Research has demonstrated working memory improves during childhood and supports vocabulary, grammar, and reading development (Adams & Gathercole, 1995, 1996; Bowey, 1996; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989, 1990). Prior to the addition of the episodic buffer in Baddeley’s model of working memory (2000a), auditory and visual aspects of working memory were often treated separately without evaluating contributions from the ability to integrate the two forms of information. The present study was designed to investigate the development of visual-verbal integration in working memory and its role in language and reading development. Tests of receptive vocabulary, receptive grammar, and decoding ability were administered to 46 children between 6 and 10 years of age. Working memory was assessed with a paired associates task where stimuli varied based on modality and contributions from long-term memory were limited by using nonwords and unfamiliar images. Data from the same tests of language and working memory were also available for 58 children between 3 and 5 years of age (Robinson & Smith, 2005) and included in exploratory analyses. Developmental findings were consistent with previous studies in indicating the unimodal aspects of working memory improve steadily across the entire age range examined. Growth curve analyses of cross-modal working memory, which taxed the episodic buffer, showed curvilinear growth where spans increased rapidly between 3 and 7 years of age then appeared to slow dramatically. Analyses of residuals support the notion of integrative growth above and beyond changes in unimodal working memory. Although cross-modal working memory did not make significant contributions to decoding ability, it accounted for 11% of unique variance in receptive grammar scores in school-aged children.

Phonological awareness (PA) can be defined as the ability to recognize that orthographic patterns represent specific phonemic elements of speech (Nitrouer, 1999). Alternatively, some view PA as a purely linguistic skill that involves the ability to recognize and manipulate specific speech sounds (e.g., Catts, 1991). A large body of research indicates the primary problem for children who do not learn to read is a deficit in PA (e.g., Morris et al., 1998; Stanovich, 1988). Far less work has examined what drives the development of PA (Metsala & Walley, 1998). Recently, it has been suggested that oral language skills influence the acquisition of PA (e.g., Dickinson, McCabe, Anastasopoulos, Peisner-Feinberg, & Poe, 2003; Olofsson & Niedersoe 1999). The primary purpose of this study was to examine the development of PA skills in children classified with a reading disability who evidenced either typical or below-average oral language skills based on measures of receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and listening comprehensions skills. In addition, this study examined whether differing conceptualizations of PA resulted in differential findings concerning the relationship between oral language skills and PA. Finally, this study examined the relationships that exist between different domains of language and different aspects of reading achievement. Elementary school age students participated in the study with 211 students receiving 70 hours of small group reading intervention. Sixty-eight students served as a control group. Children’s PA was assessed at three time points throughout the school year. Repeated measures ANCOVA and HLM analyses were conducted with letter sound knowledge and phonological processing skills as dependent variables. Students with below-average oral language skills evidenced significantly (p < .05) lower scores on both measures compared to students with typical oral language skills. Children with below-average oral language skills did not acquire PA skills at a significantly slower rate than children with typical oral language skills. Analyses also indicated that the relationship between oral language skills and PA skills remains consistent across different conceptualizations of PA. SEM analyses showed that receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary knowledge independently contributed to PA skills. Only expressive vocabulary knowledge entered into a relationship with word identification skills.

The study examined the long-term effects of a death of a child on a variety of parental psychological and physical outcomes, incorporating several methodological and conceptual innovations over previous research. Prior bereavement research typically has focused on functioning within a short time period after the death and often has utilized self-selected samples of grieving parents; thus current models of grief may be inadequate. In contrast, this study broadened the timeframe in which bereavement is studied (average time since death= 20 years), and examined a sample of bereaved parents who were not self-selected. Participants were members of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (713 bereaved and 713 non-bereaved parents) who were assessed in 1957, 1975/77, and 1992/94 and were matched on family of origin demographic variables. Results show that bereaved parents reported a higher sense of purpose in life than non-bereaved parents. Further, higher levels of purpose in life was associated with lower levels of depression in bereaved parents, and with lower levels of physical illness in bereaved men. As expected, bereaved parents exhibited higher levels of depression than non-bereaved parents. For bereaved women, having someone with whom to share private thoughts and feelings was correlated with higher levels of depression, indicating that social support may be sought when functioning is poor. Higher job satisfaction was associated with lower levels of depression in bereaved women suggesting that role variegation is a factor promoting resiliency. Further, having another child after the death of a child was associated with lower levels of depression for bereaved women. Contrary to expectations, having other children in the home at the time of death was associated with lower social support and higher divorce rates for bereaved women. In sum, the current study suggests that the negative effects of the death of a child are longstanding. Several factors (e.g., purpose in life, role variegation) may promote resiliency and thus merit more scientific study and clinical attention.

