Family Financial Pressure and Maternal and Adolescent Socioemotional Adjustment: Moderating Effects of Kin Social Support in Low Income African American Families

The moderating effect of kinship social support on the association of family financial pressure with socioemotional adjustment was examined in 200 African American mothers and adolescents. Financial pressure was positively associated with mothers’ depressive symptoms and negatively related to mothers’ optimism about the future. Financial pressure was also positively associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms and problem behavior. Kin social support was negatively linked to mothers’ depressive symptoms and positively associated with optimism. Kin support was negatively related to adolescents’ problem behavior. Kinship support moderated the association of family financial pressure with mothers’ and adolescents’ adjustment. Positive association of financial pressure with mothers’ depression was less apparent for mothers with more compared to less kin social support. Also, negative association of financial pressure with mothers’ optimism was less apparent for mothers with more compared to less kin social support. Positive relation of financial pressure with adolescents’ problem behavior was less apparent for those with more compared to less kin social support. The need to assess the links of kin social support to other domains of family life such as marital relations is discussed.     

Illness Narrative, Depression, and Sainthood: An Analysis of the Writings of Mother Teresa

In 2007, the letters of The Blessed Mother Teresa to her confessors were published for the public in a book entitled Come Be My Light. What surprised many readers was that Mother Teresa felt very distant from God and described feeling great “darkness” for many years. This paper draws parallels between the writings of Mother Teresa and those of writers’ illness narratives describing the psychiatric condition of Depression. The author provides this textual analysis to explore Mother Teresa’s experience within a psychiatric paradigm (Major Depressive Disorder), in comparison with and contrast to the spiritual paradigm of a “Dark Night of the Soul.”     

When does dual identity predict protest? The moderating roles of anti‐immigrant policies and opinion‐based group identity

Dual identities are defined as immigrants' identification with their ethnic ingroup as well as the national community in their country of residence. Dual identities have been argued to increase protest, because they make immigrants feel entitled to advocate for their disadvantaged ethnic group as part of a larger national community. In a study of Latino immigrants to the United States, however, we found that dual identities no longer predict protest when immigrants learn that other members of the national community have passed laws or enacted policies that would exclude immigrants or restrict their rights, through deportation and detention. Further, we found that immigrants who identify with those fighting to change such anti‐immigrant policies support protest regardless of the level of their dual identity and regardless of policy salience. We argue that these results point to the importance of dual identity recognition for research on immigrant protest. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Public Education in Place-Remaking: From a Retrospective Walk Through my Hometown to a Call to Action

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the role of public education in the process of place-remaking that relies on a false separation between teaching and issues of race, politics, and power. I construct a historical case study of my hometown that presents a counter narrative, presented by students, of race and legacy in the context of a public school and the surrounding community. Building upon a walk-as-method approach, I illustrate the confluence of historical, racialized narratives that are discoverable at the scale of the city but invisible within the walls of the school. I conclude with an in-progress professional code of ethical teaching and research practice for the learning sciences. These commitments are intended to support and protect students (and all young people in our communities) from bearing sole responsibility for critical stances based on their identities and histories-in-place.     

Representations in working memory yield interference effects found with externally-triggered representations

An act as simple as flicking a switch involves various stages of processing. Each stage is susceptible to interference from competing representations/processes. Interference at different stages of processing (e.g., perceptual stages versus response selection stages) leads to distinct behavioral, neural, and subjective effects. In the flanker task, for instance, one responds to a visual target and disregards flanking ‘distractors.’ Theoretically-predicted interference (increased response times, error rates, and subjective ‘urges to err’) is stronger when distractors and targets are associated with different actions (response interference) than when they look different but are associated with the same action (perceptual interference). Extant versions of the task tax working memory (WM) minimally, but many everyday actions (e.g., searching for keys or holding one's breath) require more WM-based control. To illuminate this uncharted area, we examined the nature of interference in delayed action tasks, which rely on WM. We found that systematic interference arises even when action-related representations are, not triggered solely by external stimuli, but actively held in WM. We discuss these findings with increased emphasis on the under-explored subjective effects of different kinds of interference. The implications of these findings for the study of action production, WM, and conscious processing are entertained.     

