Perceived family environment as a moderator of young adolescents' life stress adjustment

A longitudinal design was employed to test the main and stress-moderating effects of young adolescents' perceived family environment (Family Environment Scales; FES; Moos & Moos, 1981) on their depression, anxiety, and self-esteem. This study was part of a larger longitudinal project (L. Cohen, Burt, & Bjorck, 1987) that demonstrated the significant cross-sectional effects of the young adolescents' controllable and uncontrollable negative events, and the significant longitudinal effects of the former. The present cross-sectional analyses demonstrated the hypothesized main effects of the FES scores; families perceived as cohesive, organized, and expressive were related to positive psychological functioning, whereas families perceived as conflict-ridden and controlling were related to negative functioning. However, in general these effects were nonsignificant in the longitudinal analyses. Although there were a number of significant Negative Events x FES interactions, in no instance did the pattern support the hypothesized stress-buffering role of positive family climate.     

Intergroup fairness and bias in children

In recent years in research on intergroup relationships, the assumption has increasingly been made that discrimination dominates decisions when individuals allocate resources between (members of) own and other group. Conversely, in empirical studies of interpersonal decision-making, including an extensive literature on the development of children's allocation rules within dyadic relationships, it has been repeatedly observed that in dyadic relationships choices though responsive to various changes in the environment, are more strongly governed by fairness rules. The present research extends the interpersonal fairness paradigm to the intergroup case, and examines the effects of some of those variables, namely, children's age, input and attitudes toward other, that have been observed to influence choice behaviour within interpersonal relationships. The findings indicate that as children are socialized, fairness rules also play an increasing dominant role in intergroup allocation decisions, and that both relative input and the language of the outgroup influence such decisions. At the same time, there is some preliminary evidence to indicate that the relative strength of self-interest may be somewhat stronger in intergroup than in interpersonal relationships. Finally, a number of the issues that must be confronted in comparing the two more important forms of human social choices, interpersonal and intergroup decision-making, are considered.     

The discrimination of human odour by the dog

In reply to a suggestion made by Galton in 1875, the ability of dogs to discriminate between the odour of human twins was investigated. In a matching-to-sample simultaneous discrimination task, dogs were tested on their ability to discriminate odours from twins differing only in genetic relatedness or only in environmental factors, particularly diet, or from twins identical in both genetic relatedness and environmental factors. Dogs could discriminate between the odours from twins who differed only in environmental factors and between the odours of twins who differed only in genetic relatedness. However, they were unable to discriminate between odours produced by infant twins identical in both genetic relatedness and environmental factors. Thus twins may be discriminated by dogs as long as they differ in genetic relatedness or environmental factors. The possible source of discriminable odours is discussed and how the effects of genes and environment are mediated considered.