How Does Family Connectedness Contribute to Youths’ Health? The Mediating Role of Coping Strategies

Family connectedness has important implications for adolescents’ well-being, contributing to their physical, psychological, and social health. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying these effects. The present longitudinal study examined the process by which family connectedness, as perceived by adolescents, predicted greater positive and fewer negative health behaviors in adolescents over time. In particular, we sought to determine whether adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies mediated the link between family connectedness and adolescents’ self-reported health status. Data were obtained from 1,774 New Zealand adolescents aged 10–17 years, who completed a self-report survey three times at one-year intervals. With longitudinal mediation path models, we tested whether maladaptive and adaptive coping strategies at T2 functioned as mediators between family connectedness at T1 and overall health, vitality, sleep sufficiency, body satisfaction, substance use, and self-harm at T3. Findings revealed that family connectedness predicted greater levels of adaptive coping, which, in turn, predicted better health indicators but not decreases in ill-health indicators. Furthermore, family connectedness predicted lower maladaptive coping, which, in turn, predicted higher levels of positive health outcomes and fewer negative health outcomes. Results showed that the positive effect of family connectedness on adolescents’ health occurred through increased use of adaptive coping strategies, decreased use of maladaptive coping strategies, or both. These results have important implications for practitioners working with adolescents and parents, as well as for health promotion program developers.     

Caregivers can implement play-based instruction without disrupting child preference

Young children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder often require systematic teaching to learn new skills, and caregivers can teach their children by embedding learning opportunities in a play-based context. However, researchers have not evaluated procedures to train caregivers how to implement a combination of strategies designed to establish rapport and early language skills while maintaining play as a preferred context. Caregiver–child dyads composed of 2 mothers and their sons were recruited to participate. A multiple-probe design across strategies was used to demonstrate the efficacy of behavioral skills training on the mothers' integration of parallel play, child-directed interaction, teaching requests (mands), and teaching labels (tacts). Both children acquired the target requests and labels as a function of their mothers' teaching. By assessing the children's preferences, we confirmed the teaching strategies did not decrease toy engagement or the value of playing with their mother. We obtained stimulus generalization of the mothers' implementation of the strategies from a clinic to their home and maintenance of mother and child performance across a month.     

Linking personality traits to objective foul records in (semi-)professional youth basketball

Rule breaking behavior in sports (e.g., fouls) can impact the outcome of games, tournaments, or even whole seasons. Although personality traits have been related to different forms of rule breaking behavior across fields, it has hardly been investigated whether personality traits predict rule breaking behavior in sports. We ran a longitudinal study with 242 (semi-)professional basketball players. Specifically, we measured personality traits prior to the start of the season and official foul statistics per player during the season. Out of the basic personality traits from the HEXACO Model of Personality, Conscientiousness accounted for a substantial amount of variability in the committed/called fouls, whereas no robust relations with other traits or a sports-oriented personality trait (i.e., Sports Mental Toughness) were found.     

Triangulating School Climate: Areas of Convergence and Divergence Across Multiple Levels and Perspectives

Students often have differing perceptions of their school's climate. Although these subjective perceptions can be meaningful outcome predictors, discrepancies create challenges for those seeking to globally characterize or intervene to improve the climate of a school. Trained, independent  observers can provide insights on perceptible and ostensibly malleable aspects of the school; however, the extent to which these observations help us to understand differences in students’ report of school climate has not been examined. To study this, we assessed convergence and divergence between independent observers’ assessments and students’ perceptions of school climate at the classroom and school levels. Data come from the Maryland Safe and Supportive Schools Initiative (MDS3), which included 20,647 students and observations of 303 teachers in 50 high schools. Students responded to survey items regarding safety, engagement, and environment; independent observers assessed teachers’ classroom practices and the school physical environment. A three-level model partitioned variance to the individual, classroom, and school levels. The variance in students’ climate perceptions was primarily between students, with most classroom and school intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) ranging from 0.01 to 0.08, though one was as high as 0.20; however, observations explained large percentages of between-school variation in climate (58%–91%). Findings suggest the potential utility of outside observations for explaining school-level variation in school climate to inform decision-making and future research.     

