Balance in Positive Emotional Expressivity Across School Contexts Relates to Kindergartners’ Adjustment

Positive emotional expressivity has been associated with increased social competence and decreased maladjustment in childhood. However, a few researchers have found null or even positive associations between positive emotional expressivity and maladjustment, which suggests that there may be nuanced associations of positive expressivity, perhaps as a function of the social context in which it is expressed. We examined whether observed positive emotional expressivity balance across peer-oriented/recreational and learning contexts predicted kindergarten children’s adjustment (N = 301). Research Findings: Higher positive expressivity during lunch/recess compared to positive expressivity in the classroom was associated with lower teacher–student conflict, externalizing behaviors, and depressive symptoms. In addition, overall positive emotional expressivity predicted lower externalizing behaviors as well as lower depressive and anxiety symptoms. Practice or Policy: The results suggest the importance of assessing observed positive emotional expressivity in context as a potential indicator of children’s maladjustment risk and the need for children to adapt their emotions to different contexts. Implications for assessing and supporting positive emotional expression balance and training emotional regulation in school are discussed.     

Ethics and Visual Rhetorics: Seeing's Not Believing Anymore

When working with graphics and illustrations, technical communicators face ethical questions at almost every step. The visual rhetorics available offer help with evaluating visual components but little guidance on ethical issues. This article presents examples of ethical conflicts, describes some of the prominent visual rhetorics, and discusses ethical issues that need to be addressed. Some steps for improving ethical awareness related to graphics and illustrations are suggested.     

Masculinity, Femininity, and Sex Role Attitudes in Early Adolescence: Exploring Gender Intensification

This longitudinal study of 200 young adolescent girls and boys (mean age 11.6 years in sixth grade) investigated the hypothesis that differences in masculinity, femininity, and sex role attitudes would intensify across the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades (between 11 and 13 years of age) and that pubertal timing (early, on time, late) would play a role in this intensification. Analyses revealed that sex differences in masculinity and sex role attitudes increased across grades, but not sex differences in femininity. Pubertal timing was not associated with this gender divergence, although the evidence is equivocal for boys. The results provide support for gender intensification, but the role of pubertal timing may not be as strong as previously supposed.     

The Mediating Role of Parenting Stress in Methadone-Maintained Mothers' Parenting

OBJECTIVE: To (1) examine the subjective experience of parenting stress as a mediator between 2 distal stressors (sociodemographic risk and global psychological maladjustment), and examine the parenting of methadone-maintained mothers, and (2) identify maladaptive and adaptive parenting correlates of specific types of parenting stress. DESIGN: We analyzed baseline data from interviews conducted with 74 methadone-maintained mothers who expressed interest in a randomized clinical trial study testing the efficacy of a relational parenting intervention. Baseline measures included questionnaires on maternal psychological maladjustment, parenting stress, parenting problems, and children's maladjustment. Three series of hierarchical linear regressions were conducted to test the mediation model and specificity of associations. RESULTS: Parenting stress mediated the associations between sociodemographic risk and 2 maladaptive parenting domains (aggression and neglect) and between psychological maladjustment and all 5 parenting domains examined (aggression, neglect, affective interactions, limit setting, and autonomy), although correlations were modest. Child-focused stress was associated with higher levels of aggression, limit-setting problems, and restricted autonomy. Stress derived from the mother - child relationship was associated with higher levels of neglect and affective withdrawal. CONCLUSIONS: Although preliminary in nature, results of this study indicate the importance of understanding the role of internal mechanisms (e.g., parenting stress) in the parenting processes of addicted women and examining specific correlates of their parenting problems.     

Contextual associations in trace conditioning

Rats were given tone-footshock pairings with a 0-, 10-, or 30-sec trace interval between tone offset and shock onset. Half the rats within each trace interval were tested for their conditioned fear of the tone through a lick suppression procedure; the remaining rats were evaluated for their fear of the background or contextual cues through their avoidance of the compartment in which conditioning had occurred. Less conditioning was observed to the tone with increasing trace intervals. However, conditioned fear of the context increased with increases in the trace duration. The ability of the more predictive stimulus, the tone, to overshadow the contextual cues was determined by the tone’s temporal contiguity with the footshock. The need to incorporate temporal parameters within current theories of conditioning is discussed.     

Parents do matter: trajectories of change in externalizing and internalizing problems in early adolescence

This study examined the relative influence of three parenting behaviors (support, behavioral control, and psychological control) and deviant peers on trajectories of externalizing and internalizing problems in early adolescence. A white, working-to-middle-class sample of adolescents and their mothers and fathers in two-earner families participated in a 32-year longitudinal study (N = 109 families). The study began when the adolescents were in sixth grade (M age = 11.5 years). Analyses showed that parents' firm behavioral control seemed to halt the upward trajectory in externalizing problems among adolescents with deviant peers. Initial levels of internalizing problems were higher among adolescents with parents who reported lower levels of behavioral control and among adolescents with deviant peers. This study suggests that parenting exerts an important influence in adolescents' lives and may do so even in the face of potentially negative peer influence.     

Some empirical issues in research on academic departments: Homogeneity,aggregation, and level of analysis

This study investigated the appropriateness of the academic departmental level of analysis. Homogeneity of faculty members' responses to measures of organizational structure, environmental uncertainty, and task routineness was examined to determine the legitimacy of aggregating those responses to create departmental level variables. Analysis of variance suggested that the structure and environmental uncertainty subscales were measuring departmental level phenomena, but that the task routineness scales were not. Results demonstrate the importance of empirically testing, rather than assuming, levels of analysis in studies of academic departments.