Social Problems in ADHD: Is it a Skills Acquisition or Performance Problem?

Recent models suggest that social skills training’s inefficacy for children with ADHD may be due to target misspecification, such that their social problems reflect inconsistent performance rather than knowledge/skill gaps. No study to date, however, has disentangled social skills acquisition from performance deficits in children with ADHD. Children ages 8–12 with ADHD (n?=?47) and without ADHD (n?=?23) were assessed using the well-validated social behavioral analysis framework to quantify cross-informant social skills acquisition deficits, performance deficits, and strengths. Results provided support for the construct and predictive validities of this Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS) alternate scoring method, including expected magnitude and valence relations with BASC-2 social skills and ADHD symptoms based on both parent and teacher report. Acquisition deficits were relatively rare and idiosyncratic for both the ADHD and Non-ADHD groups, whereas children with ADHD demonstrated cross-informant social performance deficits (d?= 0.82–0.99) on several specific behaviors involving attention to peer directives, emotion regulation, and social reciprocity. Relative to themselves, children with ADHD were perceived by parents and teachers as exhibiting more social strengths than social acquisition deficits; however, they demonstrated significantly fewer social strengths than the Non-ADHD group (d?=??0.71 to ?0.89). These findings are consistent with recent conceptualizations suggesting that social problems in ADHD primarily reflect inconsistent performance rather than a lack of social knowledge/skills. Implications for refining social skills interventions for ADHD are discussed.     

Of Men and Money: Characteristics of Occupations that Affect the Gender Differentiation of Children’s Occupational Interests

Occupational interests become gender differentiated during childhood and remain so among adults. Two characteristics of occupations may contribute to this differentiation: the gender of individuals who typically perform the occupation (workers’ gender) and the particular goals that the occupation allows one to fulfill, such as the opportunity to help others or acquire power (value affordances). Two studies tested hypotheses about whether U.S. 6- to 11-year-olds show gender differences in their interest in novel jobs that were depicted as (a) being performed by men versus women and (b) affording money, power, family, or helping values. In Study 1, 98 children rank-ordered their preferences for experimentally-manipulated novel jobs, and they answered questions about their occupational values and the value affordances of jobs in which men and women typically work. In Study 2, a second sample of 65 children was used to test the replicability of findings from Study 1. As hypothesized, children were more interested in jobs depicted with same- than other-gender workers in both studies. Boys showed greater interest than did girls in novel jobs depicted as affording money in Study 1, but not Study 2. Explicit knowledge that men and women typically work in jobs that afford differing values increased with participants’ age.     

Predictors of Gender-Typed Toy Purchases by Prospective Parents and Mothers: The Roles of Childhood Experiences and Gender Attitudes

Gender differences in children’s toy interests are among the largest in the psychological literature. Parents are often the primary purchasers of children’s toys. In these studies, we investigated the factors that predict whether parents and prospective parents will purchase gender-typed toys for their children or future children. Prospective parents (Study 1, n?=?238, 151 women, 87 men) and mothers (Study 2, n?=?96) reported their retrospective childhood interests, likelihood of purchasing gender-typed toys, stereotypes about toys, and environmental versus essentialist attributions for perceived gender differences in children’s toys. Across both studies, participants reported playing with gender-typed toys more than cross-gender toys as children. They also planned to purchase gender-typed toys for their prospective children (Study 1) or their own children (Study 2). Participants endorsed more stereotypes for feminine toys than for masculine toys and indicated that they believe that gender differences in children’s interests are mostly environmentally influenced, with some biological influence. In addition, gender-typed toy interests as a child predicted the likelihood of purchasing gender-typed toys for their own children. Among women, having nontraditional interests as a child predicted the likelihood they would purchase nontraditional toys for their own children. This relationship was mediated by the endorsement of gender stereotypes among prospective parents (Study 1), but not among mothers (Study 2).     

The G-NORM Scale: Development and Validation of a Theory-Based Gender Norms Scale

Sex Roles - Gender norms are increasingly recognized as important modifiers of health. Despite growing awareness of how gender norms affect health behavior, current gender norms scales are often...     

Three Sibling Survivors’ Perspectives of their Father’s Suicide: Implications for Postvention Support

Journal of Child and Family Studies - This qualitative case study describes three adult siblings’ experiences and their perceptions of support connected with the time before and after their...     

Resisting temptation and overcoming procrastination: The roles of mental time travel and metacognition

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - We tend to seek immediate gratification at the expense of long-term reward. In fact, the more distant a reward is from the present moment?the more we tend...     

Captivity and habituation to humans raise curiosity in vervet monkeys

Animal Cognition - The cognitive mechanisms causing intraspecific behavioural differences between wild and captive animals remain poorly understood. Although diminished neophobia, resulting from a...     

Children's natural conversations following exposure to a rumor: Linkages to later false reports

Previous research has shown that children naturally propagate overheard false rumors and that the circulation of such information can induce children and their peers to wrongly recall actually experiencing rumored-but-nonexperienced events. The current study extends this work by recording 3- to 6-year-olds' naturally occurring conversations following exposure to an erroneous rumor. Results indicate that, compared with children who overhear rumors spread by adults, those who pick up rumors from peers during natural interactions engage in deeper and more inventive rumor mongering. Moreover, the degree and originality of rumor propagation was linked with various qualities of children's subsequent recollections at both 1-week and 4-week delayed interviews. Furthermore, compared with 3- and 4-year-olds, 5- and 6-year-olds naturally transmitted more novel and coherent embellishments of the rumor to their peers, and more of their false narrative reports during the interviews overlapped with their own and their peers' utterances transmitted soon after the rumor was planted.     

Visual-Verbal Self/Other-Referential Processing Task: Direct vs. indirect assessment, valence, and experiential correlates

This study evaluated a new methodology for assessing valenced Self-Referential Processing (SRP) in comparison with Other-Referential Processing (ORP). Participants viewed pictures of themselves during certain trials and same-gender strangers during others, intermixed between valenced words. Participants internally-rehearsed the words “I am” or “He/she is” when presented with the respective pictures and read the valenced words, thereby associating the self/other with positivity/negativity on different trials. Participants self-monitored their affective response, and their degree of attention and/or rate of internal speech/reading speed was measured indirectly via button-press response time (RT). Results in 91 young adults demonstrated a self-positivity bias in survey ratings, stronger affective responses during SRP than ORP, slower RT during SRP than ORP, and slower RT during positive than negative valence. Difference scores between SRP of negative- vs. positive-valence trials, and between SRP vs. ORP of negative-valence trials, were correlated among survey ratings, affective responses, and RT. Finally, content analyses of phenomenological reports showed that task conditions differentially provoked a number of socioemotional experiences during both SRP and ORP (e.g., jealousy-envy, sympathy-pity, good will/pride). We discuss potential applications of the task in the study of personality and individual differences.