Healthy Nests Transition to Parenthood Program: A Mixed-Methods Study

Intimate partner relationship distress is associated with a wide range of negative adult and child outcomes. The transition to parenthood is often a time in the life of a couple where relationship distress increases and satisfaction and intimacy decrease and thus is an ideal time for targeted intervention. The Healthy Nests (HN) intervention is a three-meeting, strength-focused couples intervention for first-time parents designed to decrease maladaptive relationship conflict and increase couple well-being. The authors conducted a mixed-methods exploratory study investigating participants' overall experiences with the HN intervention and measured outcomes associated with relationship satisfaction, help seeking, father involvement, substance use, and depression. A total of 130 parents (65 dyads) participated in a randomized intervention and educational materials–only alternative intervention. Twenty dyads were interviewed as a part of the qualitative portion of the study. While the authors did not find significant quantitative effects on key outcomes, the qualitative findings suggested that participants had a positive experience with the HN intervention and indicated it was useful to have designated time and space to communicate as a couple. Qualitative findings also suggest that the focus on “aspects of strength” and “areas of change” in their relationship was useful. Implications for practice, research, and training are discussed.     

From Professionals to Potential First Ladies: How Newspapers Told the Stories of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama

This research project examined 151 articles from three prominent newspapers published in the United States, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, to analyze the coverage of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama during the 2008 presidential election. A content analysis was conducted to investigate the quantity of and common frames and themes found in articles related to the two potential first ladies. Among the major findings of this project were the common references made in the newspaper articles to controversies related to McCain and Obama, raising the question of whether increased coverage of controversies is one of the prices paid for “having it all,” both personally and professionally, as a presidential candidate’s spouse.     

Temperature increases in preterm infants during massage therapy

Temperature was assessed in 72 preterm infants randomly assigned to a control or a massage therapy group. A greater increase in temperature was noted for preterm infants receiving massage therapy versus a control group, even though the incubator portholes remained open during the 15 min massage therapy session but not for the control group over an equivalent time period.     

Breastfeeding and antidepressants

Although a large literature supports the benefits of breastfeeding, this review suggests that breastfeeding is less common among postpartum depressed women, even though their infants benefit from the breastfeeding. Depressed mothers, in part, do not breastfeed because of their concern about potentially negative effects of antidepressants on their infants. Although sertraline (Zoloft) and paroxetine (Paxol) concentrations are not detectable in infants’ sera, fluoxetine (Prozac) and citalopram (Celexa) do have detectable levels. Unfortunately these findings are not definitive because they are based on very small sample, uncontrolled studies. As in the literature on prenatal antidepressant effects, the question still remains whether the antidepressants or the untreated depression itself has more negative effects on the infant. It is possible that the positive effects of breastfeeding may outweigh the positive effects of the antidepressants for both the mother and the infant. In addition, some alternative therapies may substitute or attenuate the effects of antidepressants, such as vagal stimulation or massage therapy, both therapies being noted to reduce depression. Further studies of this kind are needed to determine the optimal course of therapy for the benefit of the depressed, breastfeeding mother and the breastfed infant.     

Effects of Performance Context on Processing Speed and Performance Ratings

The present study demonstrated that the presence of evaluatively polarized context performances not only produces contrast and halo effects on judgments of a target performance, but also causes judgments to be made much faster. Processing speed and positive halo were highly correlated, supporting the notion that halo in performance ratings results from raters' recall and use of a single, general impression. Furthermore, regression analyses demonstrated that processing speed mediates the relationship between context and halo. The relationship between these findings, halo, processing speed, and general impressions, as well as implications for performance appraisals, are discussed.     

Differential sucking by neonates of depressed versus non-depressed mothers

Forty-two neonates (M = 39-h old) of depressed and non-depressed mothers sucked on cold (50 °F) and warm (78 °F) nipples on alternating trials. Half the infants received the cold nipple on the first of the eight trials (20 s each) and the other half received the warm nipple first. Neonates of depressed mothers sucked twice as much as neonates of non-depressed mothers, suggesting arousal dysregulation, overactivity or greater hedonic behavior in the newborns of depressed mothers. Although the newborns did not show a preference for cold or warm nipples, a temperature order effect revealed that neonates who received the cold nipple on the first trial sucked significantly more on trials 2–8 than those who received the warm nipple on the first trial, suggesting that an initially cold nipple might elicit greater sucking. More research is needed on maternal mood effects and temperature of objects to determine how these factors affect neonatal sucking behaviors.     

Expertise and age effects on knowledge activation in chess

Novice, intermediate, and expert chess players of various ages, playing with two chess pieces on a quarter-section of a chessboard, performed a simple task to detect that the king is in check or is threatened with being in check. Age slowed response for both tasks. An interaction of task and skill revealed differences in diminishing response time between check and threat tasks as skill increased; experts were equally fast on both tasks. Measures of speed and working memory were negatively related to age but unrelated to skill. Skill did not mitigate age-related effects on speed of detection. These results suggest that knowledge-activation processes necessary to assess basic chess relationships slow with age, even in experts.     

Development of Phonological Constancy: Toddlers' Perception of Native- and Jamaican-Accented Words

ABSTRACT— Efficient word recognition depends on detecting critical phonetic differences among similar-sounding words, or sensitivity to phonological distinctiveness , an ability evident at 19 months of age but unreliable at 14 to 15 months of age. However, little is known about phonological constancy , the equally crucial ability to recognize a word's identity across natural phonetic variations, such as those in cross-dialect pronunciation differences. We show that 15- and 19-month-old children recognize familiar words spoken in their native dialect, but that only the older children recognize familiar words in a dissimilar nonnative dialect, providing evidence for emergence of phonological constancy by 19 months. These results are compatible with a perceptual-attunement account of developmental change in early word recognition, but not with statistical-learning or phonological accounts. Thus, the complementary skills of phonological constancy and distinctiveness both appear at around 19 months of age, together providing the child with a fundamental insight that permits rapid vocabulary growth and later reading acquisition.     

Reward value effects on timing in the peak procedure

Three experiments examined the effect of motivational variables on timing in the peak procedure. In Experiment 1, rats received a 60-s peak procedure that was coupled with long-term, between-phase changes in reinforcer magnitude. Increases in reinforcer magnitude produced a leftward shift in the peak that persisted for 20 sessions of training. In a final phase, the rats received lithium chloride-induced aversion prior to testing and a rightward shift in the peak was observed. Experiment 2 confirmed the rightward shift in the peak under lithium chloride devaluation and induced a comparable shift with satiety devaluation. The degree of rightward shift was neither additive nor multiplicative, suggesting that two processes may have contributed. Experiment 3 examined the effect of extinction on peak responding, revealing a decrease in response rate, but no evidence of any change in the timing of responding. The implications of the results for contemporary timing theories are discussed.