A transactional model of infant still‐face response and maternal behavior during the first year

The present study takes a transactional approach to extend understanding of temporal relations between parenting behaviors and infant response to the face‐to‐face still‐face, a widely used method assessing infants’ affective and behavioral response to a violation of social expectations. A low‐income, urban sample of 180 mothers and infants participated when infants were 4 and 6 months old. Directional relations between infants’ still‐face response (i.e., change in affect and gaze from interaction to still face) and three parenting dimensions were examined using cross‐lagged structural equation models. Infant still‐face response predicted later parenting behavior, while the reverse association was not significant. Specifically, infants with a greater reduction in positive affect from interaction to still face had parents with more positive parenting and less negative parenting behaviors 2 months later, controlling for prior parenting and concurrent infant behavior. Furthermore, infants who increased gaze to mother from interaction to still face had mothers who used more mental state talk 2 months later. Findings underscore the importance of examining transactional relations between infant and parent behaviors, and in particular highlight the influence of infants on parents. Acknowledging these infant‐effects is critical to the development and implementation of interventions targeting parent‐infant interactions.     

The effect of masks on the visual preference for faces in the first year of life

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, face masks were mandatory in many public spaces around the world. Since faces are the gateway to early social cognition, this raised major concerns about the effect face masks may have on infants' attention to faces as well as on their language and social development. The goal of the present study was to assess how face masks modulate infants' attention to faces over the course of the first year of life. We measured 3, 6, 9, and 12-month-olds’ looking behavior using a paired visual preference paradigm under two experimental conditions. First, we tested infants' preference for upright masked or unmasked faces of the same female individual. We found that regardless of age, infants looked equally long at the masked and unmasked faces. Second, we compared infants' attention to an upright masked versus an inverted masked face. Three- and 6-month-olds looked equally long to the masked faces when they were upright or inverted. However, 9- and 12-month-old infants showed a novelty preference for the inverted masked face. Our findings suggest that more experience with faces, including masked faces, leads to efficient adaptations of infants' visual system for processing impoverished social stimuli, such as partially occluded faces.     

Influence of physical activity on weight status during the first year of college

Abstract

Objective: To provide an analysis of weight change in response to physical activity levels among first year college students. Participants: First year students (N?=?114) participated during the 2012–2013 academic year. Methods: Using a web-based survey, researchers gathered information on physical activity and weight at three points: twice throughout the fall and once at the end of the spring semesters. Results: Over half (56.25%) of respondents reported weight gain (between 0.45 and 13.61?kg) from baseline to 9-month follow-up. Weight gainers reported an average gain of 4.20?kg. More than half of participants were not meeting minimal recommendations for cardiorespiratory fitness (59.5%) and strength (53.2%) by the end of the first year of college. Conclusion: This research provides support for intervention and implementation of strategies to promote self-regulation in college students during the transition to college. Addressing the importance of physical activity in weight maintenance is beneficial to first year students’ well-being.     

Infants' preference for speech is stable across the first year of life: Meta-analytic evidence

Previous work suggested that humans' sophisticated speech perception abilities stem from an early capacity to pay attention to speech in the auditory environment. What are the roots of this early preference? We assess the extent to which it is due to it being a vocal sound, a natural sound, and a familiar sound through a meta-analytic approach, classifying experiments as a function of whether they used native or foreign speech and whether the competitor, against which preference is tested, was vocal or non-vocal, natural or artificial. We also tested for the effect of age. Synthesizing data from 791 infants across 39 experiments, we found a medium effect size, confirming at the scale of the literature that infants reliably prefer speech over other sounds. This preference was not significantly moderated by the language used, vocal quality, or naturalness of the competitor, nor by infant age. The current body of evidence appears most compatible with the hypothesis that speech is preferred consistently as such and not just due to its vocal, natural, or familiar nature. We discuss limitations of the extant body of work on speech preference, including evidence consistent with a publication bias and low representation of certain stimuli types and ages.     

Focus on the first years: Correlates of substantiation of child maltreatment for families with children 0 to 4

The overall purpose of this study was to examine the correlates of substantiation of child neglect or child abuse in children 0–48 months of age in five areas: (1) child characteristics, (2) parent characteristics, (3) home characteristics, (4) social characteristics, and (5) maltreatment characteristics. A second purpose was to compare the results of this study to the current body of child maltreatment research.This study uses an ex-post facto design. A random sample of cases from a large metropolitan area in the southwest was obtained. Families whose cases were substantiated for maltreatment were compared to families whose cases were not substantiated. The exposure of children to a dangerous environment and poor parental skill were predictive of the substantiation in the multivariate analysis. Parents with fewer parenting skills, such as the inability to effectively communicate, lack of impulse control and use of harsh discipline, were predictive of child maltreatment in the multivariate analysis. The bivariate analysis revealed additional 22 variables as correlates of the substantiation within the 5 factors.     

