Social Exclusion Predicts Impaired Self‐Regulation: A 2‐Year Longitudinal Panel Study Including the Transition from Preschool to School

The need‐to‐belong theory stipulates that social exclusion (i.e., being rejected by peers) impairs the ability to self‐regulate, and experimental studies with adults support this contention, at least on a short‐term basis. Few studies have investigated whether social exclusion affects the development of self‐regulation of children in a more enduring manner. By using data from a community sample of 762 children, we investigated reciprocal relations between social exclusion and self‐regulation from age 4 to age 6. Social exclusion was reported by teachers, whereas self‐regulation was reported by parents. Autoregressive latent cross‐lagged analyses showed that social exclusion predicted impaired development of dispositional self‐regulation and, reciprocally, that poor self‐regulation predicted enhanced social exclusion. In other words, social exclusion undermines children's development of self‐regulation, whereas poor self‐regulation increases the likelihood of exclusion. Results illuminate the applied relevance of the need‐to‐belong theory.     

Milieu therapy for neglected children: Treatment in a caring relationship

The central thesis of this paper is that treatment of neglected children can better take place in a caring relationship than in psychotherapy or analysis. In order to create the basis for this idea, Part 1 introduces a milieu therapy for neglected children, developed by the author. In Part 2 of the article, it is proposed that treatment in a caring relationship is in line with the child's dependence on a caring person. It is also argued that the traditional distinction between problems in the child's environment and internal psychological difficulties seems imprecise. Instead, it is proposed that a problem has both an external and an internal aspect. This supports the idea that it may be possible to solve problems that are traditionally considered internal through environmental strategies, for example milieu therapy. The article is hypothesis-generating and builds upon clinical experience inspired by works of, among others, Erikson, Bowlby, Winnicott, and Fonagy and collaborators. Part 1 of the article is the first presentation in English of the main points of the author's books on milieu therapy. The ideas in Part 2 are published here for the first time.     

Strengthening concept learning by repeated testing

The aim of this study was to examine whether repeated testing with feedback benefits learning compared to rereading of introductory psychology key‐concepts in an educational context. The testing effect was examined immediately after practice, after 18 days, and at a five‐week delay in a sample of undergraduate students (n = 83). The results revealed that repeated testing with feedback significantly enhanced learning compared to rereading at all delays, demonstrating that repeated retrieval enhances retention compared to repeated encoding in the short‐ and the long‐term. In addition, the effect of repeated testing was beneficial for students irrespectively of working memory capacity. It is argued that teaching methods involving repeated retrieval are important to consider by the educational system.     

The Role of Numeracy and Intelligence in Health‐Risk Estimation and Medical Data Interpretation

Despite ample evidence that numeracy is an important influence on patient understanding and use of health‐related information, there is a dearth of studies examining the concept's relationship to other individual differences measures that may underlie complex judgments in the health domain. In this study, we compared the relative contributions of selected extant numeracy measures and general intelligence and other measures to varied judgment and decision‐making outcomes. Two hundred participants completed numeracy items, subscales of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scales, the need for cognition scale, and four relevant outcome measures including risk estimation and medical data interpretation. A numeracy scale constructed using item response and confirmatory factor analyses was consistently the strongest predictor across all outcome measures and accounted for unique variance over and above general intelligence. The results support the concept of numeracy as an independent construct that merits consideration in patient communication. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Discrete emotion norms for nouns: Berlin affective word list (DENN–BAWL)

The Berlin Affective Word List (BAWL, Võ, Jacobs, &; Conrad, Behavior Research Methods, 35, 606-609, 2006) and the BAWL-R (Võ et al. in Behavior Research Methods 38, 606-609, 2009) are two commonly used lists to investigate affective properties of German words. The two-dimensional valence and arousal model of affect underlying the BAWL is traditionally contrasted with models describing affect in discrete emotional categories, which, however, are not currently incorporated in the BAWL. In order to allow future studies to investigate affective processing from both perspectives—or to directly compare them—in the present study, we collected data by assigning nouns taken from the BAWL-R to discrete emotion intensities, which in turn allowed the assignment to discrete emotion categories. In the study, we present Discrete Emotion Norms for Nouns–Berlin Affective Word List (DENN–BAWL). Using these ratings and the psycholinguistic indexes from the BAWL-R, the DENN–BAWL allows researchers to design experiments using highly controlled and reliable word material. Data have been archived at www.fu-berlin.de/allgpsy/DENN-BAWL     

