School Subjects as Social Categorisations

The present study set out to examine school subjects in terms of social categorisations of a child’s educability. A group of academically educated (N = 180) and vocationally educated parents (N = 249) with a child in the third grade of comprehensive school were asked to indicate their child’s strongest and weakest school subject and to give reasons for their choices. The parents’ most frequent choices for both the strongest and the weakest subject turned out to be mathematics and Finnish, which substantiates the pivotal role of the cognitive-verbal competencies in defining the child’s educability. The choices were guided by the child’s gender, so that mathematics was typically regarded as the strongest subject of boys and the weakest subject of girls and conversely, Finnish was regarded as the strongest subject of girls and the weakest subject of boys. The parent’s educational position organised the reasons given for the subject choices so that self-serving attribution was stronger among the academically educated than the vocationally educated parents, suggesting that the parents’ education relates to the trust they place on their child’s educational potential.     

Three Years Later: A Follow‐Up Study of Parents' Assessments of Their Children's Competencies1

The present study is a follow‐up of one that was designed to examine the changes that have occurred in parents' views of a child's competencies during the child's first 3 years of school. Parents with a university education (N=180) and a vocational education (N=249) were asked to assess their children's competencies in domains representing school subjects and abilities in preschool and at the end of the 1st and 3rd school years. The findings indicated that parents' initial optimistic views had prevailed. Furthermore, our findings on the gender‐ and education‐dependent differences suggested that the underlying social psychological organization of parental assessments already has taken shape by the time the child enters school.     

Adolescent athletes with learning disability display atypical maturational trajectories on concussion baseline testing: Implications based on a Finnish sample

Previous research has reported lower cognitive test scores on baseline testing in athletes reporting multiple previous concussions or a history of learning disability (LD). Age also has an important influence on cognitive performance. While these factors have been considered individually in previous studies, the present study is the first to explore the interaction of age, self-reported LD, and history of concussion on baseline Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT®) in a nationwide study of adolescent athletes. ImPACT® was administered to 1823 Finnish male ice hockey players (aged 12–21 years old) prior to the 2015–2016 or 2016–2017 playing seasons. Linear regressions and simple slopes analyses were used for clarifying the impact of LD and previous concussion history on maturational trajectories. In comparison to typically developing athletes, athletes with LD had lower neurocognitive scores in all composites and differing maturational trajectory in verbal memory and visual motor speed. The number of previous concussions did not impair neurocognitive performance at baseline assessment. Application of standard age-based norms to adolescent athletes with a history of LD has the potential to negatively skew clinical decision-making. Separate reference values for LD athletes are warranted due to their unique developmental cognitive trajectories. The reference values for the Finnish participants in this study are presented.     

Depressed youth: treatment outcome and changes in family functioning in individual and family therapy

This study explores the role of family functioning in therapeutic change in focused individual psychodynamic psychotherapy (FIPP) and time‐limited systems integrative family therapy (SIFT) for depressed children and adolescents. After a screening process, 72 participants aged 8 to 15 were randomized to either FIPP or time‐limited SIFT. Assessments took place prior to, at the end of, and 6 months after treatment. Families in both SIFT and FIPP showed a small but significant and sustained improvement in family functioning by the end of treatment in both mothers' self‐reports and family therapists' assessments. Better family functioning at baseline in mothers' self‐reports and improved family functioning during SIFT, as assessed by family therapists, predicted a sustained decrease in self‐reported depressive symptoms. Results indicated that time‐limited SIFT may be more effective with younger children and in patients without a diagnosis of double depression than adolescents.     

Difficult temperament predicts self‐esteem in adolescence

A six‐year longitudinal study investigated the impact of maternal hostile child‐rearing attitudes, role dissatisfaction, and maternal perceptions of adolescent temperamental difficultness on self‐esteem in late adolescence, after controlling for the initial self‐esteem measured in early adolescence. Adolescents (n = 313), derived from the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study, rated their self‐esteem at the study entry at age 12, and six years later at age 18. Maternal reports of child‐rearing attitudes, of role satisfaction, and of the temperament of the adolescent were obtained at the study entry and three years later. Mother's perceptions of adolescent's temperament as difficult at ages 12 and 15 predicted adolescent's self‐reported self‐esteem in late adolescence, whereas earlier self‐esteem did not predict later perceptions of temperament or parenting. We found no evidence that maternal perceptions of parenting indirectly, or after controlling for the initial level, predicted adolescent's self‐reported self‐esteem. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Three components of individualism

In this article, following an assumption that individualism and collectivism are separate factors, we have further established that three central components of individualism can be distinguished. In the first part of the article we examined whether the three proposed components of individualism—autonomy, mature self‐responsibility, and uniqueness—can be distinguished from each other in one cultural context, Estonia. A new scale was developed to measure the three aspects of individualism which demonstrated both the reasonable internal‐consistency reliability as well as convergent and divergent validity with several other measures of individualism and collectivism and related constructs. In the second part of the article we studied whether individualism generalizes across specific contexts or domains of social relationships, namely, across relations with family and close others; friends and peers; state and nation. The results of the three‐mode principal component analysis showed that the individualistic tendencies of the respondents did not differ much while measured toward the three types of social relation. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gendered Views of Ability in Parents’ Perceptions of Their Children’s Academic Competencies

The present study was designed to examine whether parents’ views of their child’s academic competencies are structured by gendered conceptions of abilities. In a longitudinal research design, a group of parents (N = 391) were asked to assess their third-grade child’s competence in mathematics and Finnish and to respond to a set of attitude statements; when the child reached the fifth grade, the parents were asked to reassess his/her competencies. It was found that the influence of the gender stereotype was partly domain-specific: The stereotype concerning Finnish organized the parental competence assessments as early as the child’s third grade and also predicted the assessments made about the child over the next two grades, whereas the stereotype concerning mathematics only predicted the assessments made as late as the fifth grade. In the Finnish competence assessments, the gender stereotype moderated the overall gender-of-the-child effect, whereas in the mathematics competence assessments, the gender-of-the-child effect was evinced only by the parent group that endorsed the gender stereotype. Culture-bound gender expectations and attitudes toward the expectations are significant, then, for parents’ assessments of their child’s competencies as early as the elementary school years.