Cognition and affective style: Individual differences in brain electrical activity during spatial and verbal tasks

Relations between brain electrical activity and performance on two cognitive tasks were examined in a normal population selected to be high on self-reported measures of Positive or Negative Affectivity. Twenty-five right-handed women, from an original pool of 308 college undergraduates, were the participants. EEG was recorded during baseline and during psychometrically matched spatial and verbal tasks. As predicted, participants who were high in Positive Affectivity performed equally well on the verbal and spatial tasks, while participants who were high in Negative Affectivity had spatial scores that were lower than their verbal scores. There were no group differences in baseline EEG. Both groups exhibited left central activation (i.e., alpha suppression) during the verbal and spatial tasks. When EEG data were analyzed separately for the group high in Positive Affectivity, there was evidence of parietal activation for the spatial task relative to the verbal task. The EEG data for the group high in Negative Affectivity had comparable EEG power values during verbal and spatial tasks at parietal scalp locations. These data suggest that, within a selected normal population, differences in affective style may interact with cognitive performance and with the brain electrical activity associated with that performance.     

Self-reflecting in developmental context: variations in level and patterning during the first 2 university years

Self-reflection, typically operationalized in scales of egocentrism and introspectiveness, is portrayed as problematic in much of the literature on adolescents. Self-reflection has been linked to dysfunctional self-consciousness, symptomatology, and risk behaviors. Yet, self-reflection also is seen as essential for adolescent development, particularly with respect to individuation and identity. In this exploratory study, the authors focused on the process of self-reflecting. From interviews with 10 students conducted over the first 2 university years, the authors longitudinally assessed and then evaluated self-reflecting patterns in relationship to a narrative analysis of developmental change. Students who showed evidence of developmental change or sustained engagement in developmental work over the study period devoted a higher percentage of their interview conversation to self-reflecting content. Differences in self-reflecting patterning over time among the students who showed developmental change further suggest linkages between self-reflecting and development. The authors discuss implications for the conceptualization of self-reflecting in relationship to development and for the reinterpretation of previous studies.     

Triangulation and adolescent development in the U.S. and Japan.

Using an indirect measure of family structure, relationships between parents and adolescents were studied in 99 U. S. and 60 Japanese families. As two-person relationships tend toward instability under stress, a third person may be drawn in to stabilize the system. Parents, for example, may avoid the tension in the marital relationship by focusing together on an adolescent's problem, or pull the adolescent into a coalition with one parent. Either way the parents are said to have "triangled" the adolescent. In this study, a relationship is found between parents avoiding tension in their own relationship and their tendency to triangle an adolescent. Triangled daughters, in both cultures, had lower scores on ego development, supporting the hypothesis that such patterns can be detrimental to the adolescent's personal development. The discussion includes comments on cross-cultural research.     

Young children seek out biased information about social groups

Understanding the origins of prejudice necessitates exploring the ways in which children participate in the construction of biased representations of social groups. We investigate whether young children actively seek out information that supports and extends their initial intergroup biases. In Studies 1 and 2, we show that children choose to hear a story that contains positive information about their own group and negative information about another group rather than a story that contains negative information about their own group and positive information about the other group. In a third study, we show that children choose to present biased information to others, thus demonstrating that the effects of information selection can start to propagate through social networks. In Studies 4 and 5, we further investigate the nature of children's selective information seeking and show that children prefer ingroup‐favouring information to other types of biased information and even to balanced, unbiased information. Together, this work shows that children are not merely passively recipients of social information; they play an active role in the creation and transmission of intergroup attitudes.     

Graduate education in qualitative methods in U.S. psychology: current trends and recommendations for the future

The visibility of qualitative research methods (QRM) in U.S. psychology has increased with the dissemination of qualitative research in journals and books, formation of professional and scientific organizations, and recognition in educational institutions. While gains have been made, the current state of doctoral training in qualitative methods remains uncertain. It is unclear what training graduate students receive in U.S. psychology programs about qualitative methodologies and how further gains can be made in expanding visibility of QRM in graduate education. In this mixed-methods study, we surveyed a sample of faculty in U.S. psychology graduate programs about the frequency of QRM course offerings, graduate training, and students’ use of QRM in their dissertation research. We also explored qualitative responses from faculty regarding their attitudes about QRM and how these attitudes might help increase or diminish the frequency of methods training available to students. We found that even within graduate programs where there was support for QRM, enduring perceptions about the value of qualitative research limit faculty and graduate students’ use of qualitative methodologies in their research. With these findings in mind, we offer several recommendations for increasing the visibility of QRM in U.S. graduate education and the discipline of psychology as a whole.     

Facebook's Contribution to Well-being among Adolescent and Young Adults as a Function of Mental Resilience

Studies of correlations between general internet use and psychological well-being have shown mixed results. The present study aimed to elucidate the relationship between Facebook use and psychological well-being, with mental resilience expected to moderate the relationship. Two hundred Israeli adolescents and young adults completed questionnaires assessing their Facebook use, mental resilience, and psychological well-being. Results showed that Facebook use was positively correlated with psychological well-being, and that this relationship was particularly strong for participants with low mental resilience. The findings support a positive effect of Facebook use as providing a virtual supportive community for individuals who may lack the social skills needed to develop social capital and confidence through traditional communication paths.     

Multifaceted emotion regulation,stress and affect in mothers of young children

We tested a novel multi-component emotion self-regulation construct that captured physiological (vagal tone), cognitive (reappraisal) and temperament (effortful control) aspects of emotion regulation (ER) as a moderator of the link between more stressors and greater negative/less positive affectivity (NA and PA). A socio-economically diverse sample of 151 women with young children completed questionnaires and a laboratory visit (including cognitive and parent–child interaction tasks and vagal tone measurement). Women with more stressors had more NA and less PA. Furthermore, for NA only, having more stressors was substantially associated with NA but only among women with the lowest ER. This pattern was evident for the composite as well as individual indicators of ER. Results were not attributable to individual differences in executive function. Findings are discussed in light of the diathesis-stress model of stress and coping.