Several recent papers state that working memory's contents cause attention to automatically deploy to matching objects in a display. Results of eight experiments reported here are inconsistent with this claim. In the experiments, participants were given at least one object to hold in working memory (WM) at the beginning of a trial, and a recognition test was given at the end of each trial to ensure they held the object(s) in mind. During the retention interval, two objects were simultaneously flashed on the screen followed by a response probe. One of the flashed objects matched the item in WM and the other was different. If WM's contents guide attention, then probe responses should be aided when the probe appears at the location of the item matching WM. Seven experiments demonstrated that attention does not always deploy to memory matches, and four of these demonstrated that attention deploys to the mismatch when participants report not attending to memory matches. One experiment suggests that WM's contents might guide attention to memory matches for at least the first 300 ms of maintenance. The implications of these findings for theories about WM and attention are discussed.

Although used widely in psychological research, race and ethnicity are amorphous and ill-defined constructs, lack adequate reliability and validity, and are rarely suitable as explanatory variables or mechanisms of psychological processes. Existing data regarding the relation of race and ethnicity to youths externalizing behaviors are inconsistent and conflicting, which highlights their inability to adequately explain or predict human behavior. The variables for which race and ethnicity act as proxies should be tested to identify the mediators directly linking race and ethnicity with developmental outcomes. After reviewing data and ecological theory positing that neighborhood factors may account for group differences, because of vast disparities between the communities in which many Black and White Americans live, I present three hypotheses proposing neighborhood mediation of race and parenting effects on adolescent externalizing behavior. Findings were: (a) there were race differences in externalizing behavior across raters; (b) neighborhood conditions were associated with race but not with externalizing behaviors; and (c) neighborhood factors failed to account for race-moderated relations between adolescent externalizing problems and parent acceptance of the youth and use of psychological control. Implications of these findings for measuring neighborhood effects on individuals are discussed.

Functional symptoms, defined as symptoms in the absence of organic disease, are common among pediatric patients. Differences exist in the clinical application of the biomedical versus biopsychosocial model in the explanation of functional symptoms. Parents perceive greater symptom severity, have more emotional distress, and more protectively parent their children when uncertainty is high and expectations are unmet for receiving diagnostic, treatment, and prognostic information for childrens symptoms. The current study examined effects of maternal trait anxiety (high versus low), diagnosis (functional versus organic), and physicians presentation of medical information (biomedical versus biopsychosocial) on mothers cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to childrens symptoms. Mothers were hypothesized to have more negative responses to functional versus organic diagnoses presented from a biomedical versus biopsychosocial model, particularly for high anxious mothers. Mothers (N = 160) read a vignette describing a child with chronic abdominal pain and completed baseline questionnaires assessing their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses imagining themselves as the mother of the child in the vignette. Mothers then viewed one of four videos of a physician giving a functional versus organic diagnosis from a biomedical versus biopsychosocial presentation pertaining to the child in the vignette. Finally, mothers completed questionnaires assessing cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to childrens symptoms in response to the medical information received. Controlling for baseline, main effects of anxiety and diagnosis indicated that anxious mothers and those who received a functional diagnosis reported more severe symptom appraisals, pain catastrophizing, negative affect, and protective parenting after the medical evaluation vignette. Interaction effects demonstrated that anxious mothers who received a functional diagnosis presented from a biomedical framework reported significantly higher catastrophizing and negative affect than mothers in any other condition. Results underscore the importance of taking these three factors together in understanding parents responses to childrens symptoms, especially for cognitive and emotional variables. Identifying parent and provider characteristics that influence parents responses to childrens symptoms has the potential to improve the clinical encounter and enhance health outcomes for pediatric patients with functional symptoms.

In a sample of 89 depressed parents and their 115 adolescent children, ages 9-15, child caretaking behaviors were examined to determine their relationship to child and parent demographic characteristics, parental functioning and parenting, and potential child psychosocial correlates. Three different indicators of child caretaking were used: observed emotional caretaking (e.g., caring for a parents emotional distress), observed instrumental caretaking (e.g., looking after siblings), and child self-reports of caretaking measured by the Parentification Questionnaire-Youth (PQ-Y; Godsall & Jurkovic, 1995). Observations of caretaking were assessed during two parent-child interaction tasks: discussion of a shared pleasant activity and discussion of a recent stressful period related to the parents depression. Results showed that indicators of caretaking were differentially related to demographic characteristics and therefore suggest that caretaking should be considered as a multidimensional, multidetermined construct. Caretaking appeared to be strongly related to parental functioning and also appeared to have a stronger relationship to negative parenting than to positive parenting behaviors. Evidence was found for a curvilinear relationship between caretaking and its psychosocial correlates. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

Adolescent conduct problems exact serious social as well as personal cost. One of the most effective programs for the treatment of serious conduct problems in adolescents is multi-systemic therapy (MST). However, much remains unknown about the conditions under which MST is most effective. This study examined potential moderators of treatment outcomes in MST. One hundred and sixty-four participants from the Weiss, Han, Catron, Harris, Ngo & Caron (2009) data set were used to identify moderators of MST treatment effects. Analyses identified a number of significant moderators, including child age and child race, with older children and Euro-American children benefiting more from MST. Adolescents from better functioning families also gained more from MST, with 9 out of 10 significant moderators related to family or parent functioning supporting this idea. Implications suggest that MST therapists should (a) focus additional attention on cultural factors and (b) consider preparing families more for therapy as MST may not be sufficiently successfully targeting low functioning families. Future studies should (a) examine additional moderator effects, such as the marital / adult partner relationships, and (b) include potential mediators of moderator effects, such as perceived racial discrimination, to determine if such factor underlie observed moderators effects.

