Children's Responses to Entry Failure: Attention Deployment Patterns and Self-Regulation Skills

In this study the authors investigated associations among children's observed responses to failure in an analogue entry situation, their attention deployment patterns, and skills and processes associated with self-regulation. Participants were 54 kindergarten and first-grade students who were either aggressive-rejected or low aggressive-popular based on peer nominations. Inhibitory control predicted the tendency to respond to entry failure by stopping and watching the group's activity. Baseline vagal tone and other-directed attention predicted children's tendency to change entry strategies after failure. Parent-rated attention skills moderated the relation between children's attention deployment patterns during the entry task and their responses to entry failure. Children who engaged in more other-directed attention were less likely to turn to solitary play after entry failure but only if they had high or moderate levels of attentional control. Other-directed attention was related to repeating previous entry bids without modification after entry failure but only when children had high levels of attention problems.     

Immediate Movement History Influences Reach-to-Grasp Action Selection in Children and Adults

The authors review studies of mentally simulated movements. In automatic or cyclical movements, actual and motor imagery (MI) durations are similar. When athletes simulate only dynamic phases of movement or perform MI just before competing, however, environmental and time constraints lead to an underestimation of actual duration. Conversely, complex attention-demanding movements take longer to image. Finally, participants can modify the speed of MI voluntarily when they receive specific instructions. To complete the available data, the authors compared imagined and actual durations in tennis and gymnastics. Results showed systematic and disproportionate overestimation of actual duration. The authors found a relationship between complex motor skills and MI duration. They discuss the factors leading to over- and underestimation and the hypotheses that could be tested.     

SORTO: Factor Analyzing Q Sorts of Kelly's Personal Construct Productions

A procedure for evaluating personality is described. Conventional and transposed factor analyses are made from Q sort data describing the important people in the subject's life in terms of his own constructs (á la Kelly) as variables. The scoring procedure produces construct-factors and people-factors. Sorts from a subject illustrate the method. Cross-cultural applications are possible since the translation of personal constructs is not essential. Simulation of relationships to others, SORTO, combines Kelly's (1955) personal constructs with Stephenson's (1953) Q sort procedure. A large amount of personal data is factor analyzed by the computer to reveal the main idiosyncratic features of a subject's perceptions of his relationships to others. Maximum output from the analysis occurs when the nature of personal constructs employed is supplied as input to the analysis.     

Assessing Male Batterers With the Personality Assessment Inventory

Despite the importance of the assessment of ego strength for appropriate assignment of clients for psychotherapy and/or rehabilitation, existing techniques have not fulfilled expectations. A method for assessing ego strength through the Rorschach Test independent of clinical criterion is proposed. In addition to certain variables of Klopfer's RPRS (M+, FM+, FC+ plus CF+), sharply preceived space responses are included. They constitute a highly intercorrelated global measure of ego strength and are also highly correlated to a relatively independent Rorschach variable of global ego efficiency, i.e. integrated whole responses. In accordance with prediction, non-controlled color responses as well as accuracy of form perception did not correlate in a non-clinical sample with either measure of ego strength.     

Age-related changes in motor imagery from early childhood to adulthood: Probing the internal representation of speed-accuracy trade-offs

The purpose of this study was to chart the development of motor imagery ability between 5 and 29 years of age and its relationship to fine-motor skill. 237 participants performed a computerized Virtual Radial Fitts Task (VRFT) as a measure of Motor Imagery (MI) ability. Participants aimed at five targets, positioned along radial axes from a central target circle. The targets differed in width over trials (2.5, 5, 10, 20 or 40 mm). Performance was indexed by the relationship between the movement time (MT) in executed and imagined movements. A subset of participants (11–19 years old, n = 22) also performed the task with their non-preferred hand. We also examined if manual skill (measured by peg board task and posting coins) was related to the executed and imagined MT on the VRFT. Our results showed that the accuracy of the imagined movement improved steadily over childhood, reaching an asymptote during adolescence and into early adulthood. The correlation between the real and virtual MT using the preferred hand did not differ appreciably from that using the non-preferred hand. If the children could perform the tasks with their non-preferred hand (11 years and older), they also scaled performance in relatively precise terms using the less dextrous non-preferred hand. The correlation between real MT on the VRFT and fine-motor performance ranged between .53 and .42, while that for virtual movement was between .37 and .34. MI ability predicts manual skill to a moderate degree.     

