The Role Behavioral of Activation and Inhibition in Explaining Adolescents’ Game Use and Game Engagement Levels

According to Gray’s reinforcement sensitivity theory, variations in the functioning of two neuropsychological systems, the behavioral approach (BAS) and inhibition (BIS) system, can result in individual differences in personality. Several studies have looked at associations between personality and media use but media research integrating BAS and BIS is scarce. The current cross-sectional survey study (n = 1016) representative for Belgian adolescents investigated associations between BAS and BIS and game use and game engagement in adolescents. Results showed that BAS was positively associated with playing both violent and nonviolent games. BIS was negatively associated with violent game use while it was positively associated with nonviolent games. Also, BAS was positively associated with game engagement. No association was found between BIS and game engagement. Game engagement was shown to mediate the relationship between BAS and playing both violent and nonviolent games. Based on these results, the present study argues that integrating the reinforcement sensitivity theory in media research makes an important contribution to the understanding of the link between personality and game engagement and game use.     

Contributions of emotion understanding to narrative comprehension in children and adults

This study examined to what extent children and adults differ in how they process negative emotions during reading, and how they rate their own and protagonists’ emotional states. Results show that both children’s and adults’ processing of target sentences was facilitated when they described negative emotions. Processing of spill-over sentences was facilitated for adults but inhibited for children, suggesting children needed additional time to process protagonists’ emotional states and integrate them into coherent mental representations. Children and adults were similar in their valence and arousal ratings as they rated protagonists’ emotional states as more negative and more intense than their own emotional states. However, they differed in that children rated their own emotional states as relatively neutral, whereas adults’ ratings of their own emotional states more closely matched the negative emotional states of the protagonists. This suggests a possible difference between children and adults in the mechanism underlying emotional inferencing.     

The Interplay of Self‐Certainty and Prosocial Development in the Transition from Late Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood

The transition from late adolescence to emerging adulthood is a period of the life span that offers young people the possibility to consolidate their self‐certainty and prosociality. Both aspects are of core importance for increasing personal and societal well‐being. The purpose of this longitudinal study was twofold: (i) to examine patterns of change and stability in self‐concept clarity and prosociality; and (ii) to unravel over time associations between these constructs in the transition from late adolescence to emerging adulthood. In addressing both aims, we explored the moderating effects of gender. Participants were 244 Dutch emerging adults (46% male; mean age at T1 = 16.73 years) who completed six waves of data collection (mean age at T6 = 22.7 years). Findings highlighted that (i) self‐concept clarity developed nonlinearly, with an initial decline from T1 to T2 followed by an increase thereafter, while prosociality increased linearly over time and both self‐concept clarity and prosociality were characterized by high rank‐order consistency; (ii) self‐concept clarity and prosociality were positively related over time, with the effect of prosociality on self‐concept clarity being stronger than the reciprocal effect of self‐concept clarity on prosociality. Gender differences were detected in mean levels of self‐concept clarity and prosociality (male participants reported higher self‐concept clarity and lower prosociality than female participants) but not in their developmental pathways nor in their reciprocal associations. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Searching hard versus searching smart: The role of search process quality in an internship context

Based on a self‐regulatory approach, we propose that students searching for an internship following a high‐quality process will show greater search success. In a sample of 191 Belgian final year students looking for an internship, the quality of students’ search process was positively related to both self‐reported and objective search outcomes, beyond the mere intensity of their search. Specifically, reflection related positively to students’ satisfaction and perceived fit with their internship, as well as to organizations’ assessment of students’ internship performance. Planning related positively to the speed of finding an internship. Furthermore, the four search process quality dimensions explained incremental variance in these outcomes beyond a unidimensional measure of metacognitive activities, supporting the added value of our multidimensional approach.     

Exposure to Bullying and General Psychopathology: A Prospective,Longitudinal Study

Although there is mounting evidence that the experience of being bullied associates with both internalizing and externalizing symptoms, it is not known yet whether the identified associations are specific to these symptoms, or shared between them. The primary focus of this study is to assess the prospective associations of bullying exposure with both general and specific (i.e., internalizing, externalizing) factors of psychopathology. This study included data from 6,210 children participating in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Child bullying was measured by self-report at ages 8 and 10 years. Child psychopathology symptoms were assessed by parent-interview, using the Development and Well-being Assessment (DAWBA) at ages 7 and 13 years. Bullying exposure significantly associated with the general psychopathology factor in early adolescence. In particular, chronically victimized youth exposed to multiple forms of bullying (i.e., both overt and relational) showed higher levels of general psychopathology. Bullying exposure also associated with both internalizing and externalizing factors from the correlated-factors model. However, the effect estimates for these factors decreased considerably in size and dropped to insignificant for the internalizing factor after extracting the shared variance that belongs to the general factor of psychopathology. Using an integrative longitudinal model, we found that higher levels of general psychopathology at age 7 also associated with bullying exposure at age 8 which, in turn, associated with general psychopathology at age 13 through its two-year continuity. Findings suggest that exposure to bullying is a risk factor for a more general vulnerability to psychopathology.

     

Dutch Norms for the Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory: Comparisons with other Western Countries

The Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory (ECBI) is one of the most widely used and well-validated parent rating scales for children’s disruptive behavior. This screening instrument is a short, targetted and easy to implement inventory with good psychometric properties and is normed for different countries, among which the United States, Spain, Sweden and Norway. The ECBI has been successfully used for research and clinical purposes, in several countries including The Netherlands. To date, Dutch studies have relied on Scandinavian or US norm scores. However, this may be problematic because of cross-cultural differences in the degree to which certain behaviors are seen as problematic by parents. The main goal of this paper therefore was to obtain norm scores for The Netherlands among 6462 Dutch children aged 4 to 8 years (M _age?=?6.37 years; SD?=?1.32; 50.6% boys). In line with previous research, we found small differences on the mean sum scores across children of different ages (intensity scale) and gender (intensity and problem scale). Therefore, Dutch norm scores were provided age- and gender specific. Our results showed that disruptive behavior of children in the most rural areas was reported as occurring less frequently and was seen as less problematic by parents compared to the disruptive behavior of children in less rural areas. Finally, we found that Dutch norm scores on the ECBI were significantly lower than US norm scores, and significantly higher on the intensity scale (but not the problem scale) than Norwegian and Swedish norm scores.     

Associations Between Dopamine D2 Receptor (<Emphasis Type="Italic">DRD2</Emphasis>) Gene,Maternal Positive Parenting and Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms from Early to Mid-Adolescence

Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Chinese Children and Adolescents (LSCCA), this study is the first to examine the roles of the dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) gene polymorphisms (i.e., TaqIA and A241G) and maternal positive parenting at ages 10 and 11 years in the trajectories of depressive symptoms from early to mid-adolescence (ages 11 to 16 years). In a sample of 1090 Chinese adolescents (50% girls), three trajectories of depressive symptoms were identified: (i) low-stable (36.1%), (ii) moderate-increasing (44.5%), and (iii) high-increasing (19.4%). A241G AA homozygotes and youth exposed to lower levels of maternal positive parenting were both at increased odds to follow the high-increasing vs. low-stable trajectory. Moreover, the A241G polymorphism interacted with maternal positive parenting to distinguish the moderate-increasing trajectory from the high-increasing and the low-stable trajectories. For A241G G-allele carriers, but not AA homozygotes, exposure to high quality of maternal parenting decreased the odds to follow the high-increasing vs. moderate-increasing trajectory of depressive symptoms. For AA homozygotes, but not G-allele carriers, high quality of maternal parenting increased the odds to follow the low-stable vs. moderate-increasing trajectory. The DRD2 TaqIA polymorphism had neither a direct nor an interactive effect with maternal positive parenting on trajectory membership. The current findings highlight the importance of investigating gene-by-environment interactions (G × E) in trajectories of depressive symptoms over adolescence, and support a developmental versus static nature of G × E effects.