Making sense of being fat: A hermeneutic analysis of adults’ explanations for obesity

This hermeneutic‐phenomenological study of individuals enrolled in a hospital weight management clinic is an account and analysis of the experiences of being overweight, dieting and weight cycling through in‐depth life history interviews. Participants explored their earliest recollections involving family attitudes towards food, multiple experiences with dieting and weight cycling and how they explained their weight problems to themselves. Analysis revealed that mealtimes became the arena within which control battles were waged between parent and child; food became associated with control and eating subsequently became a way to gain control over other aspects of life. Eating also became a way to numb the pain associated with child abuse, to substitute for human needs for relationship and belonging and emotional cycles of eating were identified. Insights emergeing from the interview process suggest the value of considering a psychodynamic approach to understanding emotional eating.     

Trauma in the Lives of Older Men: Findings from the Normative Aging Study

Research on the prevalence of traumatic exposure has tended to focus on younger populations, limiting our knowledge about trauma and its effects in older adults. In this study, lifetime trauma exposure was assessed in a sample of 436 male military veterans of World War II and the Korean Conflict (age 59–92). A clinician-administered screening measure, the Brief Trauma Interview, was developed to assess lifetime exposure to 10 categories of trauma using DSM-IV criteria. PTSD was assessed in interview and questionnaires. Despite a high prevalence of trauma exposure, symptom levels were relatively low. Few men met criteria for current or lifetime PTSD. Secondary analyses found that lifetime symptom severity was higher in men who met the DSM-IV A.2 criterion, in contrast with men who did not meet A.2. Findings indicate that trauma is highly prevalent among older men, although many may be asymptomatic.     

Preschoolers’ Emotion Expression and Regulation: Relations with School Adjustment

Children's expression and regulation of emotions are building blocks of their experiences in classrooms. Thus, the authors’ primary goal was to investigate whether preschoolers’ expression or ability to regulate emotions were associated with teachers’ ratings of school adjustment. A secondary goal was to investigate how boys and girls differed across these associations. Children's social-emotional behaviors in Head Start and private childcare center classrooms were observed, and using a series of measures, teachers’ ratings of children's social competence, attitudes toward school, positive teacher relationships, and cooperative participation were collected. Three factors of children's school adjustment were extracted from these indicators. A series of hierarchical regressions revealed that emotion expression and regulation were indeed associated with children's reported school adjustment, with the strongest associations stemming from children's negative emotion expression and their emotion dysregulation. Many of these associations were also different for boys and girls. The results corroborate and extend the authors’ earlier findings, and have implications for social-emotional programming to maximize children's early school success.     

Emotional expressiveness during worship services and life satisfaction: assessing the influence of race and religious affiliation

The purpose of this study is to see if an emotional expressive worship style is associated with life satisfaction. Our study model contains the following core relationships: (1) blacks are more likely than whites to worship in conservative Protestant congregations; (2) members of conservative congregations and blacks will attend church services more often; (3) blacks and conservative Protestants are more likely than either whites or members of other congregations to openly express their emotions during worship services; (4) individuals who express their emotions during church services will be more likely say they worship in a highly cohesive congregation; (5) people who worship in highly cohesive congregations will generalise this sense of connectedness to people outside their place of worship; and (6) those who feel closely connected with all people will experience a greater sense of life satisfaction. Finding from a nationwide survey provide support for each of these relationships.     

科技干扰与青少年智能手机成瘾的关系：情绪症状和环境敏感性的作用

本研究以问卷法对湖北省两所中学共3219名初一至初三的中学生进行调查,建立结构方程模型来考察在家庭环境中由于父母使用科技设备而产生的科技干扰对青少年智能手机成瘾的影响机制。结果发现：（1）科技干扰不仅能直接正向预测青少年智能手机成瘾,还能通过情绪症状的中介作用间接预测青少年智能手机成瘾;（2）环境敏感性在情绪症状对青少年智能手机成瘾的影响中起显著的调节作用,具体而言,较高的环境敏感性能够缓冲情绪症状对青少年智能手机成瘾的影响。     

Precursors of social emotional functioning among full-term and preterm infants at 12 months: Early infant withdrawal behavior and symptoms of maternal depression

