A friendship intervention for children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: preliminary findings

Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are known to experience difficulty in peer relationships. Neither standard interventions for ADHD nor peer acceptance-oriented interventions fully remedy this problem. We propose that interventions targeting ADHD children's dyadic friendships may be more realistic strategies for improving peer relationships. Hence, a friendship intervention, implemented within the context of an intensive behavioral treatment program with 209 ADHD children, is described. A model is proposed in which the friend's antisocial behavior relates to parental compliance with the friendship intervention, and both the friend's antisocial behavior and parental compliance predict friendship quality and treatment response. Results indicate that children paired with peers lower on antisocial behavior and children whose parents had higher levels of compliance with the friendship intervention achieved higher quality friendships and were rated by teachers as more improved.     

Children with Autism and Their Friends: A Multidimensional Study of Friendship in High-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study of Israeli and American preadolescent children examined characteristics of friendship in 44 children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (HFASD) compared to 38 typically developing children (TYP), as they interacted with a close friend Participants were 8-12 years of age (HFASD: Israel, n = 24; USA, n = 20; TYP: Israel, n = 23; USA, n = 15), and were matched on SES, receptive language vocabulary, child age, and gender (each study group included one girl). Multidimensional assessments included: individual behaviors of target children and observed child-friend interactions during construction and drawing scenarios; target child's and friend's self-perceived mutual friendship qualities; and mother-reported characteristics (friendship's duration/frequency; friend's age/gender/disability status). Overall, children with HFASD displayed a number of differences on individual and dyadic friendship measures. Both age and verbal abilities affected friendship behaviors. Children with HFASD and their friends perceived friendship qualities similarly, suggesting that preadolescents with HFASD have capacities for interpersonal awareness. Between-group similarities also emerged on several complex social behaviors, suggesting that friendship follows a developmental trajectory in autism and may enhance social interaction skills in autism.     

Prosocial tendencies predict friendship quality, but not for popular children

Is prosocial behavior a prerequisite for having good-quality friendships? This study (N = 477, mean age = 12.2 years) examined whether the link between children’s prosocial tendencies and their perceived friendship quality was dependent on children’s level of popularity in the peer group. Children’s prosocial tendencies were assessed both as observed behavior in a standardized setting and as a self-reported predisposition to act in prosocial ways. Across measures, the results showed that prosocial tendencies are associated with higher perceived friendship quality among nonpopular children (i.e., children holding average or lower levels of popularity), but not among popular children. Thus, even if they lack prosocial qualities, popular children are still able to hold good-quality friendships. Popular children may have other compensating characteristics, such as popularity by association, that make them attractive for peers to be friends with.     

朋友的学业成就会影响我的学业成就吗？——成对友谊关系中成就目标取向的中介作用

尽管朋友是影响青少年学业成就的重要因素,但对于朋友之间双向影响的方式和途径尚缺乏研究。本研究采用同伴提名和自我报告问卷收集了8年级青少年在两个学期末的数据,获得在一个学期中稳定的同性别朋友对216对;使用主客体互倚性模型,探究朋友之间学业成就的影响效应,以及成就目标取向在朋友相互影响间的中介作用以及性别差异。结果发现：（1）青少年朋友之间在学业成就上的相似性既源于选择效应,也源于影响效应;（2）掌握目标取向不仅在个体自身当前和后续学业成就的关系中发挥中介作用,而且朋友一方的学业成就还能通过自身或对方的掌握目标取向影响对方或自己后续的学业成就,男生的中介路径多于女生;（3）对于男生而言,表现-接近目标取向在个体当下学业成就和自己后续学业成就的关系中发挥负向中介作用,但对朋友后续的学业成就有积极影响。研究结果支持了成对友谊关系是青少年学业发展的重要情境之一,并突显了成就目标取向在朋友之间学业成就相互影响中的关键作用和性别差异模式。     

