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Parents of children with autism experience significant stress and challenges in daily life that can impact their well-being. Using a daily diary method, the present study examined the same-day and next-day associations between child-related stress, social support, coping, and parental well-being outcomes (i.e. life satisfaction, positive and negative affect). A total of 76 parents (58 mothers) of autistic children participated in the study and completed daily diaries for 14 consecutive days. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that child-related stress and social support were associated with same-day life satisfaction only in mothers. Moreover, positive coping on a given day was not only related to more positive affect and higher life satisfaction on the same day but also to higher life satisfaction on the next day, whereas negative coping was only related to higher negative affect and lower positive affect on the same day in both parents. These findings emphasize the benefits of positive coping and social support in raising children with autism, which may contribute toward the further development of existing support programs for parents of children with autism.

Family, peers, and academics are three central sources of stress for Chinese adolescents, which have potential negative implications for youth's adjustment. This study investigated how within-person fluctuations in daily domains of stress (i.e., family, peer, and academic) and between-person differences in average stress levels were associated with four Chinese adolescent adjustment indicators (i.e., positive and negative emotions, sleep quality, and subjective vitality). Participants included 315 Chinese adolescents (48.3% girls; M[subscript age] = 13.05 years, SD = 0.77 years) who completed a 10-day diary on each domain of stress and indicators of adjustment. Multilevel models revealed that peer stress had the most detrimental association with Chinese adolescents' adjustment at both within-person (i.e., higher same-day and next-day negative emotions) and between-person (i.e., higher negative emotions, worse sleep quality, and lower subjective vitality) levels. Academic stress was only significant at the between-person level, corresponding to worse sleep quality and increased levels of negative emotions. Family stress exhibited mixed associations and was positively associated with positive and negative emotions and subjective vitality. These findings underscore the need to examine the impact of multiple domains of stress on Chinese adolescent adjustment. Further, identification and intervention for adolescents with elevated peer stress may be particularly helpful for increasing healthy adjustment.

Autistic children tend to show divergent social information processing, and controversies exist regarding the mechanisms underlying this processing. In this article, we summarize and categorize the current theories and evidence related to hypo- and hyperarousal accounts of social information processing in autism. The hypo-arousal account proposes reduced motivation or sensitivity to process social information and is supported by behavioral, eye-tracking, and neuroimaging studies. Recent evidence has challenged this account, highlighting the role of eye gaze in interpreting the hypo-brain activation. The hyperarousal account posits that social context could evoke anxiety and discomfort in autistic children, which could interfere with their social information processing and result in social avoidance. Most research in this field has studied children and adolescents, but some studies have included adults since autism is a lifelong condition. Here, we highlight the importance of considering the heterogeneity of arousal patterns in autistic children when developing individualized supporting protocols.

Parenting a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be tremendously challenging. It is important to identify factors associated with parenting stress. This study examined the indirect effect of parental dispositional mindfulness on their anxiety and depressive symptoms and family quality of life (FQOL) through mindful parenting and then parenting stress. Seventy-nine Chinese parents (24.1% fathers) of children with ASD aged 3-13 years completed self-report questionnaires. Results indicated that higher dispositional mindfulness was associated with higher mindful parenting, which was related to lower parenting stress, and further related to lower anxiety and depressive symptoms and higher FQOL. The findings provide valuable insight into the potential pathways through which general mindfulness and mindful parenting may positively impact parental outcomes.

To cope with the pandemic, we need first to predict it. How does the human brain model epidemic dynamics? In February and March 2020, we conducted an online diary study, where each participant completed 14 days of predictions about the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic in China. Over 400 Chinese adults participated in our study, spanning a total of 40 days. On the group level, we find participants’ predictions of the ending date of the epidemic are correlated with daily new cases. Modeling analysis shows that participants’ predictions agree with a Gaussian process model that generalizes observed case numbers to the future by similarity-based function learning, but deviate from an ideal epidemic model. On the individual level, we find individuals’ pandemic predictions are correlated with their psychological traits or states, such as future time perspective and negative emotions (anxiety, depression, and stress).