Genetic and environmental influences on aggression in 4- to 7-year-old twins

Aggressive behaviors of 38 twin pairs (21 monozygotic [MZ], 17 dizygotic [DZ]) between the ages of 4 and 7 years were assessed through mothers' ratings and observations in their homes. An observation checklist was developed in which mothers were asked to observe and report each child's specific aggressive behaviors for a total of 6 hours spread over 3 days. In particular the observations focused on the following behaviors: rejection, destructiveness, negativism, noncompliance, teasing, physical negative, insult, verbal threat, and yelling. Biometrical genetic analysis evidenced significant heritable influences on composite aggression scores in both the observation checklist and the mothers' ratings; heritability estimates varied from.24 to.94 depending on the aggression nieasnre used, with scores from the mothers' observations demonstrating smaller genetic effect than those of the parental ratings of the environmental sources of variance, within-family factors were far more important than the between-family ones. The results also yielded significant sex and zygosity differences for means of some of the specific aggressive behaviors, where males and DZ twins scored higher than females and MZ twins. It was suggested that future studies should include more detailed investigations of the context in which specific aggressive behaviors occur and the sources toward which they are directed in order to determine the extent to which different types of aggression may have different etiologies.     

Age-related differences in physical activity and depressive symptoms among 10−19-year-old adolescents: A population based study

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to examine age- and gender-related patterns of PA and depressive symptoms among students through their adolescent years.DesignData from three population-based surveys were analysed to determine levels of moderate- to vigorous-intensity PA (MVPA), participation in organized sports and depressive symptoms among 10−19-year-old adolescents.MethodQuestionnaires assessing PA and depressive symptoms were administered to 32 860 students in compulsory and upper-secondary schools in Iceland.ResultsAs age increased, depressive symptoms increased and PA decreased with over half of the adolescents in upper-secondary schools not achieving recommended daily PA. There were gender differences in PA and depressive symptoms with girls being less active and reporting higher levels of depressive symptoms than boys. MVPA was associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms among both genders while organized sports had more impact on depressive symptoms among girls.ConclusionsTo our knowledge, this study is the first to simultaneously examine patterns of PA and depressive symptoms among students through their adolescent years. Our findings show that the decrease in PA and increase in depressive symptoms is most pronounced around the transition from compulsory to upper-secondary school, or around the age of 15–16. Thus the findings provide important information about when to tailor public health efforts to reduce the burden of depressive symptoms among adolescents, for example by employing PA interventions.     

High‐Stakes Decision‐Making Within Complex Social Environments: A Computational Model of Belief Systems in the Arab Spring

People experiencing similar conditions may make different decisions, and their belief systems provide insight about these differences. An example of high‐stakes decision‐making within a complex social context is the Arab Spring, in which large numbers of people decided to protest and even larger numbers decided to stay at home. This study uses qualitative analyses of interview narratives and social media addressing individual decisions to develop a computational model tracing the cognitive decision‐making process. The model builds on work by Abelson and Carroll (1965), Schank and Abelson (1977), and Axelrod (1976) to systematically trace the inferences connecting beliefs to decisions. The findings show that protest decisions were often based on positive emotions such as pride, hope, courage, and solidarity, triggered by beliefs about successful protest and self‐sacrifice. By contrast, decisions to stay at home were triggered by beliefs about safety, state approval, and living conditions. As one participant said, “When I heard about the revolution in Tunisia, my heart was filled with solidarity for the people.” In the words of a non‐participant: “When people are killed, we must be careful. There are more important things than protest: safety and stability.” This study of individual explanations about events identifies the role of emotions in high‐stakes decision‐making within complex social environments.     

History, Human Rights, and Globalization

An illustrative comparison of human rights in 1948 and the contemporary period, attempting to gauge the impact of globalization on changes in the content of human rights (e.g., collective rights, women's rights, right to a healthy environment), major abusers and guarantors of human rights (e.g., state actors, transnational corporations, social movements), and alternative justifications of human rights (e.g., pragmatic agreement, moral intuitionism, overlapping consensus, cross‐cultural dialogue).     

Distinguishing Hypotheses From Hyperbole in Studies of Media Violence: A Comment on Markey et al. (2015)

In alleging that Bushman et al. (2013) made sensational and unsubstantiated claims, Markey et al. (2015) mistake hypotheses for hyperbole. Moreover, in their effort to show that gun violence in PG‐13 movies (for ages 13 and older) is unrelated to trends in population violence, they make unjustified demands on our data, with outcomes that are unconnected to hypothesized effects. Using outcomes in line with our hypotheses, we draw the contrary conclusion that recent trends in gun violence in youth are actually consistent with gun violence trends in PG‐13 movies. Nevertheless, because we do not believe those patterns are sufficient to draw causal conclusions, we suggest more adequate tests of the hypothesis that exposure to movie gun violence affects the beliefs and attitudes of youth toward guns.