Risk and resilience: The moderating role of social coping for maternal mental health in a setting of political conflict

Violence can threaten individual wellbeing and tear at the social fabric of communities. At the same time, suffering can mobilize social coping and mutual support. Thus, the backdrop of political violence increases risk factors and stimulates resilience. The current study examined the moderating role of social coping as reflective of risk and resiliency in Northern Ireland, a setting of protracted conflict. Specifically, structural equation modeling was used to investigate whether social coping protects from or exacerbates the negative impact of sectarian crime and nonsectarian crime on maternal mental health (N = 631). Nonsectarian crime predicted greater psychological distress for mothers in Belfast. Mixed support was found for the buffering and depletion moderation hypotheses; social coping functioned differently for nonsectarian crime and sectarian crime. Greater social coping buffered mothers’ psychological distress from the negative effects of nonsectarian crime, but exacerbated maternal mental health problems when facing sectarian crime. Results suggest that social coping is a complex phenomenon, particularly in settings of protracted political violence. Implications for interventions aimed at alleviating psychological distress by enhancing mothers’ social coping in contexts of intergroup conflict are discussed.     

Opposite effects of feedback contingency on the process of risky decisions-making

The main aim of this study was to look into the effect of feedback contingency on decision making in complex risky situations, using a driving context. Participants had to decide braking or not in a set of risky traffic situations. After the response, a negative non-contingent or contingent feedback was used. The results highlight the importance of feedback contingency upon safer decision making in risky contexts, as they showed how a contingent feedback led to faster and safer responses than a control group without any feedback; whereas a non-contingent one gives rise to slower responses and, more importantly, an enhanced risk-taking behavior that could be the cause of undesirable effects on road safety. The feedback effect was even more evident in the appearance of an opposite response bias as a function of contingency and enhanced by learning. These results accord with the theoretical accounts based upon the feedback influence on the threshold level of decision making. Moreover, the effects of feedback may be explained by new proposals focusing on the importance of attentional factors as well as of the mental models people build to react in complex risky scenarios, as a product of feedback and learning. Finally, this research may increase our understanding of the role of feedback in the process of learning safer behavior in complex risky situations.     

Going with your gut: How William James' theory of emotions brings insights to risk perception and decision making research

The basic premise of William James' theory of emotions – that bodily changes lead to emotional feelings – ignited debate about the relative importance of bodily processes and cognitive appraisals in determining emotions. Similarly, theories of risk perception have been expanding to include emotional and physiological processes along with cognitive processes. Taking a closer look at The Principles of Psychology, this article examines how James' propositions support and extend current research on risk perception and decision making. Specifically, James (1) described emotional feelings and their related cognitions in ways similar to current dual processing models; (2) defended the proposition that emotions and their expressions serve useful and adaptive functions; (3) suggested that anticipating an emotion can trigger that emotion due to associations learned from past experiences; and (4) highlighted individual differences in emotional experiences that map on well with individual differences in risk-related decision making.     

Evidence for an emotion-cognition interaction in the statistical prediction of suicide attempts

Suicidal behavior is a prevalent problem among adolescents and young adults. Although most theoretical models of suicide suggest that this behavior results from the interaction of different risk factors, most prior studies have tested only bivariate associations between individual risk factors and suicidal behaviors. The current study was designed to address this limitation by testing the effect of an emotion–cognition interaction on suicide attempts among youth. Specifically, we hypothesized that the interaction of emotion reactivity and problem-solving skills would statistically predict the probability of a recent suicide attempt among 87 adolescents and young adults. Results revealed a significant interaction, such that emotion reactivity was strongly associated with the probability of a suicide attempt among those with poor problem-solving skills, moderately associated among those with average problem-solving skills, and not significantly associated among those with good problem-solving skills. The next generation of studies on suicidal behavior should continue to examine how risk factors interact to predict this dangerous outcome.     

Changes in children’s perception-action tuning over short time scales: Bicycling across traffic-filled intersections in a virtual environment

This investigation examined short-term changes in child and adult cyclists’ gap decisions and movement timing in response to general and specific road-crossing experiences. Children (10- and 12-year-olds) and adults rode a bicycle through a virtual environment with 12 intersections. Participants faced continuous cross traffic and waited for gaps they judged were adequate for crossing. In the control condition, participants encountered randomly ordered gaps ranging from 1.5 to 5.0 s at all intersections. In the high-density condition, participants encountered high-density intersections sandwiched between sets of control intersections. These high-density intersections were designed to push participants toward taking tighter gaps. Participants in both conditions were more likely to accept 3.5-, 4.0-, 4.5-, and 5.0-s gaps at the last set of intersections than at the first set of intersections, whereas participants in the high-density condition were also more likely to accept very tight 3.0-s gaps at the last intersections than at the first intersections. Moreover, individuals in the high-density condition who waited less and took shorter gaps at the middle intersections were also more likely to take very tight 3.0-s gaps at the last intersections. The 10-year-olds in both conditions had more time to spare when they cleared the path of the oncoming car at the last intersections, whereas the 12-year-olds and adults showed no change in time to spare across intersections. The discussion focuses on linking short-term change in perceptual-motor functioning to longer term perceptual-motor development.     

