Significance of Childhood Conduct Problems to Later Development of Conduct Disorder Among Children With ADHD: A Prospective Follow-Up Study

This study investigates whether low to moderate levels of childhood oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) behaviors contribute to the development of clinically diagnosed CD in adolescence, in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 207 White boys (ages 6-12) with ADHD free of conduct disorder diagnoses. Parent and teacher ratings were obtained. Participants were assessed at mean age 18 by clinicians blind to childhood status. A non-ADHD group (recruited in adolescence) was also studied. ODD behavior ratings did not predict CD in adolescence, whereas CD behavior ratings did. No single ODD or CD behavior predicted adolescent outcome. ADHD probands with very low ratings (Not at all, Just a little) by parents and teachers on all CD behaviors were still at significantly increased risk for CD in adolescence, compared to non-ADHD controls. The same relationships were found between childhood ODD and CD behaviors, and antisocial personality disorder in adulthood (mean age, 25). We conclude that childhood ADHD is a developmental precursor of later antisocial disorder, even in the absence of comorbid ODD or CD in childhood. However, low levels of CD-type problems are not innocuous, because they predict later CD among children with ADHD without comorbid CD.     

It's different to give than to receive: predictors of givers' and receivers' reactions to favor exchange

The present research examines episodes of favor exchange among peer employees. We posit that favor receivers' and favor givers' commitment to their exchange relationships with one another will be accounted for by different factors. As predicted, in 2 different organizational contexts, receivers' commitment to their relationships with givers was found to be more related to their judgments of the givers' interactional justice when performing the favor, whereas givers' commitment to their relationships with receivers was shown to be more associated with their judgments of the favorability of the outcomes associated with the favor that they performed. The implications of these findings for how givers and receivers can better manage favor exchange, and hence their relationships with each other, are discussed.     

Repetition priming in picture naming and translation depends on shared processes and their difficulty: evidence from spanish-english bilinguals

Two experiments with highly fluent Spanish-English bilinguals examined repetition priming of picture identification and word retrieval in picture naming. In Experiment 1, between-language priming of picture naming was symmetric, but within-language priming was stronger in the nondominant language. In Experiment 2, priming between picture naming and translation was symmetric within both the dominant language and the nondominant language, but priming was stronger in the nondominant language. A mathematical model required only 3 process parameters to explain the pattern of priming across 8 conditions. These results indicate that shared processes are the basis of priming, that difficulty influences priming only at the process level, and that translation in both directions is concept mediated in fluent bilinguals.     

Low doses of interleukin-1beta improve the leverpress avoidance performance of Sprague-Dawley rats

Recent research has indicated that the pro-inflammatory cytokines, particularly interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta), can affect learning and memory. We injected male Sprague-Dawley rats with IL-1beta (1.0, 3.0, or 6.0 microg/kg, i.p.) or saline vehicle, 24h before a single 4-h session of leverpress escape/avoidance conditioning. No effect of IL-1beta at any dose was observed in the number of escape responses across the 4-h session. However, subjects treated with the two lower doses (1.0 and 3.0 microg/kg) of IL-1beta performed more avoidance responses during the final hour of the 4-h session than the other two groups. Subjects treated with the highest dose of IL-1beta (6.0 microg/kg) did not differ from controls. Results are discussed in terms of the possible mechanisms behind the IL-1beta-induced enhancement of learning, as well as the observed dose-response relationship.     

Culture Is More than a Static Residual: Introduction to the Special Section on Culture and Foreign Policy

The literature on international relations frequently refers to culture in broad, macro-level ways to explain what cannot be explained by economic or military power. The assumptions that culture is simple, uniform and the opposite of power are, in the view of the authors, erroneous. Also, the authors note that there is a lack of scholarly interaction among psychologists interested in cross-cultural phenomena and international relations specialists interested in questions of identity and foreign policy. As an introduction to a special section on culture and foreign policy, this article calls for more communication among these scholarly communities; provides a set of observations about foreign policy and culture understood as a complex, dynamic concept; and calls for specific kinds of studies to better understand foreign policy in the context of cultural complexity and richness.     

Is Bradburn's measure of psychological well-being fair to introverts? A study among 16- to 18-yr.-old students

The relationship between dimensions of personality characteristics and the perceived rearing attitude of parents in the Japanese population were investigated. The scores on a measure of perceived parental attitude of 153 normal female students, measured on the Parker Parental Bonding Instrument, were correlated with personality features from the Japanese version of the Cloninger Temperament and Character Inventory. Self-directedness, especially the subclasses of Responsibility vs Blaming and Congruent Second Nature vs Incongruent Habits, was significantly related to high scores on Maternal Care and low scores on Maternal Overprotection. The subscale of Self-acceptance vs Self-striving correlated only with low scores on Maternal Overprotection. Paternal Care was only related to the total scale scores on Self-directedness. Results suggest that some personality traits may be related to the perceived attitudes of parents, especially of the mother, during childhood.     

Discovering the Alphabetic Principle: A Lost Opportunity for Educational Reform

We review the recently published report by the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children from a behavior analytic perspective. The authors prescribe what children should learn to be successful readers based on the correlates of reading and the developmental progression of reading errors. The report offers no discussion of theoretical models that can be used by teachers and parents to reform reading instruction or specific procedures that have been shown to be effective at promoting various reading skills. We discuss these omissions in terms of the level of research included in the review, the authors' structural approach to synthesizing this research, and the constructivist orientation common to many early childhood educators. The paper concludes by identifying models and strategies from the behavior analysis literature that can be used to guide instruction and offers a modest suggestion for future reviews of reading research.     

Anxiety Symptomatology in Mexican-American Adolescents

Mexican-American adults and adolescents in general have been reported to have high levels of anxiety symptomatology. In our study of a tri-ethnic sample of 2528 junior and senior high school students, the Youth Self Report (YSR) version of the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and a sociodemographic questionnaire was used to assess the anxiety symptoms of Hispanic youth. We compared the ratings on anxiety symptoms, using Achenbach's anxiety subscale on the YSR, between two populations. The anxiety levels of youth in coastal southeast Texas (Galveston County) were compared to the anxiety levels of youth in the lower Rio Grande Valley. We found that Mexican-Americans of the Lower Rio Grande Valley scored higher on anxiety symptoms than the tri-ethnic population of Galveston County. Other factors associated with higher anxiety scores for Mexican-American youths included being born outside the US, linguistic fluency, father absent from the home, mother's education, and household size. Multiple regression analyses showed that socio-economic status (SES), family composition, and linguistic fluency had a greater relative impact on anxiety symptomatology than all other factors, both for the total sample as well as for the Mexican-American sample. These results parallel previous findings, with Mexican-American adults, which suggest either higher risk for anxiety symptomatology or a culturally related bias in the reporting of such symptoms.     

Developing a federal policy on research misconduct

Since April 1996, the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), in collaboration with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President, has been leading the development of a government-wide Federal policy for research misconduct. The author is a Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and a participant in this process. This paper places the NSTC/OSTP effort in historical context, outlines the process by which the policy will be finalized, and discusses the principal issues raised during the policy development process.