Hostile Intent Attributions and Relational Aggression: The Moderating Roles of Emotional Sensitivity,Gender, and Victimization

The current study adopts a relational vulnerability model to examine the association between hostile attribution bias and relational aggression. Specifically, the relational vulnerability model implicates the interactive effects of a number of relational risk factors in the development of relational aggression. A sample of 635 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students (50.2% females) completed a self-report measure assessing hostile attribution bias and emotional distress for relational provocations. Peer nominations and teacher reports of relational aggression and relational victimization were also collected. Results supported the relational vulnerability model for girls only. Specifically, hostile attribution bias was associated with relational aggression only when relational victimization and emotional distress were also high. Implications for future research and clinical practice are discussed.     

Wednesday's Meeting Really Is on Friday: A Meta‐Analysis and Evaluation of Ambiguous Spatiotemporal Language

Experimental work has shown that spatial experiences influence spatiotemporal metaphor use. In these studies, participants are asked a question that yields different responses depending on the metaphor participants use. It has been claimed that English speakers are equally likely to respond with either variant in the absence of priming. Related studies testing non‐spatial experiences demonstrate varied results with a wide range of primes. Here, the effects of eye movement and stimuli presentation modality on comprehension of this question are investigated in different formats. In addition, the results of prior reported controls are re‐analyzed in a meta‐analysis to verify reliable ambiguity of the test question. Results suggest that English speakers have a baseline preference for the Moving Ego metaphor variant, with a stronger preference in verbal rather than written presentation. The findings have implications both for (re)interpretation of prior studies' results and future study designs.     

Can Couple Level Attachment Mediate the Influence of Depressive Symptoms on Health?

This study examined whether couple attachment behaviors, as measured by the BARE (Brief Accessibility, Responsiveness, and Engagement Scale), can mediate the influence of depressive symptoms on health for men and women. Data were gathered from the Relate Institute (www.relateinstitute.com) from 797 couples who were in a romantic relationship. Results showed depressive symptoms negatively predict daily eating habits and activity level and positively predicted total health problems and healthcare utilization for both females and males. For partners, female depression negatively predicated both male physical activity and total health problems, and also positively predicted healthcare utilization for men. Results also suggest that attachment behaviors mediated the association between depressive symptoms and total health problems. Findings are discussed from both a clinical and systemic perspective. It may be that fostering secure attachment behaviors in romantic relationships would be a helpful tool for providers working to address the depressive symptoms patients face.     

Keeping Ourselves Sane: A Qualitative Exploration of Black Women’s Coping Strategies for Gendered Racism

Sex Roles - Black women in the United States have historically overcome extreme hardships and continue to do so. They have survived unthinkable bouts of trauma due to their subordinate racial and...     

Facing temptation: The neural correlates of gambling availability during sports picture exposure

Nowadays, sports betting has become increasingly available and easy to engage in. Here we examined the neural responses to stimuli that represent sporting events available for betting as compared to sporting events without a gambling opportunity. We used a cue exposure task in which football (soccer) fans (N = 42) viewed cues depicting scheduled football games that would occur shortly after the scanning session. In the “betting” condition, participants were instructed to choose, at the end of each block, the game (and the team) they wanted to bet on. In the “watching” condition, participants chose the game they would prefer to watch. After the scanning session, participants completed posttask rating questionnaires assessing, for each cue, their level of confidence about the team they believed would win and how much they would enjoy watching the game. We found that stimuli representing sport events available for betting elicited higher fronto-striatal activation, as well as higher insular cortex activity and functional connectivity, than sport events without a gambling opportunity. Moreover, games rated with more confidence towards the winning team resulted in greater brain activations within regions involved in affective decision-making (ventromedial prefrontal cortex), cognitive inhibitory control (medial and superior frontal gyri) and reward processing (ventral and dorsal striatum). Altogether, these novel findings offer a sensible simulation of how the high availability of sports betting in today’s environment impacts on the reward and cognitive control systems. Future studies are needed to extend the present findings to a sample of football fans that includes a samilar proportion of female and male participants.     

Verbal Counting Moderates Perceptual Biases Found in Children's Cardinality Judgments

A crucial component of numerical understanding is one's ability to abstract numerical properties regardless of varying perceptual attributes. Evidence from numerical match-to-sample tasks suggests that children find it difficult to match sets based on number in the face of varying perceptual attributes, yet it is unclear whether these findings are indicative of incomplete numerical abstraction abilities early in development or instead are driven by specific demands of the matching task. In this study, we explored whether perceptual biases would be found in data from a numerical task invoking verbal representations of number and whether these biases are moderated by verbal counting behavior. Three- to 6-year-old children classified as proficient counters (cardinal principle knowers) participated in a number cardinality task in which they were asked to identify which of 2 arrays—either perceptually homogeneous or heterogeneous in appearance—contained a specific number of animals (e.g., “12 animals”). Results revealed an overall performance bias for homogeneous trials in this cardinality task, such that children were better able to exactly identify the target cardinality when items within the sets were perceptually identical. Further analyses revealed that these biases were found only for those children who did not explicitly verbally count during the task. In contrast, performance was unaffected by the perceptual attributes of the array when the child spontaneously counted. Together, results reveal that cardinality judgments are negatively impacted by perceptual variation, but this relationship is muted in those children who engage in verbal counting.     

Stability of formal thought disorder and referential communication disturbances in schizophrenia

This study examined the degree to which different types of communication disturbances in the speech of 48 schizophrenia patients and 28 controls were variable and state related versus stable and traitlike. Clinically rated formal thought disorder and 5 types of referential disturbance showed substantial stability within participants over time. The sixth type of referential disturbance, the vague reference, was not stable over time. Formal thought disorder was associated with the severity of core psychotic symptoms in patients. whereas referential disturbances showed little or no association with positive or negative symptom severity. Furthermore, changes in psychotic symptoms over time were accompanied by corresponding changes in formal thought disorder but not referential disturbances. These results support the idea that some types of referential disturbances are traitlike and may be reflective of vulnerability as well as manifest illness.     

Assessment Centers: Current Practices in the United States

Purpose  

The goals of this investigation were to review current AC practices in the United States by evaluating whether they follow the Guidelines and Ethical Considerations for Assessment Center Operations (International Task Force on Assessment Centers, 2000). We both expanded upon and compared our results to a prior benchmarking study (Spychalski et al. in Personnel Psychol, 50:71–90, 1997), and investigated practices regarding job analysis, AC development, dimensions (i.e., job requirements), exercises, assessor characteristics and training, behavior recording, data integration, organizational policy, assessee rights, AC evaluation and AC technology. Data were collected via an online survey completed by individuals from human resource departments of organizations (N = 54) across the U.S; organizations to whom the survey was sent were selected by sampling Fortune 500 organizations based on economic sector.     

The Impact of Exercise on Suicide Risk: Examining Pathways through Depression,PTSD, and Sleep in an Inpatient Sample of Veterans

Suicide has a large public health impact. Although effective interventions exist, the many people at risk for suicide cannot access these interventions. Exercise interventions hold promise in terms of reducing suicide because of their ease of implementation. While exercise reduces depression, and reductions in depressive symptoms are linked to reduced suicidal ideation, no studies have directly linked exercise and suicide risk. The current study examined this association, including potential mediators (i.e., sleep disturbance, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and depression), in a sample of Veterans. SEM analyses revealed that exercise was directly and indirectly associated with suicide risk. Additionally, exercise was associated with fewer depressive symptoms and better sleep patterns, each of which was, in turn, related to lower suicide risk.