Social information processing and cardiac predictors of adolescent antisocial behavior

The relations among social information processing (SIP), cardiac activity, and antisocial behavior were investigated in adolescents over a 3-year period (from ages 16 to 18) in a community sample of 585 (48% female, 17% African American) participants. Antisocial behavior was assessed in all 3 years. Cardiac and SIP measures were collected between the first and second behavioral assessments. Cardiac measures assessed resting heart rate (RHR) and heart rate reactivity (HRR) as participants imagined themselves being victimized in hypothetical provocation situations portrayed via video vignettes. The findings were moderated by gender and supported a multiprocess model in which antisocial behavior is a function of trait-like low RHR (for male individuals only) and deviant SIP. In addition, deviant SIP mediated the effects of elevated HRR reactivity and elevated RHR on antisocial behavior (for male and female participants).     

Self‐Reported Career Interests Among Adjudicated Male Adolescents: A Pilot Study

Using J. L. Holland's (1985) Self‐Directed Search, this study compared the career interests of 28 adjudicated male adolescents with a normative high school male sample. The mean Artistic score of the adjudicated adolescents was significantly higher, and the authors found that this group endorsed fewer Investigative items and more Artistic items than the normative sample. The adjudicated sample showed poor differentiation and significantly higher intercorrelations among the Holland codes.     

From left to right: how the personality system allows basic traits to influence politics via characteristic moral adaptations

Research on the association of personality to political orientation has suggested that direct influences are modest. Here we used a personality system model in which direct influences on political behaviour flow from moral values, with personality mostly acting on these characteristic moral adaptations, rather than directly affecting political attitudes. Study 1 in 447 subjects supported this model, with significant effects on political orientation flowing from four of the five-factor model personality domains, but largely mediated through moral values concerning the importance of group order and individual rights. This personality system model was replicated in an independent study (n= 476) using a US sample and including a different measure of politics. Both studies support predictions that personality has significant effects on political attitudes, but that these are exerted largely via moral values. These findings help to explain inconsistencies in previous studies attempting to link personality to political orientation that have not included the intermediary level of values.     

Dimensions of social capital and life adjustment in the transition to early adulthood

The predictive relations between social capital depth (high-quality relationships across contexts) and breadth (friendship network extensivity) and early-adult, life adjustment outcomes were examined using data from a prospective longitudinal study. Interviews at age 22 yielded (a) psychometrically sound indexes of relationship quality with parents, peers, and romantic partners that served as indicators of a latent construct of social capital depth, and (b) a measure of number of close friends. In follow-up interviews at age 24, participants reported on their behavioral adjustment, educational attainment, and arrests and illicit substance use. Early-adolescent assessments of behavioral adjustment and academic performance served as controls; data on what were construed as interpersonal assets (teacher-rated social skills) and opportunities (family income) were also collected at this time. Results showed that depth was associated with overall better young-adult adjustment, net of prior adjustment, and assets and opportunities. Breadth was only modestly associated with later outcomes, and when its overlap with depth was taken into account, breadth predicted higher levels of subsequent externalizing problems. These findings are consistent with the notion that social capital is multidimensional and that elements of it confer distinct benefits during an important life transition.     

The development of complex sentence interpretation in typically developing children compared with children with specific language impairments or early unilateral focal lesions

This study compared sentence comprehension skills in typically developing children 5-17 years of age, children with language impairment (LI) and children with focal brain injuries (FL) acquired in the pre/perinatal period. Participants were asked to process sentences 'on-line', choosing the agent in sentences that varied in syntactic complexity (actives, passives, subject clefts and object clefts), and in the presence or absence of a subject-verb agreement contrast. Results revealed that accuracy and processing speeds vary with syntactic complexity in all groups, reflecting the frequency and regularity of sentence types. Developmental changes continued throughout childhood, as children became faster and more accurate at processing more complex sentence structures. Children with LI and children with FL were quite profoundly delayed, displaying profiles similar to, or more impaired than those of younger children, but there was no evidence in the FL group for a disadvantage in left- vs. right-hemisphere-damaged children. Children with LI showed one unique pattern: higher than normal costs (reflected in reaction times) in using converging information from subject-verb agreement, in line with studies suggesting special vulnerabilities in grammatical morphology in this group. Results are discussed in terms of the Competition Model, a theory of language processing designed to account for the statistical changes in performance that are observed during development, and the probabilistic deficits in children with language impairments.     

Friendship as a moderating factor in the pathway between early harsh home environment and later victimization in the peer group. The Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group

Two prospective investigations of the moderating role of dyadic friendship in the developmental pathway to peer victimization are reported. In Study 1, the preschool home environments (i.e., harsh discipline, marital conflict, stress, abuse, and maternal hostility) of 389 children were assessed by trained interviewers. These children were then followed into the middle years of elementary school, with peer victimization, group social acceptance, and friendship assessed annually with a peer nomination inventory. In Study 2, the home environments of 243 children were assessed in the summer before 1st grade, and victimization, group acceptance, and friendship were assessed annually over the next 3 years. In both studies, early harsh, punitive, and hostile family environments predicted later victimization by peers for children who had a low number of friendships. However, the predictive associations did not hold for children who had numerous friendships. These findings provide support for conceptualizations of friendship as a moderating factor in the pathways to peer group victimization.