Online racial discrimination and the protective function of ethnic identity and self-esteem for African American adolescents

A growing body of literature has shown that being victimized online is associated with poor mental health. Little is known about the factors that protect youth from the negative outcomes that may result from these victimization experiences, particularly those related to race. Using a risk and resilience framework, this study examined the protective function of ethnic identity and self-esteem among African Americans who experience online racial discrimination. For the sample of 125 adolescents, hierarchical regression results revealed that higher levels of ethnic identity and self-esteem significantly moderated the negative impact of online racial discrimination on anxiety levels. These findings show that ethnic identity and self-esteem can buffer the negative mental health outcomes associated with online racial discrimination, at least with respect to adolescents' anxiety. Findings from the current study have significant implications for adolescent adjustment given the increased time youth spend doing online activities.     

Effects of game location, period, and quality of opposition in elite handball performances

The aims of the present study were to identify (i) home advantage in elite handball according to the quality of opponent, (ii) the game periods where the teams score more goals, and (iii) the game statistics associated with the teams' success according to the game's location. The sample comprised 480 regular season games (2007-2009) from the Spanish Professional Handball League. The goals scored and shot effectiveness (6 m, 7 m, 9 m and fast breaks) were analyzed for each 5-min. game period in games between players of balanced and unbalanced quality. The home advantage was 64%, with higher values (71%) in balanced and lower values (55%) in unbalanced games. The 5-min. game periods in which teams scored more goals were the last 5-min. period of each half, especially in the second half. The effectiveness was only different in shots closer to the goal (6 m), which supports the territoriality theory of home advantage.     

Childhood Executive Function Continues to Predict Outcomes in Young Adult Females with and Without Childhood-Diagnosed ADHD

We prospectively followed an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of preadolescent girls with ADHD (n?=?140) and matched comparison girls (n?=?88) over a period of 10?years, from middle childhood through late adolescence/young adulthood. Our aim was to examine the ability of childhood measures of executive function (EF) to predict functional outcomes at follow-up. Measures of EF comprised the childhood predictors, with academic, socioemotional, occupational, and global functioning serving as young adult criterion measures. Results indicated that childhood EF - particularly measures of global EF and working memory - predicted academic and occupational functioning across our entire sample (independent of diagnostic group status), but diagnostic status (ADHD versus comparison) moderated the association between (a) working memory and reading achievement and (b) a global EF measure and suspensions/expulsions. That is, in the ADHD group, low working memory predicted poor reading scores and impaired global EF predicted higher suspensions/expulsions, but this was not the case in the comparison group. Overall, these results extend previous findings of associations between EF and adolescent outcomes in girls with and without ADHD into young adulthood. Findings continue to suggest the importance of assessing and developing interventions that target EF impairments early in life in order to prevent long-term difficulties across a range of important functional domains.     

Social Isolation and Perceived Barriers to Establishing Social Networks Among Latina Immigrants

Research has identified numerous mechanisms through which perceived social isolation and lack of social support negatively impact health. Little research attention has been dedicated to factors that influence the development of social networks, which have the potential to decrease perceptions of social isolation and provide social support. There is mixed evidence concerning the availability of supportive social networks for Latinos in the US. This study explores trauma-exposed Latina immigrants’ experiences of social isolation in the US and its perceived causes. Twenty-eight Latina immigrant women participated in an interview about traumatic experiences. Informal help seeking and the availability of friendships in the US were also queried. Frequent comparisons between experiences in their home countries and in the US shaped the emerging themes of social isolation and lack of social support. Women reported feeling lonely, isolated, closed-in, and less free in the US due to family separation and various obstacles to developing and maintaining relationships. Socioeconomic, environmental, and psychosocial barriers were offered as explanations for their limited social networks in the US. Understanding experiences of social isolation as well as barriers to forging social networks can help inform the development of social support interventions that can contribute to improved health among Latinos.     