This study forms part of a longitudinal investigation of early infant social withdrawal, maternal symptoms of depression and later child social emotional functioning. The sample consisted of a group of full-term infants (N = 238) and their mothers, and a group of moderately premature infants (N = 64) and their mothers. At 3 months, the infants were observed with the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB) and the mothers completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). At 12 months, the mothers filled out questionnaires about the infants’ social emotional functioning (Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment and the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-Social Emotional). At 3 months, as we have previously shown, the premature infants had exhibited more withdrawal behavior and their mothers reported elevated maternal depressive symptoms as compared with the full-born group. At 12 months the mothers of the premature infants reported more child internalizing behavior. These data suggest that infant withdrawal behavior as well as maternal depressive mood may serve as sensitive indices of early risk status. Further, the results suggest that early maternal depressive symptoms are a salient predictor of later child social emotional functioning. However, neither early infant withdrawal behavior, nor gestational age, did significantly predict social emotional outcome at 12 months. It should be noted that the differences in strength of the relations between ADBB and EPDS, respectively, to the outcome at 12 months was modest. An implication of the study is that clinicians should be aware of the complex interplay between early infant withdrawal and signs of maternal postpartum depression in planning ports of entry for early intervention.     

大学生情绪智力和班级人际网络对适应性的影响机制:多层中介效应模型

以国内7所大学、20个教学班、646名学生为研究样本,采用问卷调查法和社会网络分析法收集数据。运用1-1-1中介效应模型分析大学生情绪智力、班级人际网络和适应性之间的关系。结果显示:(1)大学生适应性与情绪智力、班级人际网络的点度中心度呈显著正相关,情绪智力可正向预测大学生适应性,情绪智力可正向预测大学生在班级人际网络的点度中心度;(2)1-1-1中介效应模型分析结果显示班级人际网络的点度中心度在情绪智力与适应性关系中起部分中介作用。     

Religiosity and the mental health of adolescents in Great Britain

Most studies show that religion is a protective factor for mental health. A few argue that it is detrimental and the remainder conclude it makes no difference. We investigate the religiosity correlates of childhood psychopathology – strength of belief, importance of being able to practice one’s religion, and worship frequency. Questions on religiosity were included in the mental health survey of children in Great Britain administered to 2992 11–19-year-olds in 2007. The Development and Well-Being Assessment was used to generate rates of clinically recognisable mental disorders. Logistic regression analysis was used to establish the magnitude of the religiosity correlates of emotional and conduct disorders. Young people with a stated religion who had weakly held beliefs or who regarded religious practice as unimportant were those with the greater likelihood of having emotional disorders. Regular attendance at religious services or prayer meetings reduced the likelihood of having a conduct disorder.     

Cognitive Bias for Pictorial and Linguistic Threat Cues in Children

The present study was designed to test the conditions under which threat-related cognitive bias can be observed in anxious children. Measures of cognitive bias for threatening words and pictures were obtained from spider fearful children (N = 55) and non-fearful children (N = 58) aged 8–11 in the first experiment, and from spider fearful children (N = 44), and two control groups (N = 41; N = 36) aged 8 in the second experiment. Cognitive bias was assessed by the emotional Stroop task. In line with our previous findings, all children aged 8 showed a bias for spider words, but not for spider pictures. However, a relation between spider fear and bias was observed when age was taken into account: bias for spider words decreased with age in the non-fearful children whereas this bias maintained in the fearful group. This differential age effect too replicated earlier findings (Kindt, Bierman, & Brosschot, 1997). It is suggested that a bias for threat words is a normal characteristic in children aged 8. During development, normal children learn to inhibit this processing bias, whilst fearful children fail to learn this ability.     

伪装情绪的人际影响及其作用机制

伪装情绪是指在情绪交互的过程中, 人们展现实际不存在的积极或消极情绪, 放大亦或是压抑原本的情绪。伪装情绪是一种策略选择的结果, 表现者所展现的情绪在当下可能并未发生, 但却能在某种程度上令人信服。目前关于伪装情绪的研究比较分散, 对于伪装情绪人际影响及其作用机制还存在着一定争议。现有文献多从博弈过程、亲社会行为情境、组织情境和领导效果四个方面对伪装情绪的人际效应进行探讨, 其中相关的机制包括情绪接受者的情感反应及“以己度人”的内心过程。未来的研究可以从情绪接受者、群体伪装、伪装情绪效价、认知神经机制以及文化等方面, 对伪装情绪展开深入系统性的研究。