After controlling for demographic variables, mediational analysis revealed that perceived social support explained the relation between perceived child disability and depression and anxiety. Additionally, it partially explained the relation between perceived family burden and depression, anxiety, and stress. Further, parent perception of their child's disability and perceived family burden did not predict emotion-focused or social support coping. However, both emotion-focused and social support coping behaviors were related to reductions in depression in this sample.
Objective: This research intended to characterize the influence of sex and age on social cognition in adults with ASD using an adult sample. We hypothesized Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) scores would be lower in adults with ASD, with a stronger relationship between decreasing performance aging effects compared to NTs. Additionally, we hypothesized deficits would be more severe in in males with ASD compared to females with ASD.
Methods: The RME task was administered to 181 adults to quantify ToM abilities. The participants consisted of 100 adults with ASD (69 males, 32 females; age range: 18-71, mean=39.45±1.613) and matched 81 NT adults (47 males, 34 females; age range: 18-70, mean=41.51±1.883). Multiple regression analyses examined interactions between diagnosis and age, diagnosis and sex, and diagnosis by age by sex. Exploratory within group analyses assessed 1) sex differences using ANCOVA, and 2) associations with age using Pearson correlation in SPSS.
Results: We found that NT adults performed better on the RME task than adults with ASD. Worse performance on the RME task correlated with greater age for the NT, but not ASD. Additionally, no influence of sex on RME scores was identified.
Discussion: These results are consistent with other studies indicate social cognition deficits in adults with ASD compared to NT adults. Additionally, we replicated findings that suggest ToM performance declines with age in NT adults. Fewer social relationships, smaller social networks, and reduced social engagement have been associated with aging in both NTs and individuals with ASD (Pratt & Norris, 1994). However, our cross-sectional sample suggests ToM abilities may not decline with age in adults with ASD as hypothesized. Longitudinal studies are needed to corroborate these findings. Further developments in this line of research may inform novel interventions tailored toward the growing population of adults with ASD. Ultimately, our research aims to improve quality of life across the lifespan for an already vulnerable population.
Results of the dating violence assessments were reported as well as the results of a personality assessment. The comparisons between the three relationship assessments were inconclusive. This research should be taken as a guidance into the factors of dating violence by taking into consideration the characteristics and personalities of potential victims. It can also be seen as a snapshot of the current time period on the topic of relationship violence and its ideas and its prevalence.
The research conducted was at Arizona State University in three psychology classes. The results included participants relationships, abuse screening scores, and personality assessments. The True Colors personality test showed that the majority of the participants were associated with being emotion driven.
As threats emerge, change, and grow, the life of a police officer continues to intensify. To help support police training curriculums and police cadets through this critical career juncture, this study proposes a state of the art approach to stress prediction and intervention through wearable devices and machine learning models. As an integral first step of a larger study, the goal of this research is to provide relevant information to machine learning models to formulate a correlation between stress and police officers’ physiological responses on and off on the job. Fitbit devices were leveraged for data collection and were complemented with a custom built Fitbit application, called StressManager, and study dashboard, termed StressWatch. This analysis uses data collected from 15 training cadets at the Phoenix Police Regional Training Academy over a 13 week span. Close collaboration with these participants was essential; the quality of data collection relied on consistent “syncing” and troubleshooting of the Fitbit devices. After the data were collected and cleaned, features related to steps, calories, movement, location, and heart rate were extracted from the Fitbit API and other supplemental resources and passed through to empirically chosen machine learning models. From the results of these models, we formulate that events of increased intensity combined with physiological spikes contribute to the overall stress perception of a police training cadet
Cultural and ethnic identities influence the relationships individuals seek out and how they feel and behave in these relationships, which can strongly affect mental and physical health through their impacts on emotions, physiology, and behavior. We proposed and tested a model in which ethnocultural identifications and ingroup affiliations were hypothesized explicitly to enhance social connectedness, which would in turn promote expectancy for effective regulation of negative emotions and reduce self-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety. Our sample comprised women aged 18–30 currently attending college in the Southwestern US, who self-identified as Hispanic of Mexican descent (MAs; n = 82) or as non-Hispanic White/European American (EAs; n = 234) and who completed an online survey. In the full sample and in each subgroup, stronger ethnocultural group identity and greater comfort with mainstream American culture were associated with higher social connectedness, which in turn was associated with expectancy for more effective regulation of negative emotions, fewer depressive symptoms, and less anxiety. Unexpectedly, preference for ingroup affiliation predicted lower social connectedness in both groups. In addition to indirect effects through social connection, direct paths from mainstream comfort and preference for ingroup affiliation to emotion regulation expectancy were found for EAs. Models of our data underscore that social connection is a central mechanism through which ethnocultural identities—including with one's own group and the mainstream cultural group—relate to mental health, and that emotion regulation may be a key aspect of this linkage. We use the term ethnocultural social connection to make explicit a process that, we believe, has been implied in the ethnic identity literature for many years, and that may have consequential implications for mental health and conceptualizations of processes underlying mental disorders.