Overgeneral autobiographical memory and traumatic events: an evaluative review

Does trauma exposure impair retrieval of autobiographical memories? Many theorists have suggested that the reduced ability to access specific memories of life events, termed overgenerality, is a protective mechanism helping attenuate painful emotions associated with trauma. The authors addressed this question by reviewing 24 studies that assessed trauma exposure and overgenerality, examining samples with posttraumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder, depression, traumatic event exposure, and other clinical disorders. Limitations are discussed, including variations in assessment of events, depression, and overgenerality and the need for additional comparison groups. Across studies, there was no consistent association between trauma exposure and overgenerality, suggesting that trauma exposure is unlikely to be the primary mechanism leading to overgenerality. Instead, psychopathology factors such as depression and posttraumatic stress appear to be more consistently associated with overgenerality. Alternative overgenerality theories may help identify key overgenerality mechanisms, improving current understanding of autobiographical memory processes underlying psychopathology.     

Social-Evaluative Threat and Proinflammatory Cytokine Regulation: An Experimental Laboratory Investigation

ABSTRACT— This study experimentally tested whether a stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (SET), a context in which the self can be judged negatively by others, would elicit increases in proinflammatory cytokine activity and alter the regulation of this response. This hypothesis was derived in part from research on immunological responses to social threat in nonhuman animals. Healthy female participants were assigned to perform a speech and a math task in the presence or absence of an evaluative audience (SET or non-SET, respectively). As hypothesized, stimulated production of the proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) increased from baseline to poststressor in the SET condition, but was unchanged in the non-SET condition. Further, the increases in TNF-α production correlated with participants' cognitive appraisals of being evaluated. Additionally, the ability of glucocorticoids to shut down the inflammatory response was decreased in the SET condition. These findings underscore the importance of social evaluation as a threat capable of eliciting proinflammatory cytokine activity and altering its regulation.     

Gaze behavior and affect at 6 months: predicting clinical outcomes and language development in typically developing infants and infants at risk for autism

This paper presents follow‐up longitudinal data to research that previously suggested the possibility of abnormal gaze behavior marked by decreased eye contact in a subgroup of 6‐month‐old infants at risk for autism ( Merin, Young, Ozonoff & Rogers, 2007 ). Using eye‐tracking data and behavioral data recorded during a live mother–infant interaction involving the still‐face procedure, the predictive utility of gaze behavior and affective behaviors at 6 months was examined using diagnostic outcome data obtained longitudinally over the following 18 months. Results revealed that none of the infants previously identified as showing lower rates of eye contact had any signs of autism at outcome. In contrast, three infants who were diagnosed with autism demonstrated consistent gaze to the eye region and typical affective responses at 6 months. Individual differences in face scanning and affective responsivity during the live interaction were not related to any continuous measures of symptom frequency or symptom severity. In contrast, results of growth curve models for language development revealed significant relationships between face scanning and expressive language. Greater amounts of fixation to the mother's mouth during live interaction predicted higher levels of expressive language at outcome and greater rates of growth. These findings suggest that although gaze behavior at 6 months may not provide early markers for autism as initially conceived, gaze to the mouth in particular may be useful in predicting individual differences in language development.     

Upward and downward physical appearance comparisons: Development of scales and examination of predictive qualities

Despite good theoretical and empirical rationale for assessing tendencies to make upward and downward physical appearance comparisons no measure for these specific constructs exists. The present work developed and tested the psychometric properties of upward and downward physical appearance comparison scales. The scales were administered to participants (N = 224) along with measures of general appearance comparison tendencies, body image, disordered eating, Antifat and Antigay attitudes. The scales displayed good psychometric properties. Importantly, the upward but not downward physical appearance comparison scale predicted lower Appearance Evaluation and higher EAT-26 scores. Conversely, the downward but not upward physical appearance comparison scale predicted higher Appearance Evaluation and greater Antifat Attitudes (Dislike). The scales were unrelated to a nonappearance related construct. These new measures fill a gap in the literature and may be of benefit to researchers interested in body image, appearance concerns, eating disorders, social comparison, and obesity prejudice.     

Predicting romantic relationship satisfaction from life history strategy

Attachment style and communication style have been shown in previous research to predict relationship satisfaction. We hypothesized that the ultimate cause underlying the relationship among attachment style, communication style, and relationship satisfaction is Life History Strategy (LHS). Furthermore, we hypothesized that LHS would not only predict relationship satisfaction indirectly through a couple’s attachment style and communication style, but would also predict relationship satisfaction directly. Two structural equation models were constructed to model and test each of these hypotheses. The first showed that the indirect causal pathways from LHS to attachment style, attachment style to communication style, and communication style to relationship satisfaction predicted 16% of the variance in relationship satisfaction. The second added a causal pathway directly from LHS to relationship satisfaction which reduced the estimate for the influence of communication style on relationship satisfaction and increased the total variance predicted in relationship satisfaction to 60%. These results challenge the notion that it is primarily the communication between two romantic partners which influences their relationship outcome by proposing that their LHS may be influential: (1) indirectly through their attachment style and communication style; and (2) directly upon relationship satisfaction.     

Gender gaps in cognitive and social‐emotional skills in early primary grades: Evidence from rural Indonesia

This paper examines the magnitude and source of gender gaps in cognitive and social‐emotional skills in early primary grades in rural Indonesia. Relative to boys, girls score more than 0.17 SD higher in tests of language and mathematics (cognitive skills) and between 0.18 and 0.27 SD higher in measures of social competence and emotional maturity (social‐emotional skills). We use Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to investigate the extent to which gender differences in early schooling and parenting practices explain these gender gaps in skills. For cognitive skills, differences in early schooling between boys and girls explain between 9% and 11% of the gender gap whereas differences in parenting practices explain merely 3%–5% of the gender gap. This decomposition result is driven largely by children living in villages with high‐quality preschools. In contrast, for social‐emotional skills, differences in parenting styles toward boys and girls explain between 13% and 17% of the gender gap, while differences in early schooling explain only 0%–6% of the gender gap.     

The relationship of offending style to psychological and social risk factors in a sample of adolescent males

Research has indicated that life‐course persistent offenders typically vary their offending style, following a criminal career progression from co‐ to solo‐offending. Few studies have investigated the offenders who contemporaneously mix their style of offending. A sample of 1,047 male adolescent offenders from the Pathways to Desistance study was investigated over a 7‐year period. Participants were identified as solo, co or contemporaneous mixed style (CMS) offenders for each wave of data and one‐way between groups analysis of variance was conducted to examine variations between the different offending styles in terms of offending frequencies, exposure to violence, peer antisocial behaviour and influence, resistance to peer influence, impulse control and psychopathy. CMS offenders were found to consistently report significantly higher rates of offending and present significantly higher negative risk factors and lower protective risk factors than solo‐ and co‐offenders for the duration of the study. A multinomial logistic regression was used to investigate predictors of offending style with CMS as the reference category. Higher levels of exposure to violence and peer antisocial behaviour and lower levels of impulse control predicted membership of the CMS group for the first part of the study when compared with co‐offenders; and higher levels of exposure to violence and peer antisocial behaviour continued to predict CMS offending when compared to solo‐offenders until the end of the study.