Children with behaviour problems: the influence of social competence and social relations on problem stability,school achievement and peer acceptance across the first six years of school

The aims of the present study were to investigate the role for problematic children of the child's social competence, teacher relations and behaviour with peers for later problem persistence, school performance and peer acceptance, in terms of moderating (protective and exacerbating) and independent effects. Groups of children with externalizing (n=26) and internalizing (n=25) problems and a non‐problematic group (n=44) were followed from grade 1–6. Teachers rated behaviour problems and social competence in the first, third and sixth grades, the teacher–child relationship in third grade, and school achievement in sixth grade. Behaviour with peers was assessed in observations in later elementary school. Peer acceptance was assessed through peer nominations in sixth grade. Both problem groups had lower social competence, school achievement and peer acceptance in sixth grade than the non‐problematic group. There were moderating and independent effects of social competence, teacher and peer relations on outcomes, but these applied mainly to children with internalizing problems. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Self-derogating consequences of sex-based preferential selection: The moderating role of initial self-confidence

One hundred and twenty undergraduates (60 male and 60 female) served as leaders for a one-way communication task. They were selected for the leadership position on the basis of merit or preferential selection. Among those selected preferentially, one group was given no information, another group was given positive information, and a third group was given negative information about their task-related leadership ability. As expected, when selected preferentially and provided with no ability information, males did not differ in self-views but females were far more negative in self-views than those selected on the basis of merit. However, when provided with positive information about task-related ability women selected preferentially did not differ in self-view from those selected on the basis of merit, and when provided with negative information about task-related ability men selected preferentially did evidence more negative self-views then those selected on the basis of merit. Measures of self-view included evaluations of performance, perceptions of general leadership ability, and desire to persist in the leadership role. The findings lend support to the idea that confidence in task-related ability is an important determinant of reactions to preferential selection. Implications of these findings, both theoretical and practical, are discussed.     

Parents,parenting, and children's sleep problems: Exploring reciprocal effects

Longitudinal analysis of data on 658 children/families from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development addressed two issues regarding children's sleep problems (measured by maternal report in third and sixth grades when the child was 8 and 11 years old, respectively) and family functioning (measured using observations and questionnaires in third and fifth grades when the child was 8 and 10 years old): (1) Do family factors/processes in third grade predict change over time in child sleep problems and, reciprocally (2) Do child sleep problems when the child is in third grade predict change in family factors/processes? Results indicated that sleep problems were adversely affected (increased more/decreased less over time) when, in third grade, the father was absent, mothers were younger, experienced more negative emotions and were less sensitive in interacting with the child, and when the mother–child relationship was characterized by less closeness/more conflict. No linkages involving fathers and fathering were detected. Reciprocally, more sleep problems in the third grade predicted adverse changes in maternal negative emotionality, maternal sensitivity, and maternal closeness/conflict. Discussion highlights the need to conceptualize family functioning and children's sleep problems in family systems’ terms (i.e. reciprocal effects).     

The Unintended Effect of Perceived Transformational Leadership Style on Workaholism: The Mediating Role of Work Motivation

Abstract

Given the apparent magnitude of the problems related to workaholism, the current research was designed to provide evidence about the impact of both personal and organizational variables on determining health-damaging work habits of the employees. This paper presents a study aimed at clarifying the mediating role that work motivation plays in the relationship between the perceived transformational leadership style and workaholism. Based on the Self-Determination Theory and the Job Demands–Resources model, we hypothesized that transformational leadership should be directly related to the lower levels of workaholism, whereas the indirect effect of transformational leadership was expected to increase the levels of workaholism through work motivation of the employees. Two hundred and fifty Lithuanian employees participated in the empirical study. The results confirmed the expected relationship between transformational leadership and workaholism via work motivation showing that the negative role of transformational leadership in workaholism is explained by its positive influence on intrinsic motivation, as well as introjected, integrated, identified regulations, which, in turn, enhance the employees’ workaholism.     

