The Journal of Genetic Psychology

Khasmohammadi, Mahdi; Ghazizadeh Ehsaei, Sara; Vanderplasschen, Wouter; Dortaj, Fariborz; Farahbakhsh, Kioumars; Keshavarz Afshar, Hossein; Jahanbakhshi, Zahra; Mohsenzadeh, Farshad; Mohd Noah, Sidek; Sulaiman, Tajularipin; Brady, Carol; Hormozi, Atoosa kalantar

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2019.1700896pmid: 31886741

AbstractStudies exploring excessive Internet use and gambling are rapidly expanding concerns regarding its impact on mental health, especially in young people due to the increased prevalence of Internet and gambling addictions. Research suggests that perceived peer support plays a significant role in adolescents’ psychological well-being. However, no empirical study has dealt with the mediating effect of perceived peer support on the relationship between Internet and gambling addictions and psychological well-being. Thus, the present study aimed to examine whether perceived peer support mediates the relation between Internet and gambling addictions and psychological well-being of adolescents. A sample of 347 Iranian adolescents aged 14 to 18 (Mean age 16.14, 50.4% male) who were studying in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia participated in this study. Subjective Vitality Scale (SVS), Compulsive Internet Use Scale (CIUS), Six-item Social Support Questionnaire (SSQ6), and The South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) were used to collect data. Mediation analyses showed a significant indirect effect of compulsive Internet use and problem gambling on psychological well-being through perceived peer support. The total effects of compulsive Internet use and problem gambling on psychological well-being were negative. This study implies the significance of strengthening the knowledge about the impact of peer relationships among adolescents.

Mareovich, Florencia; Taverna, Andrea S.; Peralta, Olga A.

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2019.1709409pmid: 31905324

AbstractThe purpose of this research was to explore the kind of information Spanish-speaking 3-year-old children and adults use when learning adjectives in a joint picturebook reading situation. The impact of two linguistic clues was studied; a morphological clue (adjective suffix) and a semantic clue (descriptive information concerning the property). Results show that for children the description was decisive to map the new adjective with the property; for adults, instead, the presence of the suffix was crucial. These results illustrate a developmental shift in the sort of clues that shapes adjective learning.

Danovitch, Judith H.

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2020.1712319pmid: 31928321

AbstractTwo experiments investigate whether children ages 5 through 10 (n = 121) take into account an individual’s role when choosing what information to share or with whom to share it. In Experiment 1, children heard statements about an unfamiliar animal’s behavior and appearance. They then chose one statement to share with each of two characters with different job descriptions. Seven-year-olds consistently shared the information that aligned with each character’s role, but 5-year-olds and a subset of 9-year-olds did not. Experiment 2 showed that children’s decisions about what to share were not driven by their personal preferences for the information they were sharing. In addition, when children were provided with a single fact and had to choose with whom to share it, 7- and 9-year-olds shared information with the recipient for whom it was most relevant. Together, the findings suggest that by age 7, children can use information about an individual’s occupational role in order to infer what information to share.

Miller, Stephanie E.; Avila, Brittany N.; Reavis, Rachael D.

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2020.1719024pmid: 32037981

AbstractThe present study examined links between best friendship quality, social problem solving in response to a transgression and conscious control of behavior (i.e., executive function or EF). Eighty-one 7- to 10-year-olds answered questions about their best friendship quality and responses to friendship transgressions (i.e., interpretations, goals, and strategies they would endorse). They also completed a battery of EF tasks measuring working memory, inhibition, and shifting. Results revealed few relations between social problem solving and best friendship quality. Social problem solving related to EF abilities, with inhibition relating to fewer revenge goals and cognitive flexibility relating to more neutral interpretations. Better working memory related to worse best friendship quality. Finally, verbal IQ was a strong predictor of several positive social problem-solving interpretations, goals, and strategies. Results suggest cognitive abilities in EF and language may be important to consider during middle childhood in this period of advancing social problem solving and friendships.

Lease, A. Michele; Kwon, Kyongboon; Lovelace, Mary; Huang, Hsun-chih

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2020.1730744pmid: 32090707

AbstractWe examined the degree to which children perceive influence behaviors and influence over social norms from different types of high-status children to vary in a sample of 453 3rd through 5th grade children. Using a cluster analysis of peer-nominated popularity and likeability measures, we identified a seven-cluster solution, including three high-status clusters: Well-Liked, Popular, and Popular/Well-Liked. Popular children were perceived as using ridicule and having influence over misbehavior. Popular/Well-Liked children were perceived as using playful teasing and modeling and influencing over trend-setting and sports norms, at a degree similar to Popular children. However, Popular/Well-Liked children were not perceived as using ridicule or influencing over misbehavior; rather, they scored higher than all other status groups for prosocial assertion and academic motivation. Well-Liked children were perceived as using prosocial assertion and influencing over academic motivation at a higher degree than Average children but at a lower degree than Popular or Popular/Well-Liked children. Although the influence associated with likeability alone appeared relatively limited, likeability in conjunction with popularity seems to make a difference regarding influence behaviors and norms. A person-centered approach that takes into account multiple facets of social status is likely to enhance understanding of high-status children’s influence on their same-age peers.