Introduction: Procrastination is very common among college students, but there is a lack of consistency in the relationship between procrastination and academic achievement, which might be partly caused by the limitations of previous procrastination scales. The current study constructed the Situational Procrastination Scale (SPS) with two subscales, the Academic Situational Procrastination Scale (ASPS) and the Daily Life Situational Procrastination Scale (DSPS), by adapting previous procrastination scales. Method: The valid sample for data analysis included 2,094 medical undergraduates. After testing item discrimination, we conducted exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and measurement invariance to examine the factor structures. Reliability (i.e., internal and test-retest reliability) and validity (i.e., concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity) of the SPS were verified subsequently. Results: The ASPS included near lateness, lateness, procrastination on academic tasks before deadlines, and procrastination on academic tasks beyond deadlines, and measurement invariance across gender, household registration, and family financial status was found. The DSPS included procrastination on going out, consumption, routines, and communication, and had measurement invariance across grade, household registration, and family financial status. The results demonstrated adequate internal consistency, test-retest reliability, concurrent validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Situational procrastination positively correlated with trait procrastination at a moderate or low level and negatively correlated with self-efficacy. Only procrastination on academic tasks before and beyond deadlines negatively predicted academic achievement. Discussion: The SPS could measure procrastination accurately and clarify the nexus between procrastination and academic achievement, which has implications for improving the academic warning system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physiological synchrony is an important biological process during which parent–child interaction plays a significant role in shaping child socioemotional adjustment. The present study held a context‐dependent perspective to examine the conditional association between parent–child physiological synchrony and child socioemotional adjustment (i.e., relationship quality with parents and child emotion regulation) under different (i.e., from highly unsupportive to highly supportive) emotional contexts. One hundred and fifty school‐age Chinese children (Mage = 8.64 years, 63 girls) and their primary caregivers participated in this study. After attaching electrocardiogram (ECG) electrodes, parent–child dyads were instructed to complete a 4‐minute conflict discussion task. Parent–child physiological synchrony was calculated based on the within‐dyad association between parents' and children's respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) levels across eight 30‐second epochs. Parental emotional support, child relationship quality with parents, and child emotion regulation during the discussion task were coded by trained research assistants. Supporting our hypotheses, parental emotional support moderated the relations of parent–child RSA synchrony with both child relationship quality with parents and child emotion regulation. Furthermore, the Johnson‐Neyman technique of moderation indicated that the associations between parent and child RSA synchrony and child socioemotional adjustment indicators shifted from negative to positive as the parental emotional support became increasingly high. Our findings suggest that parent–child physiological synchrony may not be inherently adaptive or maladaptive, highlighting the importance of understanding the function of parent–child physiological synchrony under specific contexts. Research Highlights: Physiological synchrony may not be inherently adaptive or maladaptive, and the meanings of parent–child physiological synchrony might be contingent on contextual factors.Parental emotional support moderated the relations between parent–child respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) synchrony and child socioemotional adjustment indicators (i.e., child relationship quality with parents and child emotion regulation).More positive/less negative parent–child RSA synchrony was associated with better child socioemotional adjustment under a supportive emotional context, whereas with poorer child socioemotional adjustment under an unsupportive emotional context.These findings highlight the significance of considering the emotional context in physiological synchrony studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known regarding the dynamic interactions between fathers and mothers in families of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during the parenting process. This study used an actor-partner interdependence mediation (APIMeM) model to investigate the intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of emotion dysregulation and parenting stress on parenting behaviors among 211 pairs (total N = 422) of Chinese parents of children with ASD. The results indicated that for both fathers and mothers, there were significant indirect actor effects of parental emotion dysregulation on parents' own parenting behaviors through their own parenting stress. However, no significant direct or indirect partner effect was found in the analyses. These findings suggest that the emotional parenting dynamics occurred on the individual rather than the dyadic level in these families.

