Psychology
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Item Connecting the forgotten half: The school-to-work transition of non-college bound youth(2009) Ling, Thomson Joseph; O'Brien, Karen; Kivlighan, Dennis; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)When we think of high school students making the transition to adulthood, most of us picture students pursuing a college or university education. However, for many individuals, this image is not the case. For some youth, the transition to adulthood is marked by entrance into the workforce. While previous research has examined the school-to-work transition of non-college-bound youth, most only have considered a limited set of variables and only examined job attainment. By considering job quality and employment stability in addition to job attainment, the present study examined the school-to-work transition of non-college bound youth using a nationally representative sample of youth followed longitudinally. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort, we examined a comprehensive set of predictors within an ecological framework. This study sought to determine: "What were the predictors of job attainment, stability of employment, and job quality for youth who are making the school-to-work transition?" Logistic regression and structural equation modeling were used to examine the hypotheses. With regard to job attainment, depression, substance use, adolescent educational attainment, and employment in adolescence were associated with obtaining employment. With regard to job quality and stability of employment, depression, substance use, adolescent educational attainment, employment in adolescence, parental educational attainment, and income were associated with these job characteristics. Parent-adolescent relationship and physical risk were not associated with job characteristics.Item Factors Related to Changes in Infant Attachment Security: A Test of the Differential Susceptibility Hypothesis(2009) Stupica, Brandi Shawn; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A major tenet of attachment theory is that the stability of the caregiving environment drives the stability of infant attachment security. The research investigating the factors related to the stability and change of infant attachment is limited by its lack attention to infant characteristics related to attachment stability outcomes. The newly developed differential susceptibility hypothesis posits that temperamentally difficult children are more influenced by their caregiving environment. In the present study, I examine infant irritability as a moderator of the link between changes in maternal (a) depressive symptomatology, (b) life satisfaction, and (c) parenting self-efficacy on changes in infant attachment security between 12 and 18 months.Item Bridging the Attachment Transmission Gap with Maternal Mind-mindedness and Infant Temperament(2009) Sherman, Laura Jernigan; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The goal of this study was to test (a) whether maternal mind-mindedness (MM) mediates the link between maternal attachment (from the Adult Attachment Interview) and infant attachment (in the Strange Situation), and (b) whether infant temperament moderates this model of attachment transmission. Eighty-four racially diverse, economically stressed mothers and their infants were assessed three times: newborn, 5, and 12 months. Despite robust meta-analytic findings supporting attachment concordance for mothers and infants in community samples, this sample was characterized by low attachment concordance. Maternal attachment was unrelated to maternal MM; and, maternal MM was related to infant attachment differences for ambivalent infants only. Infant irritability did not moderate the model. Possible reasons for the discordant attachment patterns and the remaining findings are discussed in relation to theory and previous research.Item Maternal and Paternal Perceptions of Hostility Toward Their Adolescents: Links to Adolescent Peer-Reported Social Acceptance and Social Behavior(2008-08-21) Butler, Heidi Marie; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The goal of the present study was to examine the links between parental perceptions of hostility and peer-reported adolescent social acceptance and social behavior in eleventh grade students. Results revealed the following associations among study variables: (1) the association between parental perceptions of hostility and peer-reported social acceptance and social behavior exists; (2) the association between parental perceptions of hostility and adolescent perceptions of hostility exits; and (3) the association between adolescent perceptions of parental hostility and peer-reported adolescent social acceptance exists, however, the association between adolescent perceptions of parental hostility and peer-reported social behavior does not exist. The findings of this study provide a basis for future researcher examining the associations among parental perceptions of hostility, adolescents' perceptions of parental hostility, social acceptance, and social behavior.Item What's in a Mitten?: The Effects of Active Versus Passive Experience on Action Understanding(2008-05-28) Gerson, Sarah A; Woodward, Amanda L; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Prior research has shown that young infants understand something about others' goals. This understanding has been developmentally linked to infants' own actions. An open question is what aspects of experience are crucial to action understanding. In the current studies, we sought to examine the relation between experience and action understanding in 3-month-old infants and to investigate the differential effects of active and passive experience. Findings from Study 1 demonstrated a threshold effect: a minimal amount of active experience led to subsequent action understanding. In Study 2, we assessed whether visual experience alone would have the same effect by giving another group of infants matched passive experience. These infants, however, did not reap the same benefits from passive experience. These findings demonstrate that active experience provides important information, above and beyond that which can be gleaned from passive experience, at a time when intention understanding is first emerging.Item Conflict at home and problems with peers: Family-peer linkages and the role of adolescent depressive symptoms and gender(2008-05-05) Ehrlich, Katherine Babcock; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Peer relationships have a significant impact on developmental outcomes throughout the lifespan. One variable that has been identified extensively as a contributor to peer outcomes is children's family environment. In the present investigation, I examine the relation between adolescents' family environment and peer relationships. Specifically, I study how family conflict, including both parent-child conflict and marital conflict, is linked to social acceptance and social behavior. I examine whether adolescents' depressive symptoms act as a mediator of the links between family conflict and social acceptance and behavior. Finally, I examine the moderating role of gender.Item Understanding Low Social Acceptance in Adolescence: Roles of Social Behavior and Representations of Peers(2007-09-26) Halcrow, Sarah Ruth; Cassidy, Jude A.; Rubin, Kenneth H.; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The goal of this study was to examine whether social behavior and peer representations would be linked to the extent to which adolescents