Infant attachment in the Czech Republic: Categorical and dimensional findings from a post-communist country

Infant attachment remains virtually unexplored in former Eastern Bloc countries. The dimensional approach to infant attachment, which could ease common obstacles in cross-cultural attachment research, necessitates more empirical support. This study explores infant attachment in the Czech Republic, a post-communist country with a unique family policy, using both the categorical and the dimensional models. It also compares the Czech infant attachment distribution to infant attachment distributions in other countries and compares infant attachment distributions in European countries to the Baltimore study sample. In the Strange Situation Procedure, forty-nine (74 %) out of sixty-six mother-infant dyads (35 boys, M = 13.8, SD = 0.9) received the B classification. Despite the generous family policy and cultural emphasis on close mother-infant relationships, the Czech distribution of insecure categories did not differ from the Baltimore study sample. Out of other post-communist countries, only the infant attachment distribution in former East Germany differed from the Czech and the Baltimore study samples due to a lower proportion of type B and a higher proportion of type A infants. There were also more type A infants in the Italian sample. Interactive behavior scales accurately predicted attachment categories in 91 % of cases. Contact-maintenance and proximity-seeking scales substantially improve the assessment of insecure resistant behavior. Our findings support the universality and normativity of attachment and the utility of the dimensional approach.     

道德之一元论与多元论：缘起、内涵与论争

一元论与多元论之争是道德心理学领域近些年最为活跃的理论交锋之一。道德一元论认为所有外在的道德现象与内在的道德结构都可以用一种因素来解释。道德多元论则认为道德不能只用单一因素来解释,而是存在多个不同质的道德维度,且具有文化敏感性。对应道德理论和道德基础理论是这场争议的典型代表。双方就伤害的解释力、道德失声现象、模块化道德与洁净维度独立性等方面展开论争。未来研究应从三个具体方面进一步探索道德之一元论与多元论难题,进而保持道德心理学领域的理论活力。     

Adolescent Gender and Age Differences in Responsiveness to Functional Family Therapy

The current study contributes to a sparse literature on moderators of Functional Family Therapy (FFT) by examining whether responsiveness to FFT, measured by a broad range of outcomes, varies by adolescent gender, age, and their interaction. This study was informed by 687 families (n, adolescents = 581; n, caregivers = 933) and utilized a pre–post comparison design. Fixed-effects regressions with gender, age, and their interaction included as explanatory variables were conducted to calculate the average change in youth mental health, callous–unemotional traits, academic outcomes, substance use, and family functioning. Moderation analyses revealed that according to parent report, girls had significantly greater improvements in peer problems and family functioning, and boys benefited more in increased liking of school. There were differential effects by age, such that older youth had less beneficial mental health outcomes and a smaller decrease in frequency of hash use. The gender by age interaction was significant for adolescents’ report of mental health and family functioning outcomes, which suggests that girls benefit from FFT less than boys during early adolescence, but benefit more than boys in late adolescence. This finding adds to literature which has evidenced that family functioning is particularly important for girls by suggesting that FFT is important for improving older girls’ mental health and family functioning in particular. The study’s results expand the examination of outcomes of FFT to include academic outcomes, and provide insight into key factors that should be considered in addressing adolescent behavioral problems and family functioning.     

Do liberals and conservatives use different moral languages? Two replications and six extensions of Graham,Haidt, and Nosek’s (2009) moral text analysis

Do liberals and conservatives tend to use different moral languages? The Moral Foundations Hypothesis states that liberals rely more on foundations of care/harm and fairness/cheating whereas conservatives rely more on loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation in their moral functioning. In support, Graham, Haidt, and Nosek (2009; Study 4) showed that sermons delivered by liberal and conservative pastors differed as predicted in their moral word usage, except for the loyalty foundation. I present two high-powered replication studies in religious contexts and six extension studies in politics, the media, and organizations to test ideological differences in moral language usage. On average, replication success rate was 30% and effect sizes were 38 times smaller than those in the original study. A meta-analysis (N = 303,680) found that compared to liberals, conservatives used more authority r = 0.05, 95% confidence interval = [0.02, 0.09] and purity words, r = 0.14 [0.09, 0.19], fewer loyalty words, r = −0.08 [−0.10, −0.05], and no more or less harm, r = 0.00 [−0.02, 0.02], or fairness words, r = −0.03 [−0.06, 0.01].     

