Social Cognition, Child Neglect, and Child Injury Risk: The Contribution of Maternal Social Information Processing to Maladaptive Injury Prevention Beliefs Within a High-Risk Sample.

Objective: Inadequate supervision has been linked to children's injuries. Parental injury prevention beliefs may play a role in supervision, yet little theory has examined the origins of such beliefs. This study examined whether mothers who perpetrated child neglect, who as a group provide inadequate supervision, have more maladaptive beliefs. Then, it tested a social information processing (SIP) model for explaining these beliefs. Methods: SIP and injury prevention beliefs were assessed in disadvantaged mothers of preschoolers (N = 145), half with child neglect histories. Results: The neglect group exhibited significantly more maladaptive injury prevention beliefs than comparisons. As predicted, SIP was linked to beliefs that may increase injury risk, even after accounting for relevant sociodemographic variables. Conclusions: Findings support the link of beliefs to injury risk and suggest that specific cognitive problems may underlie these beliefs. Future work should further validate this model, which may inform enhancements to prevention efforts.

Validation of a New Patient-Reported Outcome Measure of the Functional Impact of Essential Tremor on Activities of Daily Living.

Background: The Essential Tremor Rating Assessment Scale (TETRAS) is a popular scale for essential tremor (ET), but its activities of daily living (ADL) and performance (P) subscales are based on a structured interview and physical exam. No patient-reported outcome (PRO) scale for ET has been developed according to US regulatory guidelines. Objective: Develop and validate a TETRAS PRO subscale. Methods: Fourteen items, rated 0-4, were derived from TETRAS ADL and structured cognitive interviews of 18 ET patients. Convergent validity analyses of TETRAS PRO versus TETRAS ADL, TETRAS-P, and the Quality of Life in Essential Tremor Questionnaire (QUEST) were computed for 67 adults with ET or ET plus. Test-retest reliability was computed at intervals of 1 and 30 days. The influence of mood (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, HADS) and coping behaviors (Essen Coping Questionnaire, ECQ) was examined with multiple linear regression. Results: TETRAS PRO was strongly correlated (r > 0.7) with TETRAS ADL, TETRAS-P, and QUEST and exhibited good to excellent reliability (Cronbach alpha 95%CI = 0.853-0.926; 30-day test-retest intraclass correlation 95%CI = 0.814-0.921). The 30-day estimate of minimum detectable change (MDC) was 6.6 (95%CI 5.2-8.0). TETRAS-P (rsemipartial = 0.607), HADS depression (rsemipartial = 0.384), and the coping strategy of information seeking and exchange of experiences (rsemipartial = 0.176) contributed statistically to TETRAS PRO in a multiple linear regression (R2 = 0.67). Conclusions: TETRAS PRO is a valid and reliable scale that is influenced strongly by tremor severity, moderately by mood (depression), and minimally by coping skills. The MDC for TETRAS PRO is probably sufficient to detect clinically important change.

Profile of social self-management practices in daily life with Parkinson's disease is associated with symptom severity and health quality of life.

PURPOSE: Social participation is a key determinant of healthy aging, yet little is known about how people with Parkinson's disease manage social living. This study describes individual differences in social self-management practices and their association with symptom severity and health quality of life. METHODS: People with Parkinson's disease (N = 90) completed measures of healthy routines, activities and relationships, symptom severity, and health related quality of life. Cluster analysis identified profiles of social self-management practices. Analysis of variance tested differences between profiles in symptom severity and health quality of life. RESULTS: Participants clustered into one of seven groups according to different combinations of three practices: health resources utilization, activities in home and community, and social support relationships. The healthiest cluster engaged equally in all three practices at above sample average degree of engagement. Four clusters that engaged at or above sample average in activities in home and community experienced less health problems than three clusters that engaged below average. Variation in aspects of social lifestyle unrelated to health appeared also to contribute to profile diversity. CONCLUSION: Findings provide insight into similarity and variation in how people with Parkinson's disease engage with social self-management resources and point to person-centered interventions.Implications for RehabilitationSocial self-management is a biopsychosocial construct to identify and describe self-care practices that engage one's social resources for managing healthful daily living.People with Parkinson's disease vary in their profiles of engaging in social self-management practices in daily living, and this variability relates to severity of symptoms and health quality of life.Learning how to identify health-centered social self-management practices may help people with Parkinson's disease to focus on the healthfulness of their own practices.Learning how to strategically engage one's social resources as part of self-care may help people with Parkinson's disease to master managing their health and well-being in daily life.

