An experimental manipulation of retrospectively defined earned and continuous attachment security

Recent longitudinal data suggest that retrospectively defined earned-secures are not more likely than continuous-secures to have been anxiously attached to their mothers in infancy and indeed experience high-quality maternal parenting in childhood. Such findings leave unanswered the question of why earned-secures report negative childhood experiences. On the basis of speculation that earned-security may result from depression-related biases in the recall of early experiences, this report describes the effects of an experimental mood induction on the valence of young adults' (18-25 years) life narratives as assessed in the Adult Attachment Interview. Among secure adults, individuals in a sadness condition were more likely to be classified as earned-secure; happy participants were more likely to be classified as continuous-secure. Induced mood was unrelated to security versus insecurity.     

College aspirations and expectations among new African-American mothers in late adolescence

It is a generally accepted finding in the sociological literature as well as in public discourse that adolescent mothers are less likely than their non-parenting counterparts to graduate high school and to attend college. For several decades, however, researchers have pointed out that the implied causal process from teen motherhood to academic failure has been largely unsupported by empirical research. In fact, scholars have recently argued that motherhood may actually serve as a positive turning point in the lives of young women. Using a sample of young African-American women, this study assesses the degree to which teen motherhood not only affects college aspirations but also expectations. Further, it tests the ability of these effects to explain the well-known educational attainment gap between teen mothers and their non-childbearing peers. Results indicate that, in general, young mothers’ college aspirations are similar to those of non-mothers, but that their generally high aspirations for academic success appear to be effectively countered by their decreased educational expectations.     

Reading a note, reading a mind: children’s notating skills and understanding of mind

Are children’s understanding of mental states (understanding of mind) related to their notating skills, that is, their ability to produce and read written marks to convey information about objects and number? Fifty-three preschoolers and kindergarteners were presented with a dictation task where they produced some written marks and were later asked to read them back. Understanding of mind was assessed using two tasks. Children’s name-writing and language skills were assessed as covariates. Children’s understanding of their own and other’s mental states was associated with their notating skills. Findings are discussed in light of the reciprocal writer-reader relation: keeping an audience in mind when writing and a writer in mind when reading. This reciprocal relation is central to writing and reading development.     

The Virtual Naval Hospital: the digital library as knowledge management tool for nomadic patrons.

OBJECTIVE: To meet the information needs of isolated primary care providers and their patients in the US Navy, a digital health sciences library, the Virtual Naval Hospital, was created through a unique partnership between academia and government. METHODS: The creation of the digital library was heavily influenced by the principles of user-centered design and made allowances for the nomadic nature of the digital library's patrons and the heterogeneous access they have to Internet bandwidth. RESULTS: The result is a digital library that has been in operation since 1997, continues to expand in size, is heavily used, and is highly regarded by its patrons. CONCLUSIONS: The digital library is dedicated to delivering the right information at the right time to the right person so the right decision can be made, and therefore the Virtual Naval Hospital functions as a knowledge-management system for the US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.     

“You Just Gotta Watch What You Say in Those Situations”: A Normative Approach to Confidant Communication Surrounding Sexual Assault Disclosure

Although less than a third of sexual assaults are reported to authorities, survivors often disclose to family, friends, or romantic partners. However, survivor-confidant communication during and following disclosure may be challenging. Research has offered little insight into the theoretical bases for such difficulty or the ways confidants effectively address the challenges they perceive. Through qualitative interviews with 26 confidants, we develop normative theory of confidants’ experiences of and responses to sexual assault disclosure. Disclosure sets the stage for challenges in communicating support and respecting survivor privacy. Confidants respond via an array of behaviors, each with relative advantages and disadvantages.     

Experimental evidence for diagramming benefits in science writing

Arguing for the need for a scientific research study (i.e. writing an introduction to a research paper) poses significant challenges for students. When faced with these challenges, students often generate overly safe replications (i.e. fail to find and include opposition to their hypothesis) or in contrast include no strong support for their hypothesis (i.e. relevant, valid evidence). How can we support novice scientists in generating and defending high quality hypotheses? A long history of research supports the affordances provided by structured representations of complex information. More recently, argument diagramming has gained traction in instruction for philosophy, social studies, and law. However, its effectiveness for supporting students in science is relatively untested. The purpose of the current study was to test the effectiveness of a simple argument diagram optimized for supporting students’ research writing in psychology. Two groups of undergraduate students in research methods lab courses were randomly assigned to diagramming support or no support. In the research papers, those given diagramming support were more likely to argue for an appropriately ‘risky’ hypothesis and wrote more about the relevance and validity of cited studies. Some of these gains show signs of transfer to a second paper written later in the course that did not require use of the diagramming tool.     

Gene-environment contributions to the development of infant vagal reactivity: the interaction of dopamine and maternal sensitivity

This study investigated dopamine receptor genes (DRD2 and DRD4) and maternal sensitivity as predictors of infant respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and RSA reactivity, purported indices of vagal tone and vagal regulation, in a challenge task at 3, 6, and 12 months in 173 infant-mother dyads. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) revealed that at 3 and 6 months, RSA withdrawal in response to maternal separation was greater (suggesting expected physiological regulation) in infants without the DRD2 risk allele than those with the risk allele. At 12 months, infants with the risk allele who were also exposed to maternal sensitivity showed levels of RSA withdrawal comparable to infants who were not at genetic risk. Findings demonstrate the importance of developmental analysis of gene-environment interaction.     

Use of superheroes social skills with middle school‐age students with autism spectrum disorder

The current study evaluated use of the Superheroes Social Skills program as a means of increasing social skill accuracy in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. Participants included four Caucasian male students that were eligible for special education services within the autism category. Social skills training was presented twice weekly for 9 weeks. The results demonstrated that implementation of the intervention improved social skill accuracy within the training setting as indicated by visual analysis and nonoverlap of all pairs. Additionally, improvements in social skill accuracy during probes conducted within the classroom with typically developing peers was observed. Despite improvements in social skill accuracy in both settings, sociometric status of participants demonstrated little change from baseline to postintervention.