A Kid-Friendly Tool to Assess Rumination in Children and Early Adolescents: Relationships with Mother Psychopathology and Family Functioning

The early identification of ruminative processes in children and early adolescents is particularly important to prevent the development of a stable ruminative style in later stages of development. The present study first aimed at validating a child-friendly tool, Kid Rumination Interview (KRI), to be used in a sample aged 7–12 years (n?=?100; 50% females). Second, we hypothesized that maternal depression, family functioning and participants’ emotion regulation skills would be associated with children’ levels of rumination. Factor analysis on KRI scores yielded two main factors: personal life-related rumination and school-related rumination. Older and female participants showed higher tendencies to ruminate about school issues compared to their younger and male counterparts. A low-to-moderate correlation emerged between school-related rumination and child/early adolescent’s emotion regulation capacities. Mothers’ depressive rumination and mothers’ depressive symptoms were positively associated with children/early adolescents’ rumination about personal life and rumination about school issues. Conversely, an adequate and positive family functioning was negatively correlated with both school-related rumination and rumination about personal life. Hierarchical regression analyses pointed to a crucial role of maternal rumination and familiar rigidity in both types of rumination. Personal life-related rumination was also specifically predicted by maternal depression and family enmeshment, whereas school-related rumination was significantly associated with children/early adolescents’ emotional control and gender. Overall, the KRI appears as a promising tool to assess rumination in children/early adolescents. Results suggests partially different pathways to specific forms of ruminative thoughts.     

Clinical Mutual Attunement and the Development of Therapeutic Process: A Preliminary Study

Despite the identification of many factors that play a central role in the development of the psychotherapy process, there is still a lack of evidence about the basic relational mechanisms that pave the way to its working. In this pilot study, we focus on nonverbal microprocessual attunement as the basic mechanism grounding the displacing of discrete factors in shaping the clinical process. Two single sessions of two short-term psychodynamic treatments, selected respectively from a good- and a poor-outcome treatment, have been coded in terms of patient and therapist speech rate, coordination in ruptures, resolution of the therapeutic alliance, and patient's displayed thinking processes. Two dynamic structural equation models focusing on clinical attunement as a factor able to activate the interplay of the assessed clinical dimensions have been theoretically designed and tested in both cases. The driven theoretical structural equation models fit the data, suggesting a different role of nonverbal attunement as a moderating factor. The obtained results are consistent with the hypothesis claiming that a good-outcome psychotherapy session is characterized by a mechanism of clinical attunement that enforces the therapist–patient relationship and promotes the integration of formal thinking processes that affect emotional and cognitive domains.     

Functional brain organization of working memory in adolescents varies in relation to family income and academic achievement

Working memory (WM) capacity reflects executive functions associated with performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks and education outcomes, including mathematics achievement, and is associated with dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortices. Here we asked if family income is associated with variation in the functional brain organization of WM capacity among adolescents, and whether that variation is associated with performance on a statewide test of academic achievement in mathematics. Participants were classified into higher‐income and lower‐income groups based on family income, and performed a WM task with a parametric manipulation of WM load (N‐back task) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behaviorally, the higher‐income group had greater WM capacity and higher mathematics achievement scores. Neurally, the higher‐income group showed greater activation as a function of WM load in bilateral prefrontal, parietal, and other regions, although the lower‐income group exhibited greater activation at the lowest load. Both groups exhibited positive correlations between parietal activations and mathematics achievement scores, but only the higher‐income group exhibited a positive correlation between prefrontal activations and mathematics scores. Most of these findings were maintained when higher‐ and lower‐income groups were matched on WM task performance or nonverbal IQ. Findings indicate that the functional neural architecture of WM varies with family income and is associated with education measures of mathematics achievement.     

A comparison of higher order auditory processes in younger and older adults

The authors conducted 3 experiments investigating the effects of aging on higher order auditory processes. They compared younger and older adults with respect to (a) their auditory channel capacity, (b) the extent of their top-down control over auditory gain, and (c) their ability to focus attention on a narrow band of frequencies. To ensure that subclinical cochlear processing deficits in older adults (e.g., higher thresholds, poorer discrimination of frequency and intensity differences) did not limit performance, the authors used only stimuli that were perfectly discriminable by all participants. No age differences were found in any of these experiments, suggesting that some higher order auditory processes (e.g., top-down control over auditory gain, auditory attention) are preserved in normal aging, despite numerous age-related declines in peripheral auditory functionality.     

Ironic effects of racial bias during interracial interactions

Previous research has suggested that Blacks like White interaction partners who make an effort to appear unbiased more than those who do not. We tested the hypothesis that, ironically, Blacks perceive White interaction partners who are more racially biased more positively than less biased White partners, primarily because the former group must make more of an effort to control racial bias than the latter. White participants in this study completed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) as a measure of racial bias and then discussed race relations with either a White or a Black partner. Whites' IAT scores predicted how positively they were perceived by Black (but not White) interaction partners, and this relationship was mediated by Blacks' perceptions of how engaged the White participants were during the interaction. We discuss implications of the finding that Blacks may, ironically, prefer to interact with highly racially biased Whites, at least in short interactions.     

Expecting to be the target of prejudice: implications for interethnic interactions

Two studies investigated the implications of ethnic minorities' prejudice expectations for their affective and behavioral outcomes during interethnic interactions. In both studies, the more ethnic minorities expected Whites to be prejudiced, the more negative experiences they had during interethnic interactions. This finding held true for chronic prejudice expectations in a diary study of college roommates (Study 1) and for situationally induced prejudice expectations in a laboratory interaction (Study 2). In Study 2, the authors extended this work to examine the relationship between ethnic minorities' prejudice expectancies and their White partners' psychological experience during interethnic interactions. Consistent with predictions, the more ethnic minorities expected Whites to be prejudiced, the more their White partners had positive experiences during interethnic interactions. These divergent experiences of ethnic minorities and Whites have important implications for the psychological success of interactions between members of these groups.     

Adapting to Context in Community-Based Participatory Research: “Participatory Starting Points” in a Chinese Immigrant Worker Community

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is increasingly being used to better understand and improve the health of diverse communities. A key strength of this research orientation is its adaptability to community contexts and characteristics. To date, however, few studies explicitly discuss adaptations made to CBPR principles and processes in response to community context and partners’ needs. Using data from our CBPR study, the San Francisco Chinatown Restaurant Worker Health and Safety Project, and drawing from literature on immigrant political incorporation, we examine the links between the contexts of the Chinese immigrant worker community, adaptations made by our collaborative, and study outcomes. In particular, we explore the concepts of contexts of reception and participatory starting points, which may be especially relevant for partnerships with immigrant communities whose members have historically had lower rates of civic and political participation in the US. We discuss contextual findings such as worker partner accounts of language barriers, economic and social marginalization, and civic skills and participation, as well as subsequent adaptations made by the partnership. We also describe the relative effectiveness of these adaptations in yielding equitable participation and building partners’ capacity. We conclude by sharing lessons learned and their implications for CBPR and partnerships with immigrant communities more broadly.