Junior Tennis Players’ Preferences for Parental Behaviors

The purpose of this study was to identify junior tennis players’ preferences for parental behaviors at competitions. Eleven focus groups were conducted with 42 high performance Canadian tennis players (M age = 13.5 yrs, SD = 1.2 yrs). Analysis revealed several themes describing athletes’ views of supportive parental behaviors. Specific preferences were that parents should not provide technical and tactical advice, but they should comment on effort and attitude, provide practical advice, respect tennis etiquette, and match nonverbal behaviors with supportive comments. By providing a children's perspective, these findings offer guidance to enhance parental involvement in tennis.     

Validation of an Italian version of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 (SATAQ-3) on adolescent girls

The present study used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to investigate the factor structure of an Italian version of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-3 (SATAQ-3) with a sample of 598 adolescent girls. Results of EFA indicated a four-factor structure: Information, Pressures, Internalization-General, and Internalization-Athlete. Factor loadings confirmed the original structure of the scale, except for one item. As expected, the four factors appeared to be slightly correlated. Cronbach's alphas for the four subscales were uniformly high: Information = .91, Pressures = .91, Internalization-General = .94, Internalization-Athlete = .84. Convergent validity of this Italian version of the SATAQ-3 was found to be good. SATAQ-3 seems useful to measure different aspects of societal influences on body image in Italian contexts. Future studies could subject SATAQ-3 to a confirmatory factor analysis in order to confirm the adequate fit of the model according to conventional criteria.     

Assortative marriage and the familiality of cognitive abilities in families of extremely gifted students

The top 1% of the extremely bright students identified by the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (Benbow & Stanley, 1980b) were tested along with their parents, using a battery of specifically designed cognitive tests. These students represented the top 0.03% of their age group in intellectual ability. The results showed that the parents were extremely able and resembled one another significantly more than parents in the general population. In addition, the intellectually precocious children resembled their parents to a lesser extent than children of average ability resemble their parents. These results suggest that considerable assortative mating has occurred among the parents of these extremely gifted youth, but that extreme giftedness cannot be predicted reliably solely as a result of the mating of bright parents.     

Failure to replicate a QTL association between a DNA marker identified by EST00083 and IQ

In a paper published in this journal, a possible QTL association was reported between general cognitive ability and a marker, identified by an expressed sequence tag, EST00083 (Skuder et al., 1995). In two small samples, the frequency of the common allele of this DNA marker, which was shown to be in the threonine transfer RNA gene in mitochondrial DNA, was significantly greater in a high-IQ group than in a low-IQ group. As part of the ongoing IQ QTL Project (Plomin et al., 1995), we have attempted to replicate this QTL association. First, we found that the QTL association remained significant when we compared 51 high- and 51 -average IQ subjects, drawn in part from the samples used in the previous report. However, when we examined the association in new samples of 40 extremely high-IQ subjects and 50 average-IQ subjects, the association did not replicate. This underlies the need for replication in case-control studies of allelic association.     

Contrasting intellectual patterns predict creativity in the arts and sciences: tracking intellectually precocious youth over 25 years

A sample of 2,409 intellectually talented adolescents (top 1%) who were assessed on the SAT by age 13 was tracked longitudinally for more than 25 years. Their creative accomplishments, with particular emphasis on literary achievement and scientific-technical innovation, were examined as a function of ability level (sum of math and verbal SAT scores) and tilt (math SAT score minus verbal SAT score). Results showed that distinct ability patterns uncovered by age 13 portend contrasting forms of creative expression by middle age. Whereas ability level contributes significantly to creative accomplishments, ability tilt is critical for predicting the specific domain in which they occur (e.g., securing a tenure-track position in the humanities vs. science, technology, engineering, or mathematics; publishing a novel vs. securing a patent).     

Trajectories of maternal depressive symptoms, maternal sensitivity, and children's functioning at school entry

Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, the authors modeled trajectories of maternal depressive symptoms from infant age 1 month to 7 years. The authors identified 6 trajectories of maternal depressive symptoms: high-chronic, moderate-increasing, high-decreasing, intermittent, moderate-stable, and low-stable. Women on these depression trajectories varied in sociodemographic risk and in changes in observed maternal sensitivity over time. Maternal sensitivity was generally higher and increased when depressive symptoms were low; sensitivity was lower and decreased when depressive symptoms were either high or increasing. Child outcomes at 1st grade were examined by trajectory group. The authors discuss the complexity of disentangling maternal symptoms from maternal sensitivity and sociodemographic risk when predicting children's functioning.     

Meeting the educational needs of special populations

We evaluated the Advanced Placement (AP) program from the point of view of intellectually precocious youth and their subsequent educational-vocational outcomes, analyzing normative and idiographic longitudinal data collected across 30 years from 3,937 participants. Most took AP courses in high school, and those who did frequently nominated an AP course as their favorite. Students who took AP courses, compared with their intellectual peers who did not, appeared more satisfied with the intellectual caliber of their high school experience and, ultimately, achieved more. Overall, this special population placed a premium on intellectual challenge in high school and found the lack of such challenge distressing. These findings can inform contemporary educational policy debates regarding the AP program; they also have general implications for designing and evaluating educational interventions for students with special needs.     

Does the nature of the experience influence suggestibility? A study of children's event memory

Two experiments examined the effects of event modality on children's memory and suggestibility. In Experiment 1, 3- and 5-year-old children directly participated in, observed, or listened to a narrative about an event. In an interview immediately after the event, free recall was followed by misleading or leading questions and, in turn, test recall questions. One week later children were reinterviewed. In Experiment 2, 4-year-old children either participated in or listened to a story about an event, either a single time or to a criterion level of learning. Misleading questions were presented either immediately or 1 week after learning, followed by test recall questions. Five-year-old children were more accurate than 3-year-olds and those participating were more accurate than those either observing or listening to a narrative. However, method of assessment, level of event learning, delay to testing, and variables relating to the misled items also influenced the magnitude of misinformation effects.