Discrepancies Between Parent and Adolescent Beliefs About Daily Life Topics and Performance on an Emotion Recognition Task

Parents and children and adolescents commonly disagree in their perceptions of a variety of behaviors, including the family relationship and environment, and child and adolescent psychopathology. To this end, numerous studies have examined to what extent increased discrepant perceptions—particularly with regard to perceptions of the family relationship and environment—predict increased child and adolescent psychopathology. Parents’ and children and adolescents’ abilities to decode and identify others’ emotions (i.e., emotion recognition) may play a role in the link between discrepant perceptions and child and adolescent psychopathology. We examined parents’ and adolescents’ emotion recognition abilities in relation to discrepancies between parent and adolescent perceptions of daily life topics. In a sample of 50 parents and adolescents ages 14-to-17 years (M?=?15.4 years, 20 males, 54 % African-American), parents and adolescents were each administered a widely used performance-based measure of emotion recognition. Parents and adolescents were also administered a structured interview designed to directly assess each of their perceptions of the extent to which discrepancies existed in their beliefs about daily life topics (e.g., whether adolescents should complete their homework and carry out household chores). Interestingly, lower parent and adolescent emotion recognition performance significantly related to greater parent and adolescent perceived discrepant beliefs about daily life topics. We observed this relation whilst accounting for adolescent age and gender and levels of parent-adolescent conflict. These findings have important implications for understanding and using informant discrepancies in both basic developmental psychopathology research and applied research in clinic settings (e.g., discrepant views on therapeutic goals).     

What are the positive consequences of illness?

Abstract

Fifty five people, either currently sick or having recovered from their illness, were recruited if they reported positive consequences of illness. They were questioned about their experiences of illness, 41 by semi-structured interview and 14 by open-ended questionnaire and responses were classified into 17 categories. The categories were similar but slightly more extensive than previous accounts of positive consequences reported in the literature. The content of the interviews and questionnaires was used to construct a 66 item questionnaire about positive consequences of illness which was then completed by 97 patients. A principal components analysis indicated a large first factor accounting for 27% of the variance. Endorsement of items varied between 87% and zero for chronic lung disease patients attending pulmonary rehabilitation. However, all patients endorsed at least one item and the median number of items endorsed was 31. Positive consequences of illness are highly varied and more common than often realised, and this has implications for the concept and measurement of quality of life.     

Comprehension of the Referential Intent of Looking and Pointing Between 12 and 15 Months

Butler, Caron, & Brooks (2000) tested the gaze following of 14-and 18-month-olds under 3 conditions: (1) when the adult's view of the targets was blocked by barriers, (2) when the barriers contained open windows, and (3) no barriers. Contrary to a nonmentalist "ecological" model (adult turns serve as cues to the location of interesting events), frequency of gaze following by 14-month-olds was not equivalent across the 3 conditions. Contrary to a mentalist model (infant wants to see what the adult is seeing), gaze following was not substantially less in the barrier than in the window and no-barrier conditions (as was the case for 18-month-olds). To examine whether the barriers posed vector projection problems for essentially nonmentalist, or line-of-sight problems for essentially mentalist younger infants, 3 experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, a 12-month group was tested in the same 3 conditions to determine if, being younger, they might yield a more clearcut nonmentalist pattern. Contrarily, they behaved like Butler et al.'s 14-month-olds. In Experiment 2, a 14-month group was tested in the barrier and window conditions, but now combining pointing with turning. Infants behaved as predicted by the mentalist model: strong responding in the window condition and minimal in the barrier (where many strained to look inside the partitions). In Experiment 3, an attempt was made to differentiate between mentalist and "geometric" (vector projection) interpretations of the results of Experiment 2 by testing another 14-month group with the adult's eyes closed while pointing. Gaze following now dropped precipitously in the window condition as did looking inside the solid barriers, indicating (1) that infants in Experiment 2 had not simply been guided to target by an extended arm, but construed it as part of a referential act that was as much visual as gestural, and (2) that by 14 months, infants may have acquired a mentalistic concept of seeing.     

Seriousness checks are useful to improve data validity in online research

Nonserious answering behavior increases noise and reduces experimental power; it is therefore one of the most important threats to the validity of online research. A simple way to address the problem is to ask respondents about the seriousness of their participation and to exclude self-declared nonserious participants from analysis. To validate this approach, a survey was conducted in the week prior to the German 2009 federal election to the Bundestag. Serious participants answered a number of attitudinal and behavioral questions in a more consistent and predictively valid manner than did nonserious participants. We therefore recommend routinely employing seriousness checks in online surveys to improve data validity.     

