Parental Strategies for Knowledge of Adolescents’ Friends: Distinct from Monitoring?

Parental monitoring is defined as a set of behaviors used to gain knowledge about an adolescent’s whereabouts, friends and associates, and activities. However, can knowledge of adolescents’ whereabouts/activities, and friends all be attained through the same strategies? Or do they require their own strategies? This study used qualitative interviews with 173 parents of older adolescents from 100 families. Emergent themes described strategies by which parents gain information about their adolescents’ friends and the substance use of those friends. The strategies included direct interaction with the friend, gaining information from the teen, using second-hand sources, and making assumptions. Some of these strategies were consistent with previous research, while others raise new questions and provide interesting new directions to pursue. Primarily, additional consideration needs to be given to assessments of parental monitoring that include strategies for gaining knowledge of adolescents’ friends and their substance use.     

Sibling jealousy in early childhood: longitudinal links to sibling relationship quality

The current investigation examined the long‐term prediction of sibling jealousy assessed in a laboratory‐based paradigm on sibling relationship quality 2 1/2 years later. This multi‐method longitudinal study included mothers, fathers, and two children from 35 families. Younger siblings were 16 months and older siblings were, on average, 4 years at Time 1. Positive longitudinal associations were found between older siblings' jealousy reactions when interacting with the father at Time 1 and sibling conflict at Time 2. These associations continued to exist even when older siblings' behaviour during the mother sessions was considered. Children's inability to regulate their jealous reactions may be indicative of lower levels of emotion regulation skills, which may, in turn, translate to poorer sibling interactions years later. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial-attention and emotional evocation: line bisection performance and visual art emotional evocation

Lesion studies demonstrate that the right temporal-parietal region (RTP) is important for mediating spatial attention. The RTP is also involved in emotional experiences that can be evoked by art. Normal people vary in their ability to allocate spatial attention, thus, people who can better allocate attention might also be more influenced by the emotional messages of the paintings (evocative impact). Seventeen healthy participants bisected an unlabeled 100mm line and their performance on this task was used to create two groups, individuals who were more (mALB) and less accurate (lALB). These participants also judged 10 paintings on five qualities, Evocative Impact, Aesthetics, Novelty, Technique, and Closure by marking a 100mm line from 1 (low degree) to 10 (high degree). An ANOVA indicated differences in accuracy on the line bisection (LB) between the two groups. Additional ANOVAs, using the quality ratings as the dependent measure, revealed that the mALB group scored the Evocative Impact greater than the lALB group. These results suggest that the differences in attentional bias between the two groups, as indicated by their LB performance, might influence their evocative impact or reactions and also be a 'barometer' of other RTP functions, including emotional processing.     

Early sexual experiences: the role of Internet access and sexually explicit material.

The current study investigated whether viewing X-rated movies, Internet access in the home, and gender of the participant would differ between age of first initiation for oral sex, age of first initiation for sexual intercourse, and number of sexual partners. An online sample of 437 participants with an average age of 29.46 participated in the study. Each participant completed a survey that assessed early sexual behaviors and Internet and X-rated material exposure. Results discovered males with Internet access during the ages of 12 to 17 reported significantly younger ages for first oral sex compared to males without Internet access. In addition, male and female participants with Internet access, between the ages 12 to 17, reported younger ages for first sexual intercourse compared to participants without Internet access. Study limitations and implications are discussed.     

Towards better computational models of the balance scale task: a reply to Shultz and Takane

In contrast to Shultz and Takane [Shultz, T.R., & Takane, Y. (2007). Rule following and rule use in the balance-scale task. Cognition, in press, doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2006.12.004.] we do not accept that the traditional Rule Assessment Method (RAM) of scoring responses on the balance scale task has advantages over latent class analysis (LCA): RAM is similar to a very restricted form of LCA. The apparent shortcomings of LCA are also less severe than they suggest. Via new simulations we show that LCA detects small classes reliably. We also counter their concerns regarding the torque difference effect and we underline the problems connectionist models have with correctly responding to balance items. Despite these differences in opinion we agree with Shultz and Takane on the possible avenues for future research.     

Coparenting and early conscience development in the family

In the current research, the authors examined children's observed compliance in a family clean-up paradigm and parents' reports of coparenting to predict young children's conscience (e.g., affective discomfort and moral regulation) in a sample of 58 families with two parents and at least two children. The authors found relations between parents' reports of children's conscience development and observer-rated compliance in a family clean-up session, and significant correlations between coparenting and conscience development. There were a greater number of significant results for younger, 2-year-old siblings than for older siblings, which may reflect the importance of the period between 2 and 3 years for the emergence of conscience. Multiple regressions revealed that younger siblings' age, observed compliance/noncompliance, and parents' reports of coparenting were all significant in predicting parents' reports of affective discomfort and moral regulation. Findings underscore the importance of continuing research on whole-family dynamics when studying young children's early conscience and moral regulation.     

Priming meritocracy and the psychological justification of inequality

The belief that status in society is based on merit is a central feature of the American Dream. This belief system justifies status inequalities by locating the cause of status differences in the individual talents and efforts of group members. We hypothesized that activating meritocratic beliefs increases the extent to which individuals psychologically justify status inequalities, even when those inequalities are disadvantageous to the self. Specifically, we hypothesized that priming meritocracy prompts individuals to engage in system-justifying psychological responses when they experience threat either at the personal or group level. Across two studies, priming meritocracy led members of a low status group to justify both personal and group disadvantage by decreasing perceptions of discrimination (Studies 1 and 2) and increasing the extent to which they stereotyped themselves and their group in status-justifying ways (Study 2).     

Decision-making in healthy children, adolescents and adults explained by the use of increasingly complex proportional reasoning rules

In the standard Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), participants have to choose repeatedly from four options. Each option is characterized by a constant gain, and by the frequency and amount of a probabilistic loss. Crone and van der Molen (2004) reported that school-aged children and even adolescents show marked deficits in IGT performance. In this study, we have re-analyzed the data with a multivariate normal mixture analysis to show that these developmental changes can be explained by a shift from unidimensional to multidimensional proportional reasoning (Siegler, 1981; Jansen & van der Maas, 2002). More specifically, the results show a gradual shift with increasing age from (a) guessing with a slight tendency to consider frequency of loss to (b) focusing on frequency of loss, to (c) considering both frequency and amount of probabilistic loss. In the latter case, participants only considered options with low-frequency loss and then chose the option with the lowest amount of loss. Performance improved in a reversed task, in which punishment was placed up front and gain was delivered unexpectedly. In this reversed task, young children are guessing with already a slight tendency to consider both the frequency and amount of gain; this strategy becomes more pronounced with age. We argue that these findings have important implications for the interpretation of IGT performance, as well as for methods to analyze this performance.