Priming third‐party ostracism increases affiliative imitation in children

Human beings are intensely social creatures and, as such, devote significant time and energy to creating and maintaining affiliative bonds with group members. Nevertheless, social relations sometimes collapse and individuals experience exclusion from the group. Fortunately for adults, they are able to use behavioral strategies such as mimicry to reduce their social exclusion. Here we test whether children, too, increase their imitation following an experience of ostracism. Given humans’ profound need to belong, we predicted that the mere hint of social exclusion – even third‐party social exclusion – would be sufficient to increase affiliative imitation in 5‐year‐olds. As predicted, children primed with videos in which one shape was ostracized by a group of other shapes subsequently imitated the actions of a model more closely than children in a control condition. These findings highlight just how sensitive humans are to social exclusion and demonstrate that children, like adults, modify their social behavior in response to ostracism.     

A comparison of authentic and transformational leadership in sport

Transformational and authentic leadership are two models of leadership, which have some similarities and are relevant to sport. However, these leadership models are also distinct and consequently may predict athlete outcomes differently. Authentic leadership has received little attention in sport and so research is needed to examine how it is unique in terms of what it adds to dominant sport leadership models. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether authentic leadership (a) is empirically distinct from transformational leadership and (b) adds to transformational leadership by explaining unique variance in commitment and enjoyment. A total of 421 (227 female, M_age = 20.32) team sport athletes took part in the study by completing a questionnaire. Authentic leadership was correlated to transformational leadership, suggesting transformational and authentic leadership show some convergent validity. However, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) revealed that authentic leadership also shows discriminant validity to transformational leadership and has incremental predictive power above that of transformational leadership, in terms of predicting athletes’ enjoyment and commitment. Our findings enhance our understanding of authentic leadership in sport and clearly show that it is distinct from transformational leadership. They also highlight the importance of authentic leadership and how it adds to transformational leadership in terms of predicting athletes’ commitment and enjoyment.     

Gaze,goals and growing up: Effects on imitative grasping

Developmental differences in the use of social‐attention cues to imitation were examined among children aged 3 and 6 years old (n = 58) and adults (n = 29). In each of 20 trials, participants watched a model grasp two objects simultaneously and move them together. On every trial, the model directed her gaze towards only one of the objects. Some object pairs were related and had a clear functional relationship (e.g., flower, vase), while others were functionally unrelated (e.g., cardboard square, ladybug). Owing to attentional effects of eye gaze, it was expected that all participants would more faithfully imitate the grasp on the gazed‐at object than the object not gazed‐at. Children were expected to imitate less faithfully on trials with functionally related objects than those without, due to goal‐hierarchy effects. Results support effects of eye gaze on imitation of grasping. Children's grasping accuracy on functionally related and functionally unrelated trials was similar, but they were more likely to only use one hand on trials where the object pairs were functionally related than unrelated. Implications for theories of imitation are discussed.     

Modeling Female Social Aggression: Predictors from Multiple Developmental Contexts

A diverse array of proposed antecedents of social aggression (SA) were examined in two studies. This work is informed by ecological systems theory and examined predictors from the micro- and mesosystems. In Study 1, women (n?=?284). completed measures of aggression, digit ratio, emotional intelligence (EI), agreeableness, parenting styles, attachment insecurity with parents and peers, and television (TV) consumption. Aggression correlated with EI, agreeableness, parental authoritarianism, attachment insecurity with fathers and peers, and TV consumption; these variables accounted for 22% of the variance in SA. Father attachment insecurity moderated the TV-SA association, suggesting that positive experiences with parents can buffer negative effects of TV consumption. Study 2 aimed to increase the predictive power of the model. Females (n?=?115) completed measures of aggression, digit ratio, EI, agreeableness, parental authoritarianism, interparental conflict, dominance goals, popularity goals, physical appearance comparison, and TV consumption. Aggression correlated with EI, agreeableness, interparental conflict, dominance goals, popularity goals, and appearance comparison. Together, these variables accounted for 40% of the variance in SA; agreeableness, dominance goals, and popularity goals were significant predictors. Interparental conflict moderated the TV-SA association, again suggesting that positive experiences with parents can cushion effects of TV consumption. Implications for development of SA are discussed.     

