A proposed index of the conformity of one sociometric measurement to another

An index is proposed to measure the extent of agreement of the data of a sociometric test with another test made at an earlier time or on another test criterion. The index is used to define an index of concordancebetween the two tests. It is shown how the index may be used for either individuals or groups. Tests of the hypothesis that agreement is random are given for all cases and applied to an example.Work done under the sponsorship of the Office of Naval Research.     

Intimate partner violence and children's reaction to peer provocation: the moderating role of emotion coaching

The current study examined the relation between intimate partner violence (IPV) and children's reactions to a stressful peer interaction in a community-based sample. The moderating role of parental emotion coaching in buffering children from negative reactions to a peer was also examined. Children participated in a peer provocation paradigm and mothers completed the Parent Meta-Emotion Interview. Both adaptive (i.e., laughing, ignoring) and maladaptive (i.e., hostile/challenging, odd behaviors) reactions to the provocative peer were examined. IPV was positively related to children's laughing and odd behaviors but was unrelated to ignoring and hostile/challenging behaviors. Additionally, emotion coaching was found to moderate relations between IPV and children's laughing and odd behaviors. The importance of understanding protective factors in families experiencing IPV and of developing emotion coaching parenting programs is discussed.     

Maternal meta-emotion philosophy and socialization of adolescent affect: The moderating role of adolescent temperament

This study explored the associations between maternal meta-emotion philosophy (MEP) and maternal socialization of preadolescents' positive and negative affect. It also investigated whether adolescent temperament and gender moderated this association. MEP involves parental awareness and acceptance of their own and their child's emotions and their coaching of child emotions. Event-planning (EPI) and problem-solving (PSI) interactions were observed in 163 mother-adolescent dyads, and maternal behaviors were coded to provide indices of socialization responses to adolescent emotion. In addition, maternal MEP was assessed via interview, and preadolescents provided self-reports of temperament on 2 occasions. Maternal MEP that is higher in awareness and acceptance was associated with reduced likelihood of negative socialization behaviors during the EPI. Moreover, preadolescents' temperamental negative emotionality (NEM) and effortful control (EC) moderated some of these MEP-socialization associations. During the positive EPI task, greater maternal awareness and acceptance is associated with reduced likelihood of negative socialization toward preadolescents with "easy" temperaments, that is, low NEM or high EC. However, during the conflict task, greater maternal awareness is associated with reduced likelihood of negative socialization among preadolescents with "difficult" temperaments. Some male-specific associations were also found.     

Good-bye, Mr. Chips: Male Teacher Shortages and Boys’ Reading Achievement

One hundred seventy-five third- and fourth-grade boys who were identified as struggling readers participated in a 10-week intervention to determine the effect of the reading teachers’ sex on boys’ reading performance, self-perceptions as readers, and view of reading as a masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral activity. Findings indicated no main effects on reading performance, yet main effects of teacher’s sex on two sub-scales of reader self-perception emerged. Evidence of interactions showed that boys responded differentially to the intervention—they responded better to female teachers. Further analysis revealed that the boys’ responses varied as much as a response to individual male teachers as to the teacher’s sex.     

Gender Differences in Being Thanked for Performing a Favor

We examined gender differences in how one responds to being thanked for a favor. Using experimental passages, we manipulated who requested the favor and the manner in which the favor is asked. Male and female participants received a set of scenarios in which social status, gender and directness of the request were orthogonally varied. Although male and female participants had very similar perceptions of whether the favor was a command or not, male but not female participants, generated more accommodating and fewer non-accommodating acknowledgments when thanked. The effect was strongest when the request was made by a boss (relative to a peer), especially if the boss was male, and made the request in a direct manner. These data are consistent with the notion that, for males, more than so for females, interactions that make salient one’s dominance status is relevant to gender-identity, and is linguistically reflected in a basic social exchange.     

