Pain Catastrophizing and Functional Disability in Youth with Chronic Pain: An Examination of Indirect Effects

Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings - Pediatric pain conditions are not uncommon and may lead to functional disability. The purpose of this study is to examine indirect effects of...     

Close relationships and placemaking: Do objects in a couple's home reflect couplehood?

The domain of couple closeness extends well beyond the individual couple members themselves. Current research suggests that there are also indicators of couple closeness, functioning, and commitment that reside in the couple's physical environment. Two community samples of adults in marital or cohabitating romantic relationships (N = 110) completed a questionnaire that tapped several relationship qualities and that asked them to indicate (a) the objects in their home that they most wanted visitors to notice and (b) their favorite objects. We examined couple displays (the percentage of objects they wanted a visitor to notice that were jointly acquired, as opposed to individually acquired), and couple markers (the percentage of favorite objects that were jointly acquired). Consistent with hypotheses, relationship qualities (closeness, dyadic adjustment, and commitment) were positively associated with reporting a relatively high proportion of (a) jointly acquired objects among those they wanted visitors to notice and (b) jointly acquired favorite objects. We discuss these results in the context of couple placemaking—the physical and symbolic creation of a home as represented operationally in the acquisition and placement of relationship–relevant objects.     

Implementation Intentions Increase Parent-Teacher Communication Among Latinos

This research tested an implementation intentions intervention to increase parent-teacher communication among Latino parents of young children. Parents (n=57) were randomly assigned to form implementation intentions or simply goal intentions to communicate with their child's teacher. They completed measures of communication and goal intentions immediately prior to the manipulation, and after the manipulation for 6 consecutive weeks. Implementation intentions increased parent-teacher communication among parents with higher initial (pre-manipulation) goal intentions, but not among those with lower initial goal intentions. The findings support existing work on the conditions for implementation intentions to work, and address an important aspect of Latino children's educational success.     

Psychophysical investigation of vigilance decrement in jumping spiders: overstimulation or understimulation?

The inability to maintain signal detection performance with time on task, or vigilance decrement, is widely studied in people because of its profound implications on attention-demanding tasks over sustained periods of time (e.g., air-traffic control). According to the resource depletion (overload) theory, a faster decrement is expected in tasks that are cognitively demanding or overstimulating, while the underload theory predicts steeper decrements in tasks that provide too little cognitive load, or understimulation. Using Trite planiceps, a jumping spider which is an active visual hunter, we investigated vigilance decrement to repetitive visual stimuli. Spiders were tethered in front of two stimulus presentation monitors and were given a polystyrene ball to hold. Movement of this ball indicates an attempt to turn towards a visual stimulus presented to a pair of laterally facing (anterior lateral) eyes for closer investigation with high acuity forward-facing (anterior median) eyes. Vigilance decrement is easily measured, as moving visual stimuli trigger clear optokinetic responses. We manipulated task difficulty by varying the contrast of the stimulus and the degree of ‘noise’ displayed on the screen over which the stimulus moved, thus affecting the signal:noise ratio. Additionally, we manipulated motivation by paired testing of hungry and sated spiders. All factors affected the vigilance decrement, but the key variable affecting decrement was stimulus contrast. Spiders exhibited a steeper decrement in the harder tasks, aligning with the resource depletion theory.     

Why do People Blame Victims of Abuse? The Role of Stereotypes of Women on Perceptions of Blame

Stereotyping research suggests that traditional women (e.g., housewives) are seen as warm and weak, whereas nontraditional women (e.g., career women) are seen as lacking warmth but competent. We expected a nontraditional female abuse victim to be perceived as less warm than a traditional victim, and thus be blamed more in an abuse scenario. In an experiment, 118 Midwestern United States college students read a marital conflict in which the husband perpetrated high levels of psychological abuse. The victim’s gender role and reaction to the abuse each were manipulated. As expected, when the victim was nontraditional or she reacted negatively to the abuse (e.g., yelled back), she was rated more negatively and blamed more due to her lack of warmth.     

How passive is passive listening? Toward a sensorimotor theory of auditory perception

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - According to sensorimotor theory perceiving is a bodily skill involving exercise of an implicit know-how of the systematic ways that sensations change as...     

Fostering Creativity Through Educational Video Game Development Projects: A Study of Contextual and Task Characteristics

The increasing demand for creative individuals in the labor market requires well-prepared professionals, capable of enhancing competitiveness through new ideas and innovative actions. Educational programs should, therefore, rely on approaches and learning environments that foster creativity. In this study, video game development projects were used as an approach to foster creativity in educational contexts. Conceptual frameworks focused on contextual creativity enablers indicate that specific environment and task characteristics can facilitate the development and expression of creativity. This study explored the extent to which students perceived that educational game development projects mimicking real-world dynamics recreated contextual conditions appropriate to foster creativity, and whether they associated these conditions with their self-perceived creativity improvement. Questionnaires were administered to 38 students enrolled in 2 educational game development programs. Findings suggest that video game development creates a remarkable setting to promote and facilitate the expression and development of students' creativity, due to characteristics of the task and of the work environment generated by this activity.     

Child and parental outcomes of a group parenting intervention for Latino families: A pilot study of the CANNE program

Criando a Nuestros Ni?os hacia el éxito (CANNE) is the Spanish adaptation of Parenting Our Children to Excellence (PACE). A pilot study conducted with 124 parents of preschoolers (mostly recent Mexican immigrants) provides preliminary evidence for the community acceptability and efficacy of CANNE. Eighty-eight of the 124 parents who enrolled in the program attended one or more of the 8 sessions (17% attended 1 session, 11% attended 2-4 sessions, and 72% attended 5 or more sessions), participated actively in sessions, and expressed high degrees of program satisfaction. Over time, parents improved on measures of harsh-inconsistent discipline, and children improved on social competence and social-communication skills. When high-versus-low attenders were compared, high attenders (parents who attended 4 sessions or more) reported greater increases than low attenders in their appropriate-positive parenting practices and clear expectations, and in their children's social competence and communication skills, and they reported greater decreases in their harsh-inconsistent discipline and in their children's aggressiveness and hyperactivity. Some of these changes were evident by the end of the program, whereas others became apparent (or stronger) over a 3-month follow-up period. These encouraging results point to the need for an efficacy study that assesses how well CANNE can help larger numbers of Latino parents in the important task of bringing up their young children in the United States.     

The role of numerical competence in a specialized predatory strategy of an araneophagic spider

Although a wide range of vertebrates have been considered in research on numerical competence, little is known about the role of number-related decisions in the predatory strategies of invertebrates. Here, we investigate how numerical competence is expressed in a highly specialized predatory strategy adopted by the small juveniles of Portia africana when practicing communal predation, with the prey being another spider, Oecobius amboseli. Two or more P. africana juveniles sometimes settle by the same oecobiid nest and then share the meal after one individual captures the oecobiid. Experiments were designed to clarify how these predators use number-related cues in conjunction with non-numerical cues when deciding whether to settle at a nest. We used lures (dead spiders positioned in lifelike posture) arranged in a series of 24 different scenes defined by the type, configuration and especially number of lures. On the whole, our findings suggest that P. africana juveniles base settling decisions on the specific number of already settled conspecific juveniles at the nest and express a preference for settling when the number is one instead of zero, two or three. By varying the size of the already settled juveniles and their positions around the nest, we show that factors related to continuous variables and stimulus configuration are unlikely explanations for our findings.