Abnormal and Behavioural Psychology

The critique by Newell and Shanks (BBS, 2014) of much past work regarding unconscious influences on decision making is favorably discussed, generally speaking, in this opinion article. However, the authors’ unfortunate analytical omission of judicial decision making is critically highlighted from the standpoints of methodological feasibility, ecological validity, social importance, and the ready availability of a large quantitative-data and conceptual base on the behavior of many essential categories of legal decision makers, which was developed by Konecni and Ebbesen at the University of California, San Diego, in the period 1973-2000.

The early cognitive development of the toddlers of mothers with eating disorders is compromised. This exploratory study examined the role that the psychological and support resources of mothers with eating disorders may play in the developmental delay found in their toddlers. Twenty-nine mothers with prenatal eating disorders and their toddlers (18-24 months old) were case-control matched with no eating psychopathology mother-child dyads. Measures included maternal stress and organization of the home environment, spousal and extended social support, as well as a developmental assessment of the children. Results indicated that mothers with eating disorders history had higher parenting-related stress and poorer adaptation of the home setting to match the child’s developmental needs. Extended social support was associated with improved child outcomes only in the case of low maternal stress, while spousal support was not associated with child outcomes regardless of maternal stress levels. These preliminary findings suggest that poorer maternal functioning and spousal support in mothers with eating disorders are linked with no adaptive neurodevelopmental trajectories in their young children. Future preventive intervention programs should focus on improving maternal, spousal and child functioning in these patients.

In this article, the multifaceted theoretical underpinnings of KoneÄÂ�ni’s Anger-Aggression Bidirectional-Causation (AABC) model of interpersonal aggression are described, along with a large body of supporting data, mostly from laboratory experiments. The AABC model’s utility in the clarification of several complex issues of long standing in various scholarly domains is discussed, such as: Catharsis and the “cathartic effect”; adaptationist accounts of revenge; and intrafamilial dyadic violence.

This article proposes Decision making (Fuzz trace theory) and Evolutionary theories and their role within a new framework of investigations that have been applied to the Teen health risk behavior. The trace theory argues that how people represent, retrieve, and process information when they make decisions, and how decision making changes with development. Gist representations often incorporate emotion including valence, arousal, feeling states, and discrete emotions and Emotion determines whether gist or verbatim representations are processed. Trace theory also indicates that Intuition is developmentally advanced and that emotion is integral to intuition just opposite to classical decision making theory that assumes development progresses from hot intuitive thinking to cold calculation bypassing emotion. On the other hand evolutionary model emphasizes that natural selection shaped human neurobiological mechanisms. Most important, these responses are not arbitrary but function adaptively to calibrate developmental and behavioral strategies to match that environment. These theories promise to be valuable as comprehensive descriptive reference material for health professionals, psychologists, academicians and particularly for parents. And have broad implications for designing interventions for high-risk youth and suggests new directions for research.