Predictors of Differential Responding on a Sentence Completion Task in Traumatized Children

Information-processing theories posit that persons who have experienced trauma may have disturbed emotional processing and therefore exhibit an excess of negative responses to otherwise neutral cues. The role of this mechanism in traumatized children has yet to be fully investigated. This study examined the relationship of varied clinical characteristics and theoretically relevant moderating variables to increased trauma related responding on a non-idiographic sentence completion task. One hundred and eighty-nine children (ages 6–17) residing at a residential home between 1996 and 2011 who had experienced physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse were administered a sentence completion task and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) shortly after their admission. Three independent raters determined whether sentence completion responses were trauma related (TRR), non-trauma related, or ambiguous. Trauma related responses were then reviewed for either avoidant/denial style responding or loss related responding. The TSCC posttraumatic stress subscale (PTS) was the only subscale that was uniquely related to TRR. A significant interaction between abuse type and PTS was found with sexual abuse moderating the effect of PTS on TRR. Additionally, age at assessment was positively correlated with both TRR and loss related responding. Time since removal from home was negatively correlated with TRR. Gender differences were found for TRR and loss related responding. These findings highlight the empirical relevance of the sentence completion task in clinical research. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for research, assessment, and intervention.     

Attachment Theory as a Framework for Understanding Responses to Social Exclusion

We argue that attachment theory may provide a useful framework for understanding individuals' reactions to social exclusion. Attachment theory suggests that social exclusion should prompt an individual to seek comfort from an accepting attachment figure. However, most experimental studies constrain individuals from seeking out an attachment figure to quell their distress, and may interfere with the process of recruiting internalized attachment figures. When the goal of recruiting attachment figure support is blocked, individuals may adopt deactivating strategies, such as emotional numbing, to reduce their distress. Alternatively, individuals may adopt hyperactivating strategies, such as ingratiating behaviors, to seek proximity to attachment figure substitutes. We conclude with recommendations for future avenues of exclusion research stemming from attachment theory.     

Unreinforced Conditional Selection by Two-Year-Olds in A Six-Comparison Matching Task

The Psychological Record - Four normally developing 2-year-old children were exposed to a story in which six novel characters appeared and were named. To assess learning of the character name...     

Effects of gender and sexuality on judgements of victim blame and rape myth acceptance in a depicted male rape

Relatively few studies have investigated judgements towards male rape, and no published studies have investigated gay men's judgements towards this offence. The current study investigated the effects of gender and sexuality on victim blame and male rape myth acceptance in the depicted rape of a gay man. It was predicted that heterosexual men would make the most anti‐victim judgements, while gay men would make the most pro‐victim judgements. One hundred and fifty members of the UK population read a scenario that depicted a male rape, and then completed a questionnaire that measured blame and rape myths. As predicted, heterosexual men endorsed more rape myths and blamed the victim more than heterosexual women or gay men. Gay men made the most pro‐victim judgements overall. Results are discussed in relation to homophobia and traditional gender roles. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Specifying Associations Between Conscientiousness and Executive Functioning: Mental Set Shifting,Not Prepotent Response Inhibition or Working Memory Updating

Conscientiousness is characterized by self‐control, organization, and goal orientation and is positively related to a number of health and professional outcomes. Thus, it is commonly suggested that conscientiousness should be related to superior executive functioning (EF) abilities, especially prepotent response inhibition. However, little empirical support for this notion has emerged, perhaps due to oversimplified and underspecified modeling of EF. The current study sought to fill this gap by testing relations between conscientiousness and three facets of EF using a nested factors latent variable approach. Participants (N = 420; M_age = 22.5; 50% male; 91% Caucasian) completed a measure of conscientiousness and nine EF tasks designed to tap three related yet distinguishable facets of EF: working memory updating, mental set shifting, and prepotent response inhibition. Structural equation models showed that conscientiousness is positively associated with the EF facet of mental set shifting but not response inhibition or working memory updating. Despite the common notion that conscientiousness is associated with cognitive abilities related to rigid control over impulses (i.e., inhibition), the current results suggest the cognitive ability most associated with conscientiousness is characterized by flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing environmental contingencies and task demands.     

A comparison of race‐related pain stereotypes held by White and Black individuals

Pain judgments are the basis for pain management. The purpose of this study was to assess Black and White participants' race‐related pain stereotypes. Undergraduates (n = 551) rated the pain sensitivity and willingness to report pain for the typical Black person, White person, and themselves. Participants, regardless of race, rated the typical White person as being more pain sensitive and more willing to report pain than the typical Black person. White participants rated themselves as less sensitive and less willing to report pain than same‐race peers; however, Black participants rated themselves as more pain sensitive and more willing to report pain than same‐race peers. These findings highlight similarities and differences in racial stereotypic pain beliefs held by Black and White individuals.