Social Competence in Children with Brain Disorders: A Meta-analytic Review

Social competence, i.e. appropriate or effective social functioning, is an important determinant of quality of life. Social competence consists of social skills, social performance and social adjustment. The current paper reviews social skills, in particular emotion recognition performance and its relationship with social adjustment in children with brain disorders. In this review, normal development and the neuro-anatomical correlates of emotion recognition in both healthy children and adults and in various groups of children with brain disorders, will be discussed. A systematic literature search conducted on PubMed, yielded nine papers. Emotion recognition tasks were categorized on the basis of task design and emotional categories to ensure optimal comparison across studies before an explorative meta-analysis was conducted. This meta-analytic review suggests that children with brain disorders show impaired emotion recognition, with the recognition of sad and fearful expressions being most impaired. Performance did not seem to be related to derivative measures of social adjustment. Despite the limited number of studies on a variety of brain disorders and control groups, outcomes were quite consistent across analyses and corresponded largely with the existing literature on development of emotion recognition in typically developing children. More longitudinal prospective studies on emotion recognition are needed to gain insight into recovery and subsequent development of children with distinct brain disorders. This will aid development, selection and implementation of interventions for improvement of social competence and quality of life in children with a brain disorder.     

Unipodal performance and leg muscle mass in jumping skills among ballet dancers

We examined the vertical jump performance of each leg among 10 right-footed female ballet dancers with 1 yr. of international professional experience (quadrilles: Opera ballerinas). Their mean age was 17.5 yr. (SD=0.3). The maximal height of the unilateral jump was recorded, and muscle mass was evaluated by biphotonic absorptiometry method. Muscle mass and maximal jump height were similar for the two legs. A strong inverse relation was found between the muscle mass of the right leg (67%) and maximal jump height (r=-.81, p<.01) but not for the left leg. These results highlight a functional asymmetry and the effect of motor laterality in dance.     

Moral reasoning and emotion attributions of adolescent bullies,victims, and bully‐victims

This study investigated different facets of moral development in bullies, victims, and bully‐victims among Swiss adolescents. Extending previous research, we focused on both bullying and victimization in relation to adolescents’ morally disengaged and morally responsible reasoning as well as moral emotion attributions. A total of 516 adolescents aged 12–18 (57% females) reported the frequency of involvement in bullying and victimization. Participants were categorized as bullies (14.3%), bully‐victims (3.9%), and victims (9.7%). Moral judgment, moral justifications, and emotion attributions to a hypothetical perpetrator of a moral transgression (relational aggression) were assessed. Bullies showed more morally disengaged reasoning than non‐involved students. Bully‐victims more frequently indicated that violating moral rules is right. Victims produced more victim‐oriented justifications (i.e., more empathy) but fewer moral rules. Among victims, the frequency of morally responsible justifications decreased and the frequency of deviant rules increased with age. The findings are discussed from an integrative moral developmental perspective.