The inconsistency of babies ability to reveal displaced speech comprehension in previous research can be accounted for by the relative difficulty of the task and the strength of underlying mental representations of referents. In the current study we investigated how the nature of babies object representations affects displaced speech comprehension. We found that 12-month-old babies are more likely to comprehend absent reference to new objects than to familiar objects. We showed that this is not due to novelty preference, but due to the interference from objects prior spatiotemporal history. Finally, we found that if an object representation is clear from any interfering location information babies are more likely to display comprehension when the referent is accessible to them than when it is not.

People act on efferent knowledge of how to get a motor job done, and incorporate afferent feedback to fine tune their performance. The main purpose of this study is to access the role played by the auditory and motor systems in the skillful control of singing for trained-singers, instrumentalists and people with little or no musical training. In particular, the study investigates how effectively people can sing simple familiar tunes based on their motor knowledge, under conditions when auditory feedback is masked and not available. Trained-singers, instrumentalists and non-musicians sang Happy Birthday repeatedly under two different normal feedback and two different masking conditions. The four conditions resulted from crossing two variables: singing from memory vs. singing along with the song; and singing with normal feedback vs. singing without with an auditory mask (Babble-Mask and Song-Mask). Performances were scored according to relative & absolute pitch, tempo and rhythmic accuracy; implications with respect to the nature of memory representations for musical pitch and time were discussed.

The efficacy of Behavioral Parent Training (BPT) for treating child conduct problems is well-documented. There are nonetheless, however, several significant limitations with BPT including effect sizes that generally are in the small to moderate range, and certain sub-groups for whom the efficacy of BPT appears relatively limited. There may be a variety of factors underlying these limitations, one of which may be that parental affective reactions during challenging parent-child interactions interfere with parents motivation or ability to implement the newly learned adaptive parenting behaviors. There have been a few attempts to modify BPT to address the limitations mentioned above, but to date no studies have focused on how the recently learned parenting behaviors are influenced by parental affective reactions to challenging child behaviors. To provide an empirical foundation for modifications to increase the efficacy of BPT, the proposed study will assess relations among parent affect, parent behavior, and child behavior problems, under evocative parent-child interactions (i.e., interactions wherein the childs behavior likely is aversive to the parent) and non-evocative interactions. Specifically, the study will determine (a) whether the quality of parenting behaviors deteriorates during evocative vs. non-evocative parent-child interactions, (b) whether parental affective responses to challenging child behaviors are correlated with child behavior problems, (c) whether parenting behaviors during evocative situations are more highly correlated with child behavior problems than parenting behaviors during non-evocative situations , and (d) whether there is a hierarchy of parental factors influencing parents behavior toward their children, such that situation-specific factors are more highly related to parenting and child behaviors than are trait-like factors.

One community sample (N = 607) of youths generated self-reported responses to body dissatisfaction, from which the Adolescent Responses to Body Dissatisfaction (ARBD) inventory was constructed. A second similar sample (N = 830) completed this measure as well as measures of coping, body dissatisfaction, body mass index, depressive symptoms, and disordered eating behaviors. Evidence of seven ARBD factors emerged: Avoidant Responses, Distraction/Cognitive Shift, Focus on Weight Loss, Self-Affirmation, Lifestyle Strategies, Social Comparison, and Self-Presentation and Appearance Efforts. Subscales based on these factors provided evidence of convergent, discriminant, construct, and incremental validity. Sex and ethnic differences were also evident. The ARBD provides a window into potentially healthy and unhealthy ways in which adolescents cope with body dissatisfaction.

Graduate students in top science and engineering programs have potential for remarkable accomplishment in science and engineering. Yet few studies have examined how their careers develop after graduate school and what can be done to maximize their potential. In this study, students in top science, engineering, and mathematics graduate programs (367 men, 347 women) were assessed and tracked longitudinally for 16 years. Participants classified as especially accomplished and/or creative in science and engineering (56% of men and 41% of women) demonstrated profiles of cognitive abilities, vocational interests, and lifestyle preferences that differed from those of the other participants. Quantitative ability, investigative and social vocational interests, spouse's income, and parenthood all contributed uniquely to predicting noteworthy accomplishments in science and engineering, with fathers being more likely than mothers to be highly accomplished. Participants who were highly accomplishing in science and engineering were more satisfied with their careers than the remaining participants but equally satisfied with their lives. These findings reveal that there are multiple paths to attaining a fulfilling life.