Risks and realities: dyadic interaction between 6-month-old infants and their mothers in opioid maintenance treatment

A number of studies point to methadone exposure in utero as a possible risk factor in the developing mother–infant relationship in the first year of life. This study is part of a larger, national follow-up of 38 infants prenatally exposed to methadone or buprenorphine and 36 comparison, low-risk infants. The aim of the present paper is to assess the quality of mother–infant relationship when the infants are 6 months old. Videotaped mother–infant interactions were rated in a global scale (NICHD). Maternal and infant contributions collapsed into the variables “infant style” and “maternal style” showed that the only factor making significant contribution to the outcome measure “dyadic mutuality” was maternal style. The importance of group membership (exposed versus non-exposed), was reduced when controlling for maternal drug use prior to opioid maintenance treatment (OMT), maternal depression and parenting stress as well as infants’ developmental status and sensory-integrative functions. This suggests that prediction of dyadic mutuality should be based on individual characteristics rather than group characteristics. These results support previous research findings that methadone and buprenorphine use per se does not have direct influence on the quality of early mother–infant relationship, but tailored follow-up procedures targeting drug-free pregnancies and parenting support are beneficial for women in OMT and their children.     

Knowing your own mate value: sex-specific personality effects on the accuracy of expected mate choices

Knowing one's mate value (mate-value accuracy) is an important element in reproductive success. We investigated within- and between-sex differences in this ability in a real-life speed-dating event. A total of 190 men and 192 women filled out a personality questionnaire and participated in speed-dating sessions. Immediately after each date, participants recorded who they would choose as mates and who they expected would choose them. In line with evolutionarily informed hypotheses, results indicated that sociosexually unrestricted men and more agreeable women showed greater mate-value accuracy than sociosexually restricted men and less agreeable women, respectively. These results have important implications for understanding mating behavior and perhaps the origin of sex differences in personality.     

Bus drivers' exposure to bullying at work: an occupation-specific approach

The present study employs an occupation-specific approach to examine bus drivers' exposure to bullying and their trait anger, job engagement, job satisfaction and turnover intentions. A total of 1,023 bus drivers from a large public transport organization participated in the study. The findings show that bus driving can be a high risk occupation with regard to bullying, since 70% of the bus drivers had experienced one or more acts typical of bullying during the last six months. As many as 11% defined themselves as victims of bullying, 33% of whom (i.e. 3.6% of the total sample) see themselves as victims of frequent bullying. Colleagues were most frequently reported as perpetrators. Exposure to bullying was negatively related to job engagement and job satisfaction and positively related to turnover intentions. Job engagement and job satisfaction mediated the relationship between bullying and intention to leave, respectively. Trait anger had an interaction effect on the relationship between bullying and turnover intentions. This study indicates that workplace bullying has context-specific aspects that require increased use of context-specific policies and intervention methods.     

How does it feel? Workplace bullying,emotions and musculoskeletal complaints

The present study examines experienced emotions among self-labelled victims of ongoing workplace bullying and tests whether emotions mediate the relationship between exposure to bullying and health in the form of musculoskeletal complaints. A total of 1,024 employees from a Norwegian public transport company participated in the study, in which 116 self-labelled victims were identified. Ten positive and 10 negative emotions were measured (PANAS). The results showed significant differences in emotional experiences between victims and non-victims regarding all 10 negative emotions and one out of 10 positive emotions. Victims felt less "interested" and more "afraid," "upset," "angry," "guilty," "nervous," "hostile," "frustrated," "ashamed," "scared" and "stressed" than did non-victims. Further, the results pointed to both positive and negative emotions as mediators of the relationship between exposure to bullying and musculoskeletal complaints. In particular the negative emotion "stress" acted as a significant mediator regarding this relationship. Hence, emotions seem to be central to understanding the detrimental effects of bullying on the victims' health.