A 10 year follow-up study of young people reported missing to the police for the first time in 2005

Young people who go missing face significant risks and vulnerabilities, yet there has been limited research looking their longer-term criminal justice-related outcomes. The aim of this study was to explore the criminal justice and mental health-related trajectories of a random sample of 215 young people reported missing for the first time in 2005, followed up for a decade. Two thirds (64.7%) of the sample had accumulated an offence history and 68.4% a victimisation history. More than a third were reported missing multiple times; these youth were characteristically different to single episode missing persons with respect to police contacts and mental health-related vulnerability. Results highlight a significant level of mental health concern among a population that police are not adequately equipped to respond to. Further research is needed to better understand motivations for going missing and the extent of risks and vulnerabilities they face while missing and upon return.     

Perceived consequences of hazing exposure during the first year of college: Associations with childhood victimization

Objective: This study investigates the association between histories of childhood victimization and perceived consequences of college hazing. Participants: First-year college students at four US universities (N?=?120). Method: Participants completed Web-based surveys asking about childhood victimization (eg, child maltreatment), peer victimization, and perceived consequences of hazing during college. Results: Results indicated that college students with childhood victimization histories perceived hazing to be negative. In particular, physical dating violence and a greater total number of childhood victimization exposures were related to a higher number of perceived negative consequences. Conclusion: Past victimization exposures confer risk on college students who experience hazing, in that these students are more likely to perceive negative consequences of hazing. Hazing-related policies and outreach efforts should consider these potential negative consequences, and counselors should be aware of the link between past victimization and how hazing might be experienced.     

Teaching intercultural awareness to first‐year medical students via experiential exercises

This study assessed the extent to which a one‐time experiential intervention improved intercultural awareness and sensitivity among first‐year medical students. The students participated in group activities in which they shared personal experiences, solved a hypothetical problem, and engaged in team building exercises. Post‐intervention, students reported less intercultural awareness, but a greater commitment to improving the intercultural climate of the medical school and an increased willingness to work in diverse groups during their medical training. The results of the study suggest that experiential interventions may provide an important complement to didactics around issues of intercultural awareness and sensitivity with medical students. Importantly, experiential interventions must provide students with sufficient time to reflect upon and discuss feelings, thoughts and attitudes that emerge during this kind of intercultural awareness training.     

Events and experiences impacting the development of clinical self confidence: a study of the first year of client contact

Research was conducted to identify the events and experiences influencing the development of clinical self-confidence during the first year of client contact for beginning marriage and family therapists. Thirty-nine recent graduates of a master's degree training program participated in a semistructured interview in which they were asked to describe the influences on their clinical self-confidence. Through qualitative analysis, four event and experience categories emerged as exerting the most influence on confidence at this stage of professional development: supervision, contact with clients, contact with peers, and personal life stress. The authors recommend providing strength-focused supervision, acknowledging the effects of client contact, encouraging peer contact, and attending to personal life stress.     

Measuring the Psychobiological Correlates of Daily Experience in Adolescents

Mapping the psychobiological correlates of social contexts, experiences, and emotional responses of adolescents in their daily lives provides insight into how adolescent well‐being shapes, and is shaped by, experience. Measures of these psychobiological correlates are enabled by devices and technologies that must be precise and suitable for adolescent participants. The present report reviews the most often used research measures, and suggests strategies for best practice, drawn from practical experience. The rapid advances in technological methods to collect attuned measures of psychological processes, social context, and biological function indicate the promise for multimodal measures in ecological settings. Attaining these methodological goals will support research to secure comprehensive, quality data, and advance the understanding of psychobiological function in ambulatory settings.     

Correlates of Engagement in Family Therapy

Sixty-five families who continued in conjoint family therapy were compared on a variety of antecedent variables to 65 families who dropped out. The following factors were found to be associated with engagement in therapy: (a) age of the identified patient; (b) number of children in the family; (c) the family's prior involvement with community agencies; (d) the presence or absence of antisocial acting-out; and (e) attendance of father at both the initial intake interview and early treatment sessions. Maximal discrimination between continuing and dropout families was demonstrated by simultaneous consideration of several significant variables. The implication of these results for family therapy selection criteria are discussed.     

