Adult Attachment in Children Raised by Parents with Schizophrenia

Maternal schizophrenia is known to have an adverse effect on the quality of mother–infant interaction; and children of parents with severe mental illness run a higher risk of poor mental health and social outcomes. Hence, children raised by a parent with schizophrenia may be less likely to attain secure attachment, although there is less evidence so far to support this. Moreover, there is a lack of research in this field that focusses on the needs and experiences, the strengths and vulnerabilities, of the children themselves. Qualitative methods are thus needed to generate new insights and hypotheses. The present study uses semi-structured interviews with 23 adults who, as children, were raised with a parent who experienced schizophrenia. This reveals a range of attachment problems, resulting in difficulties in forming secure adult relationships. Problems with trust and intimacy were found to be common.     

高功能孤独症者非字面语义理解缺陷：隐喻视角的ERP研究

研究采用事件相关电位技术从隐喻语义理解角度考察了高功能孤独症成人非字面语义理解中的行为特点及脑半球参与模式。行为结果显示：高功能孤独症成人对新异隐喻句的反应时最长,两类隐喻句的反应时均长于普通成人,但错误率上两组被试间无差异。脑电结果显示：高功能孤独症组对新异隐喻句的N400波幅最大,未出现半球偏侧化现象,传统隐喻句在左半球的N400波幅大于右半球,两类隐喻句的N400波幅均大于正常被试。结论：高功能孤独症成人具备隐喻理解能力,并对新异隐喻的理解做出更多努力,但右脑功能异常仍旧存在,左右半球在总体功能或神经联通性上仍旧弱于常人。     

The swimsuit issue: Correlates of body image in a sample of 52,677 heterosexual adults

Past research on adults’ body image has typically used small convenience samples, limiting the ability to examine associations of personal characteristics to body satisfaction. This study of 52,677 heterosexual adults ages 18–65 examined associations of body satisfaction to age, height, gender, and body mass index (BMI). Age and height were mostly unrelated to body satisfaction. Consistent with an Objectification Theory perspective, fewer men than women reported being too heavy (41% versus 61%), rated their body as unattractive (11% versus 21%), or avoided wearing a swimsuit in public (16% versus 31%). Men felt better about their bodies than women across most of the weight span, although among underweight individuals, women felt better than men. Slender women (BMIs 14.5–22.49) were more satisfied than most other women (BMIs 22.5–40.5). Among men, underweight and obese men were least satisfied. These findings highlight gender differences in the association of weight to body satisfaction.     

Body image across the adult life span: stability and change

By far, the majority of studies investigating body image in adults have drawn samples from college populations within a very narrow age range. The purpose of the present paper is to review empirical research on the body image of adults older than the typical college student. There are marked changes in appearance across the adult life span, especially for women, which lead to the expectation of concomitant changes in body image. In fact, the review found that body dissatisfaction was remarkably stable across the adult life span for women, at least until they are quite elderly. In contrast, the importance of body shape, weight and appearance decreased as women aged, underscoring an important distinction between evaluation and importance of the body. However, there are many large gaps and limitations in the current literature that will need to be addressed before a more complete understanding of the development of body image across the adult life span is achieved.     

The construction of large number representations in adults

What is the nature of our mental representation of quantity? We find that human adults show no performance cost of comparing numerosities across vs. within visual and auditory stimulus sets, or across vs. within simultaneous and sequential sets. In addition, reaction time and performance in such tasks are determined by the ratio of the numerosities to be compared; absolute set size has no effect. These findings suggest that modality-specific stimulus properties undergo a non-iterative transformation into representations of quantity that are independent of the modality or format of the stimulus.     

Procrastination: Different time orientations reflect different motives

Because procrastination concerns a person’s ability to meet deadlines, temporal dimension is clearly important to this personality construct. In the present study, the characteristic profile of arousal and avoidant motives of procrastinators were related to past, present, and future time conceptions. Participants (140 women, 135 men; mean age = 49.4, SD = 5.55) completed measures of arousal and avoidance procrastination, and time orientation. Results indicated that avoidant procrastination was associated negatively with present-fatalistic time orientation, and arousal procrastination was associated positively with present-hedonist and negatively with future time orientations. The variance accounted for by time orientations was modest, yet provides further evidence that there are distinct motives for chronic procrastination.     

