Parent–Child Aggression Risk in Expectant Mothers and Fathers: A Multimethod Theoretical Approach

The current investigation evaluated whether cognitive processes characteristic of the Social Information Processing model predicted parent–child aggression (PCA) risk independent of personal vulnerabilities and resiliencies. This study utilized a multimethod approach, including analog tasks, with a diverse sample of 203 primiparous expectant mothers and 151 of their partners. Factors considered in this study included PCA approval attitudes, empathy, reactivity, negative child attributions, compliance expectations, and knowledge of non-physical discipline alternatives; additionally, vulnerabilities included psychopathology symptoms, domestic violence victimization, and substance use, whereas resiliencies included perceived social support, partner relationship satisfaction, and coping efficacy. For both mothers and fathers, findings supported the role of greater approval of PCA attitudes, lower empathy, more overreactivity, more negative attributions, and higher compliance expectations in relation to elevated risk of PCA. Moreover, personal vulnerabilities and resiliencies related to PCA risk for mothers; however, fathers and mothers differed on the nature of these relationships with respect to vulnerabilities as well as aspects of empathy and PCA approval attitudes. Findings provide evidence for commonalities in many of the factors investigated between mothers and fathers with some notable distinctions. Results are discussed in terms of how findings could inform prevention programs.     

Engagement in the university context: exploring the role of a sense of justice and social identification

The aim of this study was to investigate how a sense of justice, university identification and student engagement emerge within the educational context and the reciprocal relationships among these constructs. Two correlational studies were conducted: (1) a pilot study aimed at validating the constructs of justice (distributive, procedural, and interactional aspects), social identification and student engagement (rule-abiding and extra-role aspects), within the university context (N \(=\) 280); (2) a study exploring the robustness of and the relationships between those constructs (N \(=\) 429). The results confirmed the presence of a four-factor solution involving a sense of overall justice (comprising distributive, procedural and interactional aspects), social identification, and two types of student engagement (rule-abiding and extra-role behaviours). A sense of justice was found to be related to students’ rule-abiding behaviour and, at the same time, it was related to students’ extra-role behaviour, only for closely identified students. In other words, student identification with the university moderated the relationship between sense of justice and extra-role behaviours. Our results showed the important role of sense justice in promoting student engagement (in both aspects of rule-abiding and extra-role behaviour), providing useful insights for the management of the university level educational system towards a better involvement of students in the attainment of higher academic performances and institutional commitment.     

Expressed Emotion,Parental Stress,and Family Dysfunction Among Parents of Nonclinical Italian Children

Expressed emotion (EE) is an index of the amount of emotion typically displayed by a family member or caretaker characterized by high emotional involvement, hostility or criticism. The aims of the current study were (a) to examine EE, stress and helplessness in childcare, and family functioning in mothers and fathers of elementary and junior high school children without clinical mental health problems living in a “nonclinical” family context; (b) to assess relationships between child age, gender, socio-economic status and EE; and (c) to investigate whether there are some factors—in a “normal family” context—that play a crucial role in the quality of EE. EE, assessed using the Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS), and questionnaires assessing parenting alliance, family functioning, parenting stress index, and the parent’s state of helplessness in caring for the child were completed by a community-based Italian sample of mothers and fathers of children (N = 381) aged 6–14 years (M = 9.8, SD = 2.25). As expected, low rates in all FMSS variables were found for mothers and fathers, without significant differences between them. Mothers and fathers who showed high EE scores reported higher family non-adaptive functioning. Mothers also reported higher parental stress and higher Helplessness in caring for the child. Mothers’ stress and fathers’ reports of higher family non-adaptive functioning were the most consistent predictors of EE. Further research is needed to highlight associations between EE and family functioning.     

The Country's Crime Rate Moderates the Relation Between Authoritarian Predispositions and the Manifestations of Authoritarianism: A Multilevel,Multinational Study

We performed a multilevel, multinational test of Stenner's model on authoritarianism using the 2008 European Values Survey dataset (N = 55 199, nested in 38 nations). We focussed on the effects exerted on four authoritarian manifestations (racial intolerance, political intolerance, negative attitudes towards immigrants, and moral intolerance) by the cross‐level interaction between participants' authoritarian predispositions (assessed in terms of childrearing values) and their country's crime rate. Associations between authoritarian predispositions and racial intolerance, political intolerance, negative attitudes towards immigrants, and moral intolerance were significantly stronger among participants living in countries characterised by high crime rates than those among participants living in countries with low crime rates. Limitations, implications, and future directions of this study are discussed. Copyright © 2013 European Association of Personality Psychology.     

