Validation of the Peer Social Maturity Scale for Assessing Children's Social Skills

We evaluated the utility of a brief, seven‐item, teacher‐rated Peer Social Maturity Scale (PSMAT). In Study 1, teachers of 138 Australian children (ranging from 5 to 8 years and 5 months old) in kindergarten and Grades 1 and 2 rated their pupils' social maturity using the PSMAT and their classroom social skills via the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS). The PSMAT showed excellent internal consistency and a significant overall correlation with the SSRS social skills scale. Study 2 involved a new longitudinal sample of children who were rated by different classroom teachers in kindergarten and Grades 1 and 2 of full‐time primary school. Consistent with Study 1, at all three time points, PSMAT scores were highly correlated with SSRS social skills scores. PSMAT scores also correlated significantly with peer‐rated social preference. These studies confirm that the PSMAT is a reliable and valid assessment of children's social maturity within their classroom peer groups. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Man on a Pendulum by Israel J. Gerber

Group therapy provides the ideal arena for helping individuals cultivate the observing ego—that part of the sensorium that has the power of witnessing oneself in the world. The essence of our method is to employ the group as a temporary observing ego, out of which members may develop their own observing egos. A five-step process is presented to (1) help the members see how they are affecting others when they do not see this themselves, (2) help the members see how they produce this effect, (3) help the members see the self-injurious nature of their behavior, (4) resolve resistances to seeing any of this, and (5) help the members arrive at new modes of behavior.     

Allusive thinking (cognitive looseness) and the propensity to perceive “meaningful” coincidences

This study aimed at evaluating relations between the disposition to make “meaningful” associations between random events and potentially predisposing factors related to a more “loose” cognitive control, that is, loose associative processing (allusive thinking) and poorer inhibition of irrelevant memory content. As the findings of this study suggest, individuals with a higher disposition to perceive coincidences produced a higher rate of unusual associations in the Bridge-the-Associative-Gap test than low scorers, and showed poorer inhibition of no longer relevant memory content in the Recent Probes Task. These relationships were independent from individual differences in paranormal belief. Performance in a random generation task (Mittenecker Pointing Test) yielded no support for an important role of a biased concept of randomness in the perception of coincidences. The findings suggest that common mechanisms may underlie the propensity to perceive meaningful coincidences, cognitive looseness, and positive schizotypy.     

Compliance Dynamics Within a Simulated Friendship Network I: The Effects of Agency,Tactic, and Node Centrality

This study investigated the structural causes of perceptions of power and the way that these perceptions create expectations regarding influence attempts. It applied measures derived from dynamic social impact theory to model predictions of target compliance and agent response to an influence attempt. Sociograms provided the structure within which compliance dynamics were investigated. Results from an experiment (N = 458) showed that structural positions with greater eigenvector and betweenness centrality generated stronger perceived power, and that observers' attributions regarding responses to a compliance request follow a systematic three‐step process—agent acts, target responds, and agent reacts. The model, reflecting agency, influence tactic, and power, formalizes the attributional process that observers employ when evaluating compliance requests.     

Early pathways to bullying: A prospective longitudinal study examining the influences of theory of mind and social preference on bullying behaviour during the first 3 years of school

Research has focused on the role of theory of mind (ToM) for positive social behaviour, while the association between ToM and negative social behaviours is less well understood. This longitudinal study compares two mediation models examining the role of ToM and peer-rated social preference at ages 5 and 6 for bullying at age 7. Participants were 114 children (58 boys, M_age = 67 months) at entry to primary school (T1). At Time 2 (T2), 106 children and, at Time 3 (T3), 96 children remained. Teacher-rated externalizing problems and children’s language ability were controlled at T1. Poor ToM was found to indirectly predict later bullying via poor social preference, while for boys only, greater earlier ToM directly predicted greater bullying 2 years later. These results suggest that there are different pathways to bullying via ToM and social preference , which has implications for interventions to prevent the development of bullying behaviour.     

Girls' and Boys' Changing Attitudes Toward School

This study considered children in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade in order to determine whether boys and girls differ from one another in their attitudes toward school when they first begin, and whether the relationship between boys' and girls' attitude changes with time. The information used in the study was collected during an evaluation of the California preschool program. A total of 6011 educationally disadvantaged children in 148 elementary schools were selected for the evaluation. The Attitude to School Questionnaire, developed at UCLA, was used to measure attitude. The study found that the sample of disadvantaged girls and boys has similar attitudes toward school in kindergarten. As they progress through the second grade, girls' attitude remains stable, while boys' attitude improves. The study also found that the differences between these attitude patterns were statistically significant. The study's results challenge the belief that girls have a better attitude toward school and suggest that differences in attitude between girls and boys develop between kindergarten and first grade.     

The Cognitive Dynamics of Beliefs: The Effect of Information on Message Processing

This study investigated the time course of belief change from univalent versus mixed‐valence messages, both while the message was being received and after receipt while it was being considered. Hypotheses about the temporal patterns of belief change were tested with belief trajectories from S. E. McGreevy (1996) , valid N= 78, with an average number of time points per person = 5,267 (126.41 seconds) for the message‐receipt phase and 2,467 (59.22 seconds) for the postmessage phase. Results showed that while receiving a message, beliefs changed according to the value and the order of presentation of information in the message. A greater number of positive belief changes were generated in response to a positive univalent message than to a mixed‐valence message. In the postmessage phase, a greater oscillatory pattern of belief change was found for a mixed‐valence message than for a univalent message. Theoretical and methodological implications of these findings are discussed.