Demographic and familial predictors of early executive function development: Contribution of a person-centered perspective

Executive function (EF) skills are integral components of young children’s growing competence, but little is known about the role of early family context and experiences in their development. We examined how demographic and familial risks during infancy predicted EF competence at 36 months of age in a large, predominantly low-income sample of nonurban families from Pennsylvania and North Carolina in the United States. Using latent class analysis, six ecological risk profiles best captured the diverse experiences of these families. Profiles with various combinations of family structure, income, and psychosocial risks were differentially related to EF. Much of the influence of early risks on later EF appears to be transmitted through quality of parent-child interactions during infancy. Findings suggest that early family environments may prove to be especially fruitful contexts for the promotion of EF development.     

The vigilant parent: Parental role salience affects parents' risk perceptions, risk-aversion, and trust in strangers

Since parenting involves protecting children from various risks and dangers, tendencies towards increased risk perception, risk-averse decision-making, and distrust of strangers may come to be associated with the parental role. Consequently, parents may be more likely to exhibit each of these psychological tendencies when their parental role is situationally salient than when it is not salient. We tested this hypothesis in two studies that manipulated the salience of the parental role in samples of parents and nonparents and measured the effects on participants' risk perceptions, risk-aversion, and trust in strangers. As we hypothesized, parents perceived greater risk (Study 1), made more risk averse choices (Study 1), and trusted strangers less (Study 2) when their parental role was salient than when it was not salient. Implications for understanding psychological adaptations to social roles are discussed.     

Cognitive model decomposition of the BART: Assessment and application

The Balloon Analogue Risk Task, or BART, aims to measure risk taking behavior in a controlled setting. In order to quantify the processes that underlie performance on the BART, Wallsten, Pleskac, and Lejuez (2005) proposed a series of mathematical models whose parameters have a clear psychological interpretation. Here we examine a 2-parameter simplification of Wallsten et al.’s preferred 4-parameter model. A parameter recovery study shows that — with plausible restrictions on the number of participants and trials — both parameters (i.e., risk taking γ⁺ and response consistency β) can be estimated accurately. To demonstrate how the 2-parameter model can be used in practice, we implemented a Bayesian hierarchical version and applied it to an empirical data set in which participants performed the BART following various amounts of alcohol intake.     

The utility and accuracy of oral reading fluency score types in predicting reading comprehension

This study used data from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS; Good & Kaminski, 2002) oral reading fluency (ORF) probes to examine variation among different ORF score types (i.e., the median of three passages, the mean of all three passages, the mean of passages 2 and 3, and the score from passage 3) in predicting reading comprehension as a function of student reading fluency level and to compare the screening accuracy of these score types in predicting student reading comprehension. The results revealed that the relation between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension varied as a function of students' oral reading fluency and that different score types had varying predictive validity for year-end reading comprehension. The mean of all three passages demonstrated a marginally better balance in screening efficiency from September to December of grade one (especially for low-performing students), whereas in grades two and three, the median score was the best predictor. Furthermore, across all grades, increasing reading rates were observed for the three administered passages within an assessment period. The observed patterns mimicked previous experimental studies (Francis et al., 2008; Jenkins, Graff, & Miglioretti, 2009), suggesting that practice effects are an important consideration in the administration of multiple passages assessing oral reading fluency.     

Relationships between digit ratio 2D:4D and self-reported aggression and risk taking in an online study

2D:4D, the length ratio of the second to the fourth digit, is a putative measure of prenatal testosterone, which may have effects on aggression and risk taking. Participants in a German online study (>1000 females, >1200 males) submitted their self-measured digit lengths and self-report measures on verbal and physical aggression and risk taking. For males, left-hand 2D:4D and verbal aggression correlated significantly (r = −.10, after correction for age and reduced reliability in self-measured 2D:4D), with other relationships being similar but non-significant. For females, no relationships between aggression and 2D:4D were found. Risk taking and right-hand 2D:4D correlated significantly in women (r = −.10, after correction for age and reduced reliability in self-measured 2D:4D); similar, but statistically non-significant, relationships were found in men. The result corroborates an emerging view that 2D:4D is negatively related to aggression in males and that 2D:4D is negatively related to risk taking. This tentatively points to effects of prenatal testosterone on these characteristics.