Neuroscientific insights into the development of analogical reasoning

Analogical reasoning, or the ability to find correspondences between entities based on shared relationships, supports knowledge acquisition. As such, the development of this ability during childhood is thought to promote learning. Here, we sought to better understand the mechanisms by which analogical reasoning about semantic relations improves over childhood and adolescence (e.g. chalk is to chalkboard as pen is to…?). We hypothesized that age‐related differences would manifest as differences in the brain regions associated with one or more of the following cognitive functions: (1) controlled semantic retrieval, or the ability to retrieve task‐relevant semantic associations; (2) response control, or the ability to override the tendency to respond to a salient distractor; and/or (3) relational integration, or the ability to consider jointly two mental relations. In order to test these hypotheses, we analyzed patterns of fMRI activation during performance of a pictorial propositional analogy task across 95 typically developing children between the ages of 6 and 18 years old. Despite large age‐related differences in task performance, particularly over ages 6–10 but through to around age 14, participants across the whole age range recruited a common network of frontal, parietal and temporal regions. However, activation in a brain region that has been implicated in controlled semantic retrieval – left anterior prefrontal cortex (BA 47/45) – was positively correlated with age, and also with performance after controlling for age. This finding indicates that improved performance over middle childhood and early adolescence on this analogical reasoning task is driven largely by improvements in the ability to selectively retrieve task‐relevant semantic relationships.     

Evaluation of the effects a caregiver training programme has on the cognitive and functional maintenance of the elderly / Valoración de los efectos de un programa de formación de cuidadores sobre el mantenimiento cognitivo y funcional de ancianos

Abstract

With the increase in the elderly population comes a need to ensure they remain cognitively and functionally stable for as long as possible. Achieving this through a caregiver training programme based on the Person Centred Care (PCC) approach has been suggested. On this basis, the purpose of this study has been to evaluate the effectiveness of a caregiver training programme on the cognitive and functional maintenance of the elderly. The study sample comprised 56 elderly people and 14 caregivers, who were assessed using the MMSE, Clifton, Barthel, EuroQol, RMBPC (elderly) and SSFQ (caregivers) measurement scales. The results at intergroup level show significant differences in the pre-treatment assessment: the control group had higher scores for MMSE, Barthel, EuroQol and RMPBC scales, but that difference disappeared as scores for the treatment group increased. At an intragroup level, increases in scores were observed in the MMSE, Clifton and EuroQol scales for the treatment group and decreases in the Clifton, EuroQol and Barthel scales for the control group. From these results we can conclude that a caregiver training programme based on a PCC approach produces cognitive and functional benefits in the elderly. In addition, caregivers in the treatment group felt more competent, confident and satisfied with their work.     

Nuanced aesthetic emotions: emotion differentiation is related to knowledge of the arts and curiosity

The ability to distinguish between emotions is considered indicative of well-being, but does emotion differentiation (ED) in an aesthetic context also reflect deeper and more knowledgeable aesthetic experiences? Here we examine whether positive and negative ED in response to artistic stimuli reflects higher fluency in an aesthetic domain. Particularly, we test whether knowledge of the arts and curiosity are associated with more fine-grained positive and negative aesthetic experiences. A sample of 214 people rated their positive and negative feelings in response to various artworks including positive and negative themes. Positive ED was associated with the embracing sub-trait of curiosity that reflects engagement and enjoyment of novelty and complexity, but was unrelated to artistic knowledge and perceived comprehension. Negative ED was associated with higher curiosity and particularly more knowledge of the arts. This relationship was mediated by appraised comprehension suggesting that deeper engagement with art, by those with more art knowledge, is associated with more fine-grained emotional experiences. This finding extends ED beyond well-being research and suggests that more nuanced emotional experiences are more likely for those with expertise in the arts and motivation for exploration.     

Dyadic Coping in Couple Therapy Process: An Exploratory Study

This study aimed at moving beyond previous research on couple therapy efficacy by examining moment‐by‐moment proximal couple and therapist interactions as well as final treatment outcomes and their reciprocal association. Seven hundred four episodes of dyadic coping within 56 early therapy sessions, taken from 28 married couples in treatment, were intensively analyzed and processed using a mixed‐methods software (T‐LAB). Results showed that negative dyadic coping was self‐perpetuating, and therapists tended to passively observe the negative couple interaction; on the contrary, positive dyadic coping appeared to require a therapist's intervention to be maintained, and successful interventions mainly included information gathering as well as interpreting. Couples who dropped out of treatment were not actively engaged from the outset of therapy, and they used more negative dyadic coping, whereas couples who successfully completed treatment showed more positive dyadic coping very early in therapy. Results highlight the role of therapist action and control as critical to establishing rapport and credibility in couple therapy and suggest that dyadic coping patterns early in therapy may contribute to variable treatment response.     

Gender stereotype–consistent memories: How system justification motivation distorts the recollection of information related to the self

Research based on system justification theory has shown that women’s self-perceptions may be altered by the motivation to justify the system and its inequalities. Self-perceptions being built on past experiences, the present study aimed to explore how system justification motivation induced through a system dependency manipulation may alter both women’s recall of autobiographical memories and their behavior. Women who were led to feel highly dependent on the social system perceived themselves as more competent and recalled memories of higher competence in the verbal domain compared with the negatively stereotyped scientific domain. Women’s behavioral choices (between doing a verbal or a math exercise) also revealed a higher preference for the gender stereotype–consistent verbal exercise in the high–system dependency condition, as compared with the low–system dependency condition. These results suggest that gender stereotypes may not only satisfy self- or group-serving motivation but also the need to perceive the system in a positive light.