Parents’ Reports of Children’s Internalizing Symptoms: Associations with Parents’ Mental Health Symptoms and Substance Use Disorder

This brief report examined the unique associations between parents’ ratings of child internalizing symptoms and their own depression and anxiety in families with parental substance use disorder (SUD). Further, we examined whether parental SUD (father only, mother only, both parents) was related to discrepancy in mothers’ and fathers’ reports of children’s internalizing symptoms. Participants were 97 triads (fathers, mothers) in which one or both parents met criteria for SUD. Polynomial regression analyses were conducted to examine whether father-mother reports of child internalizing symptoms had unique associations with parents’ own symptoms of depression and anxiety while controlling for child gender, child age, and SUD diagnoses. Controlling for fathers’ symptoms and other covariates, mothers experiencing more depression and anxiety symptoms reported more symptoms of child internalizing symptoms than did fathers. Mothers’ and fathers’ SUD was associated with higher anxiety symptoms among mothers after controlling for other variables. A second set of polynomial regressions examined whether father-mother reports of child internalizing symptoms had unique associations with parents’ SUD diagnoses while controlling for child gender and child age. After controlling for mothers’ symptoms and other covariates, parents’ reports of children’s internalizing symptoms were not significantly associated with either parent’s SUD or parental SUD interactions (i.e., both parents have SUD diagnoses). Taken together, mothers’ ratings of children’s internalizing symptoms may be accounted for, in part, by her reports of depression and anxiety symptoms.     

When Accurate Beliefs Lead to Better Lie Detection1

This study tested the hypothesis that people with accurate beliefs about the cues that predict deception are better at detecting deception only when those beliefs are cognitively available and activated. To test the hypothesis, participants viewed video fragments of people who were being either honest or dishonest. A questionnaire assessed participants' beliefs about the cues involved in deception, and activation of participants' belief cues was accomplished by manipulating suspicion. The results provided support for the hypothesis, where participants whose beliefs were activated and had accurate beliefs were better at detecting deception compared to other participants. Gender differences were also found, where lies communicated by women were more accurately detected than were lies communicated by men.     

Multidisciplinary assessment and diagnosis of conversion disorder in a patient with foreign accent syndrome

Multiple reports have described patients with disordered articulation and prosody, often following acute aphasia, dysarthria, or apraxia of speech, which results in the perception by listeners of a foreign-like accent. These features led to the term foreign accent syndrome (FAS), a speech disorder with perceptual features that suggest an indistinct, non-native speaking accent. Also correctly known as psuedoforeign accent, the speech does not typically match a specific foreign accent, but is rather a constellation of speech features that result in the perception of a foreign accent by listeners. The primary etiologies of FAS are cerebrovascular accidents or traumatic brain injuries which affect cortical and subcortical regions critical to expressive speech and language production. Far fewer cases of FAS associated with psychiatric conditions have been reported. We will present the clinical history, neurological examination, neuropsychological assessment, cognitive-behavioral and biofeedback assessments, and motor speech examination of a patient with FAS without a known vascular, traumatic, or infectious precipitant. Repeated multidisciplinary examinations of this patient provided convergent evidence in support of FAS secondary to conversion disorder. We discuss these findings and their implications for evaluation and treatment of rare neurological and psychiatric conditions.     

The use of response cost to treat spitting by a child with autism

We evaluated the extent to which noncontingent access to one or multiple items and the contingent removal of a specific item decreased a young boy's spitting. Results indicated that the boy's spitting did not decrease when he was given noncontingent access to multiple, alternative stimuli or to a toy radio. By contrast, when the toy radio was removed contingent on spitting, the rate of the boy's spitting decreased to zero or near‐zero levels. Similar results were produced in the boy's special education classroom. Follow‐up sessions conducted 2 and 4 months later indicated that the reduction in the boy's spitting persisted across time. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Metameric intransitivity