The empowering potential of intergroup leadership: How intergroup leadership predicts psychological empowerment through intergroup relational identification and resources

As work increasingly transcends organizational boundaries, employee psychological empowerment benefits from resources provided by others outside of the employee's own team, department, or organization. These intergroup collaborations, however, may be inhibited by social identity and social categorization processes, so that the empowerment potential of these relations remains largely untapped. In this study (N = 213), we demonstrate that intergroup leadership is linked to employee psychological empowerment via intergroup relational identification and access to resources. In this way, this study demonstrates the empowering potential of intergroup leadership and intergroup relational identification for employees who collaborate across group barriers. We finish this paper by discussing the main implications for both empowerment and intergroup leadership theory, suggesting fruitful avenues for future research and highlighting the practical value for those who are motivated to increase psychological empowerment among boundary-spanning employees.     

When Leaders Are Seen as Transformational: The Effects of Organizational Justice1

In 2 studies, we attempted to make a first step toward integrating the literature on transformational leadership and organizational justice. We examined the extent to which justice affects perceptions of transformational leadership. We predicted that especially interactional justice should have strong effects. Study 1 was a vignette study (N = 100) in which distributive, procedural, and interactional justice were manipulated orthogonally. As expected, only interactional justice affected transformational leadership perceptions. Study 2 replicated these results in an organizational field study (N = 257). Distributive and procedural justice affected perceptions of transformational leadership, but when interactional justice was entered in the regression equation, their effects disappeared. Implications for integrating the literature on transformational leadership and organizational justice are discussed.     

The Relation Between Mechanical Ability Tests and Verbal and Non-Verbal Intelligence Tests

The present study examined the verbal imitative performance of normal and retarded children at four mental ages (MAs 5, 6, 7, and 8 years). Three dependent measures of imitation were taken: total, mimical, and conceptual. The results indicated that both IQ and mental age were significant factors in imitative performance. Retardates primarily demonstrated mimical imitation at the MA 5 level and conceptual imitation at the MA 7 level, while normals emitted primarily mimical responses at MA7. Retardates and normals differed in total imitation only at MA 5.     

Leading Military Teams to Think and Feel: Exploring the Relations Between Leadership,Soldiers' Cognitive and Affective Processes,and Team Effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between leadership and military teams' affective and cognitive processes and the subsequent links between these processes and team effectiveness. Soldiers (N = 148) from 32 teams completed questionnaires assessing these variables. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to analyze the data. Transformational leadership was positively associated with cognitive and affective processes, but only active management-by-exception leadership was related to negative affect. Neither form of management-by-exception leadership related to cognitive processes. Positive affect, negative affect, and cognitive processes were all related to team viability. Finally, some mediation effects were observed. Implications of the results for developing leadership in military teams are drawn.     

Imitation is beneficial for verb learning in toddlers

The interplay between action and language is still not fully understood in terms of its relevance for early language development. Here, we investigated whether action imitation may be beneficial for first language acquisition. In a word-learning study 24-, 30- and 36-month-old children (N = 96) learned the labels of different actions in one of two conditions: Either the children just observed the experimenter producing the action (observation condition) or children produced the action themselves (action condition). The results show that 36-month-olds learned the labels of the more complex actions in both conditions, whereas 30-month-olds learned the labels only in the action but not in the observation condition. These findings suggest that action imitation is beneficial for verb learning early in life.     

Delayed imitation of complex behavioural sequences by 14- to 16-month olds

The present study was conducted to determine if children under the age of 18 months can exhibit delayed imitation of three-event sequences when they have no opportunity to practice. Twenty-three 14- to 16-month-old children underwent two different imitation conditions. In the practice condition the children could imitate the sequence immediately after modelling; then they were tested 1 or 7 days later. In the no practice condition the children had the chance to imitate only on the test day. Children were able to imitate the sequences under both conditions irrespective of the delay period. They produced significantly more target actions, and more target actions in the correct order, in the test phase and cued recall phase, compared with the baseline. There were no differences between the two conditions with a 1-day delay period, but after a 7-day delay, the number of target actions produced during the practice condition was significantly higher than those in the no practice condition. The results are discussed in terms of nonverbal mimetic representations. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mirroring,imitation, identification: the sense of self in relation to the mother's internal world

The phenomenon of neonatal imitation, and the use of mutual imitation by mother and baby in the service of attunement, are considered in relation to psychoanalytic theories of mirroring, imitation and identification. Material from infant observation and from the treatment of two children on the autistic spectrum is discussed in terms of the suggestion that developmental imitation implies a perceived position of balance between the external baby and the mother's supposed internal occupant. This is seen as making possible introjective identification and assimilation, with the enrichment of the sense of identity, in contrast to the kind of imitation involving mimicry, in which adhesive or projective identification may be operative.     

