When Trust Fails: The Relation Between Children’s Trust Beliefs in Peers and their Peer Interactions in a Natural Setting

One hundred and forty-nine 8–11 year-old children (86 males; M?=?9 years - 4 months and SD?=?7 months) from the UK were administered the Trust Beliefs in Peers scale and were observed in the playground over one school year. Quadratic relations were found between trust beliefs in peers and peer interaction, which varied by gender. Compared to girls with the middle range of trust beliefs, girls with very low beliefs and those with very high beliefs (a) were less accepted/more rejected by the peer group (i.e., lower group interaction, and greater negatively received bids), (b) showed greater indirect aggression (engaged in and received), (c) showed greater non-engagement (i.e., being alone), and (d) showed greater concomitant distress. Compared to children with the middle range of trust beliefs, children with those extreme trust beliefs in peers demonstrated greater direct aggression (engaged in and received) and showed passive behavior (for boys only). The findings supported the conclusion that children, primarily girls, who trust peers too little and those who trust too much are at risk for psychosocial maladjustment.     

Cognitive development following early brain injury: evidence for neural adaptation

Over the past few decades a large body of work from developmental neurobiology has shown that mammalian brain development is the product of dynamic and adaptive processes operating within highly constrained, but continually changing, biological and environmental contexts. The recent study of children with prenatal focal brain injury supports this dynamic view of development for humans. Children's injuries often affect substantial portions of one cerebral hemisphere, resulting in damage that would compromise cognitive ability in adults. However, longitudinal behavioral studies of this population have revealed only mild deficits. It is suggested here that children's capacity for adaptation reflects normal developmental processes operating against a backdrop of serious neural perturbation. Data from three behavioral domains--linguistics, spatial cognition and affective development--illustrate this complex profile of change.     

A genetically informed study of marital instability and its association with offspring psychopathology

Parental divorce is associated with a number of emotional and behavioral problems in young-adult offspring, but theoretical and empirical considerations suggest that the relation may be partially or fully accounted for by passive gene-environment correlation or environmental selection characteristics. The current study used the Children of Twins Design to explore whether shared environmental or genetic factors confound the relationship between parental marital instability and measures of psychopathology. Comparisons of the offspring of adult twins in Australia on 3 factors of abnormal behavior, including drug and alcohol, behavioral, and internalizing problems, suggest that environmental influences associated with divorce account for the higher rates of psychopathology. The results are consistent with a causal connection between marital instability and psychopathology in young-adult offspring.     

The influence of gender on occupational aspirations of kindergarten children

By updating and extending previous research on the effect of gender role socialization on occupational choices of children, this research found very sexstereotypical occupational preferences in a sample of 540 kindergarten children. The girls in the study selected occupations that averaged 87% female and the boys selected occupations averaging 84% male. The boys perceived a significantly wider range of vocational options than the girls. In a reversal condition, children were asked to pretend to be of the opposite sex. Most of the children selected occupations with sex ratios favoring their pretended sex; girls were slightly more stereotypic than boys. An unanticipated finding was the extremeness of reactions of the boys to the suggestion that they pretend to be girls. It is argued that current sex-role socialization fails to recognize the realities of the expanding participation of women in the paid labor force.     

How type of excuse defense, mock juror age, and defendant age affect mock jurors' decisions

The authors investigated the effects of mock juror age (younger vs. older), defendant age (22 vs. 65), and type of excuse defense used by defendants (a highly self-inflicted condition, Cocaine Dependency Disorder, vs. a less self-inflicted condition, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) on mock juror decisions. Ninety-six younger and 96 older adults read a scenario and answered a questionnaire. Results indicated that the defendant using the highly self-inflicted excuse was more likely to receive a guilty verdict and a longer sentence than was the defendant using the less self-inflicted excuse. Older jurors were more certain of their verdicts and saw the defendant as more responsible for his condition than did younger jurors. Defendant age did not affect juror decisions. In addition, excuse type and juror age affected the jurors' perceptions of the victim's responsibility for the attack. The authors discuss the potential influence of juror age on perceptions of defendant responsibility.     

Contextual determinants of retrieval in three-month-old infants

Three-month old infants learned to kick to produce movement in an overhead crib mobile on a conjugate reinforcement (FRI) schedule. All infants were trained in the presence of one of two distinctive crib bumpers. In Experiment 1, infants receiving cued-recall tests in the presence of the original training bumper remembered the conditioned association 1 week later, but those tested in the presence of a different bumper did not. Two weeks later, neither training group evidenced retention of the contingency. In Experiment 2, infants who received a 3-min exposure (“a reactivation treatment”) to the original training bumper 24 h prior to the 2-week retention test exhibited excellent long-term retention, whereas those exposed to a different bumper as a reminder did not, irrepective of whether it was identical to the test bumper or not. These findings demonstrate that the context alone, even though it was never exclusively paired with reinforcement, can act as a retrieval cue.     

Locus of Control and Activity Level as Moderators in the Quantitative Job Demands—Satisfaction/ Psychological Anxiety Relationship: An Experimental Analysis

The present study examined the impact the quantitative job demands on satisfaction and psychological anxiety. In addition, the moderating effects of locus of control and activity level were examined. Consistent with the literature, perceptions of job demands were found to negatively affect satisfaction and positively affect psychological anxiety. Individuals reporting high activity levels had the strongest positive relationship between perceived job demands and psychological anxiety. Finally, external locus of control strengthened the negative relationship between perceived job demands and satisfaction. Results and social implications are discussed.     

The velten mood induction procedure: A methodological review

The Velten Mood Induction Procedure (1968) has been used extensively to induce elated and depressed moods in experimental subjects, and a wide range of psychological and behavioral effects have been studied following mood induction. This paper reviews experimental findings relating to the effectiveness of the Velten Mood Induction Procedure. Evidence is provided from 46 experiments concerning behavioral and self-report measures of assessment. Implications for the use of this procedure in mood induction research are discussed. It is concluded that the findings relating to the Velten procedure's effectiveness, and assessments of the contribution of demand characteristics to the procedure, are inconsistent and equivocal.