Cross-cultural reading the mind in the eyes: an fMRI investigation.

The ability to infer others' thoughts, intentions, and feelings is regarded as uniquely human. Over the last few decades, this remarkable ability has captivated the attention of philosophers, primatologists, clinical and developmental psychologists, anthropologists, social psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists. Most would agree that the capacity to reason about others' mental states is innately prepared, essential for successful human social interaction. Whether this ability is culturally tuned, however, remains entirely uncharted on both the behavioral and neural levels. Here we provide the first behavioral and neural evidence for an intracultural advantage (better performance for same- vs. other-culture) in mental state decoding in a sample of native Japanese and white American participants. We examined the neural correlates of this intracultural advantage using fMRI, revealing greater bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci recruitment during same- versus other-culture mental state decoding in both cultural groups. These findings offer preliminary support for cultural consistency in the neurological architecture subserving high-level mental state reasoning, as well as its differential recruitment based on cultural group membership.

Experienced facial masking indirectly compromises quality of life through stigmatization of women and men with Parkinson's disease.

This study examined the relationship between self-reported facial masking and quality of life (QoL) in people with Parkinson's disease (PD), and tested experienced stigma as a mediator and gender as a moderator of this relationship. The strength of stigma as a mediator was compared against an alternative mediator, depression. Ninety people with PD (34 women) rated difficulty showing facial expression (masking), and completed the Stigma Scale for Chronic Illness, Geriatric Depression Scale (15-item), and Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire-39. A conditional process model tested the indirect effect of facial masking on QoL through stigma, separately for women and men. A parallel indirect model included both stigma and depression to compare their statistical and clinical significance as mediators. Gender-moderated mediation of stigma reduced the association between facial masking and QoL to non-significance, suggesting stigma explained the association between facial masking and QoL. While facial masking was more stigmatizing for women than for men, stigma mediated the facial masking-QoL association for both women and men. Stigma (controlling for depression) reached a statistically and clinically significant level of mediation, whereas depression (controlling for stigma) reached a statistically yet not clinically significant level of mediation. People with PD who experience more severe facial masking feel more stigmatized, especially women. Regardless of gender, an increase in stigma from facial masking increases the likelihood of compromised QoL that reaches both statistical and clinical levels of significance.

Maternal Social Information Processing and the Frequency and Severity of Mother-Perpetrated Physical Abuse.

The frequency and severity of physical abuse influences children's outcomes, yet little theory-based research has explored what predicts its course. This study examined the potential role of social information processing (SIP) factors in the course of abuse. Mothers with histories of perpetrating physical abuse ( N = 62) completed measures of SIP, and the frequency and severity of mother-perpetrated physical abuse were collected from Child Protection Services records. Poorer problem-solving capacities were significantly related to greater frequency of physical abuse. Hostile attributions toward children were positively associated with abuse severity. Controlling for demographics and co-occurrence of neglect, SIP factors together accounted for a significant proportion of variance in the frequency of physical abuse, but not severity. With the exception of unrealistic expectations, preliminary evidence supported a link between maternal SIP and the course of abuse perpetration. Future research directions and implications for intervention are discussed.

Intellectual Disabilities and Neglectful Parenting: Preliminary Findings on the Role of Cognition in Parenting Risk.

