Caregivers’ Positive Emotional Expression and Children’s Psychological Functioning after Parental Loss

The death of a loved one, particularly a parent, has been identified as not only the most common, but also the most distressing form of adversity youth may experience in their lifetime. Surviving caregivers’ communication with their children may play a critical role in shaping bereaved children’s psychological functioning. However, few studies have examined the specific content (e.g., word usage) of caregivers’ verbal communication as a predictor of psychological functioning in bereaved youth. In a sample of 39 parentally-bereaved children and their surviving caregivers, we investigated whether the frequency of caregivers’ use of positive emotion words (e.g., “love”, “happy”, “hope”) during a reminiscing task about the deceased was associated with children’s psychological functioning and coping. In a cross-sectional analysis, we specifically examined whether these associations were moderated by the amount of time passed since children lost their parents. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Program (LIWC) was used to code and evaluate the percentage of positive emotion words caregivers used during the discussion. When caregivers used more positive emotion words, children were less likely to experience depression, anxiety, and avoidant coping. Those associations were present for children who had experienced parental loss at least 105 days prior to the study.     

The Relations Between Patterning,Executive Function,and Mathematics

Patterning, or the ability to understand patterns, is a skill commonly taught to young children as part of school mathematics curricula. It seems likely that some aspects of executive function, such as cognitive flexibility, inhibition, and working memory, may be expressed in the patterning abilities of children. The primary objective of the present study was to examine the relationship between patterning and executive functioning for first grade children. In addition, the relations between patterning, executive functioning, mathematics, and reading were examined. The results showed that patterning was significantly related to cognitive flexibility and working memory, but not to inhibition. Patterning, cognitive flexibility, and working memory were significantly related to mathematical skills. Only patterning and working memory were significantly related to reading. Regression analyses and structural equation modeling both showed that patterning had effects on both reading and mathematics measures, and that the effects of cognitive flexibility were entirely mediated by patterning. Working memory had independent effects on reading and mathematics, and also effects moderated by patterning. In sum, these findings suggest that cognitive flexibility and working memory are related to patterning and express their effects on reading and mathematics in whole or in part through patterning.     

��What I wanted to do was���� Discrepancies Between College Women��s Desired and Reported Responses to Gender Prejudice

When experiencing gender prejudice, college women engage in a dynamic decision making process about whether and how to respond. We examined the discrepancy between how college women wanted to respond and how they actually responded to gender prejudice events and explored their reasons for not using a desired response. In this study, 81 college women from the Western United States responded to a qualitative online daily diary about gender prejudice. In 34% (N?=?265) of the events, the women reported there was a discrepancy between what they wanted to do and how they actually reacted, with the most common discrepancy being a desire to utilize a confrontational response (91%, N?=?242). Over the two week period, women reported significantly more events during which they considered the use of a confrontational response (N?=?242) than they actually used one (N?=?199). Women??s reported reasons for not using their desired response included: not being cost effective (25%), concern about social norms (37%), setting limitations (19%), personality characteristics (9%) and not being bothered enough by the event (10%). We also found that when women considered using a confrontational response but decided not to, they reported using all other response types instead. In these cases, women who did nothing during the event reported lower levels of distress during the event than women who used a psychological response or a different confrontational response. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Becoming an expert in the musical domain: It takes more than just practice

Previous research has supported the theory that acquisition of expertise in any domain is possible for healthy individuals with sufficient deliberate practice, but such an extreme environmental position brings the existence of innate talent into question. The present study investigates the effects of both environmental factors and talent on expert performance in both high school and conservatory-level musicians. Audition scores and accumulated practice time were recorded, and correlated with scores on Gordon's Advanced Measures of Music Audiation and Raven's Progressive Matrices. Higher-level musicians report significantly higher mean levels on innate characteristics such as general intelligence and music audiation, in addition to higher levels of accumulated practice time. These factors together accounted for more of the variance in music performance than practice alone. A multi-factor view is thus shown to be the best explanation for the acquisition of musical expertise.     

Effects of small monetary incentives on return rates of a health survey to adults in rural areas

This study assessed differences in response rates to a mailed health survey by adults in two neighboring rural midwestern counties with differential incentives, of dollar 2.00 and dollar 5.00. Potential respondents in each county were randomly selected from a commercial database of residents' addresses. County "F" respondents (n = 541) which were 57% female and 95% Euro-American having a mean age of 47.3 yr. (SD= 16.9), received the dollar 5 incentive. County "H" respondents (n= 514) were 63% female, 95% Euro-American, had a mean age of 49.0 yr. (SD= 14.7), and received a S2 incentive. The response rates were 71% using the dollar 2 incentive and 73% using the dollar 5 incentive. These were not significantly different by chi-square test. The more cost-effective incentive for increasing the response rate of adults in this rural midwestern sample was to code the envelopes and use a dollar 2.00 rather than dollar 5.00 incentive, a cost per returned survey of dollar 5.24 versus dollar 9.13, respectively. The findings support Dillman's principle of diminishing returns as the size of the incentive goes up.     

Meditative interventions and antisocial personality disorder

Empathic functioning and inhibitory control deficits are two symptoms of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Despite their deleterious effects, limited research exists on interventions that would ameliorate these specific symptoms. We suggest that meditative interventions may help to increase empathic functioning and inhibitory control in ASPD individuals. Using Luria’s working brain framework, we present research showing that meditative interventions influence the same brain regions associated with empathic functioning and inhibitory control. Implications for the counseling profession and directions for further research are discussed.     

Does intrinsic reward motivate cognitive control? a naturalistic-fMRI study based on the synchronization theory of flow

Cognitive control is a framework for understanding the neuropsychological processes that underlie the successful completion of everyday tasks. Only recently has research in this area investigated motivational contributions to control allocation. An important gap in our understanding is the way in which intrinsic rewards associated with a task motivate the sustained allocation of control. To address this issue, we draw on flow theory, which predicts that a balance between task difficulty and individual ability results in the highest levels of intrinsic reward. In three behavioral and one functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, we used a naturalistic and open-source video game stimulus to show that changes in the balance between task difficulty and an individual’s ability to perform the task resulted in different levels of intrinsic reward, which is associated with different brain states. Specifically, psychophysiological interaction analyses show that high levels of intrinsic reward associated with a balance between task difficulty and individual ability are associated with increased functional connectivity between key structures within cognitive control and reward networks. By comparison, a mismatch between task difficulty and individual ability is associated with lower levels of intrinsic reward and corresponds to increased activity within the default mode network. These results suggest that intrinsic reward motivates cognitive control allocation.