Joshua Klugman

Stressful Life Events and Depression Symptoms: The Effect of Childhood Emotional Abuse on Stress Reactivity

OBJECTIVE Stressful life events are associated with an increase in depressive symptoms and the onset of major depression. Importantly, research has shown that the role of stress changes over the course of depression. The present study extends the current literature by examining the effects of early life stress on emotional reactivity to current stressors. METHOD In a multiwave study (N = 281, mean age = 18.76; 68% female), we investigated the proximal changes that occur in depressive symptoms when individuals are faced with life stress and whether a history of childhood emotional abuse moderates this relationship. RESULTS Results support the stress sensitivity hypothesis for early emotional abuse history. Individuals with greater childhood emotional abuse severity experienced greater increases in depressive symptoms when confronted with current dependent stressors, controlling for childhood physical and sexual abuse. CONCLUSIONS This study highlights the importance of emotional abuse as an indicator for reactivity to stressful life events.

Stressful Life Events and Depression Symptoms

OBJECTIVE Stressful life events are associated with an increase in depressive symptoms and the onset of major depression. Importantly, research has shown that the role of stress changes over the course of depression. The present study extends the current literature by examining the effects of early life stress on emotional reactivity to current stressors. METHOD In a multiwave study (N = 281, mean age = 18.76; 68% female), we investigated the proximal changes that occur in depressive symptoms when individuals are faced with life stress and whether a history of childhood emotional abuse moderates this relationship. RESULTS Results support the stress sensitivity hypothesis for early emotional abuse history. Individuals with greater childhood emotional abuse severity experienced greater increases in depressive symptoms when confronted with current dependent stressors, controlling for childhood physical and sexual abuse. CONCLUSIONS This study highlights the importance of emotional abuse as an indicator for reactivity to stressful life events.

Cognitive behavioral therapy for youth with social anxiety: differential short and long-term treatment outcomes.

This study examined social anxiety symptoms and/or diagnosis as a predictor of differential short- and long-term cognitive-behavioral treatment (CBT) outcomes. Ninety-one anxiety-disordered youth participated in a randomized clinical trial of CBT. Semi-structured interviews provided dimensional clinical severity ratings (CSRs) for childrens principal anxiety disorder at pretreatment, posttreatment, 1-year and 7.4-year follow-up assessments for youth with versus without pretreatment social anxiety. Thirty-nine youth presented with either principal (n=17), secondary (n=11), or tertiary social phobia diagnoses (n=7) or subclinical social anxiety symptoms (n=4). Hierarchal linear modeling (HLM) indicated that youth made similar gains from pretreatment to posttreatment and 1-year follow-up regardless of their social anxiety symptoms or diagnosis; however, youth with social anxiety symptoms or diagnosis were significantly less improved at 7.4-year follow-up. This pattern was distinct from that of youth with the most severe (CSR=4) principal anxiety disorders at pretreatment. Though initially responsive to CBT, children who present with social anxiety diagnoses or symptoms may require an enhanced or extended treatment to maintain their gains into young adulthood whether or not social anxiety is considered their principal childhood difficulty.

Gender, Social Class, and Exclusion: Collegiate Peer Cultures and Social Reproduction

This article explores gender and class exclusion among college students. The authors use qualitative data to explore how students talk about gender and class exclusion and quantitative data to model patterns of exclusion within the Greek system. The Greek system serves as a site for social reproduction. Students constructed young women as elitist and prone to class exclusion, while typifying young men as unconcerned with such matters. Quantitative analyses complicate these findings. Within the Greek system, women are less exclusive than alleged and men more so. This discontinuity may reflect gender stereotypes and gender differences in the embodiment of social class. The authors argue that these patterns reinforce male privilege through the assertion that they are not engaged in social class exclusion while lacing undue blame on women as agents of class reproduction.

Individual differences in autistic trait load in the general population predict visual working memory performance

Prior studies have reported instances of both intact and impaired working memory (WM) performance in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In order to investigate the relation between autistic traits that extend into the normal population and WM, 104 normal college-aged students who varied in their levels of autistic traits were tested. The loading of ASD-associated traits in the normal population leads to differing predictions about WM performance. ASD traits related to a local processing style (or “attention to detail”) might enhance WM while ASD-associated traits related to difficulty switching attention and reorienting focus (or “social interaction”) might impair WM performance. To assess these predictions, participants filled out the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and performed a working memory task with both visual and verbal variants. AQ scores were then broken into “attention to detail” and “social interaction” factors, as proposed by Hoekstra and colleagues. The results showed that AQ scores did not predict verbal WM performance but they did predict visual WM performance. The social interaction and attention to detail factors of the AQ had opposing relationships with visual WM performance: A higher level of social difficulty was associated with significantly poorer visual WM performance while a higher level of attention to detail was associated with enhanced visual WM performance. Further investigation of the relation between AQ and WM using the original five-factor model proposed by Baron-Cohen and colleagues (2001) revealed an association between impoverished imagination and visual WM overall.