Petersen, Helena; Holodynski, Manfred

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2020.1734909pmid: 32114957

AbstractAs a means of psychological distancing, pretend play may facilitate emotion regulation. Up to now, however, the empirical evidence for a relation between these two is not consistent. The present study examines the impact of pretend play on reflective emotion regulation of expression with a disappointing gift task using the strategy of role-taking. Fifty-two children aged 3 to 6 years were motivated to deceive the experimenter volitionally by false smiling, regardless of whether they received an attractive gift, an unattractive gift, or no gift. Twenty-five of the children accomplished the task in the context of a pretend play where they were playfully guided to take on a role assumed to facilitate reflective emotion regulation of expression. The other 27 children received only a direct verbal instruction. As an indication of successful reflective emotion regulation of expression, twelve adult naïve observers judged children’s videotaped behavior according to the quality of emotion that the children seemed to experience. This impression analysis showed no impact of experimental variation and thus no facilitating effect of pretend play with a given task-convenient role. While happiness ratings in the pretend play group did not correlate to children’s quality of play, they positively correlated to children’s joy of playing.

Gomez-Baya, Diego; Tomé, Gina; Reis, Marta; Gaspar de Matos, Margarida

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2020.1735986pmid: 32151204

AbstractPositive Youth Development (PYD) presents a strength-based conception of transition to adulthood that has been well-supported by literature to date. However, research is needed to integrate the pathways to PYD and the possible moderators. This study aimed to analyze the relationships between internal resources for resilience and PYD and to examine the moderating role of short-term and long-term self-regulation by gender. To reach this overall aim, a cross-sectional study was performed with a national sample of 2700 youths (73.3% girls; Mage = 21.3, SD = 2.79) from Portugal, who completed self-report measures. Regression-based moderation models were developed. Results indicated that greater presence of internal resources for resilience was related to higher PYD. Long-term self-regulation and gender moderated this relationship, such that a greater effect was observed in men with high levels of long-term self-regulation. These results highlight the need to integrate prevention and promotion paradigms to foster healthy development in youth, as well as the importance of taking self-regulation skills and gender into account in program design.

Hayashi, Hajimu

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2020.1738321pmid: 32202221

AbstractChildren come to prefer fair distributions at the age of 5 to 6 years. But do they actually want to be fair, or do they want to appear fair to others? In three conditions, an experimenter initially distributed chocolates to 5-/6-year-old participants and partners they were paired with. Participants always possessed, through some means, two chocolates when the experimenter returned after a brief absence, and they had to decide whether to take an extra one for themselves. To measure the extent to which children were concerned with actually being fair versus appearing fair, two conditions were created in which children were led to believe that the experimenter did not know that the distributions had become equal. In the windfall condition, a confederate gave one additional chocolate to the participant, and in the partner condition, the partner transferred one chocolate to the participant. Compared to the control condition, participants who passed the false belief task in both of these conditions tried to appear fair in their distribution. Thus 5-/6-year-old children seem to prefer appearing fair to others regardless of the situation.

Karababa, Ali

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2020.1745745pmid: 32297838

AbstractThe aim of the study was to examine correlations among maladaptive perfectionism, hope, and anxiety and the moderating role of hope in the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and anxiety among early adolescents. The sample of the study consisted of 639 early adolescents (354 female/285 male; Meanage = 12.8, SDage = .65, range: 11-14). In line with this purpose, the cross-sectional model was conducted. The findings of the study showed that there were significant correlations among maladaptive perfectionism, hope, and anxiety. Moreover, the findings found that hope moderated the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and anxiety. More specifically, the findings suggested that among early adolescents with lower hope, the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and anxiety was stronger than those with higher hope.

Conry-Murray, Clare; McKechnie, Megan; Olivieri Pagan, Nicole

doi: 10.1080/00221325.2020.1749021pmid: 32295499

AbstractParticipants with ADHD (n = 45) and participants without ADHD (n = 130, total n = 175) judged hypothetical moral and conventional rule violations that varied the impulsivity of the act, the ADHD diagnosis, and the gender of the actor in order to examine (1) social reasoning about impulsiveness and (2) whether participants infer impulsiveness from the characteristics of the actor, including gender and ADHD-status. Moral violations were judged more negatively than conventional violations, even when they were impulsive. The characteristics of the actor influenced judgments in that participants judged boys’ behavior as more acceptable, as having less control, and as deserving of less punishment compared to girls. In addition, actors who were described as having ADHD were judged overall more positively. Participants with ADHD judged that all actors should receive similar punishment, regardless of the actor’s ADHD diagnosis, while participants without ADHD judged actors with ADHD should receive less punishment than those without.