Multiple trajectories of physical aggression among adolescent boys and girls

Latent growth mixture modeling was used to identify discrete patterns of physical aggression from Grades 7 to 11 among a sample of 1,877 youth. Four trajectory classes adequately explained the development of physical aggression in both boys and girls: Low/No Aggression; Persistent High Aggression; Desisting Aggression, characterized by decreasing risk throughout adolescence; and Adolescent Aggression, characterized by low early risk that increases until Grade 9, levels out, and then declines in late adolescence. Girls were less likely than boys were to be in any trajectory besides the Low/No Aggression trajectory. Parental supervision, deviant peer association, academic orientation, impulsivity, and emotional distress at Grade 7 were all strongly associated with trajectory class membership. These associations did not differ by gender. These findings strongly suggest that the processes involved in the development of physical aggression in adolescence operate similarly in boys and girls.     

甲状腺激素在脑发育中的作用及临床意义

甲状腺激素在神经系统尤其是脑的发育和成熟过程中起着决定性的作用。甲状腺激素过多或过少直接关系到脑的发育和功能状况。有关甲状腺激素作用的分子机制的研究已经取得了重要的进步。研究发现发育脑中的甲状腺激素通过调控特异基因的表达来发挥作用。母体甲状腺激素主要影响妊娠前20周胎儿的神经发育。     

Emotional well-being: The role of social achievement goals and self-esteem

The current study examined how self-esteem and social achievement goals affect individuals’ emotions independently and jointly using the data collected from 367 college students. Social development goals were related to positive emotions (i.e., love and joy). Social demonstration-avoid goals were related to maladaptive patterns (low levels of joy but high levels of fear, shame and sadness). Social demonstration-approach goals were positively associated with joy but had null relations with all other emotions. The results indicated that social development goals buffered students with low self-esteem against negative emotions and amplified the positive emotional experiences. In contrast, social demonstration-avoid goals were especially harmful for students with low self-esteem.     

A Clinical Comparative Study Evaluating the Effect of Epilepsy Versus Adhd on Timed Cognitive Tasks in Children

Both children with epilepsy and children with ADHD may be characterized by slowing on reaction-time measurement. This is of particular interest, as neuropsychological assessment is often requested in the differential diagnosis between children with short non-convulsive epileptic seizures and children with ADHD. In this study we attempt to identify patterns of impairment on timed tasks that are specific for epilepsy, relative to ADHD. This study was an open, controlled parallel-group clinical investigation which included two groups of patients: 60 children with ADHD and 60 children with epilepsy. These children were compared with a control group (n =30) on two types of timed cognitive tasks: tasks with low information load (simple reaction-time measurement) and tasks with high information load (multiple decision reaction-time measurement). The simple reaction-time measurements show significant differences between ADHD and controls (all except for visual RT non-dominant hand) and between epilepsy and controls (only one test). No significant differences were found between epilepsy and ADHD. The two tests with high information load show significant slowing compared with the controls for epilepsy on the Binary Choice Reaction-Time Test and for ADHD on the Visual Searching Test. On both tests also the differences between epilepsy and ADHD are significant. The two tests in combination have a relatively satisfactory potential to classify the children with ADHD (75% correct classification) and the children with epilepsy (55% correct classification). We may conclude that complex reaction-time tests (i.e., timed tasks with high information load) have potential for assessing the differential impact of ADHD and epilepsy on attentional function. These tasks specifically reveal general slowing for children with epilepsy and slowing as an effect of failures of inhibitory self control on unstructured tasks for ADHD.     

A Stage Is a Stage Is a Stage: A Direct Comparison of Two Scoring Systems

L. Kohlberg (1969) argued that his moral stages captured a developmental sequence specific to the moral domain. To explore that contention, the author compared stage assignments obtained with the Standard Issue Scoring System (A. Colby & L. Kohlberg, 1987a, 1987b) and those obtained with a generalized content-independent stage-scoring system called the Hierarchical Complexity Scoring System (T. L. Dawson, 2002a), on 637 moral judgment interviews (participants' ages ranged from 5 to 86 years). The correlation between stage scores produced with the 2 systems was .88. Although standard issue scoring and hierarchical complexity scoring often awarded different scores up to Kohlberg's Moral Stage 2/3, from his Moral Stage 3 onward, scores awarded with the two systems predominantly agreed. The author explores the implications for developmental research.     

Emotion Comprehension: The Impact of Nonverbal Intelligence

A substantial body of research has established that emotion understanding develops throughout early childhood and has identified three hierarchical developmental phases: external, mental, and reflexive. The authors analyzed nonverbal intelligence and its effect on children's improvement of emotion understanding and hypothesized that cognitive level is a consistent predictor of emotion comprehension. In all, 366 children (182 girls, 184 boys) between the ages of 3 and 10 years were tested using the Test of Emotion Comprehension and the Coloured Progressive Matrices. The data obtained by using the path analysis model revealed that nonverbal intelligence was statistically associated with the ability to recognize emotions in the 3 developmental phases. The use of this model showed the significant effect that cognitive aspect plays on the reflexive phase. The authors aim to contribute to the debate about the influence of cognitive factors on emotion understanding.     

