Early antecedents of childhood impulsivity: The role of parent-child interaction,cognitive competence,and temperament

This prospective longitudinal investigation examined early mother-child interaction as a predictor of children's later self-control capabilities. Multimethod assessments of mother-child relationships, primarily focused on observed relationship qualities in the home, were conducted during the first 2 years and related to children's later impulse control capabilities. Child cognitive competence and temperament assessed during the 2nd year were also related to later impulsivity. Follow-up assessments of children's impulsivity were conducted at age 6 (N=79), using a variety of laboratory measures. Findings indicated that responsive, cognitively stimulating parenttoddler interactions in the 2nd year modestly predicted later measures of cognitive nonimpulsivity and ability to delay gratification. Security of mother-infant attachment predicted the same outcomes, but only for boys and not for girls. Child cognitive competence in the 2nd year also consistently predicted children's later impulse control capabilities, although this was not true for measures of child temperament. Overall, the findings support a multidimensional and developmental conceptualization of the early antecedents of childhood impulsivity.This research was supported by NIMH grants MH28018 to J. E. Bates and MH38605 to S. L. Olson. Portions of this research were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Baltimore, April 1987. The authors thank the families who participated, and others whose help was essential in data collection: Beth Ridge, Melinda Monroe, Jeff Harness, and Christine Maslin.     

The politics of careers education and guidance: A case for scrutiny

Political aspects of processes involved in defining careers education and guidance are brought to light through an examination of debates surrounding the definition of guidance at four different points of the journey from policy to practice, and of related 'gaps' between 'theory' and 'practice'. It is argued that these 'gaps' cannot be adequately conceptualised within a curriculum evaluation paradigm. They result from the conflictual nature of curriculum change which, in this case, produced repeated contests over the definition of guidance, with different outcomes in different occupational settings. These outcomes, it is argued, were influenced not only by rational debate but by the distribution of power between the various groups of actors concerned. The politics of careers education and guidance are placed on the agenda for consideration by both researchers and practitioners.     

The noun-verb problem in Chinese aphasia.

Previous studies have shown that Broca's aphasics experience a selective difficulty with action naming inside or outside of a sentence context. Conversely, it has been suggested that Wernicke's aphasics are particularly impaired in object naming. A number of explanations have been offered to account for this double dissociation, including grammatical accounts according to which the main verb problem in agrammatic Broca's aphasics is viewed as a by-product of their syntactic and/or morphological impairment, due perhaps to the greater morphological load carried by verbs (compared with nouns). In the Chinese language, there are no verb conjugations and no declensions. Hence there is no reason to expect a relationship between morphological impairment and deficits in action naming. We examined comprehension and production of object and action names, outside of a sentence context, in a sample of Chinese-speaking Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics. There was an interaction between patient group and object/action naming, but no corresponding interaction on the comprehension task. We conclude that action-naming deficits in Broca's aphasia (and/or the corresponding sparing of action names in Wernicke's aphasia) cannot be attributed to morphological differences between nouns and verbs. We also found a sublexical variant of the noun/verb dissociation applied to the internal structure of compound words made up of a verbal and a nominal element: Broca's aphasics tended to lexicalize the verbal portion of these words more often than the nominal compound, while Wernicke's showed the opposite pattern. These sublexical effects are difficult to explain in syntactic terms nor do they fit the standard lexical view. A modified lexical account is proposed, emphasizing semantic/conceptual effects in a distributed lexicon.     

Early Behavior Problems as a Predictor of Later Peer Group Victimization: Moderators and Mediators in the Pathways of Social Risk

This study is a prospective investigation of the predictive association between early behavior problems (internalizing, externalizing, hyperactivity–impulsiveness, immaturity–dependency) and later victimization in the peer group. Teacher ratings of the behavioral adjustment of 389 kindergarten and 1st-grade children (approximate age range of 5 to 6 years-old) were obtained, using standardized behavior problem checklists. These ratings predicted peer nomination scores for victimization, obtained 3 years later, even after the prediction associated with concurrent behavior problems was statistically controlled. Further analyses suggested that the relation between early behavior problems and later victimization is mediated by peer rejection and moderated by children's dyadic friendships. Behavior problems appear to play an important role in determining victimization within the peer group, although the relevant pathways are complex and influenced by other aspects of children's social adjustment.     

