Helicopter parenting through the lens of reddit: A text mining study.

The study aimed to understand Reddit users' experience with helicopter parenting through first-hand accounts. Text mining and natural language processing techniques were employed to extract data from the subreddit r/helicopterparents. A total of 713 original posts were processed from unstructured texts to tidy formats. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a popular topic modeling method, was used to discover hidden themes within the corpus. The data revealed common environmental contexts of helicopter parenting (i.e., school, college, work, and home) and its implication on college decisions, privacy, and social relationships. These collectively suggested the importance of autonomy-supportive parenting and mindfulness interventions as viable solutions to the problems posed by helicopter parenting. In addition, findings lent support to past research that has identified more maternal than paternal models of helicopter parenting. Further research on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on helicopter parenting is warranted.

Mortality Salience Effects of Critical Incidents - A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda.

Critical incidents (CI) trigger acute stress reactions and psychological trauma because of direct or vicarious exposure. These events include natural disasters, wars, terrorist attacks and pandemics, and usually result in deaths and serious physical injuries. Their life-threatening nature makes them reasonable candidates to induce mortality salience (MS). The current review aims to consolidate Terror Management Theory (TMT) research using CIs as MS. A systematic literature review was conducted. Overall, 74 articles with 113 studies were included. Through this review, strong support for MS effects of CI has been found. Consistent with TMT, CIs tend to trigger worldview defence, self-esteem enhancement and relationship seeking. CIs have also been found to impact negatively on individual well-being and organisational health. Recommendations specific to crisis interventions and well-being will be discussed. The review concludes with potential future research directions to strengthen and expand empirical knowledge in CI salience.

Within- and between-person relationships between spontaneous self-affirmations, coping style, and wellbeing.

Self-affirmations-responding to self-threatening information by reflecting on positive values or strengths-help to realign working self-concept and may support adaptive coping and wellbeing. Little research has been undertaken on spontaneous self-affirmations in response to everyday threats, and less has been undertaken on the relationships between spontaneous self-affirmations, coping, and wellbeing. This study aimed to test both within- and between-person relationships between spontaneous self-affirmations, coping, and wellbeing, controlling for threat intensity and other outcomes. A repeated survey assessment design was adopted to achieve these aims. Outcome measures included approach coping, avoidance coping, positive affect, negative affect, and eudaimonic wellbeing. It was found that spontaneous self-affirmations positively predicted approach coping and positive affect at both within- and between-person levels, and eudaimonic wellbeing at the between-person level. Overall, spontaneous self-affirmations were positively associated with approach coping and aspects of wellbeing.

The relationship sabotage scale: an evaluation of factor analyses and constructive validity.

BACKGROUND: Some individuals are no longer entering romantic relationships, others move through relationships too quickly searching for "the one" and making quick assessments of their romantic partners, while others stay in their relationships but "check out" or do not work on their issues. These are conclusions from two studies: (1) an interview with psychologists who specialise in relationship therapy, and (2) an analysis of individuals' lived experiences of relationships. The concept of relationship sabotage can explain these phenomena. However, presently, there is no instrument to conceptualise and empirically measure how people continue to employ self-defeating attitudes and behaviors in (and out) of relationships to impede success, or withdraw effort, and justify failure. METHODS AND RESULTS: A series of three studies (involving a total of 1365 English speaking individuals of diverse gender orientation, sexual orientation, and cultural background, with relationship sabotage experience) were conceptualized for the current project to fill the need for scale development and to build empirical evidence on the topic of self-sabotage in romantic relationships. The scale was developed over two studies using exploratory factor analysis and one-congeneric model analyses. The third study, using confirmatory factor analysis, confirmed the final structure for the Relationship Sabotage Scale (RSS), which contains 12 items and three factors: defensiveness, trust difficulty, and lack of relationship skills. Constructive validity analyses were also conducted. CONCLUSION: The RSS is a brief scale that provides conclusive information about individual patterns in relationships. Findings using this scale can offer explanations regarding the reasons that individuals engage in destructive behaviours from one relationship to the next. Investigations should continue to test a model for sabotage in romantic relationships using the developed scale and other factors such as relationship diferences and insecure attachment. More specifically, this measure can be used to understand mediator constructs of relational outcomes within the attachment framework to explain relationship dissolution and work towards relationship maintenance.

I'll cry instead: Mu suppression responses to tearful facial expressions.