Development of a Short Form of the Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI)

The Test Anxiety Inventory (TAI) is widely used in research and practical settings and has particular application to the assessment and treatment of test anxiety in student populations. However, there are a number of instances in which a short version of the TAI would be more appropriate, especially when time constraints preclude the use of the full form. Similar short forms have been developed for other measures such as the State scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; T. M. Marteau & H. Bekker, 1992). The authors of the present study aimed to develop a short form of the TAI. The TAI was completed by 333 undergraduate psychology students. Item–remainder correlations were used to compare short forms with varying numbers of items. Internal consistency and concurrent and construct validity were assessed in hypothetical and actual examination conditions. A 5-item short form produced optimal reliability and validity, and a balance of items from the Worry and Emotionality subscales of the TAI. Further research is needed to replicate these results, but the 5-item short form of the TAI shows promise, particularly for contexts in which time demands preclude the use of longer versions.     

Winch on Moral Dilemmas and Moral Modality

Peter Winch's famous argument in “The Universalizability of Moral Judgments” that moral judgments are not always universalizable is widely thought to involve an essentially sceptical claim about the limitations of moral theories and moral theorising more generally. In this paper I argue that responses to Winch have generally missed the central positive idea upon which Winch's argument is founded: that what is right for a particular agent to do in a given situation may depend on what is and is not morally possible for them. I then defend the existence of certain genuine moral necessities and impossibilities in order to show how certain first‐person moral judgements may be essentially personal.     

Dispositions,explanation, and behavior 1

According to the theory of dispositions here defended, to have a disposition is to have some (non‐dispositional) property that enters into a law of a certain form. The theory does not have the crucial difficulty of the singular material implication account of dispositions, but at the same time avoids the unfortunate notion of ‘reduction sentences’. It is further argued that no dispositional explanation is one of the covering‐law type; but the theory shows how, for any dispositional explanation! To construct a potential explanation of the covering‐law type. The theory can also be applied fruitfully to human behavior, especially with respect to the issues of reasons and causes and of’ rational’ explanation. The success of the applicability of this theory of dispositions is further evidence of its adequacy.     

Individual Differences Associated with Emotional and Behavioral Responses to Ambiguous Social Situations in which Rejection Might be Inferred

This study sought to examine the extent to which undergraduates' experiences with and attitudes relevant to rejection may be associated with their emotional and behavioral responses to ambiguous social situations in which rejection might be inferred. Undergraduate students completed questionnaires that assessed their experiences with and attitudes relevant to being rejected. Next, each participant read six hypothetical scenarios that described various situations that could be interpreted as interpersonal rejection. Following each scenario, participants completed questionnaires that assessed their emotional and behavioral responses to the hypothetical situation. Analyses revealed that the participants' experiences with rejection (and, to a lesser extent, their rejection-relevant attitudes) were associated with a negative emotional response and some negative behavioral responses. In sum, when another individual's interpersonal behavior has an uncertain intent, undergraduates' prior experiences with rejection may be especially important in determining the extent to which they feel and act as if they have been rejected.     

Religiousness and Depressive Symptoms in Five Ethnic Adolescent Groups

This study examined the relation between religiousness and depressive symptoms in African American, Asian American, European American, Hispanic American, and Native American adolescents (N = 13,317) in the United States with self-esteem and school attachment as potential mediators in this link. The data were taken from a nationally represented sample of adolescents in Grades 7 through 12, from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Structural equation analyses with measurement and structural invariance across the five ethnic groups and gender supported the model that religiousness, as a composite of internal and external religiousness items, negatively predicted depressive symptoms 1 year later controlling for baseline depressive symptoms. Self-esteem and school attachment partially mediated this link but only for European American and African American adolescents.