Spirituality as a 1‐Year Prospective Predictor of Violence Perpetration and Drug Use Among Youth at Continuation High Schools1

This paper presents the results of a 1‐year prospective study of violence perpetration, drug use, and spirituality among continuation high school youth. Spirituality was found to predict later violence perpetration and drug use as a single predictor. However, it failed to predict violence or drug use in models that also entered 6 other variables; particularly, baseline levels of violence and drug use, and morality of drug use. It is possible that current measures of spirituality predict later violence perpetration and drug use as a result of tapping attitudes about morality. Controlling for baseline spirituality, male gender, low morality of drug use, violence perpetration, and drug use predicted later spirituality. Spirituality appears to be affected by drug use and violence, but not the converse. The protective influence of spirituality is not supported, at least as currently measured.     

Age-progressed images may harm recognition of missing children by increasing the number of plausible targets

Age progression, often used to help find missing children, is a technique whereby an outdated photograph of an individual is used to generate an updated image of that individual. Despite its importance, few empirical psychological studies have tested the utility of age progression. The current studies had two purposes: (1) to empirically test the effectiveness of a computerized age-progression system (APRILage); and (2) to examine how the presentation of an age-progressed image changes observers’ decision-making strategies. Presenting participants with an age-progressed image in addition to an outdated image resulted in fewer target recognitions and more mistaken non-target ‘recognitions’ (Study 1; N = 135), led participants to assign fewer confidence points to the actual target and more confidence points to non-targets (Study 2; N = 231), and increased, rather than decreased, the number of plausible targets (Study 3; N = 88). Results are explained within a multidimensional face-space conceptualization of facial recognition.     

Risk Taking and Sensitivity to Punishment in Children with ADHD,ODD, ADHD+ODD,and Controls

We used the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART) to examine risk taking and sensitivity to punishment, two relevant aspects of behavioral inhibition, in 203 school-age children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), ADHD+ODD, and controls. Participants earned points on the BART by pumping 30 separate balloons that exploded at variable intervals. No points were earned on a trial when a balloon exploded. The number of pumps across all balloons estimated risk taking and the reduction in pumps following balloon explosions was interpreted as an indicator of sensitivity to negative punishment. We found that all groups significantly differed from one another on risk taking. The ADHD+ODD group pumped the most, followed by the ODD, ADHD, and the control group, respectively. For sensitivity to negative punishment, all groups performed differently, with the ODD group showing the least sensitivity to an exploded balloon, followed by the ADHD, control, and ADHD+ODD groups, respectively. Children with ADHD+ODD demonstrated significantly different patterns of risk taking and sensitivity to negative punishment than children with either ADHD-only or ODD-only. ADHD youth with comorbid ODD had the greatest levels of risk taking, but they were also the most sensitive to negative punishment. The relationship between ADHD and ODD, as well as the nature of comorbidity in constructs related to risk taking and related behaviors, are discussed.     

Identifying the task characteristics that predict children's construction task performance

Construction tasks form a major part of children's play and can be linked to achievement in maths and science. However there is a lack of understanding of construction task ability and development. Therefore, there is little foundation for the applied use of construction tasks, such as in teaching or research, as there are no apparent methods for assessing difficulty. This empirical research identifies four construction task characteristics that impact on cognition and predict construction task difficulty in children aged 7–8 and 10–11 years and adults. The results also reveal a developmental trajectory in construction ability. The research provides a method to quantify, predict and control the complexity of construction tasks for future research and to inform applied use. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Economic inequality is linked to biased self-perception

People's self-perception biases often lead them to see themselves as better than the average person (a phenomenon known as self-enhancement). This bias varies across cultures, and variations are typically explained using cultural variables, such as individualism versus collectivism. We propose that socioeconomic differences among societies--specifically, relative levels of economic inequality--play an important but unrecognized role in how people evaluate themselves. Evidence for self-enhancement was found in 15 diverse nations, but the magnitude of the bias varied. Greater self-enhancement was found in societies with more income inequality, and income inequality predicted cross-cultural differences in self-enhancement better than did individualism/collectivism. These results indicate that macrosocial differences in the distribution of economic goods are linked to microsocial processes of perceiving the self.     

Privatization or Deprivatization: British Attitudes About the Public Presence of Religion

Achterberg and colleagues conclude there is in train a significant change toward deprivatization in Europe. In the late 1990s Christians were more pro public religion in countries where they were least numerous and in the Netherlands in particular there had been an increasing difference in attitudes between believers and nonbelievers over 25 years. Examining more recent survey data on British attitudes (1998 and 2008), we find a firm consensus among the nonreligious against religion having a high public profile, while Christians are more likely to object to antireligion sentiment and people belonging to non‐Christian religions are more likely to support public religion. Nonreligious people appear to be no more hostile now than in the late 1990s, and where there has been a decrease in sympathy for public religion it is among religious groups.     

The development of memory efficiency and value-directed remembering across the life span: a cross-sectional study of memory and selectivity

Although attentional control and memory change considerably across the life span, no research has examined how the ability to strategically remember important information (i.e., value-directed remembering) changes from childhood to old age. The present study examined this in different age groups across the life span (N = 320, 5-96 years old). A selectivity task was used in which participants were asked to study and recall items worth different point values in order to maximize their point score. This procedure allowed for measures of memory quantity/capacity (number of words recalled) and memory efficiency/selectivity (the recall of high-value items relative to low-value items). Age-related differences were found for memory capacity, as young adults recalled more words than the other groups. However, in terms of selectivity, younger and older adults were more selective than adolescents and children. The dissociation between these measures across the life span illustrates important age-related differences in terms of memory capacity and the ability to selectively remember high-value information.     

Latent Class Analysis of Antisocial Behavior: Interaction of Serotonin Transporter Genotype and Maltreatment

To improve understanding about genetic and environmental influences on antisocial behavior (ASB), we tested the association of the 44-base pair polymorphism of the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) and maltreatment using latent class analysis in 2,488 boys and girls from Wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. In boys, ASB was defined by three classes (Exclusive Covert, Mixed Covert and Overt, and No Problems) whereas in girls, ASB was defined by two classes (Exclusive Covert, No Problems). In boys, 5-HTTLPR and maltreatment were not significantly related to ASB. However, in girls, maltreatment, but not 5-HTTLPR, was significantly associated with ASB. A significant interaction between 5-HTTLPR and maltreatment was also observed, where maltreated girls homozygous for the short allele were 12 times more likely to be classified in the Exclusive Covert group than in the No Problems group. Structural differences in the latent structure of ASB at Wave 2 and Wave 3 prevented repeat LCA modeling. However, using counts of ASB, 5-HTTLPR, maltreatment, and its interaction were unrelated to overt and covert ASB at Wave 2 and only maltreatment was related to covert ASB at Wave 3. We discuss these findings within the context of sex differences in ASB and relevant models of gene-environment interplay across developmental periods.