Social conflict is a part of everyday life, and it can be a potent stressor for both humans and other animals. In the laboratory, when two Syrian hamsters (Mesocricetus auratus) compete for territory, a dominance hierarchy is quickly formed. Becoming subordinate is a significant stressor resulting in increased release of adrenocorticotropic hormone, β-endorphin, and cortisol. Defeated hamsters will also subsequently fail to display territorial aggression in future social encounters and will instead display increased submissive behavior, even in the presence of a smaller, non-aggressive intruder. This change in behavior is consistent and long-lasting and has been termed conditioned defeat (CD). Corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) is an important neuropeptide in the control of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis response to stress. It is also involved in a number of behaviors such as anxiety, stress responding, food intake, learning, and memory. The widespread distribution of CRF, CRF-like peptides, and CRF receptors, particularly in brain sites related to anxiety, fear, and stress responses, suggests a role for CRF and CRF-like peptides in modulating emotional responses other than via HPA axis activity. It has also been shown that CRF may have a role in the acquisition and expression of CD. Non-specific and CRF type 2-specific CRF antagonists reduce the acquisition and expression of CD in male hamsters while injection of a CRF type 1-specific antagonist does not. Therefore, the goal of this dissertation was to investigate the role of CRF type 1 and 2 receptors in CD in hamsters and to identify neuroanatomical locations where CRF may be acting. It was found that non-specific or CRF type 1 receptor specific agonists enhance the expression, but not acquisition, of CD. Further, these agonists appear to enhance aggressive behavior in animals that were not previously defeated, suggesting a modulatory role for CRF type 1 receptors in agonistic behavior that depends on an animal’s previous social experience. Further, localization of CRF receptors was determined in hamster brain in sites thought important for CD and agonistic behavior, but changes in receptor binding following defeat were not observed. Implications of these results and future directions are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to explore the stress-eating relation established in the literature by examining a naturally occurring stressor, adolescent dating violence, and its effect on eating in adolescent girls. Specifically, analyses focused on assessing the mediating role of depression in the adolescent dating violence-fruit and vegetable intake relation and the moderating role of sports team involvement in the adolescent dating violence-depression relation. A nationally representative sample of 5,892 black, Hispanic, and white adolescent girls were surveyed using measures assessing physical and sexual dating violence experiences, depressed affect, suicidal thoughts, plans, and/or attempts, fruit and vegetable intake and involvement in team sports. This study supported the hypothesis that depression mediates the relation between adolescent dating violence and dietary intake, but only in black adolescent girls. These findings suggest that black girls victimized by dating violence experience depression, which may affect their desire or motivation to eat properly. This study also supported the hypothesis that sports team involvement, a source of social support and physical activity, moderated the relation between adolescent dating violence and depression and suicidality, but only for white adolescent girls. For this group, participating on a sports team served to protect those girls reporting dating violence from experiencing depression at the high rate reported by those dating violence victims not involved on a sports team. The findings presented in this study provide evidence that depression explains how experiences of dating violence affect eating behavior for a high-risk group, black adolescent girls. Recognizing depression’s contribution to this group’s high rate of obesity and overweight is an important step in preventing obesity and obesity-related outcomes in this population. Also, this study highlights an important source of social support, sports team involvement, and its potential to protect dating violence victims from experiencing depression and suicidal ideation, plans, and attempts.

A processing model of emotion regulation (PMER) was investigated by assessing the attachment system and the two types of emotion regulation strategies (adaptive and maladaptive) in undergraduate students (N = 307) at Georgia State University. The analysis of the data revealed an interesting set of findings: (a) attachment anxiety was a stronger indicator of whether people use adaptive or maladaptive emotion regulation strategies than was attachment avoidance; (b) self efficacy, and not cognitive inability to suppress unwanted thoughts, partially mediated the relationship between attachment anxiety and adaptive emotion regulation strategies; and (c) cognitive inability to suppress unwanted thoughts, and not self efficacy beliefs, partially mediated the relationship between attachment anxiety and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. Overall, the findings provided substantial support for the PMER, and also have important implications for clinical interventions aimed at effective emotion regulation.

