Empathy theory and practice: a survey of psychologists and counselors

Psychologists and counselors completed a questionnaire devised by the authors to explore the relationships between their extent of endorsement of empathy definitions, their use and views of empathy, and their identification with theories of psychotherapy. Results from 565 respondents suggested that those who identified with humanistic/experiential and psychodynamic theories seemed to have similar views of how empathy is defined and viewed and reported that they use empathy more than those with other theoretical inclinations. These findings suggest that there is some consistency between theoretical identification and definition, as well as reported use and views of empathy.     

Rebellious teens? Genetic and environmental influences on the social attitudes of adolescents

Genetic and environmental influences in social attitudes were investigated in adopted and nonadopted children (N = 654) and their biological and adoptive relatives in the Colorado Adoption Project. Conservatism and religious attitudes were measured in the children annually from ages 12 to 15 and in the parents during the 12-year-old visit. Multivariate genetic model fitting indicated that both conservatism and religious attitudes are strongly influenced by shared-family environmental factors throughout adolescence. In contrast to previous findings from twin studies, which suggest that genetic influence on social attitudes does not emerge until adulthood, the present study detected significant genetic influence in conservatism as early as age 12. There was no evidence of genetic influence, however, on religious attitudes during adolescence.     

Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: a meta-analytic and theoretical review

Although the merits of parents using corporal punishment to discipline children have been argued for decades, a thorough understanding of whether and how corporal punishment affects children has not been reached. Toward this end, the author first presents the results of meta-analyses of the association between parental corporal punishment and 11 child behaviors and experiences. Parental corporal punishment was associated with all child constructs, including higher levels of immediate compliance and aggression and lower levels of moral internalization and mental health. The author then presents a process-context model to explain how parental corporal punishment might cause particular child outcomes and considers alternative explanations. The article concludes by identifying 7 major remaining issues for future research.     

Assault victimization and suicidal ideation or behavior within a national sample of U.S. adults

Data from a nationally representative sample of 5,238 U.S. adults were used to examine the extent to which physical assault victimization was associated with suicidal ideation or behavior (SIB). The results from multivariable logistic regression analyses indicate that physical assault victimization was positively associated with SIB after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics and alcohol use (OR = 3.6; 95% CI = 2.4-5.5). Those who were injured during the most recent physical assault (OR = 2.7; 95% CI = 1.2-6.0) and those who were assaulted by a relative (OR = 3.4; 95% CI= 1.0-11.0) or intimate partner (OR = 7.7; 95% CI = 2.7-22.5) were significantly more like to report SIB than victims who were not injured or were assaulted by a stranger. Also, those who were victimized but not injured (OR = 5.6; 95% CI = 3.8-8.2) and those who were victimized by a stranger (OR = 2.9; 95% CI = 1.4-6.0) were more likely to report SIB than non-victims. These results highlight the need for legal, medical, mental health, and social service providers to address the co-occurrence of violent victimization and suicidal ideation, particularly, but not exclusively, victimization by family members and intimates.     

Index to Volume 23

Other Index

Index to Volume 23     

Word naming times and psycholinguistic norms for Italian nouns

The present study describes normative measures for 626 Italian simple nouns. The database (LEXVAR. XLS) is freely available for down-loading on the Web site http://wwwistc.ip.rm.cnr.it/material/ database/. For each of the 626 nouns, values for the following variables are reported: age of acquisition, familiarity, imageability, concreteness, adult written frequency, child written frequency, adult spoken frequency, number of orthographic neighbors, mean bigram frequency, length in syllables, and length in letters. A classification of lexical stress and of the type of word-initial phoneme is also provided. The intercorrelations among the variables, a factor analysis, and the effects of variables and of the extracted factors on word naming are reported. Naming latencies were affected primarily by a factor including word length and neighborhood size and by a word frequency factor. Neither a semantic factor including imageability, concreteness, and age of acquisition nor a factor defined by mean bigram frequency had significant effects on pronunciation times. These results hold for a language with shallow orthography, like Italian, for which lexical nonsemantic properties have been shown to affect reading aloud. These norms are useful in a variety of research areas involving the manipulation and control of stimulus attributes.     

The Roles of Ethnicity and School Context in Predicting Children's Victimization by Peers

This study examines the prevalence, stability, and contextual correlates of peer victimization in a sample of African-American, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic White urban elementary school-age children. A total of 1956 children (40% African-American, 42% Hispanic, and 18% White) attending any 1 of 14 public elementary schools located in one large and one mid-sized Midwestern city participated in this study. Peer ratings of victimization were obtained at two points in time, separated by a 2-year period. Findings revealed that risk for being victimized by peers varied by ethnicity and by school context. Hispanic children had lower victimization scores than did either African-American or White children. These findings, however, were moderated by school context, such that attending ethnically integrated schools was associated with a significantly higher risk of victimization for White children and a slightly lower risk of victimization for African-American children and did not affect the risk of victimization for Hispanic children. In addition, African-American children were less likely than Hispanic and White children to be repeatedly victimized by peers over time. The importance of considering ethnicity and context in explaining peer victimization is discussed and suggestions for preventive interventions and future research are provided.     

Implicit motor sequence learning is represented in response locations

Previous work (Willingham, 1999) has indicated that implicit motor sequence learning is not primarily perceptual; that is, what is learned is not a sequence of stimuli. Still other work has indicated that implicit motor sequence learning is not specific to particular muscle groups or effectors. In the present work, we tested whether implicit motor sequence learning would be represented as a sequence of response locations. In Experiment 1, learning showed very poor transfer when the response locations were changed, even though the stimulus positions were unchanged. In Experiment 2, participants switched their hand positions at transfer, so that one group of participants pushed the same sequence of keys but used a different sequence of finger movements to do so, whereas another group pushed a different sequence of keys but used the same sequence of finger movements used at training. Knowledge of the sequence was shown at transfer only if the sequence of response locations was maintained, not the sequence of finger movements.