Mother Knows Best? Mother and Child Report of Behavioral Difficulties of Children of HIV-Infected Mothers

Children of HIV-infected mothers have more psychosocial adjustment difficulties than do those of noninfected mothers. In this study, child psychosocial adjustment in children of HIV-infected women is examined across the three stages of HIV-infected: asymptomatic, symptomatic and AIDS. Participants were 99 HIV-infected women and 148 noninfected women. Children were not identified as being HIV infected. Mother and child reports of behavioral difficulties are compared, and competing hypotheses about mother report of child behavior difficulties are tested. Results indicate an ascending linear trend for child report of internalizing and externalizing difficulties from the noninfected stage through increasingly severe stages of HIV-infection. According to mother report, child externalizing and internalizing difficulties are nonlinear, as mothers report an increase through the infected symptomatic stage, then a decrease in the AIDS stage. Implications for assessment, prevention and intervention in families with maternal HIV infection are discussed.     

The Associations between Mothers’ and Grandmothers’ Depressive Symptoms,Parenting Stress,and Relationship with Children: An Actor–Partner Interdependence Mediation Model

Three-generation households that include parents and grandparents raising children together have become increasingly common in China. This study examined the relations among depressive symptoms, parenting stress, and caregiver–child relationships in the mother–grandmother dyadic context. Participants were mothers and grandmothers from 136 three-generation households. Results from Actor–Partner Interdependence Mediation Modeling indicated that mothers’ depressive symptoms were indirectly related to mother–child conflict/closeness through own parenting stress; grandmothers’ depressive symptoms were indirectly related to grandmother–child conflict through own parenting stress. Mothers’ depressive symptoms were indirectly related to grandmothers’ conflict with children through grandmothers’ parenting stress, and grandmothers’ depressive symptoms were indirectly related to mothers’ conflict/closeness with children through mothers’ parenting stress. The relation between mothers’ parenting stress and mother–child closeness was stronger than the relation between grandmothers’ parenting stress and grandmother–child closeness. Findings highlight the implications of using a family system perspective and the dyadic approach in understanding and improving family functioning in Chinese three-generation households.     

Religiousness, Health, and Health Behavior in Public-Use Data of the National Center for Health Statistics

Studies of religiousness and health-related variables in large, population-based cross-sectional or, preferably, longitudinal studies, which are often prohibitively expensive, are important to complement findings from the more commonly performed studies. Inadequately known among social science researchers, the national health surveys of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) offer large, high-quality data sets to the public at no or nominal cost and hence offer important opportunities for research in the area of religion and health, religion and reproductive behavior, sociology of religion and psychology of religion. This report provides an overview of the data sets and a bibliography of prior research using these data, which is intended to suggest how the data of NCHS may be further exploited by researchers of religiousness and health.

Maintenance of Relationship and Individual Functioning Gains Following Online Relationship Programs for Low‐Income Couples

Initial evidence suggests that gains in relationship functioning from brief, web‐based programs are maintained through one year following the intervention; however, whether these results generalize to a low‐income sample is unclear. Furthermore, previous research from in‐person couple therapy suggests there may be different shapes of maintenance slopes for behavioral versus acceptance‐based techniques. This study contacted 668 individuals who enrolled in online behavioral (ePREP) or acceptance‐based (OurRelationship) programs one year following completion of the program. Multilevel modeling was used to examine linear and quadratic rates of change in the year following the online intervention as well as total amount of change from pretreatment to 12‐month follow‐up for both relationship and individual functioning. The majority of couples who responded continued to be in a relationship with the same partner (68.3%). Examinations of relationship functioning indicated couples in both programs maintained their gains over follow‐up (i.e., no significant linear or quadratic changes), with medium‐to‐large within‐group effect sizes from pre‐ to one‐year follow‐up. There were no significant differences in relationship outcomes between OurRelationship and ePREP. Similarly, examinations of individual functioning outcomes indicated couples maintained their gains over follow‐up or continued to improve. In total, couples experienced small‐to‐medium within‐group effect sizes from pretreatment to one‐year follow‐up, with larger effects for individuals who were initially distressed. These results suggest that online programs create lasting change for low‐income couples in relationship and individual functioning, with minimal differences between behavioral and acceptance‐based orientations.     

