Bidirectional Associations Between Coparenting Relations and Family Member Anxiety: A Review and Conceptual Model

Research into anxiety has largely ignored the dynamics of family systems in anxiety development. Coparenting refers to the quality of coordination between individuals responsible for the upbringing of children and links different subsystems within the family, such as the child, the marital relationship, and the parents. This review discusses the potential mechanisms and empirical findings regarding the bidirectional relations of parent and child anxiety with coparenting. The majority of studies point to bidirectional associations between greater coparenting difficulties and higher levels of anxiety. For example, the few available studies suggest that paternal and perhaps maternal anxiety is linked to lower coparental support. Also, research supports the existence of inverse links between coparenting quality and child anxiety. A child’s reactive temperament appears to have adverse effects on particularly coparenting of fathers. A conceptual model is proposed that integrates the role of parental and child anxiety, parenting, and coparenting, to guide future research and the development of clinical interventions. Future research should distinguish between fathers’ and mothers’ coparenting behaviors, include parental anxiety, and investigate the coparental relationship longitudinally. Clinicians should be aware of the reciprocal relations between child anxiety and coparenting quality, and families presenting for treatment who report child (or parent) anxiety should be assessed for difficulties in coparenting. Clinical approaches to bolster coparenting quality are called for.     

A Method for the Measurement of the Self-Concept of Children in the Third Grade

Fifty-five males and 38 females were administered a self-rating scale which allowed self and typical-student estimates of intelligence, motivation, and achievement. Males and females gave similar self-estimates of intelligence, although compared to the males, the females rated their motivation and achievement higher. Both males and females regarded the typical female student as more intelligent, more motivated, and more academically successful than the typical male student. A sex difference was observed on self versus typical-student-of-the-same-sex ratings. On noncollege-related personality dimensions, both males and females continue to share an unfavorable female stereotype.     

Muscle Stiffness in Down Syndrome and Other Mentally Handicapped Subjects

An attempt was made to determine the effects of strength training on elbow flexor stiffness of Down syndrome, non-Down syndrome mentally handicapped, and nonhandicapped subjects. It was hypothesized that stiffness would be affected by the training. Results showed that only half of the individual subjects increased their maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) level as a result of the training and that premeasures and postmeasures of MVC were not significantly different for any of the three groups. As expected, for both premeasures and postmeasures, nonhandicapped subjects had a significantly higher MVC than the other groups who were not significantly different. An important finding was that measures of stiffness (slopes of the IEMG × Torque) were not significantly different for the three groups. This finding is consistant with recent studies (Davis & Kelso, 1982; Shumway-Cook & Woollacott, in press) but raises serious doubts about the popularly held opinion that Down syndrome individuals are hypotonic. It was also found that both the Down syndrome and other mentally handicapped subjects produced significantly less torque at the maximum level than the nonhandicapped subjects. These findings suggest that deficits in mentally handicapping conditions result from a decrease in the range of a primary motor control parameter λ (see Feldman, 1986).     

An Examination of Rapid Positioning Movements with Spatiotemporal Constraints

Unidirectional positioning movements with spatiotemporal-constraints were examined as a test of impulse-timing theory (Schmidt, 1976; 1980; Wallace, 1981). Movements were examined at the kinematic, kinetic, and neuromuscular levels in three experiments. In the first experiment, displacement was held constant while five different movement times were examined. Both amplitudes and durations of the EMG and the kinetic variables were related to movement time. The results generally support the impulse-timing model. In the second experiment, movements were performed to a target at each of four distances in a constant movement time. EMG and force amplitudes and, unexpectedly, accelerative-force duration were modulated to achieve changes in displacement when movement time was constant. In the third experiment, movement time and displacement were simultaneously varied resulting in four conditions with equal average velocities. The results of this experiment were not as clear and exhibited individual differences. EMG duration did not always vary with changes in movement time. The results of all three experiments could not be adequately accounted for by the impulse-timing model.     

Intrusive and avoidant ideation among females pursuing infertility treatment

Abstract

It was shown that infertility and its treatment constitute a stressful experience for women, reflected particularly in disturbing intrusive ideation about the stress source. Infertility patients reported levels of intrusive ideation significantly higher than routine gynecologic patients and not significantly different from levels of psychiatric outpatients being treated for stress reactions to traumatic events. Intrusive ideation also predicted the degree of self-reported infertility-specific distress and dysfunction, further clarifying the key role of such ideation in the experience. Finally, as hypothesized, the frustration level of the treatment experience (as indexed by the number of infertility treatment methods attempted) predicted avoidant ideation. Implications for managing the psychological distress and disruption associated with the infertility treatment experience were discussed.     

Personality and Memory in Old Age

We examined the impact of personality on episodic memory performance in a sample of 287 healthy adults aged 68-95 years. Extraversion and neuroticism were assessed with a standardized personality inventory. Episodic memory was assessed with an everyday task. Results from regression analyses controlling for the effects of age, gender, and education show that higher extraversion and lower neuroticism are associated with higher episodic memory performance. In addition, the strength of the correlations between neuroticism and episodic memory declined with increasing age in a male sub-sample, revealing an interaction between age and neuroticism.