were socially accepted. Findings indicated that prosocial behavior was positively associated with acceptance whereas aggressive, disruptive, and shy behaviors were negatively associated with acceptance. Results also suggested gender moderated the link between shy behavior and acceptance, such that shy boys were significantly less accepted than shy girls. In contrast, gender did not moderate the links between prosocial, disruptive, and aggressive behavior and acceptance. Although peer representations were negatively linked to acceptance, gender did not significantly moderate these links. Additional findings suggested that prosocial, disruptive, and shy behaviors partially mediated the links between peer representations and acceptance. Contrary to expectations, peer representations partially mediated the links only between acceptance and shy behavior. Implications of findings related to the roles of adolescent social behavior, the moderating role of gender, peer representations, and social acceptance are discussed.Item Attachment Security and the Processing of Attachment-Relevant Social Information in Late Adolescence(2006-04-26) Dykas, Matthew Jason; Cassidy, Jude A; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)According to attachment theory, internal working models of attachment function to influence the ways in which individuals obtain, organize, and operate on attachment-relevant social information (Bowlby, 1980). The principal aim of this investigation was the examination of whether adolescents' internal working models of attachment are linked to their memory for attachment-relevant social information. I proposed that adolescents who possess negative internal working models of attachment (i.e., insecure adolescents and adolescents who possess negative representations of their parents) process attachment-relevant social information differently from adolescents who possess positive internal working models of attachment (i.e., secure adolescents and adolescents who possess positive representations of their parents). I also proposed that such differences are associated with two distinct patterns of attachment-relevant social information-processing. More precisely, I hypothesized that insecure adolescents and adolescents who possess negative representations of their parents are more likely to <em>suppress</em> attachment-relevant social information (from entering conscious awareness) in some circumstances, and to process attachment-relevant social information in a <em>negatively-biased schematic manner</em> in others. To test this hypothesis, I tapped adolescents' (n = 189) internal working models of attachment by assessing their "state of mind with respect to attachment" (as assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview), representations of parents, and attachment-related romantic anxiety and avoidance (as assessed using the Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory). I used four experimental tasks to assess adolescents' memory for attachment-relevant social information. Many of the findings reported in this investigation can be viewed as supporting the notion that insecure adolescents and adolescents who possess negative representations of their parents either suppress attachment-relevant social information or process such information in a negatively-biased schematic manner. For example, in the experimental task that tapped suppression, insecure adolescents showed poorer memory for emotionally-significant childhood experiences. Moreover, in all three of the experimental tasks tapping schematically-driven social information-processing, insecure adolescents and adolescents who possessed negative representations of their parents showed either greater memory for negative parental attributes or more negative reconstructive memory for conflict. In addition to these principal findings, evidence emerged that adolescent attachment was linked to memory for peer-related information, as well as to parents' reconstructive memory for adolescent-parent conflict.Item Aging, Illusory Conjunctions, and Attention(2006-04-19) Murphy, Lisa; Scholnick, Ellin K; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Elderly adults do not perform as well as young adults on complex tasks. Elderly adults' poorer performance may be partly due to an age-related increase in the occurrence of illusory conjunctions. To investigate this possibility, this research is designed to examine the relationship between attention and illusory conjunctions in young and old adult performance. Experiment 1 is modeled after Cohen and Ivry (1989; Experiment 3) and requires participants to perform concurrent digit-matching and letter identification tasks. The digit-matching task manipulates the spread of attention, i.e., narrow vs. wide; and the letter identification task provides opportunity for illusory conjunctions, because both a target and non-target letter differing in color and identity appear in the display. The results suggest that selective attention affects the formation of illusory conjunctions in young but not elderly adults. In young adults illusory conjunctions are more likely to be formed within the attentional window. The elderly are just as likely to form illusory conjunctions inside and outside the attentional window. Because the design of Experiment 1 requires the participants to identify two properties of the target letter simultaneously (i.e., the subject must determine the color and the shape of the target letter) this experiment is a dual property experiment. Since elderly performance often suffers when required to complete simultaneous tasks (Craik, 1977; Hartley, 1992; McDowd & Shaw, 2000), it is possible that an age-difference in the occurrence of illusory conjunctions in Experiment 1 was due to age differences in ability to handle dual task performance. Experiment 2 was used to investigate this possibility. Thus, Experiment 2 consisted of two conditions. In the dual property condition, the participants were required to determine both the color and the identity of the target letter. In the single property condition, the subject only reported the color of the target letter. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the results of Experiment 1 were not due to the dual property nature of Experiment 1. The pattern of illusory conjunctions was similar whether the requirements of the task were to identify one or two properties of the target letter.Item THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MATERNAL DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS AND MATERNAL INSENSITIVITY: THE MEDIATING OR MODERATING ROLE OF MATERNAL PERCEPTION OF THE INFANT(2005-08-05) AlBanna, Badia Sami; Cassidy, Jude; Psychology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Maternal insensitivity is associated with many developmental outcomes. The link between maternal depressive symptoms and maternal insensitivity is well documented. In addition, the literature supports a link between (a) maternal depressive symptoms and maternal perception of the infant and (b) maternal perception of the infant and maternal insensitivity. However, the role of maternal perception of the infant as a potential mediator or moderator of the link between maternal depressive symptoms and maternal insensitivity has not been evaluated. 150 first time, economically stressed mothers with temperamentally irritable infants from the Washington DC Metropolitan area participated. No significant links between maternal depressive symptoms, maternal perception of the infant and maternal insensitivity emerged.