Popular and aggressive boys' initial social interaction patterns in cooperative and competitive settings

Thirty-two third- and fourth-grade popular and aggressive boys were observed individually attempting to enter a game being played by a mixed-status unfamiliar-peer dyad in both competitive and cooperative game settings. Consistent with previous findings, popular entry children were accepted more readily into the game situation than were aggressive children. Popular children tended to approach the situations using more prosocial questions while their aggressive peers tended to use demands. More differences in entry strategies were noted in the competitive than in the cooperative game setting. While most entry children directed their first entry bid toward the aggressive game host, they reported having liked the popular game host best when the game was finished. Additionally, the quality of game interactions was observed to become more positive following a popular child's entry, while becoming more negative following an aggressive child's entry. The results are discussed in terms of leadership roles and implications for both assessment and intervention settings and strategies.The authors wish to acknowledge the support and cooperation of the Greensboro, North Carolina, public and parochial schools, and the assistance of William Livingston.This paper was presented at the 19th Annual Convention of the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy, Houston, Texas.     

TEACHING CONVERSATION-RELATED SKILLS TO PREDELINQUENT GIRLS1

The use of conversation-related skills by youthful offenders can influence social interactions with adults. These behaviors are also likely to be useful to adolescents after their release from a treatment program (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1972, 5 , 343–372). Four girls, aged 13 to 15 yr, residing at Achievement Place for Girls in Lawrence, Kansas, received training on conversation-related behaviors. A multiple-baseline design across youths and across behaviors was used. Youth answer-volunteering in response to questions and three youth nonverbal components (“hand on face”, “hand at rest”, and “facial orientation”) were measured during daily 10-min sessions with a simulated guest in the group home's living room. Answer-volunteering was scored each session as the per cent of 13 “secondary” questions that the simulated guest did not have to ask following 10 “primary” questions. The three nonverbal components were scored according to their occurrence during 10-sec intervals and the resultant scores were averaged per session for an overall appropriate nonverbal score. The girls individually earned points within the home's token economy for participating in each session and additional points were awarded after training if preselected behavioral criteria were achieved for each of the two behavior categories per girl. Some of the training sessions were led by a “teaching-parent” (specially trained houseparent) while others were led by individual girls. Point consequences were administered by both the teaching-parent and by the “peer-trainers”. The average observed rate of answer-volunteering by the girls during pretraining sessions was 30% for S₁, 30% for S₂, 23% for S₃, and 68% for S₄. The average rate of answer-volunteering during posttraining sessions was: S₁ = 92%, S₂ = 89%, S₃ = 90%, and S₄ = 98%. The average nonverbal score during pretraining sessions was 82% for S₁, 53% for S₂, 60% for S₃, and 82% for S₄. The average nonverbal score during posttraining sessions was: S₁ = 98%, S₂ = 98%, S₃ = 98%, and S₄ = 100%. Videotapes of the sessions were shown in a random sequence to four adults (probation officer, social worker, etc who represented “significant others” for the youths' future success in the community. The adults judged posttraining tapes on the average as more appropriate 100% of the time for S₁, 100% of the time for S₂, 90% of the time for S₃, and 70% of the time for S₄. The study demonstrated that training of conversation-related skills is feasible with predelinquent girls, that the girls can help train each other, and that social validation of the training results is possible.     

Working Memory in Pediatric Epilepsy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Neuropsychology Review - Working memory is a multicomponent system that is supported by overlapping specialized networks in the brain. Baddeley’s working memory model includes four...     

Multiple sclerosis,emotion perception and social functioning

People with multiple sclerosis (MS) can experience problems in interpreting others’ emotions from faces or voices. However, to date little is known about whether difficulties in emotion perception in MS are related to broader aspects of social functioning. Also, there are few studies reporting the effect of MS on more ecologically valid assessments of emotion perception using multimodal videos. The current study looks at (1) the effect of MS on perceiving emotions from faces, voices and multimodal videos; (2) the possible role of slowed processing and executive dysfunction in emotion perception problems in MS and (3) the relationship between emotion perception and broader social functioning in MS. 53 people with MS and 31 healthy controls completed tasks of emotion perception and cognition, and assessed their levels of social support and social participation. Participants with MS performed worse than demographically matched controls on all measures of emotion perception. Emotion perception performance was related to cognitive measures in those with MS. Also, significant associations were found between emotion perception difficulties in MS and poorer social function. In particular, people with MS who had poorer emotion perception also reported lower levels of social support from their friends, and regression analysis showed that this prediction was maintained even when disease severity and cognitive function were taken into account. These results show that problems with emotion perception in MS extend to more realistic tasks and may predict key aspects of social functioning.     

Parental Involvement and Adolescents’ Academic Achievement: Latent Profiles of Mother and Father Warmth as a Moderating Influence

Parental involvement in their adolescents’ education plays an important role in promoting their children's academic outcomes. Yet, more research is needed to examine the relationship between parenting practices and parental warmth as well as to consider the potential joint contribution of warmth from both fathers and mothers. Thus, the primary purpose of the current study is to examine the extent to which patterns of parental warmth across fathers and mothers moderate the association between parental involvement and adolescents’ grade point average (GPA) and school engagement behaviors. Latent profile analysis was conducted to identify disparate profiles of fathers’ and mothers’ warmth within a nationally representative sample of 2,306 youths (51% male; mean age = 15.31 years, SD = 1.50; 77% non-Hispanic White) residing in opposite-sex, two-parent families from Wave I and II of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Latent-class enumeration processes support a five-profile solution characterized by differences in levels of parental warmth and congruency across parents: (a) Congruent High Warmth, (b) Congruent Moderate Warmth, (c) Congruent Low Warmth, (d) Incongruent High Mother/Low Father Warmth, and (e) Incongruent Low Father/Lower Mother Warmth. Subsequent multiple linear regression analyses reveal a moderating effect for Congruent Low Warmth on the relationship between parental involvement and adolescents’ GPA. Ultimately, the results show that variation in parental warmth exists across fathers and mothers with differing impact on adolescents’ outcomes. Excluding one parent without considering the joint effects of both parents will not produce an accurate and precise understanding of parenting in research or practice.