Trajectories of Social Withdrawal from Middle Childhood to Early Adolescence

Heterogeneity and individual differences in the developmental course of social withdrawal were examined longitudinally in a community sample (N = 392). General Growth Mixture Modeling (GGMM) was used to identify distinct pathways of social withdrawal, differentiate valid subgroup trajectories, and examine factors that predicted change in trajectories within subgroups. Assessments of individual (social withdrawal), interactive (prosocial behavior), relationship (friendship involvement, stability and quality, best friend’s withdrawal and exclusion/victimization) and group- (exclusion/victimization) level characteristics were used to define growth trajectories from the final year of elementary school, across the transition to middle school, and then to the final year of middle school (fifth-to-eighth grades). Three distinct trajectory classes were identified: low stable, increasing, and decreasing. Peer exclusion, prosocial behavior, and mutual friendship involvement differentiated class membership. Friendlessness, friendship instability, and exclusion were significant predictors of social withdrawal for the increasing class, whereas lower levels of peer exclusion predicted a decrease in social withdrawal for the decreasing class.     

Close friendships among senior adults

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the relative contributions of personal, affective, and social exchange characteristics to satisfaction with the best friendship. Senior adults (N = 76) described and evaluated their best friendships in terms of positive and negative affect, equity, reciprocity of social support, and satisfaction. The individual's endorsement of communal and exchange orientations were included as personal characteristics. The study confirms that a communal orientation enhances satisfaction with a best friendship and that conflict and negativity detract from it. Social exchange characteristics were not related to friendship satisfaction. The need to reevaluate the role of social exchange in close relationships is discussed.     

童年中期同伴关系、同伴关系知觉与心理行为适应的关系

本研究以422名小学二、三、四年级的儿童进行为期3年的纵向研究,考察了时间2的同伴关系知觉在时间1的同伴关系和时间3的心理行为适应之间的中介效应。结果表明,自我知觉的社会能力在同伴接纳与社交/领导行为和孤独感之间的中介作用显著,自我知觉的友谊质量在双向互选朋友与社交/领导行为和孤独感之间的中介作用显著。     

Orientations to Happiness and Subjective Well-Being in Chinese Adolescents: The Roles of Prosocial Behavior and Internet Addictive Behavior

Researchers have studied individual’s pursuit of well-being through two perspectives: the eudaimonic perspective and the hedonic perspective. Peterson and his colleagues (2005) introduced their Orientations to Happiness scale, a self-report measure assessing individual’s pursuit of well-being that corresponds to these two perspectives. Specifically, the Life of Meaning subscale is the index of the eudaimonic pursuit; the Life of Pleasure subscale is the index of the hedonic pursuit. Previous research has demonstrated that orientations to happiness are positively associated with individual’s subjective well-being, whereas little research has addressed the mechanisms underlying the associations. Based on goal theory of happiness, the present study investigated how orientations to happiness were associated with subjective well-being by examining the indirect effects of the prosocial behavior and Internet addictive behavior in a sample of Chinese adolescents aged between 13 and 18 (N = 2082). The results showed that: (1) both life of meaning and life of pleasure were positively associated with adolescents’ subjective well-being; (2) prosocial behavior partially mediated the positive association between life of meaning and subjective well-being; and (3) prosocial behavior also partially mediated the positive association between life of pleasure and subjective well-being, whereas Internet addictive behavior undermined the positive association here. The findings shed light on the underlying mechanisms between orientations to happiness and subjective well-being.     

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.     

大学生亲社会行为决策中自尊与情绪信息的交互作用

采用自编亲社会行为决策材料,以行为决策对象的被选频次为指标,通过对65名男女大学生的研究,结果发现：1）在阈上和阈下的＂图-词＂启动范式下,均存在显著的情绪启动效应,且实验性情绪变化明显。2）在正性图片启动下,自尊水平和情绪效价对亲社会行为决策均无显著影响,但二者的交互作用显著,低自尊个体在负性情绪下的亲社会行为决策存在显著性差异;行为决策对象对大学生亲社会行为决策有显著影响,与自尊水平、情绪效价之间的交互效应不显著;在负性图片启动下,自尊水平、情绪效价、行为决策对象以及三者的交互作用对亲社会行为决策均无显著影响。3）总体上,大学生亲社会行为决策受自尊水平与情绪效价的交互作用影响,也受行为决策对象及其与自尊水平、情绪效价的三次交互作用的影响。     

Friendship,Depression, and Suicide Attempts in Adults: Exploratory Analysis of a Longitudinal Follow‐Up Study