There are two kinds of afterimages. In negative afterimages, looking at a blank field after staring at a colored figure gives a figure whose color is complementary to that of the original figure. Less well understood and studied is the phenomenon of induced positive afterimages, in which staring at a colored area surrounding a small white test patch produces an afterimage in which the hue of the surround is transferred into the previously white area. Using these differences between positive and negative afterimages and also simultaneous color contrast, which has an effect on a test patch different from either of the afterimage effects, we describe a new effect, metameric intransitivity, in which perceptually similar images can generate markedly different afterimages, whereas perceptually different images can generate indistinguishable afterimages. Supplemental figures depicting the stimuli, results, and method for generating the intransitive metamers in this study may be downloaded from http://app.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Mortality salience increases adherence to salient norms and values

Four studies indicate that mortality salience increases adherence to social norms and values, but only when cultural norms and values are salient. In Study 1, mortality salience coupled with a reminder about cultural values of egalitarianism reduced prejudice toward Blacks among non-Black participants. In Studies 2 through 4, a mortality salience induction (e.g., walking through a cemetery) increased self-reported and actual helping behavior only when the cultural value of helping was salient. These results suggest that people may adhere to norms and values so as to manage awareness of death.     

Information Regarding Social‐Sexual Behavior as an Antecedent to Perceptions of Ineffectiveness in the Workplace1

Three experimental studies investigated whether information implying social‐sexual behavior (any non‐work‐related behavior containing a sexual component) by employees would influence judgments of their effectiveness. In managerial and entry‐level positions, both male and female employees depicted as engaging in social‐sexual behaviors at work were perceived as less effective and less desirable as bosses, compared to identically described managers for whom no social‐sexual behavior information was provided. However, these negative evaluations were mitigated when information was provided indicating that these managers were always on‐task and effectively using their time at work (Study 3), suggesting that the effectiveness of employees who engage in social‐sexual behavior at work is devalued because others believe that these behaviors detract from productive time in the office.     

Effects of warned and unwarned demand transitions on vigilance performance and stress

The present study was designed to explore the effects of warned and unwarned demand transitions in vigilance on performance and self-reported stress. Twenty observers (10 women and 10 men) were assigned at random to each of six conditions resulting from the factorial combination of signal salience (high and low salience signals) and switching (no switch, switch with warning, and switch without warning). Performance metrics and self-reported stress state (Task Engagement, Distress, and Worry) were collected. While demand transitions did destabilize subsequent performance, increasing intra-individual variability, overall performance efficiency was uninfluenced by either switching or warning. Demand transitions, whether warned or not, increased self-reported distress. A dynamic model of performance stress may be necessary and research employing vigilance tasks in the future may be useful for developing this performance-stress model.     

The price of deceptive behavior: Disliking and lying to people who lie to us

We hypothesized that frequency and quality of deception influences how people perceive those who lie to them and that people subsequently increase deceptive behavior as a consequence of being lied to. In Study 1, participants were covertly videotaped conversing with a partner. Following the conversation, participants evaluated partners, and partners reviewed the videotape, identifying deceptions that they told. Findings indicated that partner’s frequency of deception was inversely related to likeability. In Study 2, participants watched a videotape of a confederate who appeared to produce one or four exaggerated or minimized lies, and then evaluated the confederate. Participants and confederates subsequently engaged in a conversation. When participants witnessed either one exaggerated lie, one or four minimal lies, or no lies they trusted and liked the confederate more than when witnessing four exaggerated lies. Moreover, participants increased their own use of deception as a function of the severity and quantity of confederate’s lies.     

Rats (Rattus norvegicus) encode the shape of an array of discrete objects

To navigate efficiently, a traveler must establish a heading using a frame of reference. A large body of evidence has indicated that humans and a variety of nonhuman animals utilize the geometry, or shape, of enclosed spaces as a frame of reference to determine their heading. An important and yet unresolved question is whether shape information from arrays of discrete objects and enclosed environments are represented, and utilized, in the same way. In the present study, rats were presented with a reference memory task in which they had to find water that was hidden in 1 of 4 discrete and unique objects placed at the vertices of a rectangle. The results indicate that rats could utilize both feature and geometry cues to locate the hidden goal. The rats' performance declined during transformation tests using a triangular array, indicating that the rats may have encoded the primary axis of the object array, rather than local cues, to direct their search.