The flip side of the other‐race coin: They all look different to me

Poorer recognition of other‐race faces than own‐races faces has been attributed to a problem of discrimination (i.e., telling faces apart). The conclusion that ‘they all look the same to me' is based on studies measuring the perception/memory of highly controlled stimuli, typically involving only one or two images of each identity. We hypothesized that such studies underestimate the challenge involved in recognizing other‐race faces because in the real world, an individual's appearance varies in a number of ways (e.g., lighting, expression, hairstyle), reducing the utility of relying on pictorial cues to identity. In two experiments, Caucasian and East Asian participants completed a perceptual sorting task in which they were asked to sort 40 photographs of two unfamiliar identities into piles such that each pile contained all photographs of a single identity. Participants perceived more identities when sorting other‐race faces than own‐race faces, both when sorting celebrity (Experiment 1) and non‐celebrity (Experiment 2) faces, suggesting that in the real world, ‘they all look different to me'. We discuss these results in the light of models in which each identity is represented as a region in a multidimensional face space; we argue that this region is smaller for other‐race than own‐race faces.     

The effects of co‐occurring ADHD symptoms on electrophysiological correlates of cognitive control in young people with Tourette syndrome

Efficient cognitive control is implicated in tic control in young people with Tourette syndrome (TS). Attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) frequently co‐occurs with TS and is associated with impaired cognitive control. Young people with TS and ADHD (TS+ADHD) show poorer cognitive control performance than those with TS, but how co‐occurring ADHD affects underlying neural activity is unknown. We investigated this issue by examining behavioural and event‐related potential (ERP) correlates of cognitive control in young people with these conditions. Participants aged 9–17 with TS (n = 17), TS+ADHD (n = 17), ADHD (n = 11), and unaffected controls (n = 20) performed a visual Go/Nogo task during electroencephalography (EEG) recording. Behavioural performance measures (D‐prime, RT, reaction time variability, post‐error slowing) and ERP measures (N2, P3, error‐related negativity (ERN), error positivity (Pe)) were analysed in a 2 (TS‐yes, TS‐no) × 2 (ADHD‐yes, ADHD‐no) factorial analysis to investigate the effects of TS, ADHD, and their interaction. The results of these analyses showed that ADHD was associated with poorer performance and reduced amplitude of all ERPs, reflecting widespread cognitive control impairments. Tourette syndrome was associated with slowed RTs, which might reflect a compensatory slowing of motor output to facilitate tic control. There was no interaction between the TS and ADHD factors for any behavioural or ERP measure, indicating the impairing effects of ADHD on behaviour and electrophysiological markers of cognitive control were present in TS+ADHD and that RT slowing associated with TS was unaffected by co‐occurring ADHD symptoms.     

The application of the satir model of family therapy to the families in Hong Kong: A personal reflection

Practitioners in Hong Kong have shown an increasing interest in various family therapy approaches since the 1980s. This paper offers a critique of the major concepts and techniques of the Satir model applied to families in Hong Kong. Cultural considerations are examined in relation to the family structure and hierarchy, the Chinese self and self-esteem, communication patterns, and family rules. Implications for the application of the Satir model of family therapy in Hong Kong are discussed.     

WALKER PERCY,LANGUAGE, AND HOMO SINGULARIS

The novelist Walker Percy argued that modern science has a tremendous blind spot in its view of human nature. Unlike purely physical phenomena, which can be explained by the interaction of dyadic relationships, human beings must also be understood in terms of triadic relationships brought into being by symbolic language. The self brought into being by symbolic language is nonmaterial but real, and operates by different “laws” than those that govern dyadic relations. In making this case, Percy drew a sharp line between human and nonhuman language, a line that more recent developments in science has challenged. However, Percy's central point, that the agent of symbolic language cannot be understood within a materialist framework, remains valid.     

Educational Performance and Psychological Disengagement Among Ethnic-Minority and Dutch Adolescents

The authors used a questionnaire (N = 587) among ethnic-minority and majority group adolescents in The Netherlands to examine the idea that under certain conditions minority group members tend to psychologically disengage their self-evaluation from educational performance. The results showed that only among ethnic minorities, perceived discrimination in school was related to psychological disengagement. Furthermore, among both groups of participants, perceived diagnosticity of performance feedback was negatively related to disengagement. However, among the ethnic minority group this effect was found for only those participants with relatively high educational performance. The results showed that negative experiences in school can lead to psychological disengagement from the academic domain and that disengagement is not restricted to African American students.