“Do You Trust Him?” Children’s Trust Beliefs and Developmental Trajectories of Aggressive Behavior in an Ethnically Diverse Sample

This study investigated the role of trust beliefs (i.e., trustworthiness, trustfulness) on aggression trajectories in a four-wave longitudinal study using an ethnically diverse sample of 8- to 11-year-old children (N?=?1,028), as well as the risk profiles of low trust beliefs and low socioeconomic status on aggression trajectories. At Time 1 to Time 4, teachers provided ratings of overt aggressive behavior. At Time 1, children’s trust beliefs were assessed by a sociometric peer nomination instrument and derived using social relations analysis. Latent growth curve analysis revealed five trajectories of aggressive behavior: high-stable, medium-stable, low-stable, increasing, and decreasing. As hypothesized, children in the high-stable trajectory were perceived as less trustworthy than children in the low-stable, medium-stable, and increasing trajectories. Children in the high-stable trajectory were less trustful than children in the low-stable trajectory and had a significantly higher risk profile (i.e., low trust beliefs and low SES) compared to children in the low-stable trajectory. Our findings indicate that the developmental course of aggression during middle childhood is predicted by children’s trustworthiness and trustfulness. A risk profile of low trust and low socioeconomic status contributes to high-stable aggression trajectories.     

Postmodern Masculinities and the Eunuch

This research examines the recent rise of the eunuch within several sociological contexts. The contention of this article is that present images of masculine sexuality have inadvertently made the effigy of the eunuch more permissible, albeit, unstated. In addition, as a form of sexual deviance, this practice relies on both individual pathologies and communities for membership. Recent technological advances in the computer industry have simplified access to like-minded individuals fostering fellowship. Using both primary and secondary sources of data, individual motivations to becoming a eunuch are examined.     

Leveraging Fourth and Sixth Graders’ Experiences to Reveal Understanding of the Forms and Features of Distributed Causality

Research has focused on students’ difficulties understanding phenomena in which agency is distributed across actors whose individual-level behaviors converge to result in collective outcomes. Building on Levy and Wilensky (2008 Levy, S. T., &; Wilensky, U. (2008). Inventing a "mid-level" to make ends meet: Reasoning through the levels of complexity. Cognition &; Instruction, 26(1), 1–47. [Google Scholar]), this study identified features of distributed causality students understand and that may offer affordances for instruction. Students displayed more distributed reasoning than anticipated, used hybrid and flexible reasoning, and reasoned about additive effects of collections of agents and their interactions, even when intent was unaligned.     

Referrers' Perceived Utility and Outcomes of Clinical Neuropsychological Assessment in an Adolescent and Young Adult Public Mental Health Service

Despite frequent informal or anecdotal acknowledgement of the usefulness of neuropsychological services within various settings, including mental health settings, few studies have formally investigated the satisfaction, perceived utility, or outcomes associated with such a service. This survey‐based study evaluated referring clinicians’ (n = 35) perceptions of the usefulness and outcomes associated with the provision of clinical neuropsychological assessment and feedback within an adolescent and young adult public mental health service in Melbourne, Australia. The results suggest that referrers perceive the neuropsychological service, including formal neuropsychological assessment report and verbal and written feedbacks, as a highly useful adjunct to their clinical practice. In addition, referrers frequently reported clinically meaningful outcomes in association with the neuropsychological service, including diagnostic changes or additions (11% of clients referred), changes to approaches in treatment (52% of clients referred), and increased or appropriate access to services, education, or work (33% of clients referred). Referrers also reported that almost 60% of neuropsychological assessment reports were forwarded to other services or clinicians involved in the client's care. The findings suggest that mental health settings are likely to benefit from routine inclusion of specialist neuropsychology services. However, future research should also examine client and family perceptions regarding the satisfaction and usefulness of neuropsychological services.     

The role of problem solving in complex intraverbal repertoires

We examined whether typically developing preschoolers could learn to use a problem-solving strategy that involved self-prompting with intraverbal chains to provide multiple responses to intraverbal categorization questions. Teaching the children to use the problem-solving strategy did not produce significant increases in target responses until problem solving was modeled and prompted. Following the model and prompts, all participants showed immediate significant increases in intraverbal categorization, and all prompts were quickly eliminated. Use of audible self-prompts was evident initially for all participants, but declined over time for 3 of the 4 children. Within-session response patterns remained consistent with use of the problem-solving strategy even when self-prompts were not audible. These findings suggest that teaching and prompting a problem-solving strategy can be an effective way to produce intraverbal categorization responses.     

Response interruption and redirection for vocal stereotypy in children with autism: a systematic replication

This study systematically replicated and extended previous research on response interruption and redirection (RIRD) by assessing instructed responses of a different topography than the target behavior, percentage of session spent in treatment, generalization of behavior reduction, and social validity of the intervention. Results showed that RIRD produced substantial decreases in vocal stereotypy. Limitations of this study were that behavior reduction did not generalize to novel settings or with novel instructors and that appropriate vocalizations did not improve.     

Assessment Center Practices in South Africa

Despite the popularity of assessment centers (AC) in South Africa, no recent study exists that describes AC practices in that region. Given this research gap, we conducted a survey study that analyzes the development, execution, and evaluation of ACs in N=43 South African organizations. We report findings regarding AC design, job analysis and job requirements assessed, target groups and positions of the participants after the AC, number and kind of exercises used, additional diagnostic methods used, assessors and characteristics considered in constitution of the assessor pool, observational systems and rotation plan, characteristics, contents, and methods of assessor training, types of information provided to participants, data integration process, use of self‐ and peer‐rating, characteristics of the feedback process, and features after the AC. Finally, we compare the results with professional suggestions to identify pros and cons in current South African AC practices and offer suggestions for improvement.     

Psychological processes in young bullies versus bully‐victims

Some children who bully others are also victimized themselves (“bully‐victims”) whereas others are not victimized themselves (“bullies”). These subgroups have been shown to differ in their social functioning as early as in kindergarten. What is less clear are the motives that underlie the bullying behavior of young bullies and bully‐victims. The present study examined whether bullies have proactive motives for aggression and anticipate to feel happy after victimizing others, whereas bully‐victims have reactive motives for aggression, poor theory of mind skills, and attribute hostile intent to others. This “distinct processes hypothesis” was contrasted with the “shared processes hypothesis,” predicting that bullies and bully‐victims do not differ on these psychological processes. Children (n = 283, age 4–9) were classified as bully, bully‐victim, or noninvolved using peer‐nominations. Theory of mind, hostile intent attributions, and happy victimizer emotions were assessed using standard vignettes and false‐belief tasks; reactive and proactive motives were assessed using teacher‐reports. We tested our hypotheses using Bayesian model selection, enabling us to directly compare the distinct processes model (predicting that bullies and bully‐victims deviate from noninvolved children on different psychological processes) against the shared processes model (predicting that bullies and bully‐victims deviate from noninvolved children on all psychological processes alike). Overall, the shared processes model received more support than the distinct processes model. These results suggest that in early childhood, bullies and bully‐victims have shared, rather than distinct psychological processes underlying their bullying behavior.