Prior exposure to racial discrimination and patterns of acute parasympathetic nervous system responses to a race-related stress task among Black adults.

Black adults' prior exposure to racial discrimination may be associated with their acute parasympathetic reactivity to and recovery from a new race-related stressor. Existing analytical approaches to investigating this link obscure nuances in the timing, magnitude, and patterns of these acute parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) responses. In a re-analysis of a prior study, we utilize an hidden Markov model (HMM) approach to examine how prior experiences of racial discrimination are associated with intraindividual patterns of (1) physiological states of PNS activity and (2) patterns of and variability in transitions between these physiological states.

Allostatic Load in Childhood, Adolescence, and Young Adulthood: Are Assumptions of Measurement Invariance Warranted?

Overview: Allostatic load represents the cumulative toll of chronic mobilization of the body's stress response systems, as indexed by biomarkers. Higher levels of stress and disadvantage predict higher levels of allostatic load, which, in turn, predict poorer physical and mental health outcomes. To maximize the efficacy of prevention efforts, screening for stress- and disadvantage-associated health conditions must occur before middle age-that is, during childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.

Black Young Adult Superwomen in the Face of Gendered Racial Microaggressions: Contextualizing Challenges With Acceptance and Avoidance and Emotional Eating.

Background: Black young adult women (ages 18-35) are at disproportionate risk for obesity and emotional eating. Emotional eating interventions target psychological flexibility, such as reducing experiential avoidance and increasing acceptance of food-related thoughts. Yet Black women face gendered racism, and some endorse roles that reduce psychological flexibility, such as the superwoman schema role.

Same Goals, but Different Outcomes: Present-Focused versus Future-Focused Memory Beliefs Differentially Predict Young and Older Adults' Everyday Use of Memory Strategies.

Objective: We investigated whether beliefs about the current versus future effectiveness of memory strategies predict young and older adults' everyday strategy use.

Method: 103 young and 91 older adults reported their memory goals, beliefs about the current and future effectiveness of various strategies, and frequency of use of each strategy type.

Results: The two age groups equally valued current and future memory.

Mother knows best… or does she? Perceptions of the memory abilities of pediatric patients with epilepsy as reported by patients and their parents across time.

Purpose: This study compared the self-reported and parent-reported memory of children with epilepsy across time and explored the relationships between these measures of subjective memory and the children's actual performance on objective neuropsychological tests.

Method: One-hundred and nineteen children with epilepsy who were surgical candidates underwent comprehensive neuropsychological testing that included the Everyday Verbal Memory Questionnaire (EVMQ). Each child's parent and 82 of the children themselves completed the appropriate version of this subjective memory measure.