Social support is thought to protect against the risk of suicidal behavior in young people and late life, but less is known about the role of friendship in adults. We explored the effect of friendship on suicide attempt risk during 1‐year follow‐up of 132 adults presenting with major depressive episode (MDE). Items from the Social Adjustment Scale–Self‐Report were used as an index of frequency and quality of recent friendship contacts. Survival methods tested associations of friendship with risk of suicide attempt, recurrent MDE, and related outcomes during follow‐up. Impaired friendship predicted greater risk of suicide attempt in an unadjusted Cox model. This association was stronger for quality (p = .009) than frequency (p = .081) of friendship contacts. In the adjusted model, the effect of friendship on suicide attempts was largely explained by self‐reported depression severity. Friendship has a potentially bidirectional relationship with depression, and its effect on suicidal behavior appears to occur through its relationship with depression. Future research should examine the effect of antidepressant treatment on friendship and be designed to test mediation models of relationships between friendship, depression, and suicidal behavior.     

学生学业和行为特征如何影响教师支持？来自个体和圈子层面的证据

教师支持是师生关系的重要指标,由教师和学生共同建构;学生的学业和行为特征会影响教师支持,但是以往研究主要关注学生个体特征的影响,极少考察学生所在小群体的作用。本研究以个体和其所在圈子的学业成就、亲社会行为、攻击行为为特征,考察其对教师支持的影响,结果发现：（1）个体的学业成就积极预测后续教师支持的增加;（2）在高学业成就圈子中,个体学业成就的提高能够预测教师支持的增加,而在低学业成就圈子则不能;（3）与男生相比,在低亲社会圈子中的女生获得的教师支持更少,而在高亲社会圈子中的女生则能够获得比男生更高的教师支持。     

Effects of mimicking: acting prosocially by being emotionally moved

Mimicry is functional for empathy and bonding purposes. Studies on the consequences of mimicry at a behavioral level demonstrated that mimicry increases prosocial behavior. However, these previous studies focused on the mimickee. In the present paper, we investigated whether mimickers also become more helpful due to mimicry. In two studies, we have demonstrated that participants, who mimicked expressions of a person shown on a video, donated more money to a charity than participants who did not mimic. Moreover, the processes by which mimicry and prosocial behavior are related largely remain empirically unexamined in existing literature. The results of Study 2 confirmed our hypothesis that affective empathy mediates the relationship between mimicry and prosocial behavior. This suggests that mimicry created an affective empathic mindset, which activated prosocial behaviors directed toward others. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamics of multiple-goal pursuit

The authors propose and test a model of multiple-goal pursuit that specifies how individuals allocate effort among multiple goals over time. The model predicts that whether individuals decide to step up effort, coast, abandon the current goal, or switch to pursue another goal is determined jointly by the emotions that flow from prior goal progress and the proximity to future goal attainment, and proximally determined by changes in expectancies about goal attainment. Results from a longitudinal diary study and 2 experiments show that positive and negative goal-related emotions can have diametrically opposing effects on goal-directed behavior, depending on the individual's proximity to goal attainment. The findings resolve contrasting predictions about the influence of positive and negative emotions in volitional behavior, critically amend the goal gradient hypothesis, and provide new insights into the dynamics and determinants of multiple-goal pursuit.     

Transportation into a story increases empathy, prosocial behavior, and perceptual bias toward fearful expressions

Theorists from diverse disciplines purport narrative fiction serves to foster empathic development and growth. In two studies, participants’ subjective, behavioral, and perceptual responses were observed after reading a short fictional story. In study 1, participants who were more transported into the story exhibited higher affective empathy and were more likely to engage in prosocial behavior. In study 2, reading-induced affective empathy was related to greater bias toward subtle, fearful facial expressions, decreased perceptual accuracy of fearful expressions, and a higher likelihood of engaging in prosocial behavior. These effects persisted after controlling for an individual’s dispositional empathy and general tendency to become absorbed in a story. This study provides an important initial step in empirically demonstrating the influence of reading fiction on empathy, emotional perception, and prosocial behavior.     