Correlates of college student gambling in the United States

The authors report findings from the first national survey of gambling among college students. They collected information from 10,765 students attending 119 scientifically selected colleges included in the 2001 Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study (CAS), which indicated that 42% of responding students gambled in the last school year and 2.6% gambled weekly or more frequently. These findings contradict the widely held opinion based on previous studies that gambling is prevalent among college students. Previous studies used convenience samples that might have overestimated the risk for gambling problems. Male students and students of legal age (> or = 21 y) were more likely than others to gamble. Availability of gambling, measured by the number of types of gambling venues located in the schools' states, influenced their decisions to gamble. The concordance of characteristics associated with both gambling and binge drinking suggested a disposition to take risks that is independent of the risk objects.     

The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on infant development and maternal mental health in the first 2 years of life

We investigated how exogenous variation in exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic during the first year of life is related to infant development, maternal mental health, and perceived stress. Ninety-three socioeconomically diverse pregnant women were recruited before the pandemic to participate in a longitudinal study. Infants ranged in age at the beginning of lockdown (0–9.5 months old), thus experiencing different durations of pandemic exposure across the first year of life. The duration of pandemic exposure was not associated with family demographic characteristics, suggesting it captured exogenous variability. We tested associations between this exogenous variation in pandemic exposure and child and family outcomes. We also examined whether mother-reported disruptive life events were correlated with child and family outcomes. We found no association between duration of pandemic exposure in the first year of life and infant socioemotional problems, infant language development, or maternal mental health and perceived stress symptoms, at 12 or 24 months. However, we found that self-reported exposure to pandemic-related disruptive life events predicted greater maternal depression, anxiety, and perceived stress at 12 months, and greater depression and anxiety at 24 months. Socioeconomic status did not moderate these associations. These findings suggest cautious optimism for infants raised during this period.     

Emotional Correlates of Caregiving

This study examined correlational patterns among psychological measures administered to caregivers who participated in a training program to prevent elder abuse. Seventy caregivers of persons aged 50 years or older were administered the Cost of Care Index, Anger Inventory, Brief Symptom Inventory, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Results suggest that perceptions of caregiving burden are related to psychological distress and self-esteem but not to anger. Implications of these findings for caregiver training and elder abuse prevention are discussed.     

Correlates of tax evasion

Tax evasion has increased in the United States. Estimates of evasion indicate that the amount of federal income taxes evaded equals the federal deficit. Thus, controlling tax evasion should be a major concern of future tax policy decisions. This study analyzes the effects of 18 variables that might affect tax evasion. Specifically, the variables were used as independent variables in discriminant analyses to determine their relationship to tax evasion. The results indicated that the variables affect different types of tax evasion differently, and that all variables do not significantly influence tax evasion. Policy implications are presented based on these results.     

Emergence of a consonant bias during the first year of life: New evidence from own‐name recognition

Recent evidence suggests that during the first year of life, a preference for consonant information during lexical processing (consonant bias) emerges, at least for some languages like French. Our study investigated the factors involved in this emergence as well as the developmental consequences for variation in consonant bias emergence. In a series of experiments, we measured 5‐, 8‐, and 11‐month‐old French‐learning infants orientation times to a consonant or vowel mispronunciation of their own name, which is one of the few word forms familiar to infants at this young age. Both 5‐ and 8‐month‐olds oriented longer to vowel mispronunciations, but 11‐month‐olds showed a different pattern, initially orienting longer to consonant mispronunciations. We interpret these results as further evidence of an initial vowel bias, with consonant bias emergence by 11 months. Neither acoustic‐phonetic nor lexical factors predicted preferences in 8‐ and 11‐month‐olds. Finally, counter to our predictions, a vowel bias at the time of test for 11‐month‐olds was related to later productive vocabulary outcomes.     

Correlates and Predictors of Lottery Play in the United Kingdom

Previous studies of lottery play have tended to adopt one particular approach, concentrating on demographic, personality, cognitive, or social aspects of play. Using the recently introduced United Kingdom National Lottery, this study investigated variables associated with all of these approaches within an overall integrative framework. In a community sample (N = 160), Lottery play was positively correlated with friends' Lottery play, Instants Lottery play, frequency of other gambling, and misunderstanding of Lottery probability, and negatively correlated with level of education. In a regression analysis, friends' Lottery play, Instants Lottery play, and education level were significant unique predictors of Lottery play, and a combination of these and other variables accounted for 38% of the variance in playing behavior. The results are discussed predominantly in terms of the nature of lotteries as a social activity.