Parenting stress among families of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Prior research has shown that parenting stress levels can be quite high among families of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study investigated the degree to which such stress was related not only to the child's ADHD, but also to various other child, parent, and family-environment circumstances. Multimethod assessments were conducted on 104 clinic-referred children with ADHD. Data collected from these subjects were entered into hierarchical multiple-regression analyses, utilizing the Parenting Stress Index as the criterion. The results showed that child and parent characteristics accounted for a substantial portion of the variance in overall parenting stress. The child's oppositional-defiant behavior and maternal psychopathology were especially potent predictors. The severity of the child's ADHD, the child's health status, and maternal health status also emerged as significant predictors. These findings are discussed in terms of their impact upon the clinical management of children with ADHD.The authors are grateful to Mary Maher and Paula Nevins for their assistance in collecting and coding the data. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Kenneth Fletcher for his helpful comments regarding the statistical analyses.     

Effects of protein malnutrition and the administration of cortisol on the reflexologic development in rats.

The use of neurological tests in various states of undernutrition has confirmed the presence of delays in reflex ontogeny. Glucocorticoid administration in conditions of normal nutrition produces diminished growth and alterations in brain development similar to those observed in malnutrition, but there is not enough evidence about its effect on reflex development. In addition, some facts lead us to think that the use of permissive doses of these hormones during gestation could alleviate some of the effects of protein malnutrition on the development of pups. In the present study the ages at which certain reflexes appeared in the offspring of Wistar rats (Rattus norvegicus) fed a 20% (N) or 10% (M) protein diet from a week before conception to the end of lactation were observed. Each dietary group was subdivided into two: mothers receiving a daily injection during gestation either of a 0.9% NaCl (S) solution or of a 0.5 mg/100 g weight hydrocortisone acetate (C) solution. Results showed that the NS group of pups generally presented earlier ages of appearance of the variables under study than the remaining groups. Pups of the NC group presented delays in the age of appearance of reflexes. Finally, protein malnutrition delayed the appearance of reflexes and this effect seemed to be attenuated by treatment with hydrocortisone. Thus, hydrocortisone administration in protein malnutrition conditions seems to be beneficial although the results are harmful when administered under normal nutritional conditions.     

Some properties of configural learning: an investigation of the transverse-patterning problem.

Little is known about the conditions that encourage animals to learn to use configural associations to guide their behavior or the consequences of such learning for transfer. This study provided some information about these issues by examining how rats solve the transverse-patterning problem, which requires a configural solution (Spence, 1952). Animals had to concurrently solve 3 simultaneous visual discriminations, represented abstractly as A+ versus B-, B+ versus C-, and C+ versus A-. Experiment 1 indicated that rats use a configural solution even when the problems have an elemental solution, provided that the significance of 1 element (e.g., B) shared by 2 problems is ambiguous (e.g., A+/B-; and B+/C-). Experiments 2 and 3 suggested that, when stimulated to use a configural solution by solving the A+/B- and B+/C- problems, rats transfer the configural solution to problems that have no ambiguous elements.     

Multivariate genetic analysis of specific cognitive abilities in the Colorado adoption project at age 7

A multivariate hierarchical model of specific cognitive abilities was fitted to data from 7-year-old adopted and nonadopted sibling pairs in the Colorado Adoption Project in order to assess differential genetic influence on specific mental abilities. Model fitting results and Schmid-Leiman (Schmid & Leiman, 1957) transformations reveal significant heritable variation for verbal, spatial, and memory factors independent of general cognitive ability for the eight ability tests examined. In contrast, environmental influences are primarily measure-specific. The results suggest genetic effects in middle childhood that differentially influence mental ability scores.     

Reinstatement of latent inhibition following a reminder treatment in a conditioned taste aversion paradigm.

Reminder treatments have been shown to facilitate the retrieval of a variety of conditioned responses. Whether or not similar results would occur with an experimental paradigm which involves primarily memory for a stimulus, i.e., where no particular response is specified, is unclear. Accordingly, using Sprague-Dawley rats, we employed a latent inhibition paradigm with a long (10 days) retention interval between sucrose (CS) preexposure and sucrose-illness pairing (training). The results demonstrated a loss of latent inhibition following the 10-day retention interval suggesting "forgetting" of the CS preexposure. However, placing a single reminder exposure to the CS within the preexposure-to-training interval reinstated the preexposure effect. Controls indicated that in the absence of the initial preexposure the reminder per se did not produce latent inhibition. Thus, a reminder can reinstate a stimulus attribute (flavor representation) and explicit conditioned responses.     

Quantitative and qualitative analyses of clock drawings in Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease.

