Like Father,like Child: Early Life Family Adversity and Children’s Bullying Behaviors in Elementary School

Family adversity has been associated with children’s bullying behaviors. The evidence is, however, dominated by mothers’ perceptions of the family environment and a focus on mothers’ behaviors. This prospective population-based study examined whether children’s bullying behaviors were associated with mother- and father-reported family adversity, assessed before and after child birth. Peer-nominations were used to assess bullying behaviors of 1298 children in elementary school (mean age 7.5 years). The following paternal risk factors were prospectively associated with children’s bullying behaviors: (1) father-reported prenatal family distress, (2) fathers’ hostility at preschool age, and (3) fathers’ harsh disciplinary practices at preschool age, but effect sizes were relatively small. The effect of maternal risk factors was less consistent, only mother-reported family distress in childhood was associated with children’s bullying behaviors. The associations were independent of background family risk factors (i.e., life stress, contextual factors, and other background factors such as parental education and risk taking record) and early childhood externalizing problems. Moreover, our results indicated that father-reported family adversity predicted children’s bullying behaviors over and above the background family risk factors, early childhood externalizing problems and mother-reported family adversity. We also demonstrated that the association of fathers’ prenatal hostility and family distress with subsequent bullying behavior of their child at school was partly mediated by fathers’ harsh disciplinary practices at preschool age. Our findings highlight the importance of fathers’ behaviors in the development of children’s bullying behaviors.     

A Historical Perspective on the Future of Behavior Science

Like all natural sciences, behavior science has much to offer toward an understanding of the world. The extent to which the promise of behavior science is realized, though, depends upon the extent to which we keep what we know before us. This paper considers fundamental concepts in behavior science, including the concepts of behavior, stimulation, setting conditions, and language. In considering these concepts, we revisit comments from B. F. Skinner and J. R. Kantor and also consider some areas of behavior analytic research and the implications they have for reconsidering long-held assumptions about the analysis of behavior. We hope that, in considering our foundations, the vitality and strength of the discipline might be enhanced, our impact on science improved, and our future secured.     

The development of a Spanish language version of the Worn Out scale of the General Well-Being Questionnaire (GWBQ)

The paper describes the development of a short Spanish-language version of the General Well-Being Questionnaire (GWBQ; Cox and Gotts, 1987), based on the 12 items of its Worn Out scale. Research has shown the English-version Worn Out scale to be sensitive to aspects of the design and management of work. This study aimed to test its cross-cultural consistency in a Spanish-language workplace context. The data were collected from a sample of 229 workers in Valencia (Spain). Confirmatory Factor Analyses showed the factorial validity, reliability, and concurrent validity of the new Spanish version to be adequate. The sensitivity of the new measure to safety behavior and the reporting of accidents was also assessed and shown to be good. The new questionnaire extends the usefulness of the parent questionnaire to occupational health psychology research in the Spanish language by offering a short assessment tool appropriate for workplace studies.     

Biases in the perceived timing of perisaccadic perceptual and motor events

Subjects typically experience the temporal interval immediately following a saccade as longer than a comparable control interval. One explanation of this effect is that the brain antedates the perceptual onset of a saccade target to around the time of saccade initiation. This could explain the apparent continuity of visual perception across eye movements. This antedating account was tested in three experiments in which subjects made saccades of differing extents and then judged either the duration or the temporal order of key events. Postsaccadic stimuli underwent subjective temporal lengthening and had early perceived onsets. A temporally advanced awareness of saccade completion was also found, independently of antedating effects. These results provide convergent evidence supporting antedating and differentiating it from other temporal biases.     

The effects of modifying interpretation bias on worry in generalized anxiety disorder

This study investigated whether facilitating a benign interpretive bias decreases negative thought intrusions in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Clients were randomly allocated to an interpretation modification condition in which they repeatedly accessed benign meanings of emotionally ambiguous homographs and scenarios, or to a control condition in which they accessed threat and benign meanings with equal frequency. Worry frequency was assessed using a breathing focus task that involved categorising the valence of thought intrusions before and after an instructed worry period. Interpretation bias was assessed during the modification tasks, and on a different measure of interpretation bias (sentence completion) following a period of worry. The experimental procedure modified interpretations made during training, and in the later sentence completion task. Furthermore, compared to the control group, the benign group showed fewer negative thought intrusions during breathing focus (as rated by both participants and an assessor). These findings show that it is possible to induce a more benign interpretive bias in GAD clients and that this reduces negative thought intrusions.     

The child in time: The influence of parent–child discussion about a future experience on how it is remembered

We investigated the influence of preparation provided by parents on preschoolers’ recall. One day before children participated in a staged novel event, parents discussed the event with their child either with (verbal+photos) or without (verbal) photographs. Parents and children in a control condition read an unrelated story. Then 8–10 days later the children were interviewed about the event. Children in the verbal+photos condition recalled significantly more than those in the control condition. Parental preparation style (e.g., evaluations, hypothetical language) was associated with the child's contributions to the preparatory discussion, but no aspect of parent or child style or content was associated with children's verbal recall. Similarly, there were no significant associations between children's performance on a task of episodic future thinking, and their preparatory discussion or recall, although episodic future thinking was strongly associated with language ability. The potential underlying mechanisms and theoretical implications are discussed.