The relationship between posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and paternal parenting of adult children among ex-prisoners of war: a longitudinal study

The aversive impact of combat and combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on parenting of young children has been examined in a few studies. Nevertheless, the toll of war captivity on parenting and the long-term relations between posttraumatic symptoms and paternal parenting of adult children remains unknown. This longitudinal study examined paternal parenting of adult children among war veterans, some of whom were held in captivity. Furthermore, we examined the mediating role of PTSD symptoms in the association between captivity and parenting. The sample included two groups of male Israeli veterans from the 1973 Yom Kippur War: ex-prisoners of war (ex-POWs) and comparable veterans who had not been held captive. Both groups were assessed via self-report measures of PTSD at three time points: Time 1 (18 after the war), Time 2 (30 after the war), and Time 3 (35 after the war) years after the war. Results shows that ex-POWs reported lower levels of positive parenting compared to comparison group veterans at Time 3. Furthermore, PTSD symptoms at Time 1, Time 2, and Time 3 mediated the association between captivity experience and parenting at Time 3. In addition, it was found that increases in the levels of PTSD symptom clusters over time were associated with lower levels of positive parenting at Time 3.     

TEACHING RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS TO YOUNG CHILDREN WITH DOWN SYNDROME

Despite extensive evidence of significant and pervasive impairments in communication in individuals with Down syndrome, there is relatively little empirical and behavior analytic research demonstrating effective intervention procedures. In this study, we examined a behavior analytic intervention to teach answers to questions in two children with Down syndrome. Children acquired the target responses and generalized across settings and people. This contributes to the growing body of demonstrations of behavior analytic interventions to address the needs of children with Down syndrome. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The sustained effect of emotional signals on neural processing in 12‐month‐olds

Around the end of the first year of life, infants develop a social referencing ability – using emotional information from others to guide their own behavior. Much research on social referencing has focused on changes in behavior in response to emotional information. The present study was an investigation of the changes in neural responses that underlie social referencing behavior, reflected in event‐related potentials (ERPs). Twenty‐six 12‐month‐olds participated in a single‐session visit in which ERPs were recorded both immediately before and after a behavioral intervention in which infants' caregivers provided positive, negative or neutral information about each of three stimuli (ERP data available for n = 17). After the intervention, infants devoted more neural resources to processing negative versus neutral and positive information, as observed in early and late positive‐going components. Changes in neural responses from the pre‐ to post‐intervention recordings clarify this observation, indicating a sustained response in the negative and positive conditions, and a decrease in the neutral condition, suggesting an attenuation effect in the neutral condition. Further, infants who attended most to the objects in the behavioral intervention showed increased neural responses in the negative condition and decreased responses in the positive condition. Taken together, these findings suggest that infants' neural responses are differentially affected by positive, negative and neutral information. Furthermore, the findings highlight the importance of measuring the change in neural responses to better interpret post‐experience responses.     

Haft- und Therapieerfahrungen der Berliner Sicherungsverwahrten

The current reformation of preventive detention follows legal requirements and is not primarily derived from the treatment needs of inmates. Therefore, a fresh look at those persons who will be subjected to this new treatment is important before any legal provisions are put into practice. What are the individual life and delinquency experiences of inmates, how often, in which way and with which goal was treatment attempted? This article will expand on the current situation in the realization of the new legal standards and will describe first results on core delinquency data of a population study of 76 inmates with preventive detention in Berlin and 44 inmates in other federal states of Germany.     

Discrete Negative Emotions and Counterproductive Work Behavior

The current study investigates how seven discrete negative emotions are related to seven dimensions of counterproductive work behavior (CWB). We surveyed 240 employed students about the frequencies of their negative emotions and CWBs over a 1-month time frame. Correlational analyses revealed that almost all emotions correlated significantly with all forms of CWB, but there were significant differences in the magnitude of correlations between emotion–CWB pairs. Furthermore, a series of multiple regression analyses suggested that there were different patterns in the emotions that accounted for unique variance across different forms of CWB. This study suggests that the understudied emotions of boredom and shame might be particularly important to our understanding of CWB.     

Going beyond the facts: Young children extend knowledge by integrating episodes

The major question posed in this research was whether 4- and 6-year-olds productively extend their knowledge by integrating information acquired in separate episodes. The vehicle was a read-aloud activity during which children were presented with a novel fact in each of two passages. In Experiment 1, both age groups showed evidence of integration between the passages. For the 6-year-olds, the evidence came in the form of responses to open-ended questions. The 4-year-olds recognized the correct answers but did not generate them in the open-ended question format. The 6-year-olds who generated the correct answers also were likely to recall both of the individual facts presented in the passages. In Experiment 2, we tested whether the 4-year-olds’ integration performance would improve if their memory for the individual facts improved. Extra exposure to the individual facts resulted in higher levels of integration performance in both recall and recognition testing. The roles of memory and other potential sources of age-related differences in integration performance are discussed.     

What remains of that day: The survival of children's autobiographical memories across time

In this study we investigated the contributions of the content and the coherence of initial event reports to the survival of autobiographical memories during part of the lifespan eventually obscured by childhood amnesia. Over 100 children reported personal experiences when they were 4, 6 or 8 years old, enabling a determination of age‐related differences in two aspects of narrative coherence: Theme and chronology. Content was assessed separately through the presentation of directed memory probes. After a 1‐year delay, younger children more frequently failed to report target experiences. Multilevel modelling indicated that the survivability of a memory was predicted over and above the child's age by high thematic coherence of the initial memory narrative, but not by the memory content. It is possible that memories described in a highly thematically coherent narrative are indicative of well‐integrated event memories, and thus likely to be cued more often, resulting in their long‐term survival. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Research Framework for Understanding the Practical Impact of Family Involvement in the Juvenile Justice System: The Juvenile Justice Family Involvement Model

Family involvement is recognized as a critical element of service planning for children’s mental health, welfare and education. For the juvenile justice system, however, parents’ roles in this system are complex due to youths’ legal rights, public safety, a process which can legally position parents as plaintiffs, and a historical legacy of blaming parents for youth indiscretions. Three recent national surveys of juvenile justice‐involved parents reveal that the current paradigm elicits feelings of stress, shame and distrust among parents and is likely leading to worse outcomes for youth, families and communities. While research on the impact of family involvement in the justice system is starting to emerge, the field currently has no organizing framework to guide a research agenda, interpret outcomes or translate findings for practitioners. We propose a research framework for family involvement that is informed by a comprehensive review and content analysis of current, published arguments for family involvement in juvenile justice along with a synthesis of family involvement efforts in other child‐serving systems. In this model, family involvement is presented as an ascending, ordinal concept beginning with (1) exclusion, and moving toward climates characterized by (2) information‐giving, (3) information‐eliciting and (4) full, decision‐making partnerships. Specific examples of how courts and facilities might align with these levels are described. Further, the model makes predictions for how involvement will impact outcomes at multiple levels with applications for other child‐serving systems.