Attenuated positive psychotic symptoms and social anxiety: Along a psychotic continuum or different constructs?

Social anxiety commonly occurs across the course of schizophrenia, including in the premorbid and prodromal phases of psychotic disorders. Some have posited that social anxiety may exist on a continuum with paranoia; however, empirical data are lacking. The study aim was to determine whether attenuated positive psychotic symptoms are related to social anxiety. Young adults (N=1378) were administered the Prodromal Questionnaire (PQ), which measures attenuated positive psychotic symptoms (APPS), and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS), which measures a subset of social anxiety symptoms. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to address the extent to which social anxiety and APPS tap distinct dimensions. Confirmatory factor analyses support the existence of a separate social anxiety factor scale and four separate, though interrelated, APPS factor domains (unusual thought content, paranoia/suspiciousness, disorganized thinking, and perceptual abnormalities). Additionally, social anxiety was significantly, but not differently related to each APPS domain, although the magnitude was reduced between social anxiety and distressing APPS. The current study suggests that social anxiety and attenuated positive psychotic symptoms are separable constructs, but are significantly associated with each other.

Social status, values, and support for reform in education

Abstract Using a survey of Ohio and Indiana residents, we analyze the extent to which public support for school vouchers and school finance reform is structured by the same socioeconomic interests and values (equality, humanitarianism, individualism, and limited government) as is public support for contentious welfare policies. Disadvantaged individuals and individuals who live in disadvantaged communities are more likely to support vouchers but social status has a more ambiguous influence on support for finance reform. Values cannot explain the effect of social status on support for these education policies, but they exert independent effects. We speculate that disadvantaged individuals are more likely to see vouchers as in their interests than are advantaged individuals because voucher advocates have allied themselves with social movements and organizations representing clear constituencies (religious conservatives, low-income urban parents). On the other hand, we suggest that finance reform is more of an abstract issue because its advocates have mostly concentrated on intragovernmental litigation, and thus cleavages based on social status tend to be more obscured.

Cooperating Teacher as Model and Coach: What Leads to Student Teachers’ Perceptions of Preparedness?

Drawing on survey and administrative data on cooperating teachers (CTs) and their preservice student teachers (PSTs) in Chicago Public Schools during 2014-2015, this study offers an in-depth look at reports of how CTs engage in their mentoring roles during student teaching, and their influence on PSTs. Our sample includes CTs working with PSTs from across 44 teacher preparation institutions. Central to our analysis is an exploration of CTs as both models of effective instruction and as facilitative coaches on PST development. We find that both CT roles matter—PSTs feel better prepared to teach when their CTs model effective instruction and coach by providing more instructional support, frequent and adequate feedback, collaborative activity, job-search support, and a balance of autonomy and encouragement.

Whither the diversity bargain

ABSTRACT In Natasha Warikoo’s account, the “diversity bargain” is widespread among white elite American college students. This bargain is tentative support for preferences for underrepresented minorities in college admissions, conditioned on the admitted minority students providing white students with multicultural experiences that signal elite cosmopolitanism. This essay reviews three possible explanations for the pervasiveness of the diversity bargain: campus experiences with the benefits of diversity; socialization into expectations that elites give lip service to the benefits of diversity; and Warikoo’s methodological and analytical choices.

Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools, A.E. Lewis, J.B. Diamond. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK (2015), 249 pp

Amanda Lewis and John Diamond boldly argue that acial discrimination explains most, if not all, of the racial aps in educational outcomes in integrated schools. The uthors interviewed students, parents, teachers, staff, and dministrators at Riverview High, an affluent, racially iverse (about 45% white and 45% black) suburban high chool in the United States with stark racial differences n course placement, grades, test scores, and college desinations. Even though school staff members are aware f these racial gaps, and intended to solve them, Lewis nd Diamond argue that racial discrimination persists in tudent–teacher interactions, disciplinary practices, and rading procedures. The authors begin their empirical investigation by tacking a common lay explanation for achievement gaps: black tudents devalue academic achievement. Lewis and Diaond fielded a survey in Riverview and show that racial ifferences in self-reported behaviors, peer attitudes, and njoyment of school are minimal, or in black students’ avor. In short, the lower academic achievement of black tudents at Riverview occurs despite them valuing educaional success just as much as or more than their white ounterparts. In subsequent chapters, the authors outline how racial iscrimination impacts students’ education. According to ewis and Diamond, Riverview teachers, administrators, nd staff are not blatantly racist, but they are unconciously influenced by racial stereotypes. The consequence s they interpret the academic performance and behaviors f black students less charitably than those of white stuents. Lewis and Diamond amass interview reports from hite and black students reporting that white students re more likely to get away with breaking school rules han black students. For example, white students could et away with roaming hallways during class time withut a pass more easily than their black peers. They also how that both white and black students report that teachrs tend to have higher expectations of white students. he result is that teachers and staff view black students