By Kara A. Christensen, Amelia Aldao, Margaret A. Sheridan, and Katie A. McLaughlin | Cognition and Emotion | September 2015

Abstract:

Although the emotion regulation strategy of reappraisal has been associated with adaptive outcomes (e.g., Aldao et al., 2010), there is growing evidence that it may not be adaptive in all contexts (Troy et al., 2013). In the present study, adolescents reported their use of habitual reappraisal and their experiences with peer victimization, a chronic stressor that has significant associations with reduced well-being in this population. We examined how these variables predicted physiological reactivity (vagal withdrawal and changes in pre-ejection period) during a social stressor (i.e., Trier Social Stress Task; Kirschbaum et al., 1993). In line with the findings by Troy et al., (2013), at high levels of victimization, habitual reappraisal positively predicted adaptive physiological reactivity (i.e., greater vagal withdrawal). Conversely, at low levels of victimization, habitual reappraisal negatively predicted maladaptive physiological reactivity (i.e., blunted vagal withdrawal). These findings were specific to parasympathetic reactivity. They suggest that habitual reappraisal may exert different effects on parasympathetic reactivity depending on the presence of stressors, and highlight the importance of examining the role of contextual factors in determining the adaptiveness of ER processes.

Read the full article here.

The Marshall Project’s Eli Hager reports on the growing use of “alternative schools” — isolated classrooms, where students are often met with corporal punishment and humiliating treatment — as a way to lower suspension rates among rural schools in the South.

By Eli Hager | The Marshall Project | November 11, 2015

Rockmon Montrell “Rock” Allen, an 18-year-old from Jackson, Mississippi, has never gone to jail. But school, he says, was close enough. At Ridgeland High School, a large public school in an increasingly black suburb of Jackson, he was punished repeatedly for what seemed like minor reasons.

In the ninth grade, when he wore the wrong-color uniform or didn’t tuck in his shirt, Rock got “whooped,” as he puts it. That meant bending over, putting his hands on a desk, and getting hit three to five times on the backside with a flat wooden paddle. Mississippi is one of only four states—the others are Alabama, Georgia, and Texas—where school districts frequently use corporal punishment on students (although 19 states allow the practice by law). Teachers and administrators openly use paddles—and, in rarer cases, belts, rulers, and key chains—to whip kids into order. Continue reading »

By Robert Kinscherff, Senior Fellow in Law & Applied Neuroscience

It is fitting that I am writing this first blog of my time as Senior Fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience as we transition through the change of seasons.  It is a privilege to have the time afforded by this joint Fellowship between Harvard Law School (Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics) and Massachusetts General Hospital (Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior) to focus upon the intersections of behavioral science, developmental neuroscience, and juvenile justice.  The autumnal change of seasons is a fitting metaphor for the slow but profound changes occurring in juvenile justice which have been spurred in large measure by emerging neuroscience increasingly describing the neurobiology of adolescence.  This neuroscience provides the biological complement to what developmental psychologists have well described and what parents have long known:  Children are different. Continue reading »

By Vincent Schiraldi | The New York Times | November 10, 2015

After two decades of researching mass incarceration — and advocating for its demise — I decided in 2005 to take more direct action and accepted a job running corrections departments, first in Washington, D.C., then in New York City. It was a rude awakening. Continue reading »

By Chris Geidner | BuzzFeed News | November 8, 2015

Henderson Hill and Rob Smith are the odd couple shepherding a collaborative effort to end the death penalty in America at the most significant moment for that movement in decades.

As talk of mass incarceration, racial disparities, and criminal justice legislation has permeated the public debate on both sides of the political spectrum, another effort has taken shape under the radar: the laying of the groundwork for a Supreme Court ruling that the death penalty is unconstitutional, a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

When Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, along with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, raised the prospect this June of the Supreme Court revisiting the constitutionality of the death penalty — using a key part of Smith’s work as evidence — the ground shifted overnight, and discussions went from hypothetical to hyperdrive. Continue reading »