The Confusion of Fear and Surprise: A Developmental Study of the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis Using Eye Movements

The goal of the present study was to test the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis in children and adults by manipulating the distinctiveness between expressions and recording eye movements. Children 3–5 and 9–11 years old as well as adults were presented pairs of expressions and required to identify a target emotion. Children 3–5 years old were less accurate than those 9–11 years old and adults. All children viewed pictures longer than adults but did not spend more time attending to the relevant cues. For all participants, accuracy for the recognition of fear was lower than for surprise when the distinctive cue was in the brow only. They also took longer and spent more time in both the mouth and brow zones than when a cue was in the mouth or both areas. Adults and children 9–11 years old made more comparisons between the expressions when fear comprised a single distinctive cue in the brow than when the distinctive cue was in the mouth only or when both cues were present. Children 3–5 years old made more comparisons for brow only than both. The results of the present study extend on the Perceptual-Attentional Limitation Hypothesis showing an importance of both decoder and stimuli, and an interaction between decoder and stimuli characteristics.     

语义认知的习得、发展和老化及其神经机制

作为语言系统的重要组成部分, 探究语义认知发展机制及其神经机理对揭示人类语言发展、认知机制有着重要意义。以语义认知能力的习得、发展、老化认知机制为主线, 在系统阐释词汇-语义系统的习得、语义认知能力和策略发展的基础上, 进一步探讨了语义认知老化的认知机制及其神经机理。最后, 围绕儿童和成人的语义认知差异、句法和语义认知老化的差异、语义认知老化的影响因素等问题上进行了思考和展望。     

Coping with dialects from birth: Role of variability on infants’ early language development. Insights from Norwegian dialects

Previous research suggests that exposure to accent variability can affect toddlers’ familiar word recognition and word comprehension. The current preregistered study addressed the gap in knowledge on early language development in infants exposed to two dialects from birth and assessed the role of dialect similarity in infants’ word recognition and comprehension. A 12-month-old Norwegian-learning infants, exposed to native Norwegian parents speaking the same or two Norwegian dialects, took part in two eye-tracking tasks, assessing familiar word form recognition and word comprehension. Their parents’ speech was assessed for similarity by native Norwegian speakers. First, in contrast to previous research, our results revealed no listening preference for words over nonwords in both monodialectal and bidialectal infants, suggesting potential language-specific differences in the onset of word recognition. Second, the results showed evidence for word comprehension in monodialectal infants, but not in bidialectal infants, suggesting that exposure to dialectal variability impacts early word acquisition. Third, perceptual similarity between parental dialects tendentially facilitated bidialectal infants’ word recognition and comprehension. Forth, the results revealed a strong correlation between the raters and parents’ assessment of similarity between dialects, indicating that parental estimations can be reliably used to assess infants’ speech variability at home. Finally, our results revealed a strong relationship between word recognition and comprehension in monodialectal infants and the absence of such a relationship in bidialectal infants, suggesting that either these two skills do not necessarily align in infants exposed to more variable input, or that the alignment might occur at a later stage.     

The crying boss: Activating “human resources” through sensitivity training in 1970s Sweden

This article examines the introduction of “sensitivity training” to 1970s Swedish work life. Drawing upon a range of empirical materials, I explore the politics that were involved in the process of translating and adapting this group dynamic method to the Swedish context and consider how its proponents argued for its value. By approaching sensitivity training as an attempt to govern, shape, and regulate both human beings and the work organizations of which they were a part, I argue that sensitivity training presents an unexpectedly early example of a governing rationality that has elsewhere been described and theorized as “neoliberal.” The fact that sensitivity training was established in Swedish work life already in the early 1970s thus challenges the historiography of neoliberal modes of government, which have elsewhere been associated with a neoliberal shift in state policies occurring in the 1980s and 1990s. The article demonstrates how emotionally liberating practices in the late 1960s and early 1970s were embraced by some of the most politically influential actors in contemporary Swedish society, such as the corporate sector and the trade unions. As blue-collar trade unions and social democrats voiced increasingly far-reaching demands concerning workplace democracy and improved workplace conditions, advocates of sensitivity training presented their method as crucial to the process of “democratizing” and “humanizing” Swedish work life. Intimately associated with the new therapies of humanistic psychology, sensitivity training was used within the corporate sector to foster a more emotional and authentic leadership style that would embrace the values of emotional awareness, self-expression, and self-actualization. The crying boss emerged in this context as a key figure in the project of creating a “democratic” and psychologically satisfying organization. Yet, sensitivity training was also described as a means for companies to make better use of what was now asserted as their most important economic asset: the human being. From the outset, the idealistic vision of an emotionally liberated, democratic workplace was thus entangled with a specific kind of economic rationality, in which the emotionally liberated, self-actualizing individual emerged as a capital or asset that would be better utilized if the organization allowed—even encouraged—employees to engage in their own well-being and self-optimization.