Do physical and relational aggression explain adolescents' friendship selection? The competing roles of network characteristics,gender, and social status

The role of physical and relational aggression in adolescents' friendship selection was examined in a longitudinal sample of 274 Chilean students from 5th and 6th grade followed over 1 year. Longitudinal social network modeling (SIENA) was used to study selection processes for aggression while influence processes were controlled for. Furthermore, the effects of network characteristics (i.e., reciprocity and transitivity), gender, and social status on friendship selection were examined. The starting assumption of this study was that selection effects based on aggression might have been overestimated in previous research as a result of failing to consider influence processes and alternative characteristics that steer friendship formation. The results show that selection effects of both physical and relational aggression disappeared when network effects, gender, and social status were taken into account. Particularly gender and perceived popularity appeared to be far more important determinants of friendship selection over time than aggression. Moreover, a peer influence effect was only found for relational aggression, and not for physical aggression. These findings suggest that similarity in aggression among befriended adolescents can be considered to be mainly a by-product rather than a leading dimension in friendship selection.     

Commonly-defined and individually-defined posttraumatic growth in the US and Japan

Posttraumatic growth (PTG) is the experience of positive change resulting from the struggle with major life crises. Research on PTG has relied on instruments such as the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI: Tedeschi &; Calhoun, 1996), in which items that describe positive changes are assumed to represent personal growth equally for all people. However, some positive changes may indicate greater growth for some people. Individually-defined PTG may differ from commonly-defined PTG. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between these two definitions of PTG and how culture affects them. Participants from the US (n = 456) and Japan (n = 279) indicated the degree to which each change in the PTGI represented personal growth. Results from mixed-model analyses of variance revealed that there were main effects for defined growth as well as interaction effects for all PTGI factors. For example, US participants reported greater growth on the factors Relating to Others and New Possibilities for the commonly-defined level, but once individually-defined PTG was considered, growth scores for US participants decreased substantially, and more so than for Japanese participants. Discussion addresses cultural and individual differences in the subjective definitions of PTG and highlights several directions for future research.     

Musicians and tone-language speakers share enhanced brainstem encoding but not perceptual benefits for musical pitch

Behavioral and neurophysiological transfer effects from music experience to language processing are well-established but it is currently unclear whether or not linguistic expertise (e.g., speaking a tone language) benefits music-related processing and its perception. Here, we compare brainstem responses of English-speaking musicians/non-musicians and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese elicited by tuned and detuned musical chords, to determine if enhancements in subcortical processing translate to improvements in the perceptual discrimination of musical pitch. Relative to non-musicians, both musicians and Chinese had stronger brainstem representation of the defining pitches of musical sequences. In contrast, two behavioral pitch discrimination tasks revealed that neither Chinese nor non-musicians were able to discriminate subtle changes in musical pitch with the same accuracy as musicians. Pooled across all listeners, brainstem magnitudes predicted behavioral pitch discrimination performance but considering each group individually, only musicians showed connections between neural and behavioral measures. No brain-behavior correlations were found for tone language speakers or non-musicians. These findings point to a dissociation between subcortical neurophysiological processing and behavioral measures of pitch perception in Chinese listeners. We infer that sensory-level enhancement of musical pitch information yields cognitive-level perceptual benefits only when that information is behaviorally relevant to the listener.     

Impact of motivation on cognitive control in the context of vigilance lowering: an ERP study

We assessed the effects of time-on-task on cognitive control expressed by the CRN/Nc and the extent to which motivation modulates this relationship. We utilized two groups of participants, who were told that their performance would (evaluation condition) or would not (control condition) be evaluated online. Both groups performed a version of the Eriksen Flanker Task for 60 min. We observed classical vigilance lowering, manifested by a progressive performance decline with time-on-task, in the control, but not in the evaluation, condition. In the latter, performance remained stable throughout the task. ERP analysis indicated the same interaction in our main component of interest, the CRN/Nc, whose amplitude decreased from the first to the last period in the control condition but remained stable over time in the evaluation condition. To our knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate the impact of motivation on monitoring processes as indexed by the correct response negativity, in the context of a prolonged task. Vigilance lowering caused by a repetitive and prolonged flanker task, results in compromised response control and compromised control of correct responses. Our results suggest that alterations in ACC functioning may underlie vigilance decline and can be viewed as evidence that the action monitoring functions of the ACC can be positively affected by motivation.     

Negotiating Reintegration and Meanings of Space: Formerly Abducted Youth in Uganda

The war in Northern Uganda has ended, and youth who were abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army continue to return to communities. Research conducted in the summer of 2010 in two locations in Uganda, Gulu and Masindi, shows that the process of reintegration is an ongoing process in which formerly abducted youth (FAY) negotiate social relations for reintegration in a very interactive way. FAY consciously decide to stay quiet about their past to avoid compromising social reintegration. The experience‐oriented approach has allowed for an in‐depth exploration and understanding of the reintegration process from the perspective of FAY. In Northern Ugandan cosmology, meaning given to FAY personal spaces dominates. With FAY facing social exclusion by community members and the need to overcome boundaries to reintegration, coping mechanisms are adopted to facilitate reintegration and to carve out personal space within the Northern Ugandan cosmology. In the exploration of the process of negotiating reintegration, a conceptual model is adopted and adjusted to represent personal space within Northern Ugandan cosmology. The main findings suggest that FAY negotiate social relations for reintegration in a very interactive way and that they consciously decide to stay quiet about their past so as to not compromise social reintegration. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Besoin de cognition,besoin d’évaluer,besoin de clôture : proposition d’échelles en langue française et approche socio-normative des besoins dits fondamentaux

Introduction and objectivesAfter leading a validation of questionnaires about three fundamental needs in French language (need for cognition, closing and evaluation), we tested in two studies that fundamental needs could be subjected to social constraints and could be considered differently than exclusively like stable personality characteristics and motivational drivers of action.MethodUsing the paradigm of judges (study 1) and the paradigm of identification (study 2), the results argue for a normative approach, at least as regards the need for cognition and assess.ResultsThe results of the first study show that individuals consider more favorably targets with strong need rather than low need and especially in social contexts with high social utility (that is to say, the professional context in comparison with the friendly context). The results of the second study show that when the questionnaires about needs “as would a person having been previously well or poorly assessed” participants get higher scores high on the need for cognition questionnaire in the first case than in the second. The results regarding the need for closure are more mixed.ConclusionThe results are discussed in a socio-normative perspective.     

Towards international comparative research on the professionalisation of Religious Education

This article calls for international comparative research on the professionalisation of Religious Education (RE). To this end, it provides a rationale for focusing upon the concept of professionalisation and a theoretical justification for international comparative research, particularly identifying its significance in terms of the development of RE in England and Germany. The article outlines a methodology for exploring the concepts of professional knowledge, professional self-organisation and politics and professional development. The proposed methodology involves a systematic analysis of primary documentary sources including: (1) academic and professional journal articles and textbooks; (2) the archives of relevant institutions and organisations; and (3) external evidence, such as inspection and research reports. An analytical case study of two leading journals in each national context, Religion in Education in England and Der Evangelische Erzieher in Germany, in the immediate post-war era is appended to illustrate the benefits of implementing such a methodology across national boundaries.