Friendship Quality and Social Development

A high-quality friendship is characterized by high levels of prosocial behavior, intimacy, and other positive features, and low levels of conflicts, rivalry, and other negative features. Friendship quality has been assumed to have direct effects on many aspects of children's social development, including their self-esteem and social adjustment. Recent research suggests, however, that friendship quality affects primarily children's success in the social world of peers. Friendship quality could also have indirect effects, by magnifying or diminishing the influence of friends on each other's attitudes and behaviors. Having high-quality friendships may lessen children's tendencies to imitate the behavior of shy and withdrawn friends, but little evidence supports the hypothesis that high-quality friendships magnify friends' influence.     

Capuchin monkeys are not prosocial in an instrumental helping task

Comparative research can shed light on the evolutionary roots and cognitive underpinnings of prosocial behavior by revealing not only positive instances of prosocial motivations in other species, but also the boundary conditions of these motivations. To explore factors that may constrain prosocial behavior, we examined whether brown capuchins (Cebus apella), which demonstrate regard for the welfare of conspecifics in other contexts, would behave prosocially in a minimal-cost instrumental helping task. We observed that when given the opportunity to share tokens that allow a conspecific to obtain food from an apparatus, capuchins showed no regard for another individual's welfare. Subjects transferred tokens to an adjacent chamber when the apparatus was present, but did so just as often when the chamber was empty as when there was a recipient present to obtain food. While capuchins are sensitive to others' welfare in some contexts, the current results suggest that they do not spontaneously produce goal-specific helping actions on behalf of a conspecific. The lack of regard for others exhibited in this context provides insights into the factors that may constrain prosocial behavior in capuchins and other primate species.     

Social Achievement Goals and Social Adjustment in Adolescence: A Multiple‐Goal Perspective

Adolescents approach social situations with different social achievement goals (i.e., social development goals, demonstration‐approach goals, and demonstration‐avoid goals). Applying a latent profile analysis (LPA), a person‐centered approach, this study identified four groups of adolescents with distinct social goal profiles: approach‐oriented, undifferentiated high, demonstration‐oriented, and undifferentiated low. Observed differences in various indicators of social adjustment, including social anxiety, friendship quality, prosocial behavior as well as aggressive behavior, indicated that the approach‐oriented and undifferentiated high profiles showed most adaptive outcomes, whereas the demonstration‐oriented and undifferentiated low profiles showed maladaptive patterns of social outcomes. Profiles with high levels of social development goals showed the most adaptive social outcomes regardless of the level of demonstration‐oriented goals (i.e., demonstration‐approach and demonstration‐avoid goals). These findings suggest that focusing on high‐quality relationships and developing social competence leads to adequately contending with social challenges, and it provides protection against the negative effects of demonstration‐oriented social goals.     

目标感染研究述评

目标感染是动机领域新近出现的一个概念（Aarts等,2004）,所谓目标感染指的是个体可以自动的从他人行为信息中推测其目标并无意识的追求这一目标。目标感染在激活对象、复杂程度等方面不同于单纯的行为模仿,在行为性质、意识水平等方面又区别于观察学习。目标状态可及性、目标情感效价等因素会影响目标感染现象的发生。已有研究中通常采用目标相关词汇、社会信息两种方式进行目标的激活。作为对有意识目标追求的补充,目标感染的研究促进了我们对个体行为的理解。未来研究尚可就观察者特征、目标熟悉程度、被观察者数量等因素对目标感染的影响开展进一步的探讨。     

Nonconscious goal pursuit: Acting in an explanatory vacuum

Nonconsciously activated goals and consciously set goals produce the same outcomes by engaging similar psychological processes (Bargh, 1990; Gollwitzer & Bargh, 2005). However, nonconscious and conscious goal pursuit may have different effects on subsequent affect if goal pursuit affords an explanation, as nonconscious goal pursuit occurs in an explanatory vacuum (i.e. cannot be readily attributed to the respective goal intention). We compared self-reported affect after nonconscious versus conscious goal pursuit that either violated or conformed to a prevailing social norm. When goal-directed behavior did not require an explanation (was norm-conforming), affective experiences did not differ after nonconscious and conscious goal pursuit. However, when goal-directed behavior required an explanation (was norm-violating), nonconscious goal pursuit induced more negative affect than conscious goal pursuit.