Assessing peer network and dyadic loneliness

Describes the Peer Network and Dyadic Loneliness Scale (PNDLS), a new scale designed to assess simultaneously children's loneliness at multiple levels of peer relationships. Specifically, this scale measures loneliness associated with (a) lack of involvement in a social network and (b) the absence of a close dyadic friendship. Employing a sample of 209 5th-, 6th-, and 7th-grade boys and girls, the psychometric properties, interscale correlations, and preliminary validity data for the new scale are examined. Analyses revealed good internal consistency and a pattern of relationships with other loneliness, friendship quality, mutual best friendship, and sociometric social preference variables supporting the validity of the new scale.     

A gender perspective on Person-Manager fit and managerial advancement

This article presents two studies examining (1) the relationship between Person-Manager (P-M) fit and managerial advancement of women and men with, and without managerial aspirations and (2) the P-M fit as related to managerial and non-managerial women. The P-M fit was assessed by computing the congruence between participants' self-rated personality profile and the perceived personality profile of a manager. Sex (men show a higher P-M fit than women), gender (the higher the individual's masculine gender-role, the higher the P-M fit) and group (managers and managerial aspirants show a higher P-M fit than non-managerial aspirants and non-managers) hypotheses were tested. There was no support for the sex difference hypothesis. However, the group and gender hypotheses were confirmed showing that managers and managerial aspirants had a higher P-M fit than non-managers and non-aspirants. Further, analyses revealed that the higher the participants' masculinity scores, the higher the P-M fit. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the gendered image of the managerial role and adaptation theory.     

Psychosocial Treatment Strategies in the MTA Study: Rationale, Methods, and Critical Issues in Design and Implementation

The Collaborative Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the MTA, is the first multisite, cooperative agreement treatment study of children, and the largest psychiatric/psychological treatment trial ever conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health. It examines the effectiveness of Medication vs. Psychosocial treatment vs. their combination for treatment of ADHD and compares these experimental arms to each other and to routine community care. In a parallel group design, 579 (male and female) ADHD children, aged 7–9 years, 11 months, were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental arms, and then received 14 months of prescribed treatment (or community care) with periodic reassessments. After delineating the theoretical and empirical rationales for Psychosocial treatment of ADHD, we describe the MTA's Psychosocial Treatment strategy applied to all children in two of the four experimental arms (Psychosocial treatment alone; Combined treatment). Psychosocial treatment consisted of three major components: a Parent Training component, a two-part School Intervention component, and a child treatment component anchored in an intensive Summer Treatment Program. Components were selected based on evidence of treatment efficacy and because they address comprehensive symptom targets, settings, comorbidities, and functional domains. We delineate key conceptual and logistical issues faced by clinical researchers in design and implementation of Psychosocial research with examples of how these issues were addressed in the MTA study.Deceased     

Family Processes and Treatment Outcome in the MTA: Negative/Ineffective Parenting Practices in Relation to Multimodal Treatment

To elucidate processes underlying therapeutic change in a large-scale randomized clinical trial, we examined whether alterations in self-reported parenting practices were associated with the effects of behavioral, medication, or combination treatments on teacher-reported outcomes (disruptive behavior, social skills, internalizing symptoms) in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 579 children with Combined-type ADHD, aged 7–9.9 years, in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA). We uncovered 2 second-order factors of parenting practices, entitled Positive Involvement and Negative/Ineffective Discipline. Although Positive Involvement was not associated with amelioration of the school-based outcome measures, reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline mediated improvement in children's social skills at school. For families showing the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline, effects of combined medication plus behavioral treatment were pronounced in relation to regular community care. Furthermore, only in combination treatment (and not in behavioral treatment alone) was decreased Negative/Ineffective Discipline associated with reduction in children's disruptive behavior at school. Here, children in families receiving combination treatment who showed the greatest reductions in Negative/Ineffective Discipline had teacher-reported disruptive behavior that was essentially normalized. Overall, the success of combination treatment for important school-related outcomes appears related to reductions in negative and ineffective parenting practices at home; we discuss problems in interpreting the temporal sequencing of such process-outcome linkages and the means by which multimodal treatment may be mediated by psychosocial processes related to parenting.     

Regulation of Negative Affect During Mother–Child Problem-Solving Interactions: Adolescent Depressive Status and Family Processes

Despite recent suggestions that depression can be conceptualized as a disorder of affect regulation, relatively little research has focused on affect regulation skills in depressed individuals. This paper investigated whether depressed adolescents (N = 25) differ from nondepressed adolescents (N 25) on two indices of affect regulation (i.e., duration of negative affective states and reciprocity of maternal negative affect) as well as whether these indices are related to microsocial family interactional processes. Analyses revealed that depressed teens differed from their nondepressed peers with regard to duration of negative affective states but not in their likelihood of reciprocating negative affect. Additionally, indices of adolescent affect regulation were related to family interactional processes. Duration of depressive affect was positively associated with maternal display of facilitative behavior contingent on adolescent depressive behavior. Duration of aggressive behavior was inversely related to maternal problem-solving responses to aggressive behavior. Finally, adolescent reciprocity of maternal depressive and aggressive behaviors was strongly associated with mothers' reciprocity of adolescents' negative affective behavior.     