The asymmetric effect of regulatory fit on moral judgments of other-oriented lies

We examined whether regulatory fit effects are asymmetric—namely, whether they occur only among individuals with a promotion focus or a prevention focus. We adopted a task where individuals make moral judgments of other-oriented lies and conducted three studies. The results indicated that prevention-focused individuals judged other-oriented lies based on a vigilant strategy as more moral than lies based on an eager strategy (Studies 1 and 2). Meanwhile for promotion-focused individuals, there were no differences between eager and vigilant strategies on moral judgments of other-oriented lies. Additionally, the results suggested that the feeling of rightness is an underlying mechanism of the regulatory fit effects of prevention focus (Study 3).     

Behavioral and pharmacological treatments for tourette syndrome: A review

This article reviews the published treatment outcome research on pharmacological and behavioral treatments for Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (TS). Controlled group outcome studies of pharmacological treatments show about a 50–60% reduction in tics with haloperidol and pimozide and about a 20% reduction with clonidine. A controlled group outcome study and several within-subject design studies of behavioral treatments show about a 90% reduction in tics with habit reversal training. A large number of case studies generally confirm these results and also show benefits from other behavioral treatments such as relaxation training, self-monitoring, and contingency management. Clinical limitations of TS drugs are that they produce side effects in 50–85% of the patients and require continuous use, and long-term compliance with the medications is limited. The primary limitation of behavioral treatments is that they require a large initial time commitment. The methodological strengths of the controlled drug studies are the use of double-blind and group designs. For the behavioral studies, the strengths are rigorous recording and controlled within-subject designs.     

Self-efficacy and social behavior

Data regarding the relationship between self-efficacy and social behavior are limited, and questions remain about how to interpret the relationship of self-efficacy to phobic behavior in general. The current study includes data regarding the relationship between self-efficacy ratings and social behavior. The data also allow tests of an alternative hypothesis that self-efficacy ratings represent a general prediction regarding the likely outcome regarding a task. If this hypothesis is correct, the relationship of self-efficacy to behavior should be moderated by task familiarity. The study involved 124 socially anxious participants who gave at least partial data on a variety of measures, including three speaking tasks. In accordance with the alternative hypothesis, self-efficacy ratings best predicted behavior in reference to a familiar speaking task. Overall, self-efficacy showed only a moderate tendency to predict behavior.     

Moral dilemmas and moral rules

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contribution that rules make to reasoning about moral dilemmas. In two experiments, we find that participants show a parallel asymmetry about versions of the dilemmas that have minimized emotional force. In a third experiment, we find that people distinguish between whether an action violates a moral rule and whether it is, all things considered, wrong. We propose that judgments of whether an action is wrong, all things considered, implicate a complex set of psychological processes, including representations of rules, emotional responses, and assessments of costs and benefits.     

The Child Behavior Checklist for Group Care Workers: A Study Regarding the Factor Structure

In this study we examined the factor structure of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) filled out by group care workers. Group care workers' judgements were collected on 846 children and adolescents treated in various residential settings in The Netherlands. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we were able to show that the original CBCL factor model based on parental judgments of child behavior also fits for the judgments of group care workers. This means that the well known 8 narrow-band syndromes (Withdrawn, Somatic Complaints, etc.) as well as the 2 broad-band syndromes (Internalizing and Externalizing) can be used to interpret the CBCL scores of group care workers. This confirmation of the CBCL factor structure is a first step to add a group care worker version to the CBCL family. However, as a second step, normative data need to be gathered to further enhance the use of the CBCL for group care workers.