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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (21 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2015)
    Cover page: Differential Contributions of Language Skills to Children's Episodic Recall
    • Thesis
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2022)

    Food memories are salient across the lifespan and recent work suggests that memories for past food experiences, especially those from childhood, may influence caregivers’ present-day eating and family meal planning behaviors. Yet, researchers have not identified how cultural ideology interacts with the memory system to inform the intergenerational transmission of food values and beliefs within the family unit. This omission has the potential to perpetuate pre-existing health disparities in families belonging to minority groups and limits the efficacy and appeal of nutritional initiatives within an ever-diversifying U.S. population. Across three studies, the present dissertation examined qualitative and quantitative data on childhood memories, eating motivations, and physical health collected from caregivers belong to four subcultural groups in the U.S. The primary aims of this dissertation were to provide a systematic comparison of food and non-food memories using mixed methods (Study 1), examine food memories from a cultural perspective (Study 2), and identify potential pathways between food memories, eating motivations, and health (Study 3). The three studies presented in this dissertation demonstrated that childhood autobiographical food memories are unique, culturally bound, and potentially linked to food-related behaviors, eating motivations, and health status later in life. This dissertation provides the first known evidence of a culturally moderated pathway between the autobiographical memory system, eating motivations, health perceptions, and caregiver BMI and represents a first step towards identifying how the memory system can be used to develop more inclusive and efficacious healthcare programs.

      Cover page: Victuals and Values: Exploring Cultural Differences in Family Health Using a Food Memory Framework
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2017)
        Cover page: Narrative Skills, Gender, Culture, and Children’s Long-Term Memory Accuracy of a Staged Event
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2022)
        We examined the role of emotion- versus fact-focused conversations in the details children reported about a stressful event and whether the details provided were prompted or spontaneously offered. We also tested how these conversational strategies, in conjunction with children's emotion regulation skills, influenced children's event-related distress. Children (N = 100 8- to 13-year-olds) experienced a stressor in the laboratory and were randomly assigned to participate in a fact-focused conversation (prompted about objective event elements) or an emotion-focused conversation (prompted about subjective reactions to the event) with an unfamiliar adult. Caregivers reported on children's emotion regulation skills. Children reported more overall prompted and spontaneous details in the fact-focused condition, but reported proportionally more spontaneous details than prompted detail in the emotion-focused condition compared to the fact-focused condition. Children with lower emotion regulation skills found the emotion-focused conversation (but not the fact-focused conversation) about the laboratory stressor significantly less distressing than children with high emotion regulation skills (when controlling for initial distress about the task). We propose that combining both fact- and emotion-focused conversational techniques may be most effective for encouraging detailed disclosures from children and for providing a respite from distress for children with emotion-regulation difficulties.
          Cover page: Fact- and emotion-focused conversations elicit differential patterns of reporting and distress in children
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2020)
          When children testify in cases of child sexual abuse (CSA), they often provide minimal responses to attorneys' questions. Thus, how attorneys ask questions may be particularly influential in shaping jurors' perceptions and memory for case details. This study examined mock jurors' perceptions after reading an excerpt of a CSA trial transcript. Participants' memory of the excerpt was tested after a two-day delay. We examined how reading a direct or cross-examination excerpt that included either high or low temporal structure impacted participants' perceptions, verdict decisions and memory reports. We found that participants who read a direct examination excerpt rated the child witness as more credible, were more likely to convict the defendant and had more accurate memory reports than those who read a cross-examination excerpt, regardless of temporal structure. Suggestions for improving jurors' comprehension and recall of child statements presented as evidence in CSA cases are discussed.
            Cover page: Differential effects of direct and cross examination on mock jurors’ perceptions and memory in cases of child sexual abuse
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2020)
            The present review is intended as an overview of our current understanding of how children's individual characteristics, in terms of demographic, cognitive, and psycho-social variables, may influence their susceptibility to suggestion. The goals are to revisit conceptual models of the mechanisms of suggestibility, to provide an updated practical guide for practitioners, and to make recommendations for future research. Results suggest that children with intellectual impairment and those with nascent language skills may be particularly vulnerable to suggestion. Further, memory for separate events, theory of mind, executive function, temperament, and social competence may not be related to suggestibility, whereas additional work is needed to clarify the potential contributions of knowledge, stress, mental health, parental elaborative style, and adverse experiences/maltreatment to children's suggestibility.
              Cover page: Individual Differences in Children’s Suggestibility: An Updated Review
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2020)
              This is the first study to examine the effect of questioning children about emotions and cognitions versus facts on children's stress reactivity and regulation, as well as children's abilities to discuss their subjective experiences, in the context of adult-child discussions about a stressful event. A total of 80 8- to 12-year-old children participated in a stressful laboratory task (i.e., Trier Social Stress Test). Following the task, half of the children were engaged in an emotion-focused conversation with an adult interviewer about the event, and half were engaged in a fact-focused conversation. Electrodermal and cardiac preejection activity and respiratory sinus arrhythmia were derived at baseline, during the laboratory stressor, and during the conversation to index stress reactivity and regulation. Children's narratives were coded for indicators of emotion processing (i.e., positive and negative emotion words, cognitive words [e.g., think, know]). Children's English language abilities, self-reported stress, and several parent-report measures (demographics, child life stress, and children's emotion regulation strategies) were also obtained. Results indicate that the emotion-focused interview facilitated children's discussions of their subjective experiences without increasing their stress reactivity and that children showed enhanced physiological stress regulation during the emotion-focused interview. This research will be of interest to those in the fields of child narratives, stress, and social context as well as to parents and practitioners interested in improving children's understanding, reporting, and recovery after stressful experiences.
                Cover page: Talking about emotions: Effects of emotion-focused interviewing on children’s physiological regulation of stress and discussion of the subjective elements of a stressful experience
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2023)
                  Cover page: Misinformation – past, present, and future
                  • Article
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2021)

