Trait dissociation and the subjective affective, motivational, and phenomenological experience of self-defining memories.

The present research reports 2 studies that examine the relation between nonpathological trait dissociation and the subjective affect, motivation, and phenomenology of self-defining memories. In Study 1 (N=293), participants retrieved and rated the emotional and motivational experience of a general and a positive and negative achievement-related memory. Study 2 (N=449) extended these ratings to relationship-related memories and the phenomenological experience of the memory.

Complexity, usefulness, and optimality: a response to Foster (2010).

In his commentary, Foster (2010) made arguments at 2 levels, offering a broad critique of statistical or methodological approaches in developmental psychology in general together with critical comments that applied only to our recent article (Dogan, Stockdale, Widaman, & Conger, 2010). Certain criticisms by Foster aimed at the field as a whole appear to be justified, whereas others seem overly broad and of dubious validity. In addition, Foster ignored the full range of methodologies used by both developmental psychologists and economists to pursue the identification of causal processes.

Developmental relations and patterns of change between alcohol use and number of sexual partners from adolescence through adulthood.

We explored two unanswered questions about the role of alcohol use in sexual behavior. First, we considered whether alcohol use temporally precedes and predicts changes in sexual behavior assessed as the number of sexual partners, whether the reverse pattern holds, or whether the association reflects a common, external cause. Second, we assessed whether associations between these behaviors change as adolescents transition to adulthood.

Reciprocity in parenting of adolescents within the context of marital negativity.

The authors investigated the degree to which parents become more similar to each other over time in their childrearing behaviors. Mothers and fathers of 451 adolescents were assessed at 3 points in time, with 2-year lags between each assessment. Data on parent warmth, harshness, and monitoring were collected by parent self-report, adolescent report, and observer ratings of family interactions.

Individualism, collectivism, and delinquency in Asian American adolescents.

Although the study of delinquency has previously focused on identifying individual, family, peer, and social risk and protective factors, little empirical research has studied cultural factors and their relations to delinquency. In a large community sample of 329 Chinese, Cambodian, Laotian/Mien, and Vietnamese youths, individualism was positively related to, and collectivism negatively related to, self-reported delinquency, with partial mediation through peer delinquency (PD). Although the percentage of variance in delinquency attributable to individualism-collectivism was small compared to PD, it cannot be discounted as trivial.

Confirmatory factor analysis of single- and multiple-factor competing models of the dissociative experiences scale in a nonclinical sample.

Previous research on the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) has demonstrated that (a) dissociation is quantifiable in both clinical and nonclinical samples and (b) a three-factor structure (amnesia, depersonalization, and absorption) is tenable for clinical samples. The factor structurefor nonclinical samples is less clear, with one- and multiple-factor solutions proposed. To clarify the DESfactor structure in nonclinical samples, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on (a) one-, two-, three-, and four-factorfirst-order models and (b) two bifactor (hierarchical) models of DES scoresfor two samples of nonclinical university students.