The interaction of distress tolerance and intolerance of uncertainty in the prediction of symptom reduction across CBT for social anxiety disorder

Distress tolerance (DT) and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) have been identified as transdiagnostic processes that predict symptom severity across a range of distinct anxiety disorders. However, the joint effect of these two variables on therapeutic outcome has not yet been examined. It is possible that DT and IU may both impact on treatment response to cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) in clients with anxiety, as clients with weak DT and strong IU may be less likely to engage in exposure and cognitive restructuring tasks across treatment due to their associated distress. The purpose of this study was to examine the interaction of DT and IU as predictors of post-treatment symptom severity and treatment response to group CBT in participants with primary DSM-IV-TR diagnosed social anxiety disorder (SAD). Participants (N = 95) with SAD completed 12 weeks of manualized group CBT. Results of multilevel longitudinal analysis demonstrated an interaction effect, such that lower DT and higher IU predicted higher SAD symptom severity across the course of therapy. The findings are discussed in terms of clinical implications for the disorder-specific and transdiagnostic treatment of anxiety disorders.     

Temporary basolateral amygdala lesions disrupt acquisition of socially transmitted food preferences in rats

Lesions of the basolateral amygdala (BLA) have long been associated with abnormalities of taste-related behaviors and with failure in a variety of taste- and odor-related learning paradigms, including taste-potentiated odor aversion, conditioned taste preference, and conditioned taste aversion. Still, the general role of the amygdala in chemosensory learning remains somewhat controversial. In particular, it has been suggested that the amygdala may not be involved in a form of chemosensory learning that has recently received a substantial amount of study-socially transmitted food preference (STFP). Here, we provide evidence for this involvement by pharmacologically inactivating the basolateral amygdala bilaterally during STFP training. The same inactivation sites that impaired taste aversion learning eliminated the normally conditioned preference for a food smelled on a conspecific's breath. Impairments of learned preference persisted even in testing sessions in which BLA was not inactivated, and learning was normal when the BLA was inactivated only during testing sessions; thus, the impairment was a true acquisition deficit. In conjunction with previous results from other paradigms, therefore, our data suggest that the amygdala is vital for learning procedures involving pairings of potent and arbitrary chemosensory stimuli.     

Mechanisms of same/different abstract-concept learning by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

Experiments with 9 rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) showed, for the first time, that abstract-concept learning varied with the training stimulus set size. In a same/different task, monkeys required to touch a top picture before choosing a bottom picture (same) or white rectangle (different) learned rapidly. Monkeys not required to touch the top picture or presented with the top picture for a fixed time learned slowly or not at all. No abstract-concept learning occurred after 8-item training but progressively improved with larger set sizes and was complete following 128-item training. A control monkey with a constant 8-item set ruled out repeated training and testing. Contrary to the unique-species account, it is argued that different species have quantitative, not qualitative, differences in abstract-concept learning.     

Using Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations to Assess Cognitive Activity in Aggressive and Nonaggressive Adolescents

Articulated Thoughts in Simulated Situations (ATSS) is a think aloud method for examining a person's thought content as it unfolds in the situation. We used the ATSS to investigate the cognitive activity of aggressive and nonaggressive male and female adolescents as they listened to an audiotaped depiction of an ambiguous but provocative interaction with another student. Eighty-one adolescents participated in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment. The two factors were gender and aggressive vs. nonaggressive background. Students in the aggressive group had a history of aggressive behavior in the past year that was severe enough to warrant their arrest or suspension from school. Students in the nonaggressive group had no such history. As a secondary measure of anger and aggressiveness, we administered the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 (STAXI-2). As predicted, males, compared to females, expressed more aggressive intent on the ATSS. Likewise, aggressive, compared to nonaggressive, adolescents expressed more anger and aggressive intent on the ATSS, as well as more intense feelings of anger, less control over their anger, and a greater tendency to externalize angry feelings on the STAXI-2. As expected, scores on the ATSS were related to scores on the STAXI-2. We concluded that the ATSS is a useful method for assessing cognitive activity that may mediate aggressive behavior in adolescents.