When Gender Matters in Scientific Communication: The Role of Generic Language

Sex Roles - Prior research has documented gender differences in self-presentation and self-promotion. For example, a recent analysis of scientific publications in the biomedical sciences reveals...     

Adults' difficulties in identifying concealment among children interviewed with the putative confession instructions

The putative confession (PC) instructions (“[suspect] told me everything that happened and wants you to tell the truth”) increases children's honesty. However, research has shown that children who maintain secrecy despite the PC are more convincing. We examined whether (a) the PC undermines adults' deception detection abilities or (b) children who conceal despite the PC are better deceivers. Adults evaluated truthful and deceptive children interviewed with the PC where the PC portion of the interview was either present or absent. Adults' deception detection was no worse when the PC was present; in fact, it was slightly better. Rather than negatively affecting adults' ability to detect deception, the PC selects an unusually convincing group of concealers.     

Active school travel is associated with fewer suicide attempts among adolescents from low-and middle-income countries

Background/Objective: This study explored the association between active school travel (AST) and suicide attempts among adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Method: We used the data from the Global School-based Health Survey, including 127,097 adolescents aged 13-17 years from 34 LMICs. A self-reported survey was used to collect data on AST and suicide attempts as well as some variables. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to assess the association between AST and suicide attempts. A meta-analysis with random effects was undertaken to identify the difference in the association between AST and suicide attempts. Results: Across all the adolescents, the prevalence of AST was 37% and the prevalence of suicide attempts was 11.60%. Adolescents who engaged in AST were less likely to have suicide attempts irrespective of gender. The country-wise analysis indicated a large inconsistency in the association between AST and suicide attempt across the countries. Conclusions: AST would appear to be a protective factor for reducing suicide attempts among adolescents. However, the association between AST and suicide attempts varied greatly across the countries. Future studies should confirm the association between AST and suicide attempts.     

Romantic Conflict Narratives in Emerging Adult Couples: Viewpoint and Gender Matter

Healthy romantic relationships entail understanding the needs of the self and other when interpreting conflict events. Yet how couples make meaning around specific conflicts and their capacity to reflect on their own and their partners’ unmet needs is understudied. Using narratives, we examined destructive (e.g., extreme anger and break-up anxiety) and constructive (e.g., perspective taking) interpretations of past romantic conflicts in 80 emerging adult heterosexual couples and the extent to which such interpretations varied by viewpoint and gender. Couple members were interviewed separately about two conflict episodes in which their partner did not meet their needs (victim viewpoint) and two episodes in which they did not meet their partners’ needs (perpetrator viewpoint). As anticipated, destructive interpretations were more evident in the victim viewpoint and for female couple members. In contrast, within constructive interpretations, the use of insight was greater in the perpetrator than the victim viewpoint. Although perspective taking was expected to be more common in the perpetrator viewpoint and in female narratives, this was not the case, as this type of constructive interpretation was infrequent in narratives about conflict. The findings revealed aspects of meaning making that might be useful to mental health professionals concerned with building skills to improve romantic competence in emerging adult couples.     

Evaluation of a finger prompt variation in the treatment of pediatric feeding disorders

Children with feeding disorders often engage in refusal behavior to escape or avoid eating. Escape extinction combined with reinforcement is a well-established intervention to treat food refusal. Physical guidance procedures (e.g., jaw prompt, finger prompt) have been shown to increase food acceptance and decrease inappropriate mealtime behavior when more commonly employed escape extinction (e.g., nonremoval of the spoon) procedures are ineffective. The finger prompt, however, has not been extensively evaluated as a treatment adjunct to target food refusal, thus necessitating further examination. The purpose of this prospective study was to assess a variation of a finger prompt procedure to treat food refusal and to assess caregivers' acceptability of the procedure. Three children age 1 to 4 years admitted to an intensive feeding disorders program and their caregivers participated. The finger prompt was effective in increasing bite acceptance across all participants and decreasing or maintaining low levels of inappropriate behavior for 2 participants. The procedure was also acceptable to all caregivers.     

Implicit bias and social schema: a transactive memory approach

To what extent should we focus on implicit bias in order to eradicate persistent social injustice? Structural prioritizers argue that we should focus less on individual minds than on unjust social structures, while equal prioritizers think that both are equally important. This article introduces the framework of transactive memory into the debate to defend the equal priority view. The transactive memory framework helps us see how structure can emerge from individual interactions as an irreducibly social product. If this is right, then debiasing interventions are structural interventions. One upshot is that the utility of the individual versus structural distinction is not apparent for the purposes of intervention.

     

A Meta-Analysis of Program Characteristics for Youth with Disruptive Behavior Problems: The Moderating Role of Program Format and Youth Gender

There is high variability in efficacy for interventions for youth with disruptive behavior problems (DBP). Despite evidence of the unique correlates and critical consequences of girls’ DBP, there is a dearth of research examining treatment efficacy for girls. This meta-analysis of 167 unique effect sizes from 29 studies (28,483 youth, 50% female; median age: 14) suggests that existing treatments have a medium positive effect on DBP (g = .33). For both boys and girls, the most effective interventions included (a) multimodal or group format, (b) cognitive skills or family systems interventions, and (c) length-intensive programs for (d) younger children. Boys demonstrated significantly greater treatment gains from group format interventions compared to girls, which is particularly important given that the group program format was the most prevalent format for boys and girls, with 14 studies involving 10,433 youth encompassing this category. This is the first meta-analysis to examine the effect of program characteristics in a sample of programs selected to be specifically inclusive of girls. Given that girls are underrepresented in intervention research on DBP, findings are discussed in terms of gender-responsive considerations and elucidating how key aspects of program structure can support more effective intervention outcomes for youth.     

Facilitating mother-infant communication: A treatment model for high-risk and developmentally-delayed infants

The relationship between mother-infant interaction and interactive communication competence in high-risk and developmentally-delayed children is examined and an inter vention program that attempts to optimize mother-infant interaction is described. Interaction patterns in populations with atypical infants are consistently found to be different from those in families with normally developing infants. The risk and delayed infants show fewer, less intense, and developmentally-delayed social responses and their mothers compensate with more frequent and often intensive forms of social interaction. An intervention model is presented that (1) evaluates the mother on a hierarchy of interaction styles that range from low to high levels of sensitivity and (2) modifies interaction style through the use of easy-to-learn techniques with the goal of moving the mother to an optimal level in the defined hierarchy of social behavior.     

Detecting children's true and false denials of wrongdoing: Effects of question type and base rate knowledge

One common and unfortunately overlooked obstacle to the detection of sexual abuse is non-disclosure by children. Non-disclosure in forensic interviews may be expressed via concealment in response to recall questions or via active denials in response to recognition (e.g., yes/no) questions. In two studies, we evaluated whether adults' ability to discern true and false denials of wrongdoing by children varied as a function of the types of interview question the children were asked. Results suggest that adults are not good at detecting deceptive denials of wrongdoing by children, even when the adults view children narrate their experiences in response to recall questions rather than provide one word answers to recognition questions. In Study 1, adults exhibited a consistent “truth bias,” leading them toward believing children, regardless of whether the children's denials were true or false. In Study 2, adults were given base-rate information about the occurrence of true and false denials (50% of each). The information eliminated the adults' truth bias but did not improve their overall detection accuracy, which still hovered near chance. Adults did, however, perceive children's denials as slightly more credible when they emerged in response to recall rather than recognition questions, especially when children were honestly denying wrongdoing. Results suggest the need for caution when evaluating adults' judgments of children's veracity when the children fail to disclose abuse.