Parenting and Family Stress Treatment Outcomes in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): An Empirical Analysis in the MTA Study

Parenting and family stress treatment outcomes in the MTA study were examined. Male and female (579), 7–9-year-old children with combined type Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), were recruited at six sites around the United States and Canada, and randomly assigned to one of four groups: intensive, multi-faceted behavior therapy program alone (Beh); carefully titrated and monitored medication management strategy alone (MedMgt); a well-integrated combination of the two (Comb); or a community comparison group (CC). Treatment occurred over 14 months, and assessments were taken at baseline, 3, 9, and 14 months. Parenting behavior and family stress were assessed using parent-report and child-report inventories. Results showed that Beh alone, MedMgt alone, and Comb produced significantly greater decreases in a parent-rated measure of negative parenting, Negative/Ineffective Discipline, than did standard community treatment. The three MTA treatments did not differ significantly from each other on this domain. No differences were noted among the four groups on positive parenting or on family stress variables. Results are discussed in terms of the theoretical and empirically documented importance of negative parenting in the symptoms, comorbidities and long-term outcomes of ADHD.     

The Relation of Perceived Neighborhood Danger to Childhood Aggression: A Test of Mediating Mechanisms

In the current study, two mediational mechanisms, parenting practices and children's beliefs about aggression, were hypothesized to account for the relationship between perceived neighborhood danger and childhood aggression. Using structural equation modeling, data were analyzed from an inner-city school-based sample of 732 predominantly African American 5th graders. Results suggested that perceived neighborhood danger was associated with strong positive beliefs about aggression, which in turn was associated with high levels of aggression. The hypothesized mediating role of parenting practices (restrictive discipline, parental monitoring, and parental involvement) on the relation between perceived neighborhood danger and child aggression was not supported. However, the current findings suggest that children's positive beliefs about aggression mediated the relationship between restrictive discipline and aggression. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Prism exposure aftereffects and direct effects for different movement and feedback times

The effects of movement time and time to visual feedback (feedback time) on prism exposure aftereffects and direct effects were studied. In Experiment 1, the participants' (N = 60) pointing limb became visible early in the movement (.2-s feedback time), and eye-head aftereffects increased with increasing movement time (.5 to 3.0 s), but larger hand-head aftereffects showed little change. Direct effects (terminal error during exposure) showed near-perfect compensation for the prismatic displacement (11.4 diopters) when movement time was short but decreasing compensation with longer movement times. In Experiment 2, participants' (N = 48) eye-head aftereffects increased and their larger hand-head aftereffects decreased with increasing movement time (2.0 and 3.0 s), especially when feedback time increased (.25 and 1.5 s). Direct effects showed increasing overcompensation for longer movement and feedback times. Those results suggest that aftereffects and direct effects measure distinct adaptive processes, namely, spatial realignment and strategic control, respectively. Differences in movement and feedback times evoke different eye-hand coordination strategies and consequent direct effects. Realignment aftereffects also depend upon the coordination strategy deployed, but not all strategies support realignment. Moreover, realignment is transparent to strategic control and, when added to strategic correction, may produce nonadaptive performance.     

Performance on a mirror-drawing task by non-right-handers

Left-, mixed-, and right-handed (each n = 10, N = 30) adolescent boys who were classified on the basis of a hand preference inventory performed a mirror-drawing task with a bilateral transfer of a skill paradigm. Participants' hand preference and the magnitude of bilateral transfer of skill were assessed in terms of errors committed and time taken to complete the mirror-drawing task. Mixed-handed participants exhibited significantly less habit interference for mirror drawing, and they performed the task significantly faster than the left-handers did; the group difference was not significant for the frequency of errors committed. These groups did not differ in terms of the magnitude of bilateral transfer of skill; the trend, however, showed that the transfer of skill was minimum in mixed-handers. These findings extend the theory that mixed-handed participants' inability to transfer motor skill from one hand to the other could be attributable to their lack of a clear pattern of lateralization. Their ability to perform well either at initial or later trials may be a function of less interference from their normal motor habits.     

The development of children's knowledge of attention and resource allocation in single and dual tasks

Developmental changes in kindergarten, 1st-, and 4th-grade children's knowledge about the variables that affect attention sharing and resource allocation were examined. Findings from the 2 experiments showed that kindergartners understood that person and strategy variables affect performance in attention-sharing tasks. However, knowledge of how task variables affect performance was not evident to them and was inconsistent for 1st and 4th graders. Children's knowledge about resource allocation revealed a different pattern and varied according to the dissimilarity of task demands in the attention-sharing task. In Experiment 1, in which the dual attention tasks were similar (i.e., visual detection), kindergarten and 1st-grade children did not differentiate performance in single and dual tasks. Fourth graders demonstrated knowledge that performance on a single task would be better than performance on the dual tasks for only 2 of the variables examined. In Experiment 2, in which the dual attention tasks were dissimilar (i.e., visual and auditory detection), kindergarten and 1st-grade children demonstrated knowledge that performance in the single task would be better than in the dual tasks for 1 of the task variables examined. However, 4th-grade children consistently gave higher ratings for performance on the single than on the dual attention tasks for all variables examined. These findings (a) underscore that children's meta-attention is not unitary and (b) demonstrate that children's knowledge about variables affecting attention sharing and resource allocation have different developmental pathways. Results show that knowledge about attention sharing and about the factors that influence the control of attention develops slowly and undergoes reorganization in middle childhood.