The fight against prejudice in older adults: perspective taking effectiveness

Inhibition of prejudice appears to be more problematic for older adults, hence the need to develop programs to reduce intergroup bias at later stages in life. Perspective taking was analyzed in this study, as one of various cognitive strategies that have been shown to reduce such bias. Data on a sample of 63 Spanish participants with a mean age of 64.1 years was gathered after an intervention based on mental imagery, aimed at reducing explicit prejudice. A wide array of variables was measured (personality traits, values, empathy, and attribution) which may moderate effectiveness in perspective taking. Despite no main effect was found, effects due to interaction of perspective taking found in OLS regression analysis revealed that perspective taking based intervention was effective for some older adults, particularly those who had low scores on agreeableness, empathy, and universalism, and high scores on conformity. The conclusions suggest that perspective taking might be successfully applied to some profiles of older people albeit it is not as strong and transferable strategy as it used to be thought.     

Knowing Who Knows: Laypersons' Capabilities to Judge Experts' Pertinence for Science Topics

Because modern societies are built on elaborate divisions of cognitive labor, individuals remain laypersons in most knowledge domains. Hence, they have to rely on others' expertise when deciding on many science‐related issues in private and public life. Even children already locate and discern expertise in the minds of others (e.g., Danovitch & Keil, 2004). This study examines how far university students accurately judge experts' pertinence for science topics even when they lack proficient knowledge of the domain. Participants judged the pertinence of experts from diverse disciplines based on the experts' assumed contributions to texts adapted from original articles from Science and Nature. Subjective pertinence judgments were calibrated by comparing them with bibliometrics of the original articles. Furthermore, participants' general science knowledge was controlled. Results showed that participants made well‐calibrated pertinence judgments regardless of their level of general science knowledge.     

Barriers and facilitators of bicycle helmet use among children and their parents

Despite the fact that bicycle helmet use protects against head injuries, helmet use rate is still low even in countries with high concern for traffic safety. Earlier research shows that helmet use declines with age and that helmet use is low especially among teenagers. The aim of the present study was to investigate barriers and facilitators of helmet use among primary and secondary school pupils and their parents. Identical surveys were conducted among school children (n = 235) and their parents (n = 106). Children’s and adults’ responses concerning cycling, helmet use, helmet ownership, risk assessment and barriers and facilitators were compared and separate regression analyses conducted. Helmet use rate was lower among pupils than adults and they scored higher in most of the barrier items. The results of regression analyses showed that among children, age, gender, barriers and facilitators predicted helmet use while among adults only frequency of cycling and barriers were related to helmet use. Among children, the strongest correlates of not using a helmet were the belief of not needing a helmet and wish to use a cap or a hat instead. Having a helmet wearing as a habit and feeling safer were the strongest correlates of using helmet. Among adults, the strongest correlates of not using a helmet were “helmet looks ridiculous”, “just going to short trip” and riding close to home while the strongest correlate of using a helmet was the habit of helmet use. It was concluded that targeting the barriers in helmet wearing campaigns might work better both among children and adults than emphasising the benefits at least among Norwegian child and adult cyclists.     

Working memory in adults who stutter using a visual N-back task

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to investigate working memory in adults who do (AWS) and do not (AWNS) stutter using a visual N-back task. Processes involved in an N-back task include encoding, storing, rehearsing, inhibition, temporal ordering, and matching.MethodsFifteen AWS (11 males, 4 females; M = 23.27 years, SD = 5.68 years) and 15 AWNS (M = 23.47 years, SD = 6.21 years) were asked to monitor series of images and respond by pressing a “yes” button if the image they viewed was the same as the image one, two, or three trials back. Stimuli included images with phonologically similar (i.e., phonological condition) or phonologically dissimilar (i.e., neutral condition) names. Accuracy and manual reaction time (mRT) were analyzed.ResultsNo difference was found between AWS and AWNS in accuracy. Furthermore, both groups were more accurate and significantly faster in 1- followed by 2- followed by 3-back trials. Finally, AWNS demonstrated faster mRT in the phonological compared to neutral condition, whereas AWS did not.ConclusionResults from this study suggest different processing mechanisms between AWS and AWNS for visually presented phonologically similar stimuli. Specifically, a phonological priming effect occurred in AWNS but not in AWS, potentially due to reduced spreading activation and organization in the mental lexicon of AWS. However, the lack of differences between AWS and AWNS across all N-back levels does not support deficits in AWS in aspects of working memory targeted through a visual N-back task; but, these results are preliminary and additional research is warranted.