Article archive / June 1, 2014
Originally published: . Volume 5, No. 10. Source pages: 1, 10, 11.
Researchers from LSU, Tulane, UL–Lafayette, UNO, and Xavier Tulane’s Dr. Cunningham Chairs Invited Symposium at Association for Psychological Science 26th Annual Convention
Tulane’s Dr. Michael Cunningham chaired one of the special Invited Symposiums at this year’s Annual Convention for the Association for Psychological Science (APS), held May 22 through 24, in San Francisco.
Cunningham, Professor of Psychology and African & African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University, helped presenters from across the country examine, “Race and Parenting in African Americans: An Examination of Gender and Context.”
“Overall,” Dr. Cunningham told the Times, “the panel did a great job of distinguishing between myths and facts on research with African Americans. In doing so, each of the papers highlighted theoretical models that had empirical examples that focused on gender and context. The papers were well received by the participants,” he said.
The symposium brought together experts from across the country to look at how parenting strategies occur in direct and indirect ways in many African American families.
“Dupree et al., presented on a Dual Axis Model of Vulnerability that assists researchers in understanding the interactions of risk and protective factors,” Cunningham explained. “The presentation had an enlighten- ing and important focus on skin color,” he said. Commenting on research by Fegley, and others, he noted how “… light skinned adolescents were just as likely to prefer their own skin color as they were to prefer another skin color.” But, “In contrast, medium complexioned adolescents were more likely than their light and dark skinned peers to prefer a skin color other than their own. Dark skinned adolescents were more likely than their light and medium complexion- ed peers to prefer their own skin color.”
“In summary,” Cunningham noted, “students are complex and they can recognize strengths and challenges in the context and link the experiences to how they develop concepts about the self, in particular their respective identity,” he said.
Other topics in the special Invited Symposium included “Multidi- mensional Perspectives on African American Fathers’ Parenting Practices: Implications for Adolescent Well-Being,” and “Overweight concerns, mental health, and family process: Implications for health promotion of Black girls.”
Spencer used the phenomen- ological variant of ecological systems theory to discuss girls’ body esteem and linkages to significant others, explained Dr. Cunningham. “She reported that overweight concerns may be important to consider in relation to depressive symptoms among overweight and non-overweight Black girls despite evidence that suggests high levels of body satisfaction among Black females.”
Two teams of researchers from the University of Louisiana Lafayette (UL Lafayette) presented their research for the APS convention.
In “Parenting Stress Potentially Explains Why Parental Depression Relates to Child Behavioral Problems,” part of the offerings in the Developmental research presentations, researchers Elizabeth Jeffery, Dr. Hung-Chu Lin, Dr. Valanne MacGyvers, and Dr. Robert McFatter, all from UL Lafayette, presented data from 58 mother-child dyads. Their results indicated that parental depression, parenting stress, and child’s behavioral problems were positively correlated with one another. “Controlling for parenting stress, however, rendered the relation between parental depression and child’s behaviors nonsignificant.”
The results suggested that parenting stress might mediate the relation between parental depression and children’s behavioral problems, the researchers said.
UL Lafayette Professor Dr. Hung-Chu Lin, told the Times, “My students and I share research interests ranging from affect organization in parenting, development of self-conscious emotions, and temporal coordination of different emotions,” she said. “Our lab is equipped with state of the art Noldus Observer XT system that allows examinations of interpersonal dynamics at the microanalytic level. For the Preschoolers’ Empathy project, for example, we recruited preschoolers and observed their empathic responses to simulated distress in other social partners,” she explained. “The Observer XT permits moment-by-moment behavioral coding using recorded images from different cameras which are synchronized in time.”
Another team of researchers from UL Lafayette presented “The Effect of Familiarity on Preschoolers’ Empathy towards Distress in Social Partners.” Phillip Richard, Dr. Hung-Chu Lin, Dr. Valanne MacGyvers, Janna Bourque, and Ashley Schaff, presented research that examined preschoolers’ responses to distress in their parents, a stranger, and a crying infant, a life-like doll. They found that other-oriented behaviors indicating empathy towards the parent were negatively correlated with self- comforting behaviors towards the stranger and infant. Cognitive empathy and social inhibition predicted girls’ self- oriented behaviors in response to infant crying, noted the researchers.
“Something that is very special about our lab,” Dr. Hung–Chu Lin said, “is that it is not only comprised of psychology majors. We also have some students coming from biology and nursing departments,”
University of New Orleans’ researcher Farrah Golmaryami presented in another APS Symposium, “Innovations in Research in Adolescent Psychopathy,” on May 23. Co- authors in this work included Dr. Paul Frick, Laura Thornton, and Annie Crapanzano, all from the University of New Orleans.
Golmaryami looked at the interaction between bullying and victimization for the prediction of callous- unemotional (CU) traits in 284 students in the 4th through 7th grades. Results indicated stronger associations between bullying and CU traits for those lower on victimization, suggesting that CU traits may denote a particularly cruel bully typology.
Developmental psychologist, Dr. Patricia Sirois, from the Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, along with ten researchers from across the country, presented “Learning and Memory in Youth with Perinatal HIV Exposure and/or Infection.” Youth with perinatally acquired HIV show poorer performance in verbal learning and delayed recall compared to perinatally HIV- exposed but uninfected youth. Differences are largely accounted for by caregiver characteristics. However, associations with measures of disease severity suggest ongoing subtle effects of HIV with the potential for long- term impact, noted the researchers.
Louisiana State University’s Catherine Lemieux, joined with researchers to present “Character strengths and deep connections: Modeling resilience for disaster volunteers.” Their study examined a conceptual model with two pathways, one for altruism and one for perceived spiritual supports, leading to resilience among Hurricane Katrina-Rita volunteers. They noted these are indicators of character strengths Kindness and Spirituality. The results showed that the two indicators may have served as a protective mechanism for the whole sample despite volunteers’ different racial-cultural backgrounds. The researchers used structural equation modeling with a sample of 554 volunteers from those enrolled in metal health profession studies at five universities in the disaster-affected areas.
Doctoral student David Doyle from Tulane, in collaboration with other researchers, presented “Black Swans: The Impact of Dance Style on Objectification and Eating Disorders.” The researchers reported evidence for the general model of objectification theory and body image disturbance among male and female professional dancers in elite dance companies. Training and performing in classical styles (ballet vs. modern dance) correlated with objectifying cues and these cues correlated with body shame and eating disordered behaviors.
Amy Luthanen from Xavier University, joined with researchers from around the country to present, “The Mediating Effect of Self- Awareness on Supervisor Burnout and Workgroup Climate,” in the Industrial- Organizational subject area. The researchers found that supervisors with high self-awareness were more able to self- regulate and more likely to reorganize resources, better coping with burnout and alleviating negative effects on workgroup climate.
Dr. Mike Cunningham (L) and Dr. George Hebert at School Psychology Assn. Dr. Cunningham was the Chair of a special Invited Symposium at the recent APS Convention.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.