Assessment of dental anxiety: A facet approach

Dental anxiety is a complicated phenomenon, and its multicomponent nature is often not acknowledged in existing measurement instruments. Using a facet design, a new Dental Anxiety Inventory (DAI) was constructed. Facets chosen were: time (made up of four elements: at home, on your way to the denstist, in the denstist's waiting room, in the dental chair), situation (three elements: introductory aspects, dentist-patient interaction, actual dental treatment), and reaction (three elements: subjective feelings, physical reactions, cognitive reactions). Psychometric qualities of the DAI are good. The internal structure of the DAI was studied by linear and nonlinear techniques, and was partially recovered from the data. The construct and criterion validity of the DAI was supported in several studies.     

Perception of threat and safety at work among employees in the Norwegian ministries after the 2011 Oslo bombing

Background and objectives: Terrorism can heighten fears and undermine the feeling of safety. Little is known, however, about the factors that influence threat and safety perception after terrorism. The aim of the present study was to explore how proximity to terror and posttraumatic stress reactions are associated with perceived threat and safety after a workplace terrorist attack. Design and methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was administered to employees in 14 of 17 Norwegian ministries 9–10 months after the 2011 bombing of the government headquarters in Oslo (n = 3520). Results: About 198 of 1881 employees completing the survey were at work when the bomb exploded. Regression analysis showed that this high-exposed group had elevated perceived threat (β = 0.36; 95% CI = 0.19 to 0.53) and reduced perceived safety (β = ?0.42; 95% CI = ?0.62 to ?0.23) compared to a reference group of employees not at work. After adjusting for posttraumatic stress reactions, however, proximity to the explosion no longer mattered, whereas posttraumatic stress was associated with both high perceived threat (β = 0.55; 95% CI = 0.48 to 0.63) and low perceived safety (β = ?0.71; 95% CI, ?0.80 to ?0.63). Conclusion: Terror-exposed employees feel more threatened and less safe after a workplace terrorist attack, and this is closely linked to elevated levels of posttraumatic stress reactions.     

Directions for judgment and decision making research based on comparison selection: Reply to Arkes,Johnson, and Kardes

Our target article proposed an alternative perspective for studying consumer judgment and decision making, focusing on the types and weights of comparisons consumers select. In this response we consider the major points made by each of the commentators and examine their implications for future work addressing our comparison-focused approach.     

Protective effect of supportive family relationships and the influence of stressful life events on adolescent adjustment

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the association between the occurrence of stressful life events and internalizing and externalizing problems, and to analyze longitudinally buffering effects of supportive family relationships. To this end, 100 Spanish adolescents were studied twice, when they were in mid-adolescence (15–16 years) and two years later. They completed questionnaires regarding stressful life events, family relationships, and adolescent adjustment. Results showed that high quality parent-adolescent relationships protected boys and girls against the negative consequences of stressful life events on externalizing, but not internalizing, symptoms. The adolescents who enjoyed good relationships with their parents in mid-adolescence did not increase their externalizing problems in late adolescence as consequence of the occurrence of stressful events. However, these stressors did lead to an increase in the number of externalizing problems when the family relationships were of a middle or low quality. These results highlight the important role that supportive family relationships play in the behavioral adjustment of adolescents, protecting them against some negative consequences of stressful life events, and suggest the relevance of supporting parents through resources such as parent education in order to help them to improve their relationships with their adolescents.     

Ethnic Differences in Parents' Attitudes toward Girls' Use of Aggression

Few studies have attempted to explain ethnic differences in female aggression. The degree to which ethnic differences exist in the influence of parents' approval of aggression on their preadolescent daughters' use of physical, verbal, and relational aggression was explored in a sample of 97 parent-child dyads. Results indicate that European American parents were more disapproving of their daughters' aggressive behavior than were African American parents. Parents' attitude toward aggression was predictive of European American girls' use of physical and verbal aggression and African American girls' use of relational aggression. Implications for aggression prevention and intervention for girls are discussed.     

An Historical Overview of Basic Approaches and Issues in Ethical and Moral Philosophy and Principles

Summary

This article provides a condensed history of ethics development for the purpose of exposing psychologists and other mental health professionals to ethical and moral bases upon which modern psychological ethics are founded. In addition, it focuses on contemporary theories, with an emphasis on professional ethics.     

Preface

Summary

Child victimization is a serious and on-going problem in the United States and throughout the world. In 2000, an estimated 900,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect in the United States. New and different responses to child maltreatment will have to be developed and implemented in response to the increasingly diverse contexts and situations within which maltreatment occurs. Emerging trends in adult-child boundary violations are explored within this volume from a cross-section of disciplines, including law, sociology, criminal justice, psychology, and health services. The selections analyze issues critical to child maltreatment and offer intriguingly different perspectives of present and future issues related to child abuse.     

History and Analysis of Delayed Discovery Statutes of Limitations in Adult Survivor Litigation

Summary

In this chapter, attorney Mary R. Williams examines how while Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) cases share many of the types of facts for which delayed discovery, mental incapacity, equitable estoppel and other legal statutes of limitations doctrines were created, the combination of factors of CSA cases, including unusual social dynamics and long-term psychological effects, does not fit exactly with any of these legal doctrines. She explores the historical development of delayed discovery statutes of limitations, evaluates the different types of statutes and case law, and analyzes the problematic use of the concept of repression in legislation. This chapter interprets her ground-breaking state-by-state tabulations of delayed discovery statutes of limitations and reported appellate decisions on limitations in CSA actions, published in this volume as appendices A, B, and C.     

Holistic processing of shape cues in face identification: Evidence from face inversion,composite faces,and acquired prosopagnosia

According to a classical functional architecture of face processing (Bruce & Young, 1986), sex processing on faces is a parallel function to individual face recognition. One consequence of the model is thus that sex categorization on faces is not influenced by face familiarity. However, the behavioural and neuro-psychological evidences supporting this dissociation are yet equivocal. To test the independence between sex processing on faces and familiar face recognition, familiar (learned) faces were morphed with new faces, generating facial continua of visual similarity to familiar faces. First, a pilot experiment shown that subjects familiarized with one extreme of the face continuum roughly perceive one half of the continuum (60 to 100% of visual similarity to familiar faces) as made of familiar faces and the other part as unfamiliar. In the experiment proper, subjects were familiarized with faces and tested in a sex decision task made on faces at the different steps of the continua. Subjects were significantly quicker at telling the sex of faces perceived as familiar (60-100%), and the effect was not observed in a control (untrained) group. These results indicate that familiar face representations are activated before sex categorization is completed, and can facilitate this processing. The nature of the interaction between sex categorization on faces and familiar face recognition is discussed.     

Eye gaze patterns reveal how we reason about fractions

ABSTRACT

Fractions are defined by numerical relationships, and comparing two fractions’ magnitudes requires within-fraction (holistic) and/or between-fraction (componential) relational comparisons. To better understand how individuals spontaneously reason about fractions, we collected eye-tracking data while they performed a fraction comparison task with conditions that promoted or obstructed different types of comparisons. We found evidence for both componential and holistic processing in this mixed-pairs task, consistent with the hybrid theory of fraction representation. Additionally, making within-fraction eye movements on trials that promoted a between-fraction comparison strategy was associated with slower responses. Finally, participants who performed better on a non-numerical test of reasoning took longer to respond to the most difficult fraction trials, which suggests that those who had greater facility with non-numerical reasoning attended more to numerical relationships. These findings extend prior research and support the continued investigation into the mechanistic links between numerical and non-numerical reasoning.