American Indian Acculturation: Tribal Lands to Predominately White Postsecondary Settings

Grounded theory provided a framework for examining 25 acculturating American Indian college students, 12 relatives of acculturating American Indians, and 7 postsecondary administrators. Acculturation was defined as the transformative process resulting from the integration of tribal culture and predominately White culture. Data sources included individual interviews, focus groups, and artifact analysis. The 16 emergent themes form an acculturation theory centered on a strength‐based acculturation process affecting American Indians’ transition to predominately White postsecondary settings.     

‘We Are All the Same,We All Are Mestizos’: Imagined Populations and Nations in Genetics Research in Colombia

In Colombia, as in other Latin American countries, current population genetics research is based on the understanding that Colombians constitute a mestizo nation, given the admixture process that took place between Africans, Amerindians, and Europeans during colonial times. The mestizo is a pervasive category used by geneticists to conduct, organise, and publish research studies that deal with the continent's peopling process and the genetic makeup of its contemporary population(s). It is also the dominant imaginary for the Colombian population and a key nation-building ideology. By tracing how this category moves and is used across four Colombian genetics laboratories, it is possible to discern that despite its apparently clear-cut boundaries, the mestizo is contingent, contested, and flexible, allowing for multiple understandings and usages. This flexibility and multiplicity are visible in the quantification of genetic ancestry, the divisions of geographical location, and the understanding of gender. Such understandings allow one to think about a homogeneous nation (inclusive) that is simultaneously heterogeneous (exclusive); they provide multiple but not necessarily contradictory possibilities of being mestizo, allowing the coexistence of images of the nation that could otherwise seem contradictory; and they permit navigation around contested terms such as race, while simultaneously thinking of mixed races or racialised individuals. Finally, these flexible and multiple constructions of the mestizo (re)produce various subjects as ‘other’, whether they are women, the Indigenous, the black/dark, or the poor.     

Body checking and associated cognitions among Brazilian outpatients with eating disorders and nonpsychiatric controls

This work aims to compare in patients with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and control subjects: (a) body checking types, frequency, and parts; (b) prevalence of body avoidance and the most checked body parts; (c) body checking cognitions. Eighty-five outpatients with eating disorders (ED) and 40 controls filled out validated body checking and cognition questionnaires. ED patients, especially bulimia nervosa, check their bodies more than do the control subjects. The most checked area was the belly. The most frequent means of body checking was mirror checking, while the most avoided was weighing. The reasons that participants in the various study groups check their bodies seem to differ. Given the importance of body checking in the etiology and maintenance of EDs, it is important that clinicians consider this behavior, as well as the factors that lead to checking/avoidance in the different eating disorder subtypes, so that treatment may be more specific.     

Memory for non-native language: The role of lexical processing in the retention of surface form

Research on memory for native language (L1) has consistently shown that retention of surface form is inferior to that of gist (e.g., Sachs, 1967). This paper investigates whether the same pattern is found in memory for non-native language (L2). We apply a model of bilingual word processing to more complex linguistic structures and predict that memory for L2 sentences ought to contain more surface information than L1 sentences. Native and non-native speakers of English were tested on a set of sentence pairs with different surface forms but the same meaning (e.g., “The bullet hit/struck the bull's eye”). Memory for these sentences was assessed with a cued recall procedure. Responses showed that native and non-native speakers did not differ in the accuracy of gist-based recall but that non-native speakers outperformed native speakers in the retention of surface form. The results suggest that L2 processing involves more intensive encoding of lexical level information than L1 processing.     

Overcoming default categorical bias in spatial memory

In the present study, we investigated whether a strong default categorical bias can be overcome in spatial memory by using alternative membership information. In three experiments, we tested location memory in a circular space while providing participants with an alternative categorization. We found that visual presentation of the boundaries of the alternative categories (Experiment 1) did not induce the use of the alternative categories in estimation. In contrast, visual cuing of the alternative category membership of a target (Experiment 2) and unique target feature information associated with each alternative category (Experiment 3) successfully led to the use of the alternative categories in estimation. Taken together, the results indicate that default categorical bias in spatial memory can be overcome when appropriate cues are provided. We discuss how these findings expand the category adjustment model (Huttenlocher, Hedges, & Duncan, 1991) in spatial memory by proposing a retrieval-based category adjustment (RCA) model.