The effectiveness of individual versus group induction of depressed mood.

This study is an investigation of the effectiveness of an individually administered mood induction procedure compared with an equivalent procedure administered to a group. Seventy-nine nondepressed individuals (25 men, 54 women) were randomly assigned to either a depressive or a neutral mood induction in an individual or a group setting. In each procedure, the mood induction involved the Velten self-statement procedure (E. Velten, 1968) enhanced by related mood music. Overall, both the individual and group induction procedures were effective in producing a depressed mood state, and their effectiveness was unrelated to social desirability or the sex of the participant. However, the group procedure was more vulnerable to individual differences in response, and its use in research on depression requires stringent criteria for mood change.     

Finding groups using model-based cluster analysis: heterogeneous emotional self-regulatory processes and heavy alcohol use risk

Model-based cluster analysis is a new clustering procedure to investigate population heterogeneity utilizing finite mixture multivariate normal densities. It is an inferentially based, statistically principled procedure that allows comparison of nonnested models using the Bayesian information criterion to compare multiple models and identify the optimum number of clusters. The current study clustered 36 young men and women on the basis of their baseline heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), chronic alcohol use, and reasons for drinking. Two cluster groups were identified and labeled the high alcohol risk and normative groups. Compared to the normative group, individuals in the high alcohol risk group had higher levels of alcohol use and more strongly endorsed disinhibition and suppression reasons for use. The high alcohol risk group showed significant HRV changes in response to positive and negative emotional and appetitive picture cues, compared to neutral cues. In contrast, the normative group showed a significant HRV change only to negative cues. Findings suggest that individuals with autonomic self-regulatory difficulties may be more susceptible to heavy alcohol use and use of alcohol for emotional regulation.     

Parents’ Monitoring Knowledge Attenuates the Link Between Antisocial Friends and Adolescent Delinquent Behavior

Developmental trajectories of parents’ knowledge of their adolescents’ whereabouts and activities were tested as moderators of transactional associations between friends’ antisociality and adolescent delinquent behavior. 504 adolescents (50% female) provided annual reports (from ages 12 to 16) of their parents’ knowledge and (from ages 13 to 16) their own delinquent behavior and their friends’ antisociality. Parents also reported the adolescents’ delinquent behavior. Growth mixture modeling was used to identify two sub-groups based on their monitoring knowledge growth trajectories. Adolescents in the sub-group characterized by decreasing levels of parents’ knowledge reported more delinquent behavior and more friend antisociality in early adolescence, and reported greater increases in delinquent behavior and friend antisociality from early to middle adolescence compared to adolescents in the sub-group characterized by increasing levels of parents’ knowledge. Transactional associations consistent with social influence and social selection processes also were suppressed in the increasing knowledge sub-group as compared to the decreasing knowledge sub-group. Findings of this study were presented at the 2005 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.     

Social information processing mediates the intergenerational transmission of aggressiveness in romantic relationships.

This study explored the K. A. Dodge (1986) model of social information processing as a mediator of the association between interparental relationship conflict and subsequent offspring romantic relationship conflict in young adulthood. The authors tested 4 social information processing stages (encoding, hostile attributions, generation of aggressive responses, and positive evaluation of aggressive responses) in separate models to explore their independent effects as potential mediators. There was no evidence of mediation for encoding and attributions. However, there was evidence of significant mediation for both the response generation and response evaluation stages of the model. Results suggest that the ability of offspring to generate varied social responses and effectively evaluate the potential outcome of their responses at least partially mediates the intergenerational transmission of relationship conflict.