Maternal Depression and Adolescent Emotions: The Role of Family Functioning

Maternal depression may affect children through various mechanisms, including the stressful contexts of the children’s lives and maternal maladaptive affection, behaviors, and cognition, which affect the psychopathological development of children and contribute to disorders. The aims of the present study were to explore how family functioning mediates the relationship between maternal depression and the positive and negative emotions of adolescents. A total of 430 paired questionnaires were collected from junior high school students and their mothers. The mothers completed the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESD), and the adolescents completed the CESD, Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire, and Family Function Scale. The results revealed significant correlations among maternal depression, family functioning, and positive and negative emotions in the adolescents. The family functioning subscales of conflict and emotional expression partially mediated the relationship between maternal depression and the positive and negative emotions of the adolescents. Furthermore, the family functioning subscales of cohesion, problem solving, and responsibility fully mediated the relationship between maternal depression and positive moods in the adolescents. Analysis of the results for maternal depression, family functioning, and the emotional adjustment of the adolescents indicated that family functioning is the mediator between maternal depression and the positive and negative emotions of the adolescents. The current results suggest that adequate family functioning can prevent depression being transmitted from mothers to their adolescent children.     

Location- and object-based inhibition of return are affected by different kinds of working memory

Castel, Pratt, and Craik (2003) have shown that inhibition of return (IOR, the delayed response to a recently cued item) is disrupted by a secondary task that involves spatial working memory (WM), and they suggest that IOR is mediated by spatial WM. However, they did not specify what kind of IOR was involved. We used a dual-task paradigm to examine whether the two kinds of IOR (location- and object-based IOR) are affected by two kinds of secondary task that involve spatial and nonspatial WM, respectively. The results show that location-based IOR was disrupted by a spatial secondary task while the object-based IOR was disrupted by a nonspatial secondary task. The present study further elaborates the conclusion of Castel et al. (2003) by differentiating the effect of the two kinds of WM (spatial vs. nonspatial) on the two kinds of IOR (location based vs. object based).     

Evaluation of a Health Careers Program for Asian American and Pacific Islander High School Students

The authors evaluated a health careers program in a U.S. urban public high school. After small subgroups of the original sample were removed, participants included 162 Asian American and Pacific Islander students. Analyses of covariance indicated that, compared with the comparison group, the treatment group reported significantly higher levels of social support, school engagement, interest in learning, vocational expectations, and ethnic identity. Implications for multicultural counseling in schools are discussed. Los autores evaluaron un programa de carreras sanitarias en una escuela secundaria pública de Estados Unidos. Tras la eliminación de pequeños subgrupos de la muestra original, los participantes incluyeron 162 estudiantes Asiático‐Americanos e Isleños del Pacífico. Los análisis de covarianza indicaron que, comparado con el grupo de comparación, el grupo de tratamiento expresó unos niveles significativamente mayores de apoyo social, participación escolar, interés en el aprendizaje, expectativas vocacionales e identidad étnica. Se discuten las implicaciones para la consejería multicultural en escuelas.     

Prediction of intrinsic motivation and sports performance using 2 x 2 achievement goal framework

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of 2 x 2 achievement goals on intrinsic motivation and performance in handball. Participants were 164 high school athletes. All completed the 2 x 2 Achievement Goals Questionnaire for Sport and the Intrinsic Motivation subscale of the Sport Motivation Scale; the coach for each team rated his athletes' overall sports performance. Using simultaneous-regression analyses, mastery-approach goals positively predicted both intrinsic motivation and performance in sports, whereas performance-avoidance goals negatively predicted sports performance. These results suggest that athletes who pursue task mastery and improvement of their competence perform well and enjoy their participation. In contrast, those who focus on avoiding normative incompetence perform poorly.     

The Relation between Parent Mental Health and Child Internalizing Symptoms in Parent–Child Interaction Therapy

Journal of Child and Family Studies - The present study evaluated whether families receiving Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) experienced significant improvements in both parent and...     

Inhibition of return lasts longer at repeatedly stimulated locations than at novel locations

Inhibition of return (IOR) refers to the fact that it takes longer for people to attend to recently examined locations than to novel locations. It has been argued that a single mechanism governs both IOR and negative priming (NP). If this is true, IOR and NP should share similar characteristics. Since NP depends on the use of repeated stimuli, in this study the dependence of IOR on repeated stimuli was explored. Experiments 1A—1D showed that, at longer cue-to-target-onset asynchrony (CTOA) intervals (613 and 906 msec), IOR could be observed only at repeatedly stimulated locations. However, IOR was observed when CTOA was short (253 msec) regardless of stimulus repetition. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated Experiments 1A—1D with a within-subjects design. The important role of memory representations in IOR is proposed.     

The situated nature of concepts

For decades the importance of background situations has been documented across all areas of cognition. Nevertheless, theories of concepts generally ignore background situations, focusing largely on bottom-up, stimulus-based processing. Furthermore, empirical research on concepts typically ignores background situations, not incorporating them into experimental designs. A selective review of relevant literatures demonstrates that concepts are not abstracted out of situations but instead are situated. Background situations constrain conceptual processing in many tasks (e.g., recall, recognition, categorization, lexical decision, color naming, property verification, property generation) across many areas of cognition (e.g., episodic memory, conceptual processing, visual object recognition, language comprehension). A taxonomy of situations is proposed in which grain size, meaningfulness, and tangibility distinguish the cumulative situations that structure cognition hierarchically.     

Suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge: have they changed over time?

224 suicides from the Golden Gate Bridge in 1999-2009 were younger than other suicides handled by the Marin County Coroner but did not differ by sex or race. Those witnessed did not differ from those not witnessed. Compared to suicides from the bridge in the 1970s, recent suicides were older, more often male, and more often nonwhite.     

Family and Cultural Predictors of Depression Among Samoan American Middle and High School Students

This study investigated family intergenerational conflict and collective self‐esteem as predictors of depression in a sample of 128 Samoan middle and high school students. Simultaneous regression analyses revealed that each independent variable significantly contributed to an overall model that accounted for 13% of the variance in depression. Implications for counseling research and practice are discussed in terms of how schools may consider ways to promote these youth's cultural worth and positive family dynamics. Este estudio investigó el conflicto familiar intergeneracional y la autoestima colectiva como predictores de depresión en una muestra de 128 estudiantes samoanos de enseñanza media y secundaria. Los análisis simultáneos de regresión revelaron que cada variable independiente contribuyó de forma significativa a un modelo general que explicó un 13% de la varianza en depresión. Se discuten las implicaciones para la investigación y práctica de la consejería, en términos de cómo las escuelas pueden considerar formas de promover el valor cultural de estos jóvenes y una dinámica familiar positiva.