Child care effects in context: Quality, stability, and multiplicity in nonmaternal child care arrangements during the first 15 months of life.

Main and interactive effects of child care quality, stability, and multiplicity on infants' attachment security, language comprehension, language production, and cognitive development at 15 months were examined using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care. Thirty-nine percent of the infants in this sample experienced arrangement change, and 46% experienced multiple concurrent arrangements during the first 15 months. As in previous studies, concurrent quality, average quality, and quality slope significantly predicted cognitive and language development. There was some evidence that certain forms of unstable child care--including nonfamilial change, familial to nonfamilial change, and within-home to out-of-home change--were associated with poorer language development. Multiple child care arrangements involving family members positively predicted language comprehension; multiple care involving a mix of family and nonrelative caregivers negatively predicted language comprehension. Interactions among variables exhibited "effects in context." That is, under conditions of low or moderate quality in the primary care arrangement, the use of fewer multiple arrangements was associated with higher language scores; under conditions of high primary care quality, the use of more multiple arrangements was associated with higher language scores. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Change in depressive symptoms among daughter caregivers: An 18-month longitudinal study.

This longitudinal study investigates, over an 18-month period, the caregiving experience of a probability sample of 115 daughters who provided care to an aging parent. The levels of depressive symptoms manifested by these daughters were relatively low, with only 23.5% scoring in the clinical range during the study. Nevertheless, there was substantive change in depressive symptoms among the daughters during the 18 months. Daughters with higher levels of mastery were more likely to use problem-focused coping strategies, which led to reductions in depression, whereas daughters with lower levels of mastery were more likely to use emotion-focused coping, which led to increased levels of depression. Mastery was higher when the caregiving role was shared with a sibling; it was lower if the daughter had other caregiving responsibilities and if the parent care recipient had elevated levels of behavior problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

POD: A 3D-Integrated Broad-Purpose Acceleration Layer

To build a future many-core processor, industry must address the challenges of energy consumption and performance scalability. A 3D-integrated broad-purpose accelerator architecture called parallel-on-demand (POD) integrates a specialized SIMD-based die layer on top of a CISC superscalar processor to accelerate a variety of data-parallel applications. It also maintains binary compatibility and facilitates extensibility by virtualizing the acceleration capability.     

Longitudinal effects of adaptability on behavior problems and maternal depression in families of adolescents with autism.

Research on families of individuals with autism has tended to focus on child-driven effects utilizing models of stress and coping. The current study used a family systems perspective to examine whether family level adaptability promoted beneficial outcomes for mothers and their adolescents with autism over time. Participants were 149 families of children diagnosed with autism who were between the ages of 10 and 22 years during the 3-year period examined. Mothers reported on family adaptability, the mother–child relationship, their own depressive symptoms, and the behavior problems of their children at Wave 1, and these factors were used to predict maternal depression and child behavior problems 3 years later. Family level adaptability predicted change in both maternal depression and child behavior problems over the study period, above and beyond the contribution of the dyadic mother–child relationship. These associations did not appear to depend upon the intellectual disability status of the individual with autism. Implications for autism, parent mental health, family systems theory, and intervention with this population are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Utility of component-process approaches for understanding complex alcohol-related behavior within an executive functioning framework: Comment on Giancola (2000).

P. R. Giancola's (see record 2000-02949-013) macroconstruct framework of executive functions (EF) characterizes how cognitive processes work together to inhibit aggressive responding in provocative situations, and how alcohol intoxication increases the likelihood of aggression by disrupting these processes. His framework can be considered within contemporary controversies in cognitive neuroscience research: how interrelated EF operate, which brain areas are involved in cognitive control, the specificity of EF impairment to different behaviors, and how to operationalize EF to examine different questions. Giancola highlighted the use of one broad, multidimensional, EF construct for predicting aggressive behavior. His macroconstruct framework can also be used to examine component information-processing operations. Component-process approaches may facilitate integrative research at multiple levels and add to the specificity of EF impairment-aggression linkages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Weight cycling, psychological health, and binge eating in obese women.

This study examined the relationship between weight cycling and psychological health in 120 obese women. Weight cycling was defined in 2 ways by retrospective self-report: total lifetime weight loss and total number of weight cycles ≥20 lbs ( ≥9.07 kg). Psychological self-report measures assessed psychiatric symptoms, eating behavior, mood, stress, and perceptions of physical health. Of the 52 associations between weight cycling and psychological parameters, 8 were significant, with the most consistent association being between weight cycling and binge eating. Binge eating was also strongly associated with psychological distress, as found in previous studies. After adjusting for binge eating, however, weight cycling was independently related to only one of the psychological measures: perceived physical health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Finding groups using model-based cluster analysis: Heterogeneous emotional self-regulatory processes and heavy alcohol use risk.

Model-based cluster analysis is a new clustering procedure to investigate population heterogeneity utilizing finite mixture multivariate normal densities. It is an inferentially based, statistically principled procedure that allows comparison of nonnested models using the Bayesian information criterion to compare multiple models and identify the optimum number of clusters. The current study clustered 36 young men and women on the basis of their baseline heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), chronic alcohol use, and reasons for drinking. Two cluster groups were identified and labeled the high alcohol risk and normative groups. Compared to the normative group, individuals in the high alcohol risk group had higher levels of alcohol use and more strongly endorsed disinhibition and suppression reasons for use. The high alcohol risk group showed significant HRV changes in response to positive and negative emotional and appetitive picture cues, compared to neutral cues. In contrast, the normative group showed a significant HRV change only to negative cues. Findings suggest that individuals with autonomic self-regulatory difficulties may be more susceptible to heavy alcohol use and use of alcohol for emotional regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The failure of clinical psychologists to apply understood ethical principles.

In an earlier study, Bernard and Jara (1986) found that approximately 50% of clinical graduate students admitted that they would probably not do what the situation demanded when a peer was behaving unethically. In this study, we surveyed professional clinicians and found that significant numbers of them would also do less than they knew they should. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)