., the body’s kinesthetic and embodied approach to movement) and the perception of environmental surfaces (via distance estimations), but little research has investigated the potential relationship between these sources of individual variation. An important navigational strategy is the interaction between reliance on visual cues and vestibular or proprioceptive cues. We investigated the role of this navigational strategy in the perception of environmental surfaces. The results supported three embodied evolutionary predictions: Individuals who were most reliant on visual context (1) overestimated vertical surfaces significantly more, and (2) feared falling significantly more, than did those who were least reliant on visual context; and (3) all individuals had roughly accurate horizontal distance estimates, regardless of their navigational strategy. These are among the first data to suggest that individual differences in perception are closely related to the individual differences in navigation that derive from navigational risks. Variable navigational strategies may reflect variable capacities to perceive and navigate the environment.     

Consumer behaviour and the toilet: Research on expulsive and retentive personalities

During the last five decades, a number of studies have attempted to draw from psychoanalytic theory to examine the relationship between evacuation disorders and a person's character. According to Freud's original conceptualization, early or harsh toilet training leads children to develop an anal retentive personality, characterized by the tendency to control their bowels as well as their material possessions; by contrast, liberal toilet training leads children to develop an anal expulsive personality, characterized by the tendency to excessively relieve faeces, as well as be being careless, messy, and inclined to dispose of old products and buy new ones. Although toilet training may not be responsible, these sets of traits do cohere. To empirically examine these hypotheses, we studied the personality traits and consumption habits of people suffering from different bowel disorders. By means of semistructured interviews, we analysed the personality characteristics, sociodemographic backgrounds, and peculiar consumption habits of people suffering from constipation and diarrhoeic syndromes. The results show that constipated people tend to be obstinate, excessively concerned with hygiene, and inclined toward retaining possessions, whereas diarrhoeic people tend to be careless, disorganized, and disposed to share their possessions with others. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results and indicate avenues for future research.