studies & articles
The Blog
One of the many pleasures of being a professor was feeling the need to stay on top of the research in psychology. When I first learned about the half-life of knowledge, the literature typically said it was 3-5 years in technical fields. As a retired professor, I am still a member of the American Psychological Association and subscribe to a service that delivers abstracts and open-source articles from a large number of journals. As an alumna of Harvard, I also get information from them and I have the time to peruse multiple sources. This is a pleasure most professionals don’t have, especially if they value
work-life balance.
I still love research and, when I was asked to write the blog, I enthusiastically agreed. I try to select articles based on their relevance to practitioners, but also to capture both emerging themes and important corrections. I am hopeful that, moving forward, we will have ways to enable readers to easily engage in conversations with me and each other.
-Dr. Karen Nelson
Family climate and threat appraisals
After two long posts, I am presenting some short ones. Fosco, Weymouth & Feinberg (2023) published “Interparental Conflict, Family Climate, and Threat Appraisals: Early adolescent exposure and young adult psychopathology risk” in Journal of Family Psychology. Here’s the abstract with some information in bold:
Assessment of Transgender and Gender Nonbinary Adults
The APA website published: Psychological and Neuropsychological Assessment with Transgender and Gender Nonbinary Adults. I am providing the text with some information in bold:
Autistic youth challenges
I am presenting two studies of children on the autism spectrum. First, McIntyre, Santiago, Sutherland & Garbacz (2023) published “Parenting Stress and Autistic Children’s Emotional Problems Relate to Family-School Partnerships and Parent Mental Health” in School Psychology. Here’s the edited abstract and impact statement with some information in bold:
Risk of behavioral inhibition from infancy to age seven
This is a longer than usual post because I find behavioral inhibition fascinating and this study is very well done. Anaya et al. (2023) published “Developmental Trajectories of Behavioral Inhibition from Infancy to Age Seven: The role of genetic and environmental risk for psychopathology” in Child Development. Here’s the edited abstract and article with some key information in bold:
New ideas about intelligence
This is a longer than usual post because there is an article and two responses. All are available as open text. Unlike some of my posts that try to offer immediately helpful information, this one is more historical and theoretical, but, in my view, has important implications. First, Ackerman (2023) published “Intelligence … moving beyond the lowest common denominator” in American Psychologist. Here’s the highly edited article with some information in bold:
Universal screening for social-emotional and behavioral risk
I am especially interested in measurement because those who assess individuals need to be wary of trusting instruments because they are available. Izumi & Eklund (2023) published “Universal Screening for Social-Emotional and Behavioral Risk: Differential item functioning on the SAEBRS” in School Psychology. Here’s the edited abstract and impact statement with some information in bold:
Trauma-related diagnostic overshadowing
I had never heard the expression “diagnostic overshadowing,” but I now think it’s very important as a reminder to clinicians to be conscientious about primary diagnoses. Wislocki & Zalta (2023) published “Assessing the Existence of Trauma-related Diagnostic Overshadowing in Adult Populations” in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Here’s the edited abstract and impact statement with key information in bold:
Challenges for rural youth
I have written before about the greater prevalence of suicide in rural youth (Runkle et al. 2023) and the value of telemedicine in working with rural clients (Kaur et al., 2022). Here, I speak to substance abuse and telepsychiatry. First, Kopak & Raggio (2023) published “Substance Use Disorder and Rural Detention Center Readmission: Results from a 3-year prospective cohort study” in Journal of Rural Mental Health. Here are the impact statement and abstract, edited with some information in bold:
Childhood maltreatment and adult chronic health conditions
Fitzgerald (2023) published “Serial Indirect Effects from Childhood Maltreatment to Adult Chronic Health Conditions Through Contemporary Family Relationships and Mental Health Problems: Inquiry into sleep disturbances and stress” in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. As usual, I have edited the abstract with some information in bold:
Hope in LGBTQ+ youth
This is a long post because it contains information that may well apply to other marginalized groups. Poteat et al. (2023) published “Gender-Sexuality Alliance Meeting Experiences Predict Weekly Variation in Hope among LGBTQ+ Youth” in Child Development. Here’s the highly edited article with some information in bold:
Emotion transmission in middle childhood
I recently encountered two articles that I think are helpful. First, Hubbard, Moore, Zajac, Bookhout & Dozier (2023) published “Emotion Transmission in Peer Dyads in Middle Childhood” in Child Development. Here’s the abstract with some information in bold:
Agreement about cognitive disengagement
Mayes, Calhoun & Waschbusch (2023) published “Agreement Between Mother, Father, and Teacher Ratings of Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome (Sluggish Cognitive Tempo) in Children with Autism and Children with ADHD” in Psychological Assessment.
Patterns of coparenting and young children
Schoppe-Sullivan, Wang, Yang, Kim, Zhang, & Yoon (2023) published “Patterns of Coparenting and Young Children's Social–Emotional Adjustment in Low-income Families” in Child Development. I am providing a long summary here, first from the abstract and research summary, with some points in bold:
Psychological abuse and control in intimate partner relationships
Hamel, Cannon & Graham-Kevan (2023) published “The Consequences of Psychological Abuse and Control in Intimate Partner Relationships” in Traumatology. Here’s the abstract with some information in bold:
Youth psychotic-like experiences
Increasingly, clinicians report seeing young people with symptoms of psychosis. Karcher, Merchant, Rappaport & Barch (2023) published “Associations with Youth Psychotic-Like Experiences Over Time: Evidence for trans-symptom and specific cognitive and neural risk factors” in Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science. Here’s the abstract and impact statement with some information in bold:
Minority stress and mental health in transgender and gender-diverse individuals
I am presenting two recent studies of stress in transgender and gender-diverse individuals. First, Puckett, Dyar, Maroney, Mustanski & Newcomb (2023) published “Daily Experiences of Minority Stress and Mental Health in Transgender and Gender-Diverse Individuals” in Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science. Here’s an edited version of the abstract and impact statement with some information in bold.:
An app for sexual assault victims
Dworkin, Schallert, Lee & Kaysen (2023) published “Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial of an App-Based Early Intervention to Reduce PTSD and Alcohol Use Following Sexual Assault” in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. Here’s an edited version of the abstract with some information in bold:
Affect regulation and depression
Here, I am discussing two articles on affect regulation. First, Everaert, Benisty, Gadassi Polack, Joormann & Mishne (2022) published “Which Features of Repetitive Negative Thinking and Positive Reappraisal Predict Depression? An in-depth investigation using artificial neural networks with feature selection” in Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science. Here’s the edited abstract with some information in bold:
Socioeconomic Status and Reading Development
Taylor, Abdurokhmonova & Romeo (2023) published “Socioeconomic Status and Reading Development: Moving from ‘deficit’ to ‘adaptation’ in neurobiological models of experience-dependent learning” in Mind, Brain & Education. This is a long post but I think it’s an important one. I have edited the article extensively and put some information in bold:
The development of callous-unemotional traits
Robertson et al. (2023) published “The Bidirectional Effects of Antisocial Behavior, Anxiety, and Trauma Exposure: Implications for our understanding of the development of callous–unemotional traits” in Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science. I want to begin by differentiating primary from secondary variants of callous-unemotional traits; while people with primary variants have callous-unemotional traits and low anxiety, those with secondary variants tend to have callous-unemotional traits, high anxiety, and histories of trauma. Here’s the edited abstract and impact statement with some information in bold: