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While considerable research has examined gender development in middle childhood, little longitudinal work has been conducted at this time to indicate whether, for example, youth who show more or less gender conformity at one point continue to do so later. The present study investigated the consistency of gender identity and preferences for gender-stereotypical toys, clothing, and same-gender peer preferences among groups of transgender youth (

ADHD is the most common neurodevelopmental disorder presenting to child and adolescent mental health, paediatric, and primary care services. Timely and effective interventions to address core ADHD symptoms and co-occurring problems are a high priority for healthcare and society more widely. While much research has reported on the benefits and adverse effects of different interventions for ADHD, these individual research reports and the reviews, meta-analyses and guidelines summarizing their findings are sometimes inconsistent and difficult to interpret. We have summarized the current evidence and identified several methodological issues and gaps in the current evidence that we believe are important for clinicians to consider when evaluating the evidence and making treatment decisions. These include understanding potential impact of bias such as inadequate blinding and selection bias on study outcomes; the relative lack of high-quality data comparing different treatments and assessing long-term effectiveness, adverse effects and safety for both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments; and the problems associated with observational studies, including those based on large national registries and comparing treatments with each other. We highlight key similarities across current international clinical guidelines and discuss the reasons for divergence where these occur. We discuss the integration of these different perspective into a framework for person/family-centered evidence-based practice approach to care that aims to achieve optimal outcomes that prioritize individual strengths and impairments, as well as the personal treatment targets of children and their families. Finally, we consider how access to care for this common and impairing disorder can be improved in different healthcare systems., European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 32 (8), ISSN:1435-165X, ISSN:1018-8827

The distal relationship between risk factors in childhood and subsequent dating violence in late adolescence has not often been explored using longitudinal data. This study aims to shed light on the problem of dating violence by examining children’s backgrounds at age 7 and the link to the future involvement in dating violence at age 17 using the first and seventh waves of the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso, n = 644). The sample consists of 644 multiethnic adolescents (57.14% female, M = 17.47, SD = 0.37), mainly Swiss-born (90%), though more than half of their parents (60%) were born in another country. A latent class analysis was applied to identify three different profiles (a) zero (or minimal) involvement in teen dating violence, (b) perpetrators/victims of controlling behaviors, and (c) perpetrators/victims of controlling behaviors and of physical violence. Participants who were corporally punished and/or victims of bullying at age 7 were significantly more likely to belong to the controlling and physical violence profile than children in the non-violent class. These results suggest a certain chronicity of the effects of violent experiences in early childhood on the patterns of romantic relationships at 17 years old.

Previous research has suggested that bullying victimization is associated with higher suicidal risk among young people; however, the mechanisms underlying this relation have not been well examined. The current study aimed to illuminate the developmental links between bullying victimization and suicidal ideation by examining the mediating roles of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and substance use. The study sample consisted of n = 1465 participants (51.7% male) from the normative z-proso study. Using random intercept cross-lagged panel models and three waves of longitudinal data (ages 15, 17, and 20), the hypothesized mediation effects at the within-person level were tested while partialling out between-person confounds. The results suggested that, at the within-person level, bullying victimization did not predict subsequent suicidal ideation via depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, or substance use. However, age 15 bullying victimization predicted within-person increases in age 17 depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. In addition, depressive symptoms at age 15 and tobacco and cannabis use at age 17 were associated with within-person increases in bullying victimization at ages 17 and 20, respectively. The results also indicated that cannabis use and suicidal ideation were positively and reciprocally related over time. Future studies collecting data at multiple timescales are needed to understand proximal and longer-term mechanisms underlying the relation between bullying victimization and suicidality.

Individuals all across the world experienced significant disruptions in their personal and family life with the outbreak of the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The current study investigated dynamic associations between stress and relationship functioning over time in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Perceived stress, relationship satisfaction, and relationship quality (appreciation, intimacy, conflict) were reported by 1483 young to middle-aged participants who were in a romantic relationship and lived with their partner in 2018/2019 and in May–July 2020 (a few months after the onset of COVID-19). Data were analyzed using bivariate latent change score models. Relationship functioning (satisfaction, appreciation, intimacy) showed small decreases from before to during the pandemic. Contrary to expectations, levels of perceived stress also decreased on average from before to during the pandemic. Changes in relationship functioning were correlated with changes in stress over time, so that participants with greater decreases in relationship satisfaction, appreciation, and intimacy and greater increases in conflict from before to during the pandemic showed lesser decreases/greater increases in stress. Higher pre-pandemic relationship satisfaction was associated with greater decreases/lesser increases in stress from before to during the pandemic. Pre-pandemic levels of other measures of relationship functioning or stress were not associated with changes in outcomes over time. Results add to the literature demonstrating that stress is closely intertwined with the functioning of intimate relationships. Furthermore, they suggest that greater relationship satisfaction may serve as a protective factor for stressful life events.

Using a multimethod, multiinformant longitudinal design, we examined associations between specific forms of positive and negative emotional reactivity at age 5, children’s effortful control (EC), emotion regulation, and social skills at age 7, and adolescent functioning across psychological, academic, and physical health domains at ages 15/16 (N = 383). We examined how distinct components of childhood emotional reactivity directly and indirectly predict domain-specific forms of adolescent adjustment, thereby identifying developmental pathways between specific types of emotional reactivity and adjustment above and beyond the propensity to express other forms of emotional reactivity. Age 5 high-intensity positivity was associated with lower age 7 EC and more adolescent risk-taking; age 5 low-intensity positivity was associated with better age 7 EC and adolescent cardiovascular health, providing evidence for the heterogeneity of positive emotional reactivity. Indirect effects indicