School-Based Intervention for Social Skills in Children from Divorced Families

Divorce is an increasingly prevalent occurrence in society that has the potential to result in many adverse short- and long-term consequences for children and their parents. Social skills, such as those with peers, are one of the problems that may emerge for children of divorce. Despite this growing problem, there is a paucity of research available to effectively address the social skills needed to build and maintain positive peer interactions and subsequent relationships in students whose parents are no longer married. It was hypothesized that a social skills training program would be effective in remediating social skill deficits related to building relationships with peers in students from divorced families. The purpose of this study was to employ COPE, a school-based social skills program, to examine the effect on social skills in elementary students whose parents are divorced. Results of the social skills intervention indicated that the treatment was effective for most participants, but generalization of the COPE program had mixed results.     

Career Adapt-Abilities Scale-Italian Form: Psychometric proprieties with Italian preadolescents

During preadolescence children start to give attention to the future, to formulate thoughts, and to wonder about what they want. They also acquire knowledge and experiment with strategies to assist them in designing their future career. Among the constructs that can now play a relevant role in life designing, the four resources of career adaptability have a prominent role. This article reports the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale-International Form 2.0 for a group of middle school students. Two different studies involving Italian preadolescents were conducted. The first study tests the instrument's multidimensional structure, internal consistency and discriminant validity. The second one verifies the factorial structure's across-gender invariance and the test–retest reliability. Results provide strong psychometric support for the CAAS-Italian Form with preadolescents as a valid measure for analyzing their career adaptability and for using it in career counseling and education.     

A Secure Base from which to Cooperate: Security,Child and Parent Willing Stance,and Adaptive and Maladaptive Outcomes in two Longitudinal Studies

Early secure attachment plays a key role in socialization by inaugurating a long-term mutual positive, collaborative interpersonal orientation within the parent-child dyad. We report findings from Family Study (community mothers, fathers, and children, from age 2 to 12, N = 102, 51 girls) and Play Study (exclusively low-income mothers and children, from age 3.5 to 7, N = 186, 90 girls). We examined links among observed secure attachment at toddler age, child and parent receptive, willing stance to each other, observed in parent-child contexts at early school age, and developmental outcomes. The developmental outcomes included parent-rated child antisocial behavior problems and observed positive mutuality with regard to conflict issues at age 12 in Family Study, and mother-rated child antisocial behavior problems and observed child regard for rules and moral self at age 7 in Play Study. In mother-child relationships, the child’s willing stance mediated indirect effects of child security on positive mutuality in Family Study and on all outcomes in Play Study. In father-child relationships, both the child’s and the parent’s willing stance mediated indirect effects of child security on both outcomes. Early security initiates an adaptive developmental cascade by enlisting the child and the parent as active, willingly receptive and cooperative agents in the socialization process. Implications for children’s parenting interventions are noted.     

Age differences in self-set goal effects for memory

Research has shown that goal setting leads to gains in memory performance and memory self-efficacy across adulthood when goals are set by experimenters and accompanied by positive feedback. However, self-set memory goals have had less consistent impact. This research extended past studies on aging and memory goals to examine the impact of self-set goals using anchors to guide goal selection. Two trials of name, text, and list recall were administered to younger and older adults, comparing goal and no-goal groups. After baseline, participants assigned to the goal group set personal goals for memory gain on a second, post-goal trial for each of the three tasks. Anchoring for goal-setting was used to encourage the selection of realistic, yet challenging goals. Younger and older participants set comparable goals. Only younger adults showed a motivational response (higher gains across trials for goals than no goals), even though older adults reported being just as committed to their personal goals. Older adults may have failed to show reliable goal-related gains because no positive feedback was offered or because they were unable to activate effective strategies for improved performance.     

