The Latent Structure of Youth Responses to Peer Provocation

This study examined whether the three categories often applied to children’s behavior—aggressive, avoidant, and assertive—actually capture the structure of a naturalistic sample of youth behavior coded at a more micro level. A sample of lower-income youth (N = 392; M age = 12.69, SD = 0.95) completed a new multiple-choice measure asking them to select responses to scenarios depicting physical, verbal, and relational provocation by a peer. Youth responses to the vignettes showed the expected associations with self-reported aggression and regulation of anger, providing preliminary evidence for the convergent validity of the measure. Factor analysis confirmed that responses loaded on three factors: aggression, avoidance, and assertion. Model fit was adequate (RMSEA = .028) and cross-validated in a second sample (RMSEA = .039). Several types of responses loaded on two factors suggesting that some strategies that youth use to manage provocation are not “pure” examples of these broadband categories. Implications for conceptualization and measurement of youth social behavior are discussed

Changes in Parental Prosody Mediate Effect of Parent-Training Intervention on Infant Language Production

Objective: Parent-training interventions to reduce behavior problems in young children typically coach parents on the content of their speech, but rarely assess parents' prosody during parent-child interactions. Infant-directed speech helps shape the parent-infant relationship and promote language development, which predicts adaptive behavioral outcomes in children. The current study examined (a) the effect of a parent-training intervention on parents' vocal cues in interactions with their infant and (b) whether parental prosody mediated the impact of the intervention on infant language production. Method: Sixty families with 12- to 15-month-old infants (47% female; 95% of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity) participated in the Infant Behavior Program (IBP), a brief home-based adaptation of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, or received standard pediatric care. Speech analysis was performed on mothers' (n = 40) utterances during infant-led play pre- and postintervention. Infants' number of utterances spoken during play was assessed at pre- and postintervention, and at 3- and 6-month follow-ups. Results: Mothers who received the IBP spoke with greater pitch range and slower tempo postintervention, when controlling for baseline prosody. Change in these vocal cues, which are typical of infant-directed speech, mediated the effect of the intervention on infants' word production after 6 months. Conclusions: Interventions targeting the content of parents' speech during parent-infant interactions may lead to changes in parental prosody, which may be beneficial for infants' language development. Impaired linguistic abilities in infancy are strongly associated with behavior problems in later childhood; thus, these findings highlight a potential mechanism for intervention efficacy in promoting positive socioemotional and behavioral outcomes. What is the public health significance of this article? Interventions targeting parent behaviors in the context of the parent-infant relationship may promote the use of infant-directed speech prosody. Parents' use of these vocal cues may be beneficial for infants' language development, which has been associated with adaptive socioemotional and behavioral outcomes in later childhood

Loneliness and the recognition of vocal socioemotional expressions in adolescence

Lonely individuals show increased social monitoring and heightened recognition of negative facial expressions. The current study investigated whether this pattern extends to other nonverbal modalities by examining associations between loneliness and the recognition of vocal emotional expressions. Youth, ages 11–18 years (n = 122), were asked to identify the intended emotion in auditory portrayals of basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness) and social expressions (friendliness, meanness). Controlling for social anxiety, age, and gender, links between loneliness and recognition accuracy were emotion-specific: loneliness was associated with poorer recognition of fear, but better recognition of friendliness. Lonely individuals’ motivation to avoid threat may interfere with the recognition of fear, but their attunement to affiliative cues may promote the identification of friendliness in affective prosody. Monitoring for social affiliation cues in others’ voices might represent an adaptive function of the reconnection system in lonely youth, and be a worthy target for intervention

Rethinking the fall of the planter class

This issue of Atlantic Studies began life as a one-day conference held at Chawton House Library in Hampshire, UK, and funded by the University of Southampton. The conference aimed, like this issue, to bring together scholars currently working on the history of the British West Indian planter class in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and to discuss how, when, and why the fortunes of the planters went into decline. As this introduction notes, the difficulties faced by the planter class in the British West Indies from the 1780s onwards were an early episode in a wider drama of decline for New World plantation economies. The American historian Lowell Ragatz published the first detailed historical account of their fall. His work helped to inform the influential arguments of Eric Williams, which were later challenged by Seymour Drescher. Recent research has begun to offer fresh perspectives on the debate about the decline of the planters, and this collection brings together articles taking a variety of new approaches to the topic, encompassing economic, political, cultural, and social histor

sj-docx-2-cpx-10.1177_21677026231194963 – Supplemental material for Association Between Depression Symptoms and Emotional-Communication Dynamics

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-cpx-10.1177_21677026231194963 for Association Between Depression Symptoms and Emotional-Communication Dynamics by Amy J. P. Gregory, Melanie A. Dirks, Jonas P. Nitschke, Jessica M. Wong, Lauren J. Human and Jennifer A. Bartz in Clinical Psychological Science</p

sj-docx-3-cpx-10.1177_21677026231194963 – Supplemental material for Association Between Depression Symptoms and Emotional-Communication Dynamics

Supplemental material, sj-docx-3-cpx-10.1177_21677026231194963 for Association Between Depression Symptoms and Emotional-Communication Dynamics by Amy J. P. Gregory, Melanie A. Dirks, Jonas P. Nitschke, Jessica M. Wong, Lauren J. Human and Jennifer A. Bartz in Clinical Psychological Science</p

sj-pdf-1-cpx-10.1177_21677026231194963 – Supplemental material for Association Between Depression Symptoms and Emotional-Communication Dynamics

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-cpx-10.1177_21677026231194963 for Association Between Depression Symptoms and Emotional-Communication Dynamics by Amy J. P. Gregory, Melanie A. Dirks, Jonas P. Nitschke, Jessica M. Wong, Lauren J. Human and Jennifer A. Bartz in Clinical Psychological Science</p