Factors Associated with Healthy and Impaired Social Functioning in Young Adolescents with ADHD

There is variability in the extent to which adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) exhibit social impairment, as the same diagnosis does not necessarily entail impairment in the same area(s) of functioning. The current study entailed a cross-sectional examination of enhancers to healthy social functioning and risk factors to parent- and self-rated social impairment in 324 middle school youth (ages 10–14 years) with ADHD. A series of binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to evaluate a risk-resilience model for social functioning, including testing compensatory (i.e., main; buffering) and protective (i.e., interaction) effects of enhancers in the presence of identified risk factors. Youth conduct problems, youth depression, and negative parenting emerged as risk factors. Self-rated social acceptance, activity participation (breadth and intensity), and parent involvement were enhancers of healthy social functioning. Of these enhancers, activity participation (breadth and intensity) and parent involvement showed buffering effects against the negative impact of the risk factors on social functioning. None of the enhancers displayed protective effects. The findings of this study enhance our understanding of the social functioning of young adolescents with ADHD, who comprise an understudied population relative to younger children with similar problems.     

Is the Positive Illusory Bias Common in Young Adolescents with ADHD? A Fresh Look at Prevalence and Stability Using Latent Profile and Transition Analyses

The goal of this study was to use novel approaches that do not require the use of arbitrary cut-points (i.e., latent profile/transition analysis) to evaluate the prevalence and stability of the positive illusory bias (PIB) in young adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Participants were 326 middle-school students diagnosed with ADHD (Mage = 12.26 years, 71% male, 77% Caucasian). The Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC) was completed by participants and their parents at baseline and again 12 and 18 months later. Cross-sectional results revealed four subgroups based on SPPC responses. Only a small subset (18.4%) of youth with ADHD exhibited a global PIB, across the behavioral, scholastic, and social domains, with an additional 29% displaying a PIB in the scholastic domain only. Additionally, average parent/adolescent-rated competence within each subgroup was in line with an objective measure of scholastic competence (i.e., grades). When examined longitudinally, only a PIB in the social domain was stable across the 18-month study period and only for half of the sample. These findings suggest that the PIB is not ubiquitous in youth with ADHD, with many young adolescents rating themselves accurately relative to their parents and their grades. Further, when stability across time is considered, the PIB may be specific to social functioning, as opposed to a global, cross-domain phenomenon. Implications for the future measurement of the PIB are discussed.     

Term Kinds and the Formality of Aristotelian Modal Logic

Recent formalizations of Aristotle's modal syllogistic have made use of an interpretative assumption with precedent in traditional commentary: That Aristotle implicitly relies on a distinction between two classes of terms. I argue that the way Rini (2011. Aristotle's Modal Proofs: Prior Analytics A8–22 in Predicate Logic, Dordrecht: Springer) employs this distinction undermines her attempt to show that Aristotle gives valid proofs of his modal syllogisms. Rini does not establish that Aristotle gives valid proofs of the arguments which she takes to best represent Aristotle's modal syllogisms, nor that Aristotle's modal syllogisms are instances of any other system of schemata that could be used to define an alternative notion of validity. On the other hand, I argue, Robert Kilwardby's ca. 1240 commentary on the Prior Analytics makes use of a term-kind distinction so as to provide truth conditions for Aristotle's necessity propositions which render Aristotle's conversion rules and first figure modal syllogisms formally valid. I reconstruct a suppositio semantics for syllogistic necessity propositions based on Kilwardby's text, and yield a consequence relation which validates key results in the assertoric, pure necessity and mixed necessity-assertoric syllogistics.     

Differences in the Evaluation of Generic Statements About Human and Non‐Human Categories

Generic statements (e.g., “Birds lay eggs”) express generalizations about categories. Current theories suggest that people should be especially inclined to accept generics that involve threatening information. However, previous tests of this claim have focused on generics about non‐human categories, which raises the question of whether this effect applies as readily to human categories. In Experiment 1, adults were more likely to accept generics involving a threatening (vs. a non‐threatening) property for artifacts, but this negativity bias did not also apply to human categories. Experiment 2 examined an alternative hypothesis for this result, and Experiments 3 and 4 served as conceptual replications of the first experiment. Experiment 5 found that even preschoolers apply generics differently for humans and artifacts. Finally, Experiment 6 showed that these effects reflect differences between human and non‐human categories more generally, as adults showed a negativity bias for categories of non‐human animals, but not for categories of humans. These findings suggest the presence of important, early‐emerging domain differences in people's judgments about generics.     

Well-being vocabulary in media language: An analysis of changing word usage in Norwegian newspapers

Well-being is a widely discussed topic in research, policy, and media. This study was aimed at examining usage patterns of core terminology related to well-being in Norwegian newspapers during the past two decades. Specifically, we investigated occurrence across time of 39 words describing well-being facets from four theoretical perspectives: affective approaches, cognitive or life satisfaction approaches, eudaimonic and humanistic approaches, and character strengths. Four major newspapers were selected in order to capture sociocultural and regional variation. Evidence of significant changes in usage frequency was detected for about half of the search terms. Affective words showed variable trends, while usage of words referring to satisfaction declined. The most notable magnitude of change concerned the increase in eudaimonic words related to mastery, motivation, and self-development. Findings suggest that core vocabulary of well-being belongs to a changeable field of linguistic practice. Implications for positive psychology are proposed.     

Aging and symptoms of anxiety and depression: structural invariance of the tripartite model

Negative affect measures were evaluated in a cross-sectional community sample of adults aged 18-93 (N = 335) to examine the structure of neuroticism, anxiety, and depressive symptoms in young, middle, and older adult cohorts. Structural equation modeling was used to contrast 3 nested models: a 1-factor general distress model; a 2-factor high negative-low positive affect model; and a 3-factor "tripartite model" reflecting a higher order Negative Affect factor that is common to depression and anxiety problems and 2 lower order factors, Low Positive Affect (mostly specific to depression) and Arousal (specific to anxiety/panic). As expected, the tripartite model fit best for all age groups. Further, multigroup analyses indicated age invariance for the tripartite model, suggesting the model can be effectively applied with older populations.     

Responses to Conflict and Cooperation in Adolescents with Anxiety and Mood Disorders

This study examined patterns of behavioral and emotional responses to conflict and cooperation in adolescents with anxiety/mood disorders and healthy peers. We compared performance on and emotional responses to the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game, an economic exchange task involving conflict and cooperation, between adolescents with anxiety/depressive disorders (A/D) (N=21) and healthy comparisons (n = 29). Participants were deceived to believe their co-player (a pre-programmed computer algorithm) was another study participant. A/D adolescents differed significantly from comparisons in patterns of play and emotional response to the game. Specifically, A/D participants responded more cooperatively to cooperative overtures from their co-players; A/D girls also reported more anger toward co-players than did comparison girls. Our findings indicate that A/D adolescents, particularly females, respond distinctively to stressful social interchanges. These findings offer a first step toward elucidating the mechanisms underlying social impairment in youth with internalizing disorders. This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, NIMH.     

A computational model of fractionated conflict-control mechanisms in task-switching

A feature of human cognition is the ability to monitor and adjust one's own behavior under changing circumstances. A dynamic balance between controlled and rapid responding is needed to adapt to a fluctuating environment. We suggest that cognitive control may include, among other things, two distinct processes. Incongruent stimuli may drive top-down facilitation of task-relevant responses to bias performance toward exploitation vs. exploration. Task or response switches may generally slow responses to bias toward accuracy vs. speed and exploration vs. exploitation. Behavioral results from a task switching study demonstrate these two distinct processes as revealed by higher-order sequential effects. A computational model implements the two conflict-control mechanisms, which allow it to capture many complex and novel sequential effects. Lesion studies with the model demonstrate that the model is unable to capture these effects without the conflict-control loops and show how each monitoring component modulates cognitive control. The results suggest numerous testable predictions regarding the neural substrates of cognitive control.