Perceived family environment as a moderator of young adolescents' life stress adjustment

A longitudinal design was employed to test the main and stress-moderating effects of young adolescents' perceived family environment (Family Environment Scales; FES; Moos & Moos, 1981) on their depression, anxiety, and self-esteem. This study was part of a larger longitudinal project (L. Cohen, Burt, & Bjorck, 1987) that demonstrated the significant cross-sectional effects of the young adolescents' controllable and uncontrollable negative events, and the significant longitudinal effects of the former. The present cross-sectional analyses demonstrated the hypothesized main effects of the FES scores; families perceived as cohesive, organized, and expressive were related to positive psychological functioning, whereas families perceived as conflict-ridden and controlling were related to negative functioning. However, in general these effects were nonsignificant in the longitudinal analyses. Although there were a number of significant Negative Events x FES interactions, in no instance did the pattern support the hypothesized stress-buffering role of positive family climate.     

The social supports of suicide attempters: The different roles of family and friends

The social support patterns of a sample of 101 suicide attempters were compared with the patterns of a control sample on the basis of structured interview data. Network characteristics and the extent of support in different functional categories were examined as to their absolute and relative power to discriminate between the suicide attempters and the controls. A clear separation of the functions of kin and of friends/acquaintances emerged. The crucial difference between the attempters and the controls lay in the number of friends with whom the subjects had agreeable everyday interactions and in the number of kin that provided crisis support, both psychological and instrumental. Other support differences between the two groups were of secondary importance. While there was no overall difference in the frequency of social interactions between the two groups, the size of the social network differed greatly. Consequences for the conceptualization and measurement of social support as well as for the prevention of suicidal behavior are discussed.     

Intergroup fairness and bias in children

In recent years in research on intergroup relationships, the assumption has increasingly been made that discrimination dominates decisions when individuals allocate resources between (members of) own and other group. Conversely, in empirical studies of interpersonal decision-making, including an extensive literature on the development of children's allocation rules within dyadic relationships, it has been repeatedly observed that in dyadic relationships choices though responsive to various changes in the environment, are more strongly governed by fairness rules. The present research extends the interpersonal fairness paradigm to the intergroup case, and examines the effects of some of those variables, namely, children's age, input and attitudes toward other, that have been observed to influence choice behaviour within interpersonal relationships. The findings indicate that as children are socialized, fairness rules also play an increasing dominant role in intergroup allocation decisions, and that both relative input and the language of the outgroup influence such decisions. At the same time, there is some preliminary evidence to indicate that the relative strength of self-interest may be somewhat stronger in intergroup than in interpersonal relationships. Finally, a number of the issues that must be confronted in comparing the two more important forms of human social choices, interpersonal and intergroup decision-making, are considered.     

Self-Reported Delinquency,neuropsychological deficit,and history of attention deficit disorder

This study was designed to evaluate the possibility that a pattern of cognitive deficit is associated with delinquent behavior, while avoiding some of the methodological problems of previous research. The Self- Report Early Delinquency instrument and a research battery of neuropsychological tests were administered blindly to an unselected cohort of 678 13- year- olds. Because the diagnosis of attention deficit disorder (ADD) was found at markedly elevated rates in the backgrounds of these delinquents, the possibility was examined that the neuropsychological deficits of delinquents might be limited to delinquents with histories of ADD. Although delinquents with past ADD were more cognitively impaired than non-ADD delinquents, both groups scored significantly below nondelinquents on verbal, visuospatial, and visualmotor integration skills. In addition, ADD delinquents scored poorly on memory abilities. Subjects with ADD who had not developed delinquent behavior were not as cognitively impaired as ADD delinquents, suggesting that it is the specific comorbidity of ADD and delinquency that bears neuropsychological study.This work was supported by USPHS Grant 1 R23 MH-42723-01 from the Antisocial and Violent Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit is supported by the Medical Research Council of New Zealand. Appreciation is expressed for the methodological advice of Prof. Sarnoff A. Mednick, and for the data collection efforts of Mrs. Pat Brasch, Mrs. Kathleen Campbell, Mr. Rich Poulton, and the psychometrists who administered the WISC-R.     