An 18-month follow-up investigation of motor coordination and working memory in primary school children

The aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between motor coordination and visual working memory in children aged 5–11 years. Participants were 18 children with movement difficulty and 41 control children, assessed at baseline and following an 18-month time period. The McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development provided a measure of motor skills and the CogState One-Back task was used to assess visual working memory. Multi-level mixed effects linear regressions were used to assess the relationship between fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and visual working memory. The results revealed that for children with movement difficulty, better fine motor skills at baseline significantly predicted greater One-Back accuracy and greater (i.e., faster) speed at 18-month follow-up. Conversely, fine motor skills at baseline did not predict One-Back accuracy and speed for control children. However, for both groups, greater One-Back accuracy at baseline predicted better fine and gross motor skills at follow-up. These findings have important implications for the assessment and treatment of children referred for motor difficulties and/or working memory difficulties.     

Repetitive Intimate Partner Victimization: An Exploratory Application of Social Learning Theory

The research literature on intimate partner violence (IPV) has documented a number of poignant facts that serve as the foundation for this study. First, IPV is prevalent, frequent, and often repetitive. Moreover, repetitive violence within an intimate relationship tends to escalate over time, both in its frequency of occurrence and in its severity. We also know that decisions to leave the relationship do not guarantee that the violence will end. In addition, the phenomenon of “mutual combatancy,” prevalent in many intimate partner relationships, suggests that both parties in this dyadic process co-share the roles of offender and victim. Finally, we know that targets of IPV, like their abusers, tend to disproportionately come from families-of-origin in which violence and aggression were directly and/or vicariously experienced. These facts suggest that one possible starting point for the exploration of repetitive intimate partner victimization (R-IPV) may derive from an inter-generational transmission, or cycle of violence theory, suggested more formally in social learning approaches to criminal and deviant behaviors. The present study examines the extent to which measures of Akers' social learning constructs are able to predict repetitive intimate partner victimization. Self-report data on intimate partner violence among a sample of college students reveal the social learning theory variables, differential association and differential reinforcement in particular, are able to predict both the prevalence and frequency of predict repetitive intimate partner victimization.     

Psychopathic traits and men’s anger response to interpersonal conflict: A pilot study

Psychopathy is associated with emotional dysfunction that impedes the experience of emotions such as fear and sadness and has been purported to facilitate violent behavior. However, findings relative to the association between psychopathy and anger have not been reliably substantiated. Theorists have proposed that psychopathy predisposes one to experience greater frustration and anger, whereas other experts have suggested that there is no convincing evidence for this assertion. In the present study, we tested the relationship between psychopathy subfactors and anger subsequent to conflict or non-conflict interactions. Sixty-eight collegiate-men completed the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale and read vignettes depicting either a conflict or non-conflict scenario and were asked to imagine themselves in the situation. Following presentation of the vignettes, participants completed a lexical-decision-task assessing affective states. Results indicated that the psychopathy subfactors demonstrated strong differential associations, where Factor 1 showed negative and Factor 2 showed positive association with anger activation in response to interpersonal conflict. Findings are discussed in terms of the importance of anger as a facilitator of violence in some psychopathic individuals.     

Family-focused management: Treatment of choice for deviant and dependent families

Abstract

Helping professionals working with troubled families takes two approaches. One approach, noting that the identified patient's family's behavioral interactions have positive and negative effects on the patient and his symptoms, advocates involving family members in the treatment process. The other approach, noting that the identified patient alone has the power to resolve his problem, advocates treating the patient independently of the family. This latter approach, in effect, relieves family members of the painful feelings of responsibility. At first glance, these two approaches appear to be in conflict, and it is no wonder that professionals choose to remain with one or the other. Both points of view are valid, so that approaches need to be developed which incorporate both.