Curvature affects haptic length perception

One possible way of haptically perceiving length is to trace a path with one’s index finger and estimate the distance traversed. Here, we present an experiment in which observers judge the lengths of paths across cylindrically curved surfaces. We found that convex and concave surfaces had qualitatively different effects: convex lengths were overestimated, whereas concave lengths were underestimated. In addition, we observed that the index finger moved more slowly across the convex surface than across the concave one. As a result, movement times for convex lengths were longer. The considerable correlation between movement times and length estimates suggests that observers take the duration of movement as their primary measure of perceived length, but disregard movement speeds. Several mechanisms that could underlie observers’ failure to account for speed differences are considered.     

Triple P-Positive Parenting Program as a public health approach to strengthening parenting

Parenting programs have considerable potential to improve the mental health and well-being of children, improve family relationships, and benefit the community at large. However, traditional clinical models of service delivery reach relatively few parents. A public health approach is needed to ensure that more parents benefit and that a societal-level impact is achieved. The Triple P-Positive Parenting Program is a comprehensive, multilevel system of parenting intervention that combines within a single intervention universal and more targeted interventions for high-risk children and their parents. With Triple P, the overarching goal is to enhance the knowledge, skills, and confidence of parents at a whole-of-population level and, in turn, to reduce the prevalence rates of behavioral and emotional problems in children and adolescents. The distinguishing features of the intervention and variables that influence its effective implementation are discussed. Self-regulation is a unifying concept that is applied throughout the entire system (e.g., to interactions between children, parents, service providers, and agencies involved in delivering the intervention). Challenges and future directions for the development of public health approaches to parenting are discussed.     

Couple communication in stepfamilies

Effective communication is assumed to help sustain couple relationships and is a key focus of most relationship education programs. We assessed couple problem-solving communication in 65 stepfamily and 52 first-time-marrying couples, with each group stratified into high risk and low risk for relationship problems based on family-of-origin experiences. Relative to partners in first-time couples, partners in stepfamily couples were less positive, less negative, and more likely to withdraw from discussion. Risk was associated with communication in first-time but not stepfamily couples. Stepfamily couples do not exhibit the negative communication evident in high-risk first-time-marrying couples, and available relationship education programs that focus on reducing negative communication are unlikely to meet the needs of stepfamilies.     

In the Eyes of the Beholder: Personality and the Perception of Leadership1

This series of studies focuses on the extent to which the personality of followers is related to their perception of transformational leadership. Followers from 3 different companies and students from a Dutch university were questioned on their personality characteristics and their perception of a described leader (students) or the perception of their actual leader (employees). Although the results differ for the different samples, we found a relationship between followers' personality and the perception of transformational leadership for all of the different samples. The different relationship that we found may hint to the impact of context on the relationship between personality and the perception of leadership. In the discussion, we explain our results in light of these different contexts.     

Help when it's needed first: a controlled evaluation of brief, preventive behavioral family intervention in a primary care setting

This study evaluated the effects of a brief 3- to 4-session behavioral family intervention program for parents of preschool-aged children in a primary care setting, compared to parents in a wait-list control condition. Parents receiving the Primary Care Triple P-Positive Parenting Program intervention reported significantly lower levels of targeted child behavior problems, dysfunctional parenting, and reduced parental anxiety and stress in comparison to wait-listed parents at postassessment. These short-term effects were largely maintained at 6-month follow-up assessment of the intervention group. Implications of these findings for the prevention of behavioral and emotional problems in children are discussed.     

Bimanual curvature discrimination of hand-sized surfaces placed at different positions

This study explores bimanual curvature discrimination of cylindrically curved, hand-sized surfaces. The setup was designed so that the postures of the observers' left and right arms and hands were thesame as if the observers were holding a large object in their hands. We measured psychometric curves for observers who used active, dynamic touch; these curvatures ranged from 1.18 to 4.05/m. Bimanual discrimination thresholds were found to be between 0.26 and 0.38/m on average; they were in the same range as unimanual thresholds reported in previous studies. Variation of (1) the horizontal distance between the stimuli or (2) the position of the setup had no effect on thresholds. In addition, we found that a number of observers showed discrimination biases in which they judged two physically different curvatures to be equal. Biases were of the same order of magnitude as the thresholds and could be either positive or negative. These biases can possibly be explained by small differences in left and right arm movements, an explanation that is supported by the position dependence of biases for individual observers.     

Academic performance,popularity, and depression predict adolescent substance use

Eighty-nine high school seniors completed a questionnaire on their feelings and activities, including their use of drugs. Adolescents with a low grade point average, high popularity, and high depression were more likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and smoke marijuana than were their peers. Cigarette and alcohol use predicted marijuana use, which in turn predicted cocaine use.     

The effects of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program on preschool children with co-occurring disruptive behavior and attentional/hyperactive difficulties

Two variants of a behavioral family intervention (BFI) program known as Triple P were compared using 87 preschoolers with co-occurring disruptive behavior and attentional/hyperactive difficulties. Families were randomly allocated to enhanced BFI (EBFI), standard BFI (SBFI), or a waitlist (WL) control group. At postintervention both BFI programs were associated with significantly lower levels of parent-reported child behavior problems, lower levels of dysfunctional parenting, and greater parental competence than the WL condition. The EBFI condition was also associated with significantly less observed child negative behavior in comparison to the WL. The gains achieved at postintervention were maintained at 1-year follow-up. Contrary to predictions, the enhanced program was not shown to be superior to the standard program using any of the outcome measures at either postintervention or follow-up. Each of the programs produced significant reductions in children's co-occurring disruptive behavior and attentional/hyperactive difficulties with 80% of the children showing clinically reliable improvement in observed negative behavior from preintervention to follow-up.