Development of the comprehension and appreciation of fables

The authors proposed and tested a model of fable comprehension and appreciation. They proposed that fables are metaphoric in that they teach moral lessons about human activity, and that apprehension of the moral derives from a belief in a just world. In Study 1, children from kindergarten to 8th grade and college students received Aesop fables, reversed-outcome Aesop fables, and fable-like stories. As predicted, kindergartners and some 1st graders did not demonstrate a belief in a just world and did not differentiate between normal and reversed-outcome Aesop fables. Quality of morals provided by older participants was superior to that of younger participants. In Study 2, the quality of fable moral was found to be significantly correlated with quality of proverb and metaphor interpretation. Also, memory for goal or intention story elements was found to be related to quality of moral produced. Directions for future research are identified.     

Children's coping strategies: moderators of the effects of peer victimization?

Coping strategies were examined as potential moderators of the effects of peer victimization on children's adjustment. Self-report data on victimization experiences, coping strategies, and loneliness were collected on ethnically diverse 9-10-year-old children (177 girls, 179 boys). Teacher ratings of children's anxious-depressed and social problems and peer nominations of social preference were also obtained. Findings revealed that strategies such as problem solving that were beneficial for nonvictimized children exacerbated difficulties for victimized children. The effects of specific forms of coping were dependent on gender: social support seeking buffered victimized girls from social problems but was associated with lower peer preference for victimized boys. Data also revealed the need to examine the effects of coping on multiple adjustment outcomes.     

Preliminary evidence of attenuated blood pressure reactivity to acute stress in adults following a recent marital separation

Objective: This study explores cardiovascular reactivity during an acute-stress task in a sample of recently separated adults.

Design: In a cross-sectional design, we examined the association between adults’ subjective separation-related distress and changes in heart rate and blood pressure across the acute-stress laboratory paradigm in a sample of 133 (n = 49 men) recently separated adults.

Main outcome measures: Heart rate (HR) and Blood pressure (BP) were recorded across a resting baseline period, a math stressor task, and a recovery period.

Results: Multilevel analyses revealed that adults who reported greater separation-related distress exhibited higher initial BP and a slower linear increase in BP across the study period. In addition, adults reporting greater separation-related distress evidenced significantly slower declines in diastolic blood pressure (DBP) following the acute-stress task. HR reactivity was not moderated by separation-related distress.

Conclusions: In recently separated adults, preliminary evidence suggests that the context of the stressors may reveal differential patterns of problematic reactivity (exaggerated or blunted responding). Greater emotional intrusion and hyperactivity symptoms may index increased risk for blunted cardiovascular reactivity to general stressors. This pattern of reactivity is consistent with models of allostatic load that emphasise the deleterious effect of hyporesponsivity to environmental demands.     

Interparental conflict and adolescent emotional security across family structures

This study investigated whether interparental conflict was differentially related to forms of emotional security (i.e., family, interparental, parent–child) and whether forms of emotional security were differentially associated with mental health problems for adolescents in married versus divorced/separated families. Participants were 1032 adolescents (ages 10–15; 51% male, 49% female; 82% non-Hispanic White, 9% Black/African American, 5% Hispanic, 2% Asian or Pacific Islander, 2% Native American) recruited from a public school in a middle-class suburb of a United States metropolitan area. We used multiple group multivariate path analysis to assess (1) associations between interparental conflict and multiple measures of emotional insecurity (i.e., family, interparental, and parent–child), (2) associations between measures of emotional insecurity and internalizing and externalizing problems, and (3) moderation effects of parent–child relationships. The patterns of association were similar across family structures. A high-quality parent–child relationship did not mitigate the harmful effects of interparental conflict on emotional insecurity or mental health problems. Findings suggest that regardless of family structure, emotional security across multiple family systems may be a critical target for intervention to prevent youth mental health problems, in addition to interventions that reduce conflict and improve parent–child relationships.     

Interplay of Literacy and Orality in Inaugural Rhetoric

Inaugural addresses require a complex interplay of literacy and orality. They are written to be performed, but oral performance is not explicable in terms of textual analyses alone. Texts of the 55 inaugurals of the 42 U.S. presidents and audio recordings of the 16 dating from F. D. Roosevelt were the corpus for this study. The general hypothesis was that changes in media technology and in Presidential governance have moved both text and performance of inaugurals in the twentieth century in the direction of conversational style. Textual response measures were frequency-of-occurrence ratios of words (per paragraph, sentence, punctuation, and discourse marker), of syllables (per paragraph, sentence, word, punctuation, and discourse marker), and of first-person pronominal forms. Performance response measures were speech and articulation rates, percentage of pause time, pause duration, and phrase length. Use of contractions was also analyzed. Textual analyses showed a shortening of units and a shift from singular to plural first-person pronominal forms in the course of 200 years. Performance of the inaugurals over the past 60 years showed no diachronic changes, but was dramatically slower than that of other speech genres. Use of contractions was limited to three recent inaugurals. Various published texts of Reagan's first inaugural and Bush's and Clinton's inaugurals were compared with one another and with the audio recordings and were found to differ from one another in text, punctuation, and format, and from the audio recordings in text. The notion of conversational style is critically discussed, particularly in terms of the boundaries imposed upon it by the norms of both literacy and orality.