Parents with Intellectual Disability Learning to Parent: the role of experience and informal learning

Parenthood for people with intellectual disability remains controversial. This is so despite current concern about the participation of people with intellectual disability in socially valued roles. Formal parent training is frequently presumed necessary to teach competent parenting. Effective programs require specific skill assessment followed by performance‐based training. Training needs to include modelling, practice, and feedback and to occur in situations where the skill is needed. The role of the informal and naturally occurring context of parenting‐‐the context of everyday family life‐‐has been overlooked. Drawing on an ethnographic study of family life with six parent couples, two central themes on the role of informal learning and experience in parenting are reported. Several ways in which service providers can take account of the experiential nature of learning about parenting are proposed.     

Cultural Orientation Trajectories and Substance Use: Findings From a Longitudinal Study of Mexican‐Origin Youth

Cultural adaptation may influence Latino youth substance use (SU) development, yet few longitudinal studies have examined cultural change over time and adolescent SU outcomes. Using longitudinal data collected annually across ages 10–16 from 674 Mexican‐origin youth (50% female), the authors characterized cultural adaptation patterns for language use (English and Spanish use), values (American values and familism values), and identity (ethnic pride), and examined whether these cultural adaptation patterns were associated with differential SU risk. Youth with increasing bilingualism and high/stable family values had lower SU risk compared to youth who primarily spoke English and endorsed decreasing family values, respectively. Ethnic pride trajectories were not associated with SU. Findings highlight the importance of considering cultural change related to Latino youth SU.     

Emotional Feeding and Emotional Eating: Reciprocal Processes and the Influence of Negative Affectivity

Emotional eating, that is, eating more in response to negative mood, is often seen in children. But the origins of emotional eating remain unclear. In a representative community sample of Norwegian 4‐year‐olds followed up at ages 6, 8, and 10 years (analysis sample: n = 801), one potential developmental pathway was examined: a reciprocal relation between parental emotional feeding and child emotional eating. The results revealed that higher levels of emotional feeding predicted higher levels of emotional eating and vice versa, adjusting for body mass index and initial levels of feeding and eating. Higher levels of temperamental negative affectivity (at age 4) increased the risk for future emotional eating and feeding.     

Second-order conditioning detects unexpressed morphine-induced salt aversion

Morphine failed to condition a salt taste aversion at a dose (15 mg/kg) sufficient to produce a robust aversion to a saccharin taste. Indeed, three different concentrations of salt (1%, 1.5%, and 2%) paired with the same morphine dose yielded no direct evidence for conditioned aversion. Yet, when a novel saccharin taste was paired in compound with the previously conditioned salt conditioned stimulus, we found evidence for a conditioning to the saccharin cue alone in three separate experiments. Control groups eliminated alternative accounts such as neophobia and differential exposure to morphine. Combined, these findings indicate that morphine conditioned a salt aversion. Although this aversion was not directly expressed, a second-order conditioning procedure was able to provide a more sensitive index of conditioning.     

Counterconditioning of memory in rats

Two experiments examined the counterconditioning of an aversively motivated response in rats. Presentation of a highly palatable sugar solution (maltose in Experiment 1; sucrose in Experiment 2) to thirsty rats was used as the counterconditioning treatment. In Experiment 1, the counterconditioning procedure was found to be effective in modifying both a newly acquired and a cue-reactivated fear memory. In Experiment 2, the counterconditioning effect was shown to occur when the fear memory was reactivated with a noncontingent exposure to the unconditioned stimulus rather than the conditioned stimulus. This outcome supports the interpretation of counterconditioning as a modification of some central representation of the original training memory, rather than the acquisition of a competing peripheral response. The methodological implications of the present approach to counterconditioning are considered.