Although visuoconstructive impairment has been reported in both Alzheimer's (DAT) and Huntington's (HD) disease, there is little knowledge concerning how this cognitive deficit differs quantitatively and qualitatively in these two progressive dementias. To address this issue, the present study compared performances on the Clock Drawing Test (CDT: command and copy) of 25 DAT patients, 25 equally demented HD patients, and 25 elderly normal controls (NC). In the command condition, both patients groups were significantly impaired compared to the NC group. Although there was no significant difference between DAT and HD patients' total quantitative scores, a qualitative error analysis revealed a number of dissociations between the two patient groups. Graphic difficulties, very common in HD patients, were virtually absent in DAT patients; in contrast, conceptual errors were almost exclusively seen in DAT patients and were related to the severity of their dementia. Perseveration and "stimulus-bound" responses were also more frequent in DAT patients, and both groups made visuospatial errors. In the copy condition, the DAT, but not the HD, patients evidenced a marked improvement in performance. These results indicate that while both DAT and HD patients have significant visuoconstructive difficulties even in the early stages of their disorders, the specific cognitive processes underlying their quantitative impairments are quite different. It is possible that the DAT patients' conceptual errors are yet another indicator of the deterioration of their semantic knowledge.     

Variations in characteristic perceptual asymmetry: modality specific and modality general components.

The current study investigates sources of between-subjects variation in asymmetry scores on visual half-field and dichotic listening tasks. For each of these presentation modalities, subjects were given multiple laterality tasks. Results indicate that about 50% of the between-subjects variations in asymmetry scores in each modality is attributable to individual differences in perceptual asymmetries that are not stimulus-specific, referred to as "characteristic perceptual asymmetries" in this paper. In addition, the question of whether individual differences in characteristic perceptual asymmetries are modality specific, modality general, or both was investigated by entering subjects' asymmetry scores from visual half-field and dichotic listening tasks into a principal component analysis. The results of this analysis indicate that there are both modality specific and modality general influences on subjects' characteristic perceptual asymmetries.     

Hardiness: a review of theory and research.

Although a large body of research on hardiness (a personality construct with dimensions of commitment, control, and challenge) has accumulated, several fundamental issues remain unresolved. Although there are several hardiness scales, the properties of these scales have not been compared. There is debate as to whether hardiness is one or several characteristics. Research studying the pathways through which hardiness exerts its effects has not been comprehensively evaluated. Whereas critics have argued that hardiness does not buffer stress, others have suggested that hardiness buffers for working adults, for males, and in prospective analyses. There is also growing concern that hardiness is related to neuroticism. A review of the literature supports the following conclusions: The Dispositional Resilience Scale (DRS) has several advantages over alternative scales; DRS items form three factors that are consistent with hardiness theory; hardiness dimensions generally show low to moderate intercorrelations; the most common way of categorizing subjects as high or low in hardiness is not consistent with hardiness theory; hardiness does not buffer stress, and it does not buffer stress for working adults, for males, or in prospective analyses; both old and new hardiness scales inadvertently measure neuroticism. Recommendations for future research are provided.     

Patterns of coping with cancer.

We identified five patterns of coping in a sample of 603 cancer patients: "seeking or using social support," "focusing on the positive," "distancing," "cognitive escape-avoidance," and "behavioral escape-avoidance." Relationships of these coping patterns to sociodemographic characteristics, medical factors, stress appraisals, psychotherapeutic experience, and emotional distress were tested using correlational and regression techniques. Type of cancer, time since diagnosis, and whether a person was currently in treatment had few or no relationships to coping. The specific cancer-related problem (e.g., pain, fear of future) was also not associated with how individuals coped. Perceptions of its stressfulness, however, were related to significantly more coping through social support and more of both forms of escape-avoidance. Coping through social support, focusing on the positive, and distancing was associated with less emotional distress, whereas using cognitive and behavioral escape-avoidance was associated with more emotional distress. Implications of the results for understanding coping processes and intervention with cancer patients are discussed.     

Remembering pictures: pleasure and arousal in memory.

Incidental memory performance for pictures that varied along the affective dimensions of pleasantness and arousal was assessed. For both an immediate and delayed (1 year later) free-recall task, only the arousal dimension had a stable effect on memory performance: Pictures rated as highly arousing were remembered better than low-arousal stimuli. This effect was corroborated in a speeded recognition test, in which high-arousal materials encoded earlier in the experiment produced faster reaction times than their low-arousal counterparts. Pleasantness affected reaction time decisions only for pictures not encoded earlier. These results suggest that whereas both the dimensions of pleasantness and arousal are processed at initial encoding, long-term memory performance is mainly affected by arousal.