Effective strategies to address academic performance are critical to students with disabilities in inclusive settings. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of using gesture-based instruction via Leap Motion-aided virtual reality (VR) technology to teach matching skills to school-aged students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in China. Three participants with ASD from general education schools participated in this study. A multiple probe design across participants was used. The results indicated that all participants acquired the target match-to-sample skills and maintained the acquired skills at a high level for up to 12 weeks. Results of this study provide important implications to special education and general education teachers working with students with ASD.

Affect-biased attention is an important predictive factor of children's early socio-emotional development, possibly shaped by the family environment. Our study aimed to reveal children's temporal dynamic patterns of affect-biased attention by looking at time series of attention to emotional faces, individual differences in temporal dynamics, and their relations with parenting practices. Sixty Chinese children (27 girls; mean age: 7.92 ± 1.09 years) viewed emotional–neutral face pairs (angry, sad, and happy) for 3,000 ms while their eye movements were recorded. First, results showed that overall looking time rather than manual reaction time revealed affect-biased attention: children looked more at angry and happy faces than neutral faces, although they looked at sad and neutral faces approximately the same amount of time. Temporal course analysis revealed further differences in visual attention to emotional faces: attention bias to emotional faces emerged early after the stimuli onset (before 400 ms), even for sad faces. This bias did not hold for the entire stimulus presentation time, and only the attention bias to happy faces appeared again in the later period. Second, we applied a data-driven cluster approach to the time series of attention to emotional faces and revealed three subgroups of dynamic affect-biased attention. Finally, the machine learning method revealed that positive parenting was related to the temporal dynamic patterns of children's attention to sad faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study employed two key dynamic indicators (i.e., inertia and instability) to the psychophysiological research of child emotion regulation (ER) and examined whether respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) dynamics were associated with child ER during a stress task. Eighty‐nine Chinese school‐age children (Mage = 8.77 years, SD = 1.80 years; 46.1% girls) and their primary caregivers participated in the study. After controlling for RSA static reactivity, multiple regression analyses indicated that lower RSA inertia was related to fewer in‐task negative emotions rated by children and their caregivers, and higher RSA instability was associated with better child trait ER. This study introduces physiological indicators of the dynamic aspects of parasympathetic activity to the study of child ER. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we first examine the relationship between authentic leadership and employee's feedback-seeking behaviour. Following this we offer two perspectives to explain how and why authentic leadership promotes feedback-seeking behaviour. We suggest, from a cognitive perspective, that such leadership can influence the employees' beliefs concerning the perceived value and cost of feedback seeking and in turn increase the likelihood of employees proactively engaging in such behaviour. We further argue that emotions also play a significant role in this process. We propose that feedback-seeking behaviour could also be promoted by authentic leaders through a mechanism of cultivating the employees' positive emotions. We conclude by drawing out the theoretical contributions as well as the practical implications from this dual-perspective model, alongside a discussion of the promising directions for future research., Author(s): Jing Qian[sup.1] , Fu Yang[sup.2] , Zhuo Rachel Han[sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) Business School, Beijing Normal University, 100875, BeijingChina (2) School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and [...]

While research into the antecedents of burnout has steadily grown, the relationship between abusive supervision and burnout remains largely unknown. In addition, we know little about the contingencies under which abusive supervision may be related to employees' burnout. This study aims to examine the contingency side of the abusive supervision-burnout relationship by addressing the exploratory question of whether perceived organizational support and individual differences in political skill play moderating roles in the abusive supervision-burnout relationship. The present article developed a model and tested it with data from a sample of 248 supervisor-subordinate dyads. We hypothesized and found that (1) Abusive supervision was positively associated with burnout; (2) the positive relationship between abusive supervision and burnout was moderated by the employees' perceived organizational support in such a way that the relationship was weaker for employees who perceive higher rather than lower organizational support; (3) the positive relationship between abusive supervision and burnout was moderated by the employees' political skill in such a way that the relationship was weaker for people with high, rather than lower level of political skill., Author(s): Xiaoyan Li[sup.1] , Jing Qian[sup.2] , Zhuo Rachel Han[sup.3] , Zhuyun Jin[sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) School of Business, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, China (2) Business School, Beijing Normal University, [...]