Tears are a facial expression of emotion that readily elicit empathic responses from observers. It is currently unknown whether these empathic responses to tears are influenced by specific neural substrates. The EEG mu rhythm is one method of investigating the human mirror neuron system, purported to underlie the sharing of affective states and a facilitator of social cognition. The purpose of this research was to explore the mu response to tearful expressions of emotion. Sixty-eight participants viewed happy and sad faces, both with and without tears, in addition to a neutral control condition. Participants first completed an emotion discrimination task, and then an imitation condition where they were required to mimic the displayed expression. Mu enhancement was found in response to the discrimination task, whilst suppression was demonstrated in response to the imitation condition. Examination of the suppression scores revealed that greater suppression was observed in response to happy-tear and sad tear-free expressions. Planned contrasts exploring suppression to neutral faces revealed no significant differences between emotional and neutral conditions. The mu response to neutral expressions resembled that of the happy-tear and the sad tear-free conditions, lending support to the idea that ambiguous emotional expressions require greater sensorimotor engagement. This study provides preliminary evidence for the role of the mirror neuron system in discerning tearful expressions of emotion in the absence of context.

The extended nervous system: affect regulation, somatic and social change processes associated with mindful parenting.

BACKGROUND: A theoretical model of mindful parenting has the potential to succinctly summarise its various change processes. The primary aim of this study was to investigate some of the change processes associated with mindful parenting, namely, the affect regulation, somatic and social change processes. A secondary aim was to verify whether clinical insights are consistent with the change processes identified in a systematic review of mindful parenting. METHOD: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to analyse semi-structured interviews with four Australian clinicians delivering Mindful Parenting (MP) programs. The clinicians had extensive personal meditation practice. This qualitative study is part of a mixed methods study, which commenced with a quantitative systematic review. RESULTS: Six higher-order themes identified as change processes included reflective functioning, attachment, cognitive, affective, somatic and social change processes. CONCLUSION: The anchor is a new theoretical model summarising the change processes associated with mindful parenting. The mother portrayed as the extended nervous system for the infant is a neologism that also has not been previously mentioned in the literature. Given the limitations with the small sample and potential bias with interpretation, the anchor is a starting point to developing a theoretical model of mindful parenting. Future research with larger sample sizes and objective measures is needed to confirm whether the anchor is a reasonable summary of the change processes.

Therapeutic Alliance and Anorexia Nervosa Treatment Outcomes: Experiences of Young People and Their Families.

Treatments for anorexia nervosa provided early in the onset of the illness lead to better outcomes. Despite the treatment approach used, the therapeutic alliance may be instrumental in successful outcomes. The aim of this study was to explore the young people and their families' experiences of the illness, and their access to and satisfaction with the services received. Of particular interest was their view of the working alliance with their therapist/s. Participants were interviewed by telephone using a semi-structured questionnaire. Family based treatment or the Maudsley was found superior to other treatments with regard to physical markers of recovery, satisfaction with the services and therapy received, as well as the strength of the therapeutic alliance. All the interviewees stressed the need for more research, education, accessibility and flexibility of services and increased support for both the young people and their families.

Prevalence of substance abuse and socio-economic differences in substance abuse in an Australian community-dwelling elderly sample.

A sample of 324 55-90-year-old Australian adults participated in a survey on elderly substance abuse using the Clinical Assessment Scales for the Elderly. Overall, males had a higher prevalence rate of substance abuse than females. Significant differences in substance abuse mean scores were found for gender, age, income, community involvement, and retirement. The findings also reveal that being a female, involved in community groups, being a retiree, and being a non-baby boomer are protective factors of substance abuse. Being an upper medium income earner appears to be a risk factor of substance abuse.

From trauma to incarceration: exploring the trajectory in a qualitative study in male prison inmates from north Queensland, Australia.

BACKGROUND: There were approximately 34,000 prisoners incarcerated in Australian correctional centres as of 2014. The most common offence type for these prisoners was 'acts intended to cause injury', comprising 18 % of the total offences. Of the various risk factors for violent offending and incarceration identified in international research, trauma - either single events or ongoing; and substance abuse - which is commonly associated with violent behaviour across many cultures, are major contributors. METHOD: This paper analyses qualitative data from 11 in-depth interviews with inmates from a high security male correctional centre in QLD, Australia. The aim of the study was to explore risk factors for violence and incarceration for men from far north Queensland. RESULTS: A common trajectory to violent offending and incarceration was identified for these prisoners, including: childhood/adolescent trauma; a lack of support or treatment for trauma experiences; substance abuse to mask the pain; and a 'brain snap' precipitating a violent offence. CONCLUSION: Further research is required into factors leading to violent offending and incarceration generally. In particular early detection and intervention for trauma victims is imperative in order to reduce exposure to such a harmful trajectory from trauma to incarceration.

Light-hearted negative terminology used in computer education and related skill of noncomputer users.

Theory suggests that light-hearted but negative phrases and terminology used in computer literature and course titles may have a negative effect on noncomputer users. This study tested the effect of providing the suggestion of a negative dimension of computer ability labelled with a category of "Computer Dummy" a also the relation between computer ability and computer anxiety. The study incorporated 37 noncomputer users, 17 men and 20 women whose mean age was 52.1 yr. Scores on a self-report questionnaire indicated that 23 of the nonusers responded on the negative dimension of computer ability and included themselves in the category of "Computer Dummy." Also, belief about ability and belief about computer training were associated with computer anxiety for noncomputer users.