Callous-Unemotional Traits are Uniquely Associated with Poorer Peer Functioning in School-Aged Children

This study examines externalizing symptoms (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], conduct problems, and callous-unemotional [CU] traits) in relation to domains of peer functioning (social competence, loneliness, and close friendship quality), with a specific focus on the role of CU traits. One hundred twenty-four elementary students (grades 3–6; 45% boys) completed multiple measures of peer functioning, and teachers completed measures of externalizing symptoms and social competence. After controlling for demographic variables and other externalizing symptoms, CU traits were significantly associated with poorer peer functioning across all variables except for demands of exclusivity in close friendships. ADHD symptoms were also uniquely associated with poorer social functioning across a number of variables. In contrast, conduct problems were at times associated with better social functioning after controlling for the effects of other externalizing problems. These findings bolster the importance of developing and evaluating social skills interventions for children displaying elevated CU traits.     

All Anxiety is not Created Equal: Correlates of Parent/Youth Agreement Vary Across Subtypes of Anxiety

Research has examined patterns and correlates of parent/youth informant discrepancies in the reporting of youth anxiety. However, little work has examined whether it is better to conceptualize patterns and correlates of informant disagreement across anxiety broadly, or more useful to consider disagreement on specific symptom clusters. Using data from the Child Adolescent/Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS; N?=?488; Walkup et al. The New England Journal of Medicine, 359(26), 2753-2766. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa0804633, 2008), the current study applied the most recent recommended analytic strategies to study informant discrepancies and examined differences in the magnitude and patterns of disagreement for: (a) broadband anxiety symptoms, versus (b) symptoms of specific anxiety diagnoses (or anxiety subtypes; e.g., separation, social anxiety). Correlates of informant discrepancies were also examined. Results indicated that there was variability in agreement across anxiety subtypes, with parent/youth agreement higher on separation anxiety and school refusal symptoms relative to other domains. Parental psychopathology was associated with disagreement on broadband anxiety symptoms, such that parental psychopathology was highest when parents reported higher symptoms than their children; however, this finding was largely driven by a relationship between parental psychopathology and disagreement on separation anxiety symptoms. Age was associated with disagreement on total and separation anxiety symptoms. Gender was not associated with disagreement. Clinical implications are discussed.     

Attitudes of Southern Women: Selected Group Comparisons

Questionnaire data from 100 white women in a Southern city were examined to learn whether women belonging to groups that focus on social change or business and professional concerns were less traditional in their attitudes and behavior patterns than women who affiliate with groups that share common religious beliefs or similar socioeconomic status and whose stated purpose has a social orientation. Women belonging to the first category of groups were more likely than the other women to combine employment with marriage and children, to have help from husbands with household duties, and to support the Equal Rights Amendment.     

Saccades reveal that allocentric coding of the moving object causes mislocalization in the flash-lag effect

The flash-lag effect is a visual misperception of a position of a flash relative to that of a moving object: Even when both are at the same position, the flash is reported to lag behind the moving object. In the present study, the flash-lag effect was investigated with eye-movement measurements: Subjects were required to saccade to either the flash or the moving object. The results showed that saccades to the flash were precise, whereas saccades to the moving object showed an offset in the direction of motion. A further experiment revealed that this offset in the saccades to the moving object was eliminated when the whole background flashed. This result indicates that saccadic offsets to the moving stimulus critically depend on the spatially distinctive flash in the vicinity of the moving object. The results are incompatible with current theoretical explanations of the flash-lag effect, such as the motion extrapolation account. We propose that allocentric coding of the position of the moving object could account for the flash-lag effect.     

Enhanced attentional capture in trait anxiety

Attentional Control Theory (ACT) proposes that anxiety is specifically associated with more attentional distraction by salient stimuli. Moreover, there is some suggestion that worry is one mechanism whereby anxiety impairs attentional control. However, direct evidence for these hypotheses is lacking. In the current study we addressed limitations of previous work by examining the relationships between trait anxiety and worry and attentional distraction by a salient, task-irrelevant color singleton in a visual search task. Results revealed that trait anxiety, but not worry, was related to increased attentional distraction (i.e., capture) by the color singleton. The current results suggest that anxiety is associated with a general enhancement of bottom-up processes involved in motivational significance detection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

LETTING REALITY BECOME REAL: On Mystery and Reality in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics the notion of reality plays a central role. The present article focuses on the ethical implications of the Chalcedonian Christology underlying this concept. This approach is tied to the debate on the relationship between the universal and specific identity of Christian social ethics in public discourse. In the opening section the article outlines the pertinence of this debate with regard to Bonhoeffer's Christological ethic. In the following section the article analyzes Bonhoeffer's concept of reality and the implied Chalcedonian traits. With this foundation established the article raises the question about its social ethical implications. The final part of the article argues that Bonhoeffer's ethics and ecclesiology cannot be separated from each other, explaining why Bonhoeffer's notion of reality leads to an assertion of the church's role in letting reality become real. In the light of Bonhoeffer's notion of reality the last section argues for the reconciliation of Christian witness and participation in public discourse.     

Committed dis(s)idents: participation in radical collective action fosters disidentification with the broader in-group but enhances political identification

The present research examined the hypothesis that participation in radical, but not moderate, action results in disidentification from the broader in-group. Study 1 (N = 98) was a longitudinal study conducted in the context of student protests against tuition fees in Germany and confirmed that participation in radical collective action results in disidentification with the broader in-group (students) whereas participation in moderate collective action does not. Both types of action increased politicized identification. Study 2 (N = 175) manipulated the normativeness of different types of imagined collective actions in the same context and replicated this disidentification effect for radical actions, but only when this action mismatched the broader in-group's norms. This study also indicated that these effects were partially mediated by perceived lack of solidarity and perceived lack of commitment to the cause among the broader in-group. The implications of these findings for understanding radicalization within social movements are discussed.     

The face in the crowd effect unconfounded: happy faces, not angry faces, are more efficiently detected in single- and multiple-target visual search tasks

Is it easier to detect angry or happy facial expressions in crowds of faces? The present studies used several variations of the visual search task to assess whether people selectively attend to expressive faces. Contrary to widely cited studies (e.g., ?hman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001) that suggest angry faces "pop out" of crowds, our review of the literature found inconsistent evidence for the effect and suggested that low-level visual confounds could not be ruled out as the driving force behind the anger superiority effect. We then conducted 7 experiments, carefully designed to eliminate many of the confounding variables present in past demonstrations. These experiments showed no evidence that angry faces popped out of crowds or even that they were efficiently detected. These experiments instead revealed a search asymmetry favoring happy faces. Moreover, in contrast to most previous studies, the happiness superiority effect was shown to be robust even when obvious perceptual confounds--like the contrast of white exposed teeth that are typically displayed in smiling faces--were eliminated in the happy targets. Rather than attribute this effect to the existence of innate happiness detectors, we speculate that the human expression of happiness has evolved to be more visually discriminable because its communicative intent is less ambiguous than other facial expressions.