The Best Friendships of Shy/Withdrawn Children: Prevalence, Stability, and Relationship Quality

The mutual best friendships of shy/withdrawn and control children were examined for prevalence, stability, best friend's characteristics, and friendship quality. Using peer nominations of shy/socially withdrawn and aggressive behaviors, two groups of children were identified from a normative sample of fifth-grade children: shy/withdrawn (n = 169) and control (nonaggressive/nonwithdrawn; n = 163). Friendship nominations, teacher reports, and friendship quality data were gathered. Results revealed that shy/withdrawn children were as likely as control children to have mutual stable best friendships. Withdrawn children's friends were more withdrawn and victimized than were the control children's best friends; further, similarities in social withdrawal and peer victimization were revealed for withdrawn children and their friends. Withdrawn children and their friends reported lower friendship quality than did control children. Results highlight the importance of both quantitative and qualitative measures of friendship when considering relationships as risk and/or protective factors.     

Relationships among anxious symptomatology, anxiety sensitivity and laboratory pain responsivity in children

Existing laboratory-based research in adult samples has suggested that anxiety sensitivity (AS) increases an individual's propensity to experience pain-related anxiety, which in turn enhances pain responsivity. Such relationships have not been examined in younger populations. Thus, the present study used structural equation modeling (SEM) to test a conceptual model in which AS would evidence an indirect relationship with pain intensity via its contribution to state-specific anticipatory anxiety in relation to a variety of laboratory pain tasks (cold pressor, thermal heat, and pressure pain) in 234 healthy children (116 girls; mean age = 12.6 years, range = 8-18 years). The model further hypothesized that existing anxious symptomatology would demonstrate a direct relationship with pain intensity. Results of the SEM supported the proposed conceptual model with the total indirect effect of AS accounting for 29% of the variance in laboratory pain intensity via its effects on pain-related anticipatory anxiety. AS did not however, evidence a direct relationship with pain intensity. Anxious symptomatology on the other hand, demonstrated a significant direct effect on pain intensity, accounting for 15% of variance. The combined effects of AS, anxiety symptoms, and anticipatory anxiety together explained 62% of the variance in pain intensity. These relationships did not differ for boys and girls, indicating no moderating effect of sex in the proposed model. The present results support the potential benefit of assessing both AS and anxiety symptoms in children prior to undergoing painful stimulation.     

Hypnotherapy and cognitive behaviour therapy of acute stress disorder: a 3-year follow-up

The long-term benefits of cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for trauma survivors with acute stress disorder were investigated by assessing patients 3 years after treatment. Civilian trauma survivors (n=87) were randomly allocated to six sessions of CBT, CBT combined with hypnosis, or supportive counselling (SC), 69 completed treatment, and 53 were assessed 2 years post-treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale. In terms of treatment completers, 2 CBT patients (10%), 4 CBT/hypnosis patients (22%), and 10 SC patients (63%) met PTSD criteria at 2-years follow-up. Intent-to-treat analyses indicated that 12 CBT patients (36%), 14 CBT/hypnosis patients (46%), and 16 SC patients (67%) met PTSD criteria at 2-year follow-up. Patients who received CBT and CBT/hypnosis reported less re-experiencing and less avoidance symptoms than patients who received SC. These findings point to the long-term benefits of early provision of CBT in the initial month after trauma.     

Audio-visual speech perception off the top of the head

The study examined whether people can extract speech related information from the talker's upper face that was presented using either normally textured videos (Experiments 1 and 3) or videos showing only the outlined of the head (Experiments 2 and 4). Experiments 1 and 2 used within- and cross-modal matching tasks. In the within-modal task, observers were presented two pairs of short silent video clips that showed the top part of a talker's head. In the cross-modal task, pairs of audio and silent video clips were presented. The task was to determine the pair in which the talker said the same sentence. Performance on both tasks was better than chance for the outline as well as textured presentation suggesting that judgments were primarily based on head movements. Experiments 3 and 4 tested if observing the talker's upper face would help identify speech in noise. The results showed the viewing the talker's moving upper head produced a small but reliable improvement in speech intelligibility, however, this effect was only secure for the expressive sentences that involved greater head movements. The results suggest that people are sensitive to speech related head movements that extend beyond the mouth area and can use these to assist in language processing.     

The use of social and salience cues in early word learning

This article explores young infants' ability to learn new words in situations providing tightly controlled social and salience cues to their reference. Four experiments investigated whether, given two potential referents, 15-month-olds would attach novel labels to (a) an image toward which a digital recording of a face turned and gazed, (b) a moving image versus a stationary image, (c) a moving image toward which the face gazed, and (d) a gazed-on image versus a moving image. Infants successfully used the recorded gaze cue to form new word-referent associations and also showed learning in the salience condition. However, their behavior in the salience condition and in the experiments that followed suggests that, rather than basing their judgments of the words' reference on the mere presence or absence of the referent's motion, infants were strongly biased to attend to the consistency with which potential referents moved when a word was heard.     

Perceived organizational support and perceived external prestige: predicting organizational attachment for university faculty, staff, and administrators

The present article introduces a social-exchange model of organizational attachment incorporating both direct exchange and indirect exchange. Participants were 325 university employees. The present results indicated that perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived external prestige (PEP) both contribute to organizational attachment. Further, the results showed that the extent to which POS and PEP are related to organizational attachment is moderated by occupational proxies of cosmopolitan-local role orientation. POS was more strongly related to the affective commitment and withdrawal cognitions of staff and administrators than to those of faculty. PEP was more strongly related to affective commitment and withdrawal cognitions of university faculty than to those of university staff and administrators. The authors discussed the need to incorporate relational variables such as PEP into other social-exchange frameworks.     

Construed external image and organizational identification: a test of the moderating influence of need for self-esteem

According to Social Identity Theory (cf., J. G. March & H. A. Simon, 1958), individuals tend to identify with prestigious or high-status groups. Researchers (J. E. Dutton, J. M. Dukerich, & C. V. Harquail, 1994) have revealed that organizational members also identify with organizations that have attractive public images. To gain a better understanding of the theoretical reasons underlying the relationship between image and identification in organizations, the authors examined this relationship in a healthcare setting. In addition, they investigated need for esteem as a moderator of the relationship between construed external image and organizational identification. Consistent with previous findings, the present results indicated that construed external image is positively related to organizational identification. Perhaps it is more important that the present findings also supported need for esteem as a moderator of the relationship between construed external image and organizational identification.     

A comparison of autogenous/reactive obsessions and worry in a nonclinical population: a test of the continuum hypothesis

Employing the autogenous-reactive model of obsessions (Behaviour Research and Therapy 41 (2003) 11-29), this study sought to test a hypothesized continuum where reactive obsessions fall in between autogenous obsessions and worry with respect to several thought characteristics concerning content appraisal, perceived form, and thought triggers. Nonclinical undergraduate students (n=435) were administered an online packet of questionnaires designed to examine the three different types of thoughts. Main data analyses included only those displaying moderate levels of obsessions or worries (n=252). According to the most distressing thought, three different groups were formed and compared: autogenous obsession (n=34), reactive obsession (n=76), and worry (n=142). Results revealed that (a) relative to worry, autogenous obsessions were perceived as more bizarre, more unacceptable, more unrealistic, and less likely to occur; (b) autogenous obsessions were more likely to take the form of impulses, urges, or images, whereas worry was more likely to take the form of doubts, apprehensions, or thoughts; and (c) worry was more characterized by awareness and identifiability of thought triggers, with reactive obsessions through these comparisons falling in between. Moreover, reactive obsessions, relative to autogenous obsessions, were more strongly associated with both severity of worry and use of worrying as a thought control strategy. Our data suggest that the reactive subtype represents more worry-like obsessions compared to the autogenous subtype.     

Group differences in the mutual gaze of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

A comparative developmental framework was used to determine whether mutual gaze is unique to humans and, if not, whether common mechanisms support the development of mutual gaze in chimpanzees and humans. Mother-infant chimpanzees engaged in approximately 17 instances of mutual gaze per hour. Mutual gaze occurred in positive, nonagonistic contexts. Mother-infant chimpanzees at a Japanese center exhibited significantly more mutual gaze than those at a center in the United States. Cradling and motor stimulation varied across groups. Time spent cradling infants was inversely related to mutual gaze. It is suggested that in primates, mutual engagement is supported via an interchangeability of tactile and visual modalities. The importance of mutual gaze is best understood within a perspective that embraces both cross-species and cross-cultural data.     

International perspectives on couple relationship education

This article introduces the special section on international perspectives on couple relationship education. We first describe the theory and research underlying the increased interest in relationship education, with a strong emphasis on social policy issues. We include a discussion of both the benefits and controversies resulting from governments being involved in promoting healthy relationships. We then provide an overview of the four articles included in the special section and show how they illustrate trends occurring in a diverse set of cultural and national contexts. We conclude by highlighting issues and future directions for the relationship education field.