Conversation Orientation Moderates the Relationship between Information Sharing of Medically Assisted Reproduction and Child Adjustment

Parents who experienced infertility have increasingly used medically assisted reproduction (MAR) to add children to their families over the past few decades. These parents will need to decide if they will tell their children about being conceived using MAR. Although MAR information sharing operates within family contexts, little is known about the role of conversation orientation—one family contextual factor—in child outcomes associated with MAR information sharing in middle childhood. Derived from the Family Communication Patterns Theory, this study proposes that conversation orientation moderates the associations between MAR information sharing and children's psychosocial adjustment. This proposal was tested using a sample of 81 6- to 12-year-old MAR-conceived children from 55 families and a structured observational measure of conversation orientation. Multiple regression analyses showed that MAR information sharing interacted with conversation orientation to influence children's behavioral and attention problems but not emotional problems. In families with high conversation orientation, MAR information sharing was not significantly associated with children's behavioral and attention problems. In families with low conversation orientation, MAR information sharing was significantly associated with an increase in children's behavioral and attention problems. Results of this exploratory study demonstrate the potential significance of general communication orientation in understanding child outcomes of MAR information sharing and highlight the needed family context nuances in MAR research.     

The typology of parricide and the role of mental illness: Data-driven approach

Parricide is a rare type of homicide in which mental illness is often an important factor. The aims of this study were (a) to describe the characteristics of parricide offenders with a focus on mental illness and clinical care and (b) to examine Heide's widely used typology of parricide through a data-driven approach. We analyzed all homicides in England and Wales between 1997 and 2014. Parricide offenders in our sample were most often male, unmarried, and unemployed, with a third of offenders diagnosed with schizophrenia; 28% had been in contact with mental health services before the offense. The latent class analysis resulted in three types of parricide offenders: middle-aged with affective disorder, previously abused, and seriously mentally Ill, which confirmed, to an extent, Heide's typology. Health and social care services should actively engage with carers of people with mental illness and support to those caring for older relatives and victims of abuse.     

Accommodating an Uninvited Guest: Perspectives of Researchers in Switzerland on ‘Honorary’ Authorship

Science and Engineering Ethics - The aim of this paper is to analyze the attitudes and reactions of researchers towards an authorship claim made by a researcher in a position of authority who has...     

Attachment,mastery, and interdependence: a model of parenting processes

A democratic nation needs an interdependent citizenry who are not only competent but who also can live together cooperatively with an eye toward what will benefit the whole as well as the self. In this article, the concept of interdependence is adopted as the central goal of parenting. The Parenting Processes Model is then presented, specifying how caregivers help children develop this interdependence. This work draws upon and integrates the work of a number of theoreticians, researchers, and clinicians, with the central focus on the work of John Bowlby, Alfred Adler, and Lev Vygotsky.     

The family Re-Union initiative: a springboard for family-centered community building,locally and nationally

Family Re-Union is an ongoing conference series and family policy initiative launched in 1992 by Al and Tipper Gore. It has been the springboard for a new wave of family-centered community building efforts, including the development of an educational program to prepare a new generation of community builders. We summarize the history of this family-centered community building movement and discuss how it builds upon and differs from earlier approaches to community development. We describe Family Re-Union and some of the ongoing work it has fueled. And we suggest ways family professionals can take part in this work.     

Anger regulation in disadvantaged preschool boys: strategies, antecedents, and the development of self-control

Emotion regulation strategies observed during an age 3 1/2 frustration task were examined in relation to (a) angry affect during the frustration task, (b) child and maternal characteristics at age 1 1/2, and (c) indices of self-control at age 6 in a sample of low-income boys (Ns varied between 189 and 310, depending on the assessment). Shifting attention away from sources of frustration and seeking information about situational constraints were associated with decreased anger. Secure attachment and positive maternal control correlated positively with effective regulatory strategy use. Individual differences in strategy use predicted self-control at school entry, but in specific rather than general ways: Reliance on attention-shifting strategies corresponded with low externalizing problems and high cooperation; reliance on information gathering corresponded with high assertiveness.     

Thomas Wolfe: Study of a Wanderer

Thomas Wolfe was an American novelist who in his short and tragic life (1900-1939) was preoccupied with themes of lost youth, memory, transience and an insatiable wandering. Wolfe was preoccupied with what I have seen, felt and thought. He was a wanderer who in his brief life made seven voyages to Europe and compulsively explored that continent. He would never own a home or a piece of land. He rarely lived in an apartment for more than a year and more commonly for just a few months. The purpose of this paper is to explore the meaning of Wolfe's tormented wandering and his endless searching. It will be my thesis that Wolfe demonstrated an inability to mourn. His writings are an attempt to recapture his past and to restore a lost world. Emphasis will be placed on themes of loss and mourning, insatiable hunger and desire, preoccupation with transience and death, and a search for that which was lost.     

The Ponzo illusion affects grip-force but not grip-aperture scaling during prehension movements

Contextual cues such as linear perspective and relative size can exert a powerful effect on the perception of objects. This fact is demonstrated by the illusory effects that can be induced by such cues (e.g., the Ponzo railway track and Titchener circles illusions). Several recent studies have reported, however, that visual illusions based on such cues have little or no influence on the visuomotor mechanisms used to guide hand action. Furthermore, evidence of this sort has been cited in support of a distinction between visual perception and the visual control of action. In the current study, the authors investigated the effect of the Ponzo visual illusion on the control of hand action, specifically, the scaling of grip force and grip aperture during prehension movements. The results demonstrate that grip force scaling is significantly influenced by the Ponzo visual illusion, whereas the scaling of grip aperture is unaffected by the illusion.     

Is self special? A critical review of evidence from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience

Varied research findings have been taken to support the claim that humans' representation of the self is "special," that is, that it emerges from systems that are physically and functionally distinct from those used for more general purpose cognitive processing. The authors evaluate this claim by reviewing the relevant literatures and addressing the criteria for considering a system special, the various operationalizations of self, and how the studies' findings relate to the conclusions drawn. The authors conclude that many of the claims for the special status of self-related processing are premature given the evidence and that the various self-related research programs do not seem to be illuminating a unitary, common system, despite individuals' subjective experience of a unified self.     

Role of the inertial eigenvectors in proprioception near the limits of arm adduction range of motion

Common everyday activities such as reaching for a cup, combing one's hair, or positioning a tool involve the accurate registration of the limb's orientation relative to the body and the environment. Past work has demonstrated that the ability of humans to perceive the spatial orientation of an occluded arm is tied to the arm's inertial eigenvectors, invariant mechanical parameters corresponding to a limb's axes of rotational symmetry. In a recent study participants pointed to visible targets while the arms' inertial eigenvectors were displaced by asymmetrically weighted splints. The lack of an effect of those splints on pointing error led them to conclude that inertial eigenvectors are not the primary invariants used for proprioception. However, their data suggested an effect of the eigenvectors, but only for conditions in which pointing did not require placing the arm near the limits of shoulder adduction range of motion. In the present study we found a significant effect of displacing the eigenvector for all tested arm angles, regardless of degree of shoulder adduction. Overall, the results supported the hypothesis that proprioception is based on sensitivity to the limb's inertial eigenvectors, with no reduction of the eigenvector effect when adducting the arm so as to reach far across the body midline.