Infants' joint attention skills predict toddlers' emerging mental state language

To assess predictive relations between joint attention skills, intention understanding, and mental state vocabulary, 88 children were tested with measures of comprehension of gaze and referential pointing, as well as the production of declarative gestures and the comprehension and production of imperative gestures, at the ages of 7-18 months. Infants' intention-based imitation skills were assessed at 12, 15, and 18 months. At the ages of 24 and 36 months, toddlers' internal state lexicon was evaluated by parents with a German adaptation of the Mental State Language Questionnaire (Olineck & Poulin-Dubois, 2005). Regression analyses revealed that 9-months-olds' comprehension of referential pointing contributed significantly to the prediction of intention-based imitation skills at 15 months, as well as to children's volition and cognition vocabularies at 24 and 36 months, respectively. Moreover, 12-month-olds' comprehension of an imperative motive was shown to selectively predict toddlers' use of volition terms at 24 months. Overall, these results provide empirical evidence for both general and specific developmental relations between preverbal communication skills and mental state language, thus implying developmental continuity within the social domain in the first 3 years of life.     

Children's sleep and cognitive performance: a cross-domain analysis of change over time

Relations between changes in children's cognitive performance and changes in sleep problems were examined over a 3-year period, and family socioeconomic status, child race/ethnicity, and gender were assessed as moderators of these associations. Participants were 250 second- and third-grade (8-9 years old at Time 1) boys and girls. At each assessment, children's cognitive performance (Verbal Comprehension, Decision Speed) was measured using the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities, and sleep problems (Sleepiness, Sleep/Wake Problems) were collected via self-report. Individual growth models revealed that children who reported increases in Sleepiness exhibited little growth in Verbal Comprehension over time compared with their peers who reported decreases in Sleepiness, resulting in a nearly 11-point cognitive deficit by the end of the study. These associations were not found for Sleep/Wake Problems or Decision Speed. Child race/ethnicity and gender moderated these associations, with Sleepiness serving as a vulnerability factor for poor cognitive outcomes, especially among African American children and girls. Differences in cognitive performance for children with high and low Sleepiness trajectories ranged from 16 to 19 points for African American children and from 11 to 19 points for girls. Results build substantially on existing literature examining associations between sleep and cognitive functioning in children and are the first to demonstrate that children's sleep trajectories over 3 waves were associated with changes in their cognitive performance over time.     

Atheists and Agnostics Negotiate Religion and Family

Through in‐depth interviews with scientists at elite academic institutions—those particularly likely to have no firm belief in God—we provide insight into the motives scientists who are not religious have for joining a religious group and the struggle faced by these individuals in reconciling personal beliefs with what they consider the best interests of their families. Narratives stress the use of resources from identities as scientists to provide their children with religious choices consistent with science and in negotiating spousal influence and a desire for community. Findings expand the religious socialization and identities literatures by widening the range of understanding of the strategies parents utilize to interface with religious communities as well as lead to more nuanced public understanding of how atheist and agnostic scientists relate to religious communities.     

Safety of using the adult OMNI Resistance Exercise Scale to determine 1-RM in older men and women

Older adults may be susceptible to injury during high-intensity resistance exercise. It has been suggested that it may be more protective to predict one-repetition maximum (1-RM) than to measure it because of the high intensity associated with 1-RM testing, but it may be necessary to measure 1-RM for functional, diagnostic, or clinical purposes. The method of using the OMNI Resistance Exercise Scale (OMNI-RES) was examined as a guide for hexagenarian adults in estimating 1-RM. 22 healthy men (M age = 64.3 yr., SD = 3.2) and 27 women (M age = 63.8 yr., SD = 2.8) volunteered. After two weeks of orientation, participants used a predetermined rating of perceived exertion to select resistance in the assessment of 1-RM and again after 12 weeks of training. At the 1-RM trials, participants were asked to report soreness or injury during or after the exercise sessions. There were no reported incidences of injury during the current investigation. The current results provide a practical method to estimate 1-RM in older adults. As such, the OMNI-RES can be used safely in a potentially at-risk population.     

The influence of confidence on associations among personal attitudes, perceived injunctive norms, and alcohol consumption

Social norms theories hold that perceptions of the degree of approval for a behavior have a strong influence on one's private attitudes and public behavior. In particular, being more approving of drinking and perceiving peers as more approving of drinking, are strongly associated with one's own drinking. However, previous research has not considered that students may vary considerably in the confidence in their estimates of peer approval and in the confidence in their estimates of their own approval of drinking. The present research was designed to evaluate confidence as a moderator of associations among perceived injunctive norms, own attitudes, and drinking. We expected perceived injunctive norms and own attitudes would be more strongly associated with drinking among students who felt more confident in their estimates of peer approval and own attitudes. We were also interested in whether this might differ by gender. Injunctive norms and self-reported alcohol consumption were measured in a sample of 708 college students. Findings from negative binomial regression analyses supported moderation hypotheses for confidence and perceived injunction norms but not for personal attitudes. Thus, perceived injunctive norms were more strongly associated with own drinking among students who felt more confident in their estimates of friends' approval of drinking. A three-way interaction further revealed that this was primarily true among women. Implications for norms and peer influence theories as well as interventions are discussed.     

Religious Pathways from Adolescence to Adulthood

Prior research suggests the significance of religion for development and well‐being in adolescence and beyond. Further, new developments and applications of statistical methods have led to ways of better accounting for the multidimensional nature of religiosity (e.g., latent class analysis), as well as the dynamic aspects of religiosity (e.g., latent growth curve models). Yet, rarely, if ever, are both features of religiosity incorporated and examined together. Therefore, we propose and conduct a latent class analysis using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to identify seven distinct pathways of religiosity that involve independently changing levels of religious affiliation, religious service attendance, personal importance of religion, and prayer from adolescence to adulthood. We also show how individuals’ religious pathways are related to gender, race, parents’ education, their own education, and family formation experiences in the transition to adulthood. Our findings inform the study of how multiple dimensions of religiosity take shape across adolescence and the transition to adulthood, and suggest a new way for measuring the dynamics of religiosity in studies of the impact of religion across the life course.     

Association between tryptophan hydroxylase 2 gene polymorphism and completed suicide

The association between suicide and a single nucleotide polymorphism (rs1386483) was examined in the recently identified tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2) gene. Blood samples of 143 suicide victims and 162 age- and sex-matched controls were examined. The frequency of the TT genotype in the TPH2 polymorphism was higher in suicide victims than in controls (17.5% vs. 8.6%; p = 0.02), particularly in those with a history of repeated suicide attempts (53.3% vs. 8.6%; p < 0.0001). The examined TPH2 polymorphism was found to be associated with suicide. This genetic marker may be particularly important in understanding risk of multiple suicide attempts. Further analyses are needed to confirm these results.     

Deep-level diversity and leadership

In the special issue on Diversity and Leadership (April 2010), the authors made a strong case for the importance of diversity in workplace leadership, rejected premature declarations that workplace discrimination is obsolete, and called for leadership theories that acknowledge and promote the value of diversity. We appreciate all authors' stressing that the glass ceiling still exists, not only for women but for other historically low-power groups as well. We also agree that modern theories of leadership can benefit immensely from increased participation by scholars and practitioners who are not Western, White, upper-class men (Chin, 2010).