Imitation of synthesized English and nonEnglish vowels by children and adults

Imitations of 15 synthesized vowels, some like English vowels and some not, were obtained from nine adults and ten 6-year-old children. Estimates of the first three formant frequencies (F ₁ , F ₂ , and F ₃ ) were made from spectrograms of the vowel imitations. The reliability of reproduction was assessed by calculating standard deviations for five imitations each of ten of the synthetic stimuli. Generally, both the intrasubject and intersubject variabilities were greater for the children than for the adults. However, the differences in intrasubject variability between the two groups often were not much greater than the difference in measurement error which would be expected for voices of different fundamental frequencies. Subjects tended to reproduce the nonEnglish vowels less reliably than the English vowels, although the adults were less influenced by phonetic familiarity than were the children. Vowel familiarity appeared to be especially important for reliable reporoduction of the F ₂ frequency. Plotting of the imitation data for English vowels in a F ₁ –F ₂ plane with linear dimensions revealed a fairly systematic clustering for the four age-sex groups of men, women, boys, and girls, but the group clustering was not so systematic for the imitation data for the nonEnglish vowels.This work was supported by Public Health Service Research Grant NS-HD-12281.     

Selective and faithful imitation at 12 and 15 months

Research on imitation in infancy has primarily focused on what and when infants imitate. More recently, however, the question why infants imitate has received renewed attention, partly motivated by the finding that infants sometimes selectively imitate the actions of others and sometimes faithfully imitate, or overimitate, the actions of others. The present study evaluates the hypothesis that this varying imitative behavior is related to infants' social traits. To do so, we assessed faithful and selective imitation longitudinally at 12 and 15 months, and extraversion at 15 months. At both ages, selective imitation was dependent on the causal structure of the act. From 12 to 15 months, selective imitation decreased while faithful imitation increased. Furthermore, infants high in extraversion were more faithful imitators than infants low in extraversion. These results demonstrate that the onset of faithful imitation is earlier than previously thought, but later than the onset of selective imitation. The observed relation between extraversion and faithful imitation supports the hypothesis that faithful imitation is driven by the social motivations of the infant. We call this relation the King Louie Effect: like the orangutan King Louie in The Jungle Book, infants imitate faithfully due to a growing interest in the interpersonal nature of interactions. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/qlnIof1k-u8 .     

Innovation across cultures: Connecting leadership,identification, and creative behavior in organizations

Innovation is considered essential for today's organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers' innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet, despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) The relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) the mechanisms through which leadership impacts FIB; and (c) the degree to which relationships between leadership and FIB are generalizable across cultures. To address these lacunae, we propose an integrated model connecting four types of positive leadership behaviors, two types of identification (as mediating variables), and FIB. We tested our model in a global data set comprising responses of N = 7,225 participants from 23 countries, grouped into nine cultural clusters. Our results indicate that perceived LMX quality was the strongest relative predictor of FIB. Furthermore, the relationships between both perceived LMX quality and identity leadership with FIB were mediated by social identification. The indirect effect of LMX on FIB via social identification was stable across clusters, whereas the indirect effects of the other forms of leadership on FIB via social identification were stronger in countries high versus low on collectivism. Power distance did not influence the relations.     

Examining Youth Anxiety Symptoms and Suicidal Ideation in the Context of the Tripartite Model of Emotion

This study sought to clarify the relation of anxiety symptoms and suicidal ideation in children and adolescents by examining these variables in the context of depression and negative affect. As outlined in the tripartite model of anxiety and depression, negative affectivity is common to both emotional constructs; therefore negative affectivity may best explain the relation of each to suicidal ideation. Self report measures of generalized anxiety, depression, negative affectivity, and suicidal ideation were assessed in a primarily externalizing sample of children ages 7–18. Results suggested that the relation between anxiety and suicidal ideation was best accounted for by depression, not negative affectivity. Results also suggested that negative affectivity was associated with suicidal ideation but did not account for the relations among anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Further, depression, negative affect, and anxiety all significantly contributed to the prediction of suicidal ideation scores (r ²  = .307, p < .01).