Childhood Predictors of Desistance and Level of Persistence in Offending in Early Onset Offenders

Childhood predictors of adolescent offending careers were studied in 310 boys from the longitudinal Pittsburgh Youth Study who started offending prior to age 12. Three main groups were distinguished: serious persisters (n = 95), moderately serious persisters (n = 117), desisters (n = 63), and an intermittent group (n = 35). Group membership was predicted using risk and promotive factors measured in childhood. Serious and moderately serious persisters could be distinguished well from desisters (29.2% and 32.3% explained variance). Distinction between the two persister groups proved somewhat more difficult (20.9% explained variance). More serious persisters than desisters showed disruptive behavior, while moderately serious persisters fell in between. Further, more moderately serious persisters were marked by social disadvantage. Family involvement, small family and positive peer relationships were promotive of desistance. Concluding, early onset offenders show considerable heterogeneity in their adolescent offending careers which seem to some extent to be predicted by different sets of risk and promotive factors.     

类推理的发展序列与年龄特点

类推理主要涉及类别层级包含关系的理解和判断。使用修订的类包含、替代包含和二元律任务,以162名二至五年级儿童为被试,利用Raseh模型分析方法,旨在揭示儿童逻辑包含能力的发展序列。此外,探讨了儿童类推理发展的年龄特点。结果表明：1）类推理发展中儿童最先掌握类包含推理,其次是替代包含,最后是二元律推理;2）三、四、五年级儿童已能解决多数类包含任务,其成绩显著优于二年级儿童。四、五年级儿童能解决多数替代包含任务,其成绩均显著优于二年级儿童;3）二元律任务对二至五年级儿童来讲均比较困难。     

The New Learning Environment and Adult Developmental Needs

The link between an adult's learning capabilities and an organization's learning and adaptation is highlighted in this study of workers in a new training program. Studies have found that worker productivity differences are rooted in psychological factors. The most successful firms have supportive workplace psychologies that foster perspective transformation, yield high productivity, high involvement, high job satisfaction, low cost, and high profits. This study suggests the importance of workers having a whole-organization perspective. The findings of this study are generalizable to other organizations making the transition from training to learning in which individuals learn to continuously grow, develop, and problem solve to the benefit of all.     

Psychopathy and Anxiety in Children and Adolescents: New Insights on Developmental Pathways to Offending

This study examined the relation between psychopathy and anxiety in 130 juvenile offenders. Adolescents were administered three psychopathy scales (PCL-YV, APSD, and SRP-II), a measure of psychopathology (APS), and subsequently followed prospectively in the community for three years in order to track recidivism. Three mediational models were tested to determine whether psychopathy mediates the relation between anxiety (trait anxiety, fearlessness, and trauma) and future offending. Findings indicated that psychopathy mediated the relation between two types of anxiety (trait anxiety and fearlessness) and recidivism when using the PCL-YV as an index for psychopathy. These influences were not supported when using self-report measures of psychopathy (APSD and SRP-II) and the meditational models did not apply to the anxiety subtype of trauma for any of the psychopathy measures. The PCL-YV mediational models provide new insights on the relation between psychopathy anxiety and offending. Specifically, pathways from fearlessness to psychopathy and later offending were in the expected direction. Surprisingly, higher levels of trait anxiety were linked with higher levels of psychopathy and subsequent offending. This developmental difference is in contrast with theory and the adult literature on this topic. The results from the current study suggest that both fear and anxiety may be important considerations in treatment planning for the reduction of adolescent offending.     

The Profiles of Creative Potential and Personality Characteristics of Adult Professionals

Using 5 divergent thinking indices of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, this study examined the creative profiles of 236 adult professionals and relationships between their creative characteristics and personality types. All these adults were in their middle or late stage of professional development in business, public service, journalism, or a similar profession. Distinctive profiles of creative and personality characteristics were found as a function of the domain. For example, the adults in business, journalism, and law had strength in fluency and a weakness in resistance to premature closure; those in medicine, and research and education showed strength in originality and a weakness in abstractness of titles. Those in business were mostly either an ESTJ or ISTJ type had lower levels of creativity than other professionals. Across the domains, the adults preferring intuition in perceiving information had higher creative potential than those preferring sensing. Domains were significant predictors of most of the tested creativity, even over and above the personality types. Overall, this study supported that creative potential, personality types, and domains are intertwined although further explorations are needed to identify causality among them.     

Adult Career Changers: A Developmental Context

Adults requesting career guidance at a counseling center completed a problem-checklist and the Identity, Information, and Barriers scales of the My Vocational Situation (Holland, Daiger, & Power, 1980) inventory. Respondents indicated a need for information on careers; lack of clarity regarding interests, talents, and goals; and worries about self-confidence, independence, and assertiveness. Suggestions are given regarding appropriate interventions.     

Adult Attachment and Dyadic Adjustment: The Mediating Role of Shame

Although it is widely recognized that adult attachment is associated with romantic relationship quality, the mechanisms involved remain poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate the mediating role of external and internal shame on the association between attachment and dyadic adjustment. A battery of self-report measures was completed by 228 Portuguese participants and a serial multiple mediation model was tested. Data showed that, in the population under study, attachment dimensions were associated with worse dyadic adjustment through high external and internal shame. Internal shame alone also mediated the association between attachment avoidance and dyadic adjustment. This study identifies a new putative mechanism linking adult attachment and intimate relationship functioning that may be targeted in couples therapy to promote a better dyadic adjustment and relationship functioning.     

The Relevance of Age of Onset to the Psychopathology of Social Phobia

The present study aimed to examine the relevance of age of onset to the psychopathology of social phobia using a large clinical sample of 210 patients with social phobia. The two most common periods of onset were during adolescence (ages 14–17) and early childhood (prior to age 10). Structural regression modeling was used to test predictions that early onset social phobia would be associated with greater severity of the disorder, stronger current symptoms of depression and anxiety, greater functional impairment, and more pronounced levels of emotional disorder vulnerabilities (e.g., neuroticism/behavioral inhibition, extraversion, perceptions of control). Logistic regression was used to evaluate relationships between age of onset and the presence of acute and chronic stress at the time of onset. Results showed that earlier age of social phobia onset was associated with stronger current psychopathology, functional impairment, and emotional disorder vulnerabilities, and that later age of onset predicted the presence of an acutely stressful event around the time of disorder emergence. These results are discussed in regard to their clinical implications and congruence with prominent etiological models of the emotional disorders.     

Everyday Problem Solving and Emotion: An Adult Developmental Perspective

ABSTRACT— Despite cognitive declines that occur with aging, older adults solve emotionally salient and interpersonal problems in more effective ways than young adults do. I review evidence suggesting that older adults (a) tailor their strategies to the contextual features of the problem and (b) effectively use a combination of instrumental and emotion-regulation strategies. I identify factors of problem-solving contexts that affect what types of problem-solving strategies will be effective. Finally, I discuss how this identification of factors affects what we know about developmental differences in everyday problem-solving competence.     

Adult Attachment and Developmental Personality Styles: An Empirical Study

The current study was designed to test specific hypotheses associated with W. J. Lyddon and A. Sherry's (2001) attachment theory model of developmental personality styles. More specifically, 4 adult attachment dimensions were correlated with 10 personality scales on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory‐III (T. Millon, R. Davis, & C. Millon, 1997) with a sample of 273 men and women. Findings indicated that the adult attachment dimensions were able to predict 7 of the 10 personality styles.     

Profiles of Readers in a Digital Age

This study examined typologies of young adults as readers in the digital age (N = 993). Latent profile analysis (LPA) results showed that across different modes (printed, online, and social media) and purposes (academic and recreational) of reading, four distinctive reader groups emerged: low-interest readers, traditional readers, moderate readers, and high-interest readers. While there was an absence of the group who may read exclusively online, people with a higher level of reading interest would read a lot, and those with a lower level of reading interest would not engage themselves in reading, irrespective of different types of reading modes.     

Neurotherapy in Adult Management of Stress: Developmental Aspects of the Adult Immune System

Stress, defined as a stimulus, a response, and an interaction between the person and the environment is eventually present in everyday life. Nevertheless, stress can be both dangerous and uncomfortable. Stress influences the corticotropin??releasing factor and the locus ceruleus-norepinephrine systems, which in turn impact the hypothalamic?Cpituitary?Cadrenal axis and the autonomic nervous system. At the same time, stress directly affects the immune system. Treatment by means of an alternative approach such as neurotherapy can enhance the immune system and thereby improve the patient??s overall wellbeing.     

Emotion Dysregulation Mediates the Link between Childhood Emotional Maltreatment and Young Adult Romantic Relationship Satisfaction

This study examined the mediating role of emotion dysregulation in the relation between retrospective reports of childhood emotional maltreatment and current satisfaction in a romantic relationship. Participants included 492 (135 male, 357 female) young adults in current romantic relationships. Results indicated that total emotion regulation difficulties mediated the relation between childhood emotional maltreatment and romantic relationship satisfaction. Multiple mediator analyses indicated that nonacceptance of emotional responses, impulse control difficulties, and lack of emotional clarity uniquely mediated this relation when controlling for other emotion regulation difficulties. These findings contribute to increasing research examining the interpersonal relationships among maltreated individuals, and guide future research by elucidating the factors that increase the risk for future maladaptation.     

Profiles of Everyday Executive Function in Acquired and Developmental Disorders

The current study focused on the early development of inhibitory control in 5- to 7-year-old children attending kindergarten in two Eastern-European countries, Romania and Russia. These two countries share many aspects of child-rearing and educational practices, previously documented to influence the development of inhibitory control. Using the Lurian-based developmental approach offered by the Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment battery, the study aimed to contribute to cross-cultural developmental neuropsychology by exploring (a) early interrelationships between subcomponents of inhibitory control (response suppression and attention control) and generative fluency (verbal and figural) in these two cultures, as well as (b) the predictive value of external factors (culture and maternal education) and individual differences (age, gender, nonverbal intelligence, trait anxiety) on inhibitory control and fluency outcomes in children from both countries. First, findings in both culture samples suggest that even at this young age, the construct of inhibitory control cannot be considered a unitary entity. Second, differences in maternal education were not predictive of either inhibitory control or fluency scores. However, children’s attention control performance varied as a function of culture, and the direction of these cultural effects differed by whether the target outcome involved performance accuracy versus efficiency as an output. Findings also confirmed the previously documented intensive developmental improvement in preschoolers’ inhibitory control during this period, influencing measures of response suppression and particularly attention control. Finally, the results further stress the importance of individual differences effects in trait anxiety on attention control efficiency across cultures.     

青少年社交焦虑与学习投入的关系:意向性自我调节的解释作用及其年龄差异

本研究以6所初中、高中和大学1597名青少年为被试,一方面考察了社交焦虑、意向性自我调节和学习投入在青少年发展中的特点;另一方面考察了青少年社交焦虑与学习投入之间的关系,以及意向性自我调节在两者关系的中介作用及其不同青少年期之间的差异。结果发现：（1）随着青少年年龄增长其社交焦虑水平降低,相对于青少年中晚期,青少年中期学习投入水平较低;（2）社交焦虑可以显著负向预测青少年的学习投入;（3）意向性自我调节在社交焦虑与青少年学习投入之间起中介作用;（4）青少年中晚期群体意向性自我调节的中介作用显著,但是青少年早期意向性自我调节的中介作用不显著。结果表明：首先,青少年随着年龄的增长可以减缓社交焦虑水平;其次,青少年中期面临复杂的发展任务,这样不利于其学习投入;最后,社交焦虑可以显著预测青少年学习投入,并且在青少年中晚期意向性自我调节是两者关系的中介桥梁。     

The Role of the Child in Adult Development

This paper provides theoretical and empirical support for the view that children play a large and often underappreciated role in adult development. Fifty parents and teachers were asked to discuss occasions when they learned something valuable from a child or when a child changed them in some significant way. Adults reported that children can cause them to (a) shift their values or priorities, (b) integrate memories or experiences previously disowned or repressed, (c) become more creative and cognitively flexible, or (d) look at the world with more wonder, awe, or curiosity. Werner's concept of genetic stratification (H. Werner, 1957) and Labouvie-Vief, Chiodo, Goguen, Diehl, and Orwoll's concept of dynamic intersubjectivity (G. Labouvie-Vief, L. M. Chiodo, L. A. Goquen, M. Diehl, & L. Orwoll, 1995) are used to explain the results.     

成人短时记忆发展的实验研究

以数字、图形和颜色为实验材料,测量了青年和老年被试在记忆广度和斯腾伯格任务中的成绩。结果表明随着年龄的增大,三种材料的记忆广度都有显著的下降,记忆的搜索速度也减慢;发现在老年期不同材料的记忆广度与搜索速度也存在反比例关系。作者认为这一结果对短时记忆容量发展研究具有重要意义并进行了进一步的讨论。