Psychopathic Traits of Dutch Adolescents in Residential Care: Identifying Subgroups

The present study examined whether a sample of 214 (52.8% male, M age = 15.76, SD = 1.29) institutionalized adolescents could be classified into subgroups based on psychopathic traits. Confirmatory Factor Analyses revealed a relationship between the subscales of the Youth Psychopathic traits Inventory (YPI) and the three latent constructs of the original model on which it is based. Latent Class Analyses showed that adolescents showing psychopathic traits could be classified into three subgroups. The first group showed low scores on the grandiose/manipulative dimension, the callous/unemotional dimension, and the impulsive/irresponsible dimension (normal group). The second group scored moderate on the grandiose/manipulative dimension and the callous/unemotional dimension and high on the impulsive/irresponsible dimension (impulsive, non-psychopathic-like group). The third group scored high on all three dimensions (psychopathy-like group). The findings revealed that the impulsive, non-psychopathic like group scored significantly higher on internalizing problem behavior compared to the normal group, while the psychopathy-like and the impulsive, non-psychopathic-like group both scored higher on externalizing problem behavior compared to the normal group. Based on a self-report delinquency measure, it appeared that the psychopathy-like group had the highest delinquency rates, except for vandalism. Both the impulsive and psychopathy-like group had the highest scores on the use of soft drugs.     

Developmental Risk and Young Children’s Regulatory Strategies: Predicting Behavior Problems at Age Five

Children with early developmental delays are at heightened risk for behavior problems and comorbid psychopathology. This study examined the trajectories of regulatory capabilities and their potentially mediating role in the development of behavior problems for children with and without early developmental delays. A sample of 231 children comprised of 137 typically developing children and 94 children with developmental delays were examined during mildly frustrating laboratory tasks across the preschool period (ages 3–5). Results indicated that children with delays had greater use of maladaptive strategies (distraction, distress venting) and lower use of adaptive strategies (constructive coping) than typically developing children. For both groups, strategies had similar rates of growth across time; maladaptive strategies decreased and adaptive strategies increased. The intercept of strategy use, but not the slope, was found to mediate the relation between developmental risk and externalizing behaviors. Findings support that dysregulation, rather than the developmental risk, may be responsible for the high levels of comorbid psychopathology.     

Do physical and relational aggression explain adolescents' friendship selection? The competing roles of network characteristics,gender, and social status

The role of physical and relational aggression in adolescents' friendship selection was examined in a longitudinal sample of 274 Chilean students from 5th and 6th grade followed over 1 year. Longitudinal social network modeling (SIENA) was used to study selection processes for aggression while influence processes were controlled for. Furthermore, the effects of network characteristics (i.e., reciprocity and transitivity), gender, and social status on friendship selection were examined. The starting assumption of this study was that selection effects based on aggression might have been overestimated in previous research as a result of failing to consider influence processes and alternative characteristics that steer friendship formation. The results show that selection effects of both physical and relational aggression disappeared when network effects, gender, and social status were taken into account. Particularly gender and perceived popularity appeared to be far more important determinants of friendship selection over time than aggression. Moreover, a peer influence effect was only found for relational aggression, and not for physical aggression. These findings suggest that similarity in aggression among befriended adolescents can be considered to be mainly a by-product rather than a leading dimension in friendship selection.     

Deciding where to attend: priming of pop-out drives target selection

With attention and eye-movements humans orient to targets of interest. This orienting occurs faster when the same target repeats: priming of pop-out (PoP). While reaction times (RTs) can be important, PoP's real function could be to steer where to orient, a possibility underexposed in many current paradigms, as these predesignate a target to which to orient. In a novel procedure we intermixed pop-out trials (one oddball target, two identical distractors) with choice trials (one item of each kind) where observers freely chose an item to attend to. Pop-out trials strongly drove subsequent choice: observers typically chose the preceding target. Conversely, choice trials affected subsequent pop-out RTs. Conventional PoP measures correlated positively with our choice measures among observers, suggesting common mechanisms. Our results support PoP accounts centered on altered target priority, and underscore PoP's importance for visual exploration.     

On the role of goal relevance in emotional attention: disgust evokes early attention to cleanliness

Prior evidence has shown that aversive emotional states are characterised by an attentional bias towards aversive events. The present study investigated whether aversive emotions also bias attention towards stimuli that represent means by which the emotion can be alleviated. We induced disgust by having participants touch fake disgusting objects. Participants in the control condition touched non-disgusting objects. The results of a subsequent dot-probe task revealed that attention was oriented to disgusting pictures irrespective of condition. However, participants in the disgust condition also oriented towards pictures representing cleanliness. These findings suggest that the deployment of attention in aversive emotional states is not purely stimulus driven but is also guided by the goal to alleviate this emotional state.     

Is the emotional modulation of the attentional blink driven by response bias?

Several studies have shown that the attentional blink (AB; Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992) is diminished for highly arousing T2 stimuli (e.g., Anderson, 2005). Whereas this effect is most often interpreted as evidence for a more efficient processing of arousing information, it could be due also to a bias to report more arousing stimuli than neutral stimuli. We introduce a paradigm that allows one to control for such a response bias. Using this paradigm, we obtained evidence that the diminished AB for taboo words cannot be explained by a response bias. This supports the idea that the emotional modulation of the AB is caused by attentional processes.     

Young‐age gender differences in mathematics mediated by independent control or uncontrollability

We studied whether the origins of math anxiety can be related to a biologically supported framework of stress induction: (un)controllability perception, here indicated by self‐reported independent efforts in mathematics. Math anxiety was tested in 182 children (8‐ to 11‐year‐olds). Latent factor modeling was used to test hypotheses on plausible causal processes and mediations within competing models in quasi‐experimental contrasts. Uncontrollability perception in mathematics, or (in)dependence of efforts, best fit the data as an antecedent of math anxiety. In addition, the relationship of math anxiety with gender was fully mediated by adaptive perception of control (i.e. controllability). That is, young boys differ from girls in terms of their experience of control in mathematics learning. These differences influence math anxiety. Our findings are consistent with recent suggestions in clinical literature according to which uncontrollability makes women more susceptible to fear and anxiety disorders. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4b_47Y-e_U     

Sample size determinations for Welch's test in one‐way heteroscedastic ANOVA

For one‐way fixed effects ANOVA, it is well known that the conventional F test of the equality of means is not robust to unequal variances, and numerous methods have been proposed for dealing with heteroscedasticity. On the basis of extensive empirical evidence of Type I error control and power performance, Welch's procedure is frequently recommended as the major alternative to the ANOVA F test under variance heterogeneity. To enhance its practical usefulness, this paper considers an important aspect of Welch's method in determining the sample size necessary to achieve a given power. Simulation studies are conducted to compare two approximate power functions of Welch's test for their accuracy in sample size calculations over a wide variety of model configurations with heteroscedastic structures. The numerical investigations show that Levy's (1978a) approach is clearly more accurate than the formula of Luh and Guo (2011) for the range of model specifications considered here. Accordingly, computer programs are provided to implement the technique recommended by Levy for power calculation and sample size determination within the context of the one‐way heteroscedastic ANOVA model.