Continuity in Problems of Social Functioning in Adulthood: A Cumulative Perspective

Based on an ongoing longitudinal study involving 145 women and 152 men, this study analyzed the continuity in and accumulation of problems of social functioning from age 27 (year 1986) to age 36 (year 1995), and studied sex differences in these processes. The accumulation of problems of social functioning (e.g., poor financial standing, poor intimate relationships, and drinking problems) was more common in men than in women at both ages. Sex differences, however, narrowed because problems increased only among women during the follow-up period. Continuity, both in accumulated problems and in good social functioning, was stronger than continuity in single problems, as assumed on the basis of the theory of problem gravitation. The proportion of individuals with either accumulated problems or with good social functioning did not, however, increase relative to individuals with single problems, as the theory of problem gravitation has suggested. Continuity in problems of social functioning was partly mediated by career instability among both sexes. There was also a tendency for the quality of partner to moderate the relation between problems of social functioning between the two ages; in particular, a problematic partner was likely to add to women's problems.     

Extraversion and Neuroticism as antecedents of emotion regulation and dysregulation in adulthood

This longitudinal study examined the role of Extraversion and Neuroticism as antecedents of emotion regulation and dysregulation among 89 women and 81 men. When participants were 27 years old, their Extraversion and Neuroticism were assessed with the standardized version of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. At age 33, they completed the Big‐Five Personality Inventory, an authorized adaptation of the NEO Personality Inventory. Emotion regulation, operationalized as an active attempt to turn a negative emotion toward a more positive direction, and measured by the Repair subscale of the Meta‐Regulation Scale, and emotional social support, as measured by the Life Situation Questionnaire, were assessed when participants reached 36 years of age. Emotional ambivalence, a type of emotion dysregulation, was also assessed in this wave. Structural equation modelling demonstrated that prior Neuroticism led to higher emotional ambivalence and lowered use of Repair at age 36. Prior Extraversion, on the other hand, was linked to lower emotional ambivalence at age 36. Extraversion also led to higher attempts to rely on emotional social support to regulate emotions, but less interest in using Repair. Correlational findings revealed that Extraversion and Neuroticism showed differential continuity between ages 27 and 33. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Developmental changes in the control of saccadic eye movements in response to directional eye gaze and arrows

We investigated developmental differences in oculomotor control between 10-year-old children and adults using a central interference task. In this task, the colour of a fixation point instructed participants to saccade either to the left or to the right. These saccade directions were either congruent or incongruent with two types of distractor cue: either the direction of eye gaze of a centrally presented schematic face, or the direction of arrows. Children had greater difficulties inhibiting the distractor cues than did adults, which revealed itself in longer saccade latencies for saccades that were incongruent with the distractor cues as well as more errors on these incongruent trials than on congruent trials. Counter to our prediction, in terms of saccade latencies, both children and adults had greater difficulties inhibiting the arrow than the eye gaze distractors.     

The process of selective exposure: Why confirmatory information search weakens over time

The present research investigated whether the tendency to prefer decision-consistent to decision-inconsistent information after making a preliminary choice would vary during the sequential process of searching for additional pieces of decision-relevant information. Specifically, it was tested whether decision makers would be more confirmatory in their information evaluation and search at the commencement rather than end of an information search process. In fact, five studies revealed that participants exhibited stronger confirmatory tendencies in both information evaluation (Studies 2 and 5) and search (Studies 1, 3, and 4) immediately after making a preliminary decision compared to during the later stages of an information search process. With regard to the underlying mechanism, results further revealed that individuals appear to be more motivated to detect the best decision alternative at the beginning (as opposed to the end) of an information search process, which leads to increases in confirmatory information processing during these stages.     

评《实用神经伦理学:增进对于心脑的治疗和理解》

介绍了《实用神经伦理学:增进对于心脑的治疗和理解》一书的主要内容,分析了该书的思想路线.在作者看来,书中通过经验研究清晰地展示出神经科学研究同临床实践以及社会文化互动的方式和结果,成功证实了生命伦理学研究在神经科学中的重要意义.同时,作者指出了该书在论证上存在的矛盾和缺陷,以及时某些哲学理论的误读.