                  Purpose

                  This longitudinal investigation assessed how the frequency of parent-adolescent conversations about COVID-19, moderated by adolescents' stress, influenced adolescents' empathic concern and adherence to health protective behaviors (HPBs) throughout the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

                  Methods

                  Participants were 181 adolescents (Mage = 15.23 years; 51% girls; 47% Latinx) and their parents. Frequency of parent-adolescent conversations about COVID-19 (i.e., pandemic-related symptoms, health behaviors, and social effects), empathic concern toward vulnerable others, and adolescent HPBs were assessed via surveys in the first months of the pandemic, and empathic concern and HPBs were assessed again nine months later.

                  Results

                  Results revealed that more frequent parent-adolescent conversations early in the pandemic predicted increased adherence to HPBs throughout the pandemic when adolescents reported low stress (direct effect), but conversation frequency predicted decreased adherence to HPBs via reduced empathic concern when adolescents reported high stress (indirect effect).

                  Conclusions

                  Parents and other socialization agents, such as teachers, should be sensitive to adolescents' stress before engaging them in frequent conversations about the pandemic to mitigate the potential negative impact these conversations may have on adolescents' empathic concern and adherence to HPBs. Decreasing adolescents' stress may be an initial step in promoting effective message transference. Collective action (including wearing masks and receiving the vaccine) remains critical to overcoming COVID-19. The current study contributes to our understanding of the processes underlying adolescents' adherence to recommended HPBs, which is critical as pandemic fatigue and stress continue to rise.
                    Cover page: Parent-Adolescent Conversations About COVID-19 Influence Adolescents' Empathic Concern and Adherence to Health Protective Behaviors
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2016)
                    We examined the links between parental elaborativeness and children's suggestibility about a salient event, testing the hypothesis that, in an accuracy-focused context, children of elaborative parents are more resistant to false suggestions than children of less elaborative parents. Our hypothesis was supported: in a sample of 68 4–7 year-old children and caregivers, parent elaborativeness, along with children's working memory, additively predicted resistance to false suggestions from an unfamiliar interviewer about peripheral details of an alleged transgression. Children were forthcoming about the transgression when it actually occurred and highly resistant to suggestions that the transgression took place when it did not. Results have implications for understanding how parents socialize children to resist suggestions in accuracy-focused contexts through everyday reminiscing practices. Implications for theories of narrative and memory development, and for applied contexts such as the legal system, are discussed.
                      Cover page: Parental reminiscing style and children’s suggestibility about an alleged transgression
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