Loving and angry? Happy and sad? Understanding and reporting of mixed emotions in mother–child relationships by 6‐ to 12‐year‐olds

The Evaluative Space Model of emotions allows for the coactivation of positive‐appetitive and negative‐avoidant systems, but few studies have examined mixed emotions in child development. Existing research suggests children's understanding of opposite valence emotion combinations emerges by approximately 11 years of age. However, it is not yet clear whether various opposite valence combinations are understood at different ages, nor whether children can understand them in others before they have experienced such mixed emotions themselves. Semi‐structured interviews with 97 children investigated whether they regarded six combinations of opposite valence mixed emotions as possible, could provide reasons for them, and report their own experience of each in the context of mother–child relationships. Both understanding that such combinations are possible and ability to provide reasons for them increased after age 6 and up to age 11, but were still incomplete in 12‐year‐olds. Understanding of different opposite valence combinations developed at different rates. At each age, fewer children who showed understanding of these combinations in others reported having had a similar experience themselves. The findings suggest a need to systematically examine a range of mixed emotions in order to develop a comprehensive theory of the development of mixed emotion understanding. They also suggest extending research into adolescence.     

Marital Processes Linking Gender Role Attitudes and Marital Satisfaction Among Mexican‐Origin Couples: Application of an Actor–Partner Interdependence Mediation Model

Informed by dyadic approaches and culturally informed, ecological perspectives of marriage, we applied an actor–partner interdependence mediation model (APIMeM) in a sample of 120 Mexican‐origin couples to examine (a) the associations linking Mexican immigrant husbands’ and wives’ gender role attitudes to marital satisfaction directly and indirectly through marital processes (i.e., warmth and negativity) and (b) whether the associations between spouses’ gender role attitudes and marital processes were moderated by wives’ employment. Although previous research has identified spouses’ gender role attitudes as potential predictors of spouses’ marital satisfaction, no study has examined these links in a dyadic model that elucidates how gender role attitudes may operate through processes to shape marital satisfaction and conditions under which associations may differ. We found that when spouses reported less sex‐typed attitudes, their partners reported feeling more connected to them and more satisfied with the marriage, regardless of whether wives were employed. Our results suggest that marital satisfaction was highest for those Mexican‐origin couples in which marital partners were less sex‐typed in their attitudes about marital roles to the extent that partners’ attitudinal role flexibility promoted spouses’ feelings of warmth and connection to their partner.     

“Digging in” or “Giving in”: Attachment-related threat moderates the association between attachment orientation and reactions to conflict

Prior research suggests that individuals higher in attachment anxiety react to conflict in a more hostile manner than those lower in attachment anxiety. Although less pronounced, there is also evidence that attachment anxiety is associated with submissive behavior in conflict. Thus, the literature presents a paradox, as attachment anxiety is associated with both domineering and submissive responses to relationship conflict. We proposed that attachment-related threat moderates the effects of attachment orientations on conflict behavior, such that under conditions of low threat attachment anxiety would be associated with dominance, whereas under conditions of high threat attachment anxiety would be associated with submission. Further, we expected that this interaction between attachment anxiety and threat condition would be stronger for individuals lower in attachment avoidance, relative to those higher in avoidance. We found support for our hypotheses, such that attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, and threat interacted to predict responses to relationship conflict.     

Measuring the speed of newborn object recognition in controlled visual worlds

How long does it take for a newborn to recognize an object? Adults can recognize objects rapidly, but measuring object recognition speed in newborns has not previously been possible. Here we introduce an automated controlled‐rearing method for measuring the speed of newborn object recognition in controlled visual worlds. We raised newborn chicks (Gallus gallus) in strictly controlled environments that contained no objects other than a single virtual object, and then measured the speed at which the chicks could recognize that object from familiar and novel viewpoints. The chicks were able to recognize the object rapidly, at presentation rates of 125 ms per image. Further, recognition speed was equally fast whether the object was presented from familiar viewpoints or novel viewpoints (30° and 60° azimuth rotations). Thus, newborn chicks can recognize objects across novel viewpoints within a fraction of a second. These results demonstrate that newborns are capable of both rapid and invariant object recognition at the onset of vision.     

Is Alaska an Aberration or the Worst Case? A Robust Regression Approach to Understanding Inter-State Variations of Forcible Rape

Alaska’s rape rate perennially exceeds that of all other states. This study considers Alaska’s socioeconomic extremes—its frontier demography, its externally dependent resource economy, and its military presence—as explanations for inter-state variations of sexual violence. Robust regression procedures that accommodate extreme values were used to account for the effects of measures capturing Alaska’s unique socioeconomic qualities on state-level rape rates. The results showing that other economically dependent states with frontier demographic structures also report elevated rape rates indicate that despite its endemic levels of sexual violence, Alaska is not an aberration but is instead the worst case possible.     

Sensitivity to the acoustic correlates of lexical stress and their relationship to reading in skilled readers

The role of suprasegmental information in reading processes is a growing area of interest, and sensitivity to lexical stress has been shown to explain unique variance in reading development. However, less is known about its role in skilled reading. This study aimed to investigate the acoustic features of suprasegmental information using a same/different cross-modal matching task. Sixty-four adult participants completed standardized measures of reading accuracy, reading speed, and comprehension and performed an experimental task. The experimental task required the participants to identify whether non-speech acoustic sequences matched the characteristics of written words. The findings indicated differences in responses depending on where the lexical stress was required for the word. Moreover, evidence was found to support the view that amplitude information is part of the word knowledge retrieval process in skilled reading. The findings are discussed relative to models of reading and the role of lexical stress in lexical access.