Association between anxiety and depression in children and adolescents with anxiety disorders

The relationship between anxiety and depression was examined in a sample of 106 children and adolescents referred to an outpatient anxiety disorder clinic for children. Twenty-eight percent of patients with DSM-III diagnoses of anxiety disorders displayed a concurrent major depression. Children with anxiety disorders plus major depression were found (1) to be older, (2) to demonstrate more severe anxiety symptomatology, and (3) to be diagnosed with different rates of certain anxiety-disorder subtypes, when compared to anxious patients without major depression. Nondepressed anxious children and adolescents did not differ from a psychopathological control group in severity of either anxiety or depression symptoms.     

Serotonergic and opiate interactions in the modulation of drug- and environmental-induced analgesia in the neonatal rat pup

Serotonergic and opiate interactions in the modulation of drug- and environmental-induced analgesia were assessed in 6-day-old Sprague-Dawley-derived rat pups using tail-flick testing procedures. In these experiments the serotonergic antagonist metergoline was observed to attenuate both the analgesia induced by the opiate agonist morphine and the analgesia induced by isolation from siblings and the dam, an environmental manipulation which has previously been shown to be associated with increases in opiate activity. In contrast, the opiate antagonist naloxone was observed to be ineffective in blocking not only analgesia induced by the serotonergic agonist quipazine, but also analgesia induced by long-term deprivation from the dam and food, a manipulation that has been previously reported to induce increases in serotonergic utilization. These results suggest that in the neonate, as in the adult, the serotonergic modulation of nociception appears to occur "downstream" from the opiate systems serving to regulate nociception following both drug- and environmental-induced alterations in pain sensitivity. Analgesia induced by long-term deprivation from food and the dam appears to be strongly related to increases in serotonergic activity and relatively unaffected by opiate antagonism, whereas analgesia induced by isolation from siblings and the dam may be related to increases in opiate activity, but modulated by serotonergic systems serving to regulate pain responsivity. Thus alterations in the environment, mediated at least in part by alterations in opiate and serotonergic activity, appear to play an important role in influencing the sensitivity of the neonate to pain stimuli.     

A linguistic deficit resulting from right-hemisphere damage

The ability of right-brain-damaged (RBD) subjects to correctly insert a word into a well-formed stimulus sentence was tested. Subjects also performed three evaluative tasks designed to establish their degree of general cognitive impairment. The performance of RBD subjects on these tasks was compared to that of left-brain-damaged (LBD) and non-brain-damaged (NBD) subjects. Although RBD subjects outperformed LBD subjects on the language-related evaluative tasks, the RBD group was significantly more impaired on a subset of the insertion task. This subset included items which required reassignment of the syntactic status of elements in the stimulus sentence in order for the insertion to be carried out. The results of this study permit refinement of the common characterization of RBD individuals as rigid in their interpretation of meaning and indicate right-hemisphere involvement in aspects of the grammar previously thought to be inaccessible to it.     

A developmental study of the auditory Stroop effect

A pediatric auditory version of the Stroop procedure was developed and administered to 48 normal children from 3 to 6 years of age. Our purpose was to define the developmental course characterizing interaction between auditory and semantic speech dimensions in young children. The procedure was a reaction time (RT) task that required children to respond as quickly and as accurately as possible to words spoken by a male or a female voice. Children were instructed to ignore what was said and to push the "Mommy" button if Mommy was talking or the "Daddy" button if Daddy was talking. Performance was obtained for words with neutral, congruent, and conflicting semantic content. Preschool children manifested processing dependencies that were similar to those observed in adults on the visual Stroop procedure. Conflict between semantic and auditory dimensions significantly increased RT and congruence between the two dimensions significantly decreased RT relative to the neutral condition. The pattern of results indicated that the meaning of words was processed automatically in the normal children. The magnitude of the Stroop effect reflected developmental change with increasing age.