Parents with intellectual disabilities (PID) are over-represented in the child protective services (CPS) system. This study examined a more nuanced view of the role of cognition in parenting risk. Its goal was to validate a social information processing (SIP) model of child neglect that draws on social cognition research and advances in neuroscience. Mothers who had CPS child neglect cases were compared with mothers with no CPS involvement on a set of SIP factors. Mothers with low IQs were oversampled. As predicted, the Neglect group had significantly greater SIP problems than the Comparison mothers. SIP problems were associated with direct measures of neglect (e.g., cognitive stimulation provided children, home hygiene, belief regarding causes of child injuries). Further, for the direct measures that were most closely linked to CPS Neglect Status, IQ did not add significant predictive capacity beyond SIP factors in preliminary model testing. Implications for intervention with PID discussed.

More than meets the eye: the role of self-identity in decoding complex emotional states.

Folk wisdom asserts that "the eyes are the window to the soul," and empirical science corroborates a prominent role for the eyes in the communication of emotion. Herein we examine variation in the ability to "read" the eyes of others as a function of social group membership, employing a widely used emotional state decoding task: "Reading the Mind in Eyes." This task has documented impaired emotional state decoding across racial groups, with cross-race performance on par with that previously reported as a function of autism spectrum disorders. The present study extended this work by examining the moderating role of social identity in such impairments. For college students more highly identified with their university, cross-race performance differences were not found for judgments of "same-school" eyes but remained for "rival-school" eyes. These findings suggest that impaired emotional state decoding across groups may thus be more amenable to remediation than previously realized.

Smiling and sad wrinkles: Age-related changes in the face and the perception of emotions and intentions.

There is a common belief that wrinkles in the aging face reflect frequently experienced emotions and hence resemble these affective displays. This implies that the wrinkles and folds in elderly faces interfere with the perception of other emotions currently experienced by the elderly as well as with the inferences perceivers draw from these expressions. Whereas there is ample research on the impact of aging on emotion recognition, almost no research has focused on how emotions expressed by the elderly are perceived by others. The present research addresses this latter question. Young participants rated the emotion expressions and behavioral intentions of old and young faces displaying identical expressions. The findings suggest that emotions shown on older faces have reduced signal clarity and may consequently have less impact on inferences regarding behavioral intentions. Both effects can be expected to have negative consequences for rapport achieved in everyday interactions involving the elderly.

Mental state decoding abilities in young adults with borderline personality disorder traits.

Previous studies have demonstrated that patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) tend to misattribute malevolence to benign social stimuli, including facial expressions. Yet, facial emotion recognition studies examining those with BPD have yielded mixed results, with some studies showing impaired accuracy and others demonstrating enhanced accuracy in the recognition of emotions or mental states. The current study examined the ability to decode mental states from photographs of just the eye region of faces in a nonclinical sample of young adults who exhibited BPD traits (high BPD) compared with those who did not (low BPD). Group differences in mental state decoding ability depended on the valence of the stimuli. The high-BPD group performed better for negative stimuli compared with the low-BPD group, but did not perform significantly different from the low-BPD group for stimuli of neutral or positive valence. The high-BPD group also demonstrated a response bias for attributing negative mental states to facial stimuli. In addition, findings suggested that the group difference in accuracy for negative stimuli could not be explained by response bias, because the group difference in response bias for negative stimuli did not reach significance. These findings suggest that BPD traits may be associated with enhanced ability to detect negative emotions and a bias for attributing negative emotions to nonnegative social stimuli.

The relationship between burnout and support for punishment and treatment: a preliminary examination.

According to the existing literature, support for punishment and support for treatment of inmates are the two major orientations held by correctional workers. There is a small but growing body of studies that has examined the predictors of these orientations. The literature suggests that personal characteristics account for little of the variance in correctional orientations whereas individual-level perceptions of work environment factors are related to correctional orientations; however, the effects of job burnout have not been explored. This study investigates the relationship between burnout and the two correctional orientations. Burnout has three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and ineffectiveness. This study finds that depersonalization is positively related to support for punishment and negatively related to support for treatment. Ineffectiveness leads to a lower support for treatment whereas emotional exhaustion leads to a higher support for treatment.