School violence is considered the most significant problem facing United States schools (Elam, Rose, & Gallup, 1999, 2003, 2004). Although school shootings receive the bulk of media attention, incidents such as physical assaults, property crimes, intimidation, and sexual harassment are much more common (National Center for Education Statistics, 2004). In addition, little is known about the experiences of teachers. The present study examines the relationship between various types of school violence and teacher burnout. The final sample consisted of 315 high school teachers who returned surveys that assessed knowledge of direct and indirect experiences with violent acts at school over the past 12 months. Respondents also completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory. A series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses was used to determine how much variance in three domains of professional burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, personal accomplishment) was accounted for by direct and indirect experiences with violence. Results suggest 1) that teachers experience and witness a broad range of violent acts (particularly sexual harassment) in their workplaces, and 2) that direct and indirect exposure to both physical and psychological forms of violence resulted in higher emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. Implications are discussed.

Women’s use of aggression in intimate partner relationships is consistently debated by researchers of intimate partner aggression. One tenet suggests women use aggression within intimate relationships at similar rates as men. Conversely, a second tenet acknowledges women’s use of aggression but suggests that the meaning and consequences associated with women’s aggression is not coercive or severely injurious, which are typical characteristics of men’s use of aggression. The current study evaluated incarcerated women in order to build upon an integrative approach that suggests that women’s use of aggression is related to the relationship dynamics generated from variations in coercive and conflictual behaviors. Further, the current study evaluated the moderating relation of childhood abuse history and posttraumatic stress symptoms between relationship dynamics and women’s use of aggression. Ninety-six women, who participated in a larger research project that investigated incarcerated women’s life experience, reported on the dynamics of their most recent abusive heterosexual relationship, their own use of aggression (minor and severe) and childhood abuse history and posttraumatic stress symptoms. Findings suggest that incarcerated women involved in intimate relationships characterized as highly conflictual use significantly more minor and severe aggression toward their partners than women involved in relationships with low levels of conflicts. The finding is significant regardless of the level of coercion present in the relationship. Lastly, neither childhood abuse history nor posttraumatic symptoms moderated the relation between intimate partner relationship dynamics and women’s use of aggression. Various reasons for the lack of support for the moderating effect of history on women’s use of aggression are discussed.

Sexual abuse is defined as any act which forces or coerces a child into engaging in non-consensual sexual activities that they may not understand. As child sexual abuse is recognized as a mental health and public health concern, increased research efforts have been directed towards identifying the physical, emotional, and cognitive effects of child sexual abuse. The majority of such research uses adult survivors of child sexual abuse and is quantitative, retrospective, and correlational in design. Qualitative approaches with adults are few; thus far, descriptive research with children is largely limited to forensic applications. Pargament (1997) proposes the existence of religious coping, or the introduction of the sacred in an individual’s search for significance in times of stress. Initial research efforts have begun to delineate the positive and negative religious coping strategies used within various adult populations. The purpose of the present investigation is to gain an experiential understanding of religious coping from the perspective of adolescent girls who have experienced sexual abuse. Open-ended interviews and phenomenological analysis with each of the 6 participants revealed the complexity present in their experience of religious coping. The presence of a highly relationship-based experience of religious coping is discussed and its implications for the assessment and treatment of complex posttraumatic stress disorder are explored. Finally, implications of the present investigation for the adolescent participants and members of spiritual communities are delineated.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD; Crohn’s disease & ulcerative colitis) is a chronic illness in which medication and dietary adherence may determine disease natural history and severity of symptoms. We hypothesized that age, prospective memory (PM) and body satisfaction would predict medication and dietary adherence in adolescents with IBD and that gender and age would modify the relation between body satisfaction and adherence, with older girls being less adherent than younger children. Fifty-seven participants aged 10-21 (M = 16.5, SD = 2.3) with IBD and their caregivers were recruited. Informed consent, demographics and body satisfaction questionnaires were completed. PM was assessed using a naturalistic task. Adherence was measured by the 1-week completion of a medication and dietary log. A questionnaire was administered to evaluate coping strategies used for overcoming obstacles to dietary adherence. Two hierarchical regressions were conducted for medication and diet adherence respectively. As hypothesized, age had a significant effect (â = -.42, p < .01) on dietary adherence, accounting for approximately 17% of the variance (R2change = .17; Fchange (1,41) = 8.57, p = .006), with younger children being more adherent. Body satisfaction had a greater and more significant effect on dietary adherence than age (â = -.33, p < .01); i.e. participants more satisfied with their body reported better dietary adherence (R2change = .28; Fchange (2,35) = 6.97, p < .05). Findings remained consistent across multiple measures of body satisfaction and dietary adherence. None of the predictors had a significant effect on medication adherence. Health care providers who treat adolescents with IBD and parents should be made aware of factors affecting adherence in order to improve disease outcomes and patients’ quality of life.