The impact of maternal characteristics and contextual variables on infant-mother attachment

This prospective study examined the effects of maternal characteristics, social support, and risk factors on infant-mother attachment in a heterogeneous sample. Two hundred and six women between the ages of 18 and 40 were interviewed during their last trimester of pregnancy and 1 year postpartum. Structural equation modeling revealed that maternal attachment experiences were significantly related to prenatal representations of the infant and of the self as a mother, which were significantly related to infant-mother attachment assessed by the Strange Situation. Maternal risk factors were significantly related to prenatal representations, and social support from other women predicted infant-mother attachment. The overall model indicated a good fit. Thus, both individual and contextual factors were important in explaining infant attachment security.     

Reporting Risk: Perceptions of Fear and Risk from Health News Coverage

Using actual news coverage of an environmental risk, this experimental study examined whether providing unrelated risk comparisons and information about other sources of the same risk influenced readers' reactions to the coverage. The study suggests stories that provide information on other sources of a contaminant may do little to reduce risk perceptions; however, providing information about the magnitude of the risk at hand relative to other risks had several communication benefits. Both comparisons lead readers to feel more informed about the risk and, thus, better able to make decisions than those who did not see the comparisons. Media implications are discussed.     

Hiring and Developing Quality Community College Faculty

There is a likely community college teacher shortage on the horizon. Thus, community colleges not only need to focus on hiring quality instructors who emphasize teaching excellence, but institutions need to invest time and resources developing quality faculty plans to address faculty needs and provide adequate faculty development programs. When Iowa's community college licensure law was repealed in 2003, 15 area community colleges were left with the task of developing their own quality faculty plans. The Quality Faculty Plan design and one-year implementation is assessed.     

Design Considerations for an Intensive Autism Treatment Centre

Individuals with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) who display severe and challenging behaviour sometimes require centre‐based intensive applied behaviour analysis (ABA) therapy to meet their health, safety and educational needs. Unfortunately, despite the need for centre‐based treatment, there is a paucity of empirical research on building and programme design features that influence positive behavioural outcomes for individuals with ASD. We surveyed professionals who had experience providing services to the ASD population regarding the building design and policy features that could facilitate treatment. This article highlights the features that were highly endorsed as beneficial in the design of an intensive ASD treatment facility, with the intended purpose of discovering which features create an environment in which the individuals can more easily transition into an appropriate mainstream learning environment. It is hoped that the results of the survey will be helpful to those developing ASD treatment facilities and allow them to circumvent trial and error that could occur when building a centre from the ground up.     

Guiding movements with internal representations: a reach-and-grasp task

We investigated participants' ability to use internal representations of the environment to guide prehensile movements, when visual feedback was not available. Reaching and grasping performed with concurrent visual feedback was compared to conditions in which participants actively formed spatial images and passively encoded images from visual presented information. Movement times, the proportion of time spent after peak velocity and peak apertures, were greater when concurrent visual feedback was unavailable. Movement times increased as a function of premovement occlusion length, with passively encoded images resulting in shorter movement durations than actively formed images. The findings indicated that participants adapted their movement trajectories to compensate for the degradation of stored spatial information, when concurrent visual feedback was not available.     

Emotion regulation profiles, temperament, and adjustment problems in preadolescents

The longitudinal relations of emotion regulation profiles to temperament and adjustment in a community sample of preadolescents (N=196, 8-11 years at Time 1) were investigated using person-oriented latent profile analysis (LPA). Temperament, emotion regulation, and adjustment were measured at 3 different time points, with each time point occurring 1 year apart. LPA identified 5 frustration and 4 anxiety regulation profiles based on children's physiological, behavioral, and self-reported reactions to emotion-eliciting tasks. The relation of effortful control to conduct problems was mediated by frustration regulation profiles, as was the relation of effortful control to depression. Anxiety regulation profiles did not mediate relations between temperament and adjustment.     

The Relation Between Callous-Unemotional Traits,Psychosocial Maturity,and Delinquent Behavior Among Justice-Involved Youth

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are a risk factor for severe and persistent patterns of juvenile delinquency. Given the influence of CU trait assessments in justice-system settings, it is important to determine whether the predictive utility of CU traits is conditional on the absence of protective psychosocial factors. Employing a sample of justice-involved male youth (N = 1,216, M_age = 15.29), this study examined whether psychosocial maturity (PSM) outweighs or attenuates the effect of CU traits on delinquency. Results indicated that youth with high CU traits or low PSM offended more during the year following their first arrest. Additionally, PSM moderated the relation between CU traits and offending, such that higher PSM was associated with less offending but only among low CU youth.     

No cuts,no buts: Satisfaction of first-year medical students with a hybrid prosection-based model for learning gross anatomy during the Covid-19 pandemic

Few realized the extent of disruption that the Covid-19 global pandemic would impose upon higher anatomical education. While many institutions were obliged to adopt a fully-remote online model, the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine strove to develop a curriculum that would allow medical students to receive an in-person anatomy education. A hybrid model that emphasized learning from prosected cadavers and self-study stations was implemented, with the remainder of the students' time directed toward studying at home. Through an anonymous survey aimed at gleaning student satisfaction, this study demonstrates that this hybrid prosection-based anatomy course aligned with student preferences both assuming no health risk (64.6% agreed) and given the current risk of contracting Covid-19 (78.5% agreed). Generally, students felt that their education was equal to that of previous years (Likert scale = 3.24 ± 1.05), fostered an appreciation for anatomy (4.56 ± 0.59), promoted teamwork (4.13 ± 0.85), and prepared them for practical examinations (4.18 ± 0.74). Linear mixed-effect models demonstrated that specific differences in results could be attributed to students' preconceived preferences toward student-led dissections and to past medical training. Importantly, most students “disagree” (1.97 ± 1.00) that they were concerned about the risk of exposure to Covid-19 during in-person anatomy laboratory sessions. Areas requiring improvement were identified by the model, including the provision of access to the cadavers outside of the regularly scheduled laboratory times (3.89 ± 1.08). These findings should be utilized when designing future gross anatomy courses in response to the “new normal”.     

“Do We Have to Call It That?” The Response of Neoliberal Multiculturalism to College Antiracism Efforts

The authors discuss the ways in which neoliberal multiculturalism influences the reception and implementation of antiracist initiatives on college campuses. They suggest the intersections of neoliberalism and racism produce a resistance to antiracist efforts and desire for softened multicultural approaches that maintain the status quo. Since the logics of White supremacy and capitalism dominate every space of our society, critical multiculturalism must address these oppressive systems in antiracism education.