Children's Use of Gaze and Limb Movement Cues to Infer Deception

A sample of 96 children from kindergarten, 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades judged the truthfulness of peers who varied in gaze and limb movement while providing verbal communications. Results indicated that children attributed greater lying to the peers who displayed indirect rather than direct gaze and active rather than nonactive limb movement. The use of these cues was more evident in 4th- and 6th-grade children than it was in kindergarten and 2nd-grade children. Pilot studies indicated that adults and children as young as 5-6 years of age associated indirect gaze and active limb movement with anxiety. The findings are discussed with respect to children's theory of mind, concepts of lying, understanding of display rules, and learning of physiological cues associated with deception.     

Parental Influence on Attitudes toward Institutional Authority

Two views were examined on the development of attitudes toward institutional authority: one proposing that such attitudes are normally transmitted from parent to offspring, the other that such attitudes develop as a consequence of childhood experiences with the trustworthiness of parental authorities. University students in England (N = 50) completed questionnaires to provide assessments of their attitudes toward authority and those of their parents, and also judgments of the trustworthiness of their parents, as recalled from childhood. Consistent with previous studies, there was evidence of a “generation gap,” with parents being perceived as significantly more proauthority than students. Nevertheless, multiple regression analyses indicated that students' attitudes toward authority were positively and significantly related to the perceived attitudes of their parents, suggesting transmission from parents to offspring. There was no evidence to support the view that the students' attitudes were affected by their judgments of parental trustworthiness.     

How schoolchildren’s acceptance of self and others relate to their attitudes to victims of bullying

Previous research has indicated that harm to the mental health of children who are repeatedly victimised by their peers at school can be ameliorated through social or emotional support provided by other students. In this study we examined whether student provictim attitudes are related to more basic attitudes to self and attitudes to others. Measures of these attitudes were developed for use with children, and shown to be internally consistent and possess concurrent validity. Relations between these variables were then examined with a sample of Australian school children ( $N = 212$ ) aged between 9 and 14 years. Provictim attitudes correlated significantly ( $r = .55$ ) with acceptance of others, but not with acceptance of self ( $r = -.04$ ). Controlling for age and gender, multiple regression analyses confirmed these findings. Attitudes to victims were less positive for older students ( $r = -.22$ ). Gender differences, however, were not significant. These findings suggest that among schoolchildren self-acceptance is unrelated to positive attitudes towards victims, whereas acceptance of others has a moderately strong relation with provictim attitude. Implications for improving attitudes to victims among school children were examined.     

Exploitation in Older Adults: Personal Competence Correlates of Social Vulnerability

ABSTRACT

Clinical assessment of older people at heightened risk of financial exploitation (also termed social vulnerability) is a difficult task. There are a number of previously untested domains of personal competence which could influence social vulnerability in later life. In this study, intellectual, cognitive, and social-cognitive functioning was assessed in a combined sample of dementia patients (n = 31) and neurologically healthy individuals (n = 68) aged 50 years or over. Informants provided assessments of participants' social functioning, personality, and social vulnerability. In the combined sample, multiple regression analyses revealed significant relationships between each personal competence domain and (lower) social vulnerability, apart from personality which was non-significant. General cognitive functioning and, in particular, executive functioning showed significant overlap with social vulnerability after controlling for memory and age. Social measures were also important correlates of vulnerability, indicating that both neurocognitive and social cognitive deficits may contribute to financial exploitation in later life.     

Free(z)ing Degrees of Freedom in Skill Acquisition

This study reports an empirical investigation into Bernstein's (1967) ideas that in the early stages of the acquisition of a movement skill the coordination problem is reduced by an initial freezing out of degrees of freedom, followed later in the learning process by the release of these degrees of freedom and their incorporation into a dynamic, controllable system. “Freezing” degrees of freedom was made operational both as a rigid fixation of individual degrees of freedom and as the formation of rigid couplings between multiple degrees of freedom. Five subjects practiced slalom-like ski movements on a ski apparatus for 7 consecutive days. Results showed that at the early phases of learning, the joint angles of the lower limbs and torso displayed little movement, as expressed by their standard deviations and ranges of angular motion, whereas joint couplings were high, as shown by the relatively high cross correlations between joint angles. Over practice, angular movement significantly increased in all joint angles of the lower limbs and torso, although the cross correlations decreased. Support for the processes of freezing and releasing degrees of freedom was thus given at both levels of operationalization. In addition, a consistent change from laterally symmetric to laterally asymmetric cross-correlation patterns were observed as a function of practice. Overall, the findings provide empirical support for Bernstein's ideas regarding the mastery of redundant degrees of freedom in the acquisition of coordination.     

Gender Now

This paper offers a synthesizing position statement on gender now. Gender has been socially transformed; cultural orders and symbolic meanings have evolved. Gender theory has changed considerably. Kinship as it informs gender has been reconsidered. The binary masculine–feminine complementary relationship between gender and sexuality has been deconstructed. Gender development has been recast in a frame that is both more attuned to social transformations and more fine-tuned to the relational excess that is early human life. Gendered embodiment and fantastic experience is being thought in accord with our recognition of the anxious force of normative regulation. The intricate latticework of gender coherence, bodily coherence, and psychic equilibrium is now open to question. Clinical technique, as one listens to gender now, must also be reframed.     

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.     

Assessing Omitted Confounder Bias in Multilevel Mediation Models

To draw valid inference about an indirect effect in a mediation model, there must be no omitted confounders. No omitted confounders means that there are no common causes of hypothesized causal relationships. When the no-omitted-confounder assumption is violated, inference about indirect effects can be severely biased and the results potentially misleading. Despite the increasing attention to address confounder bias in single-level mediation, this topic has received little attention in the growing area of multilevel mediation analysis. A formidable challenge is that the no-omitted-confounder assumption is untestable. To address this challenge, we first analytically examined the biasing effects of potential violations of this critical assumption in a two-level mediation model with random intercepts and slopes, in which all the variables are measured at Level 1. Our analytic results show that omitting a Level 1 confounder can yield misleading results about key quantities of interest, such as Level 1 and Level 2 indirect effects. Second, we proposed a sensitivity analysis technique to assess the extent to which potential violation of the no-omitted-confounder assumption might invalidate or alter the conclusions about the indirect effects observed. We illustrated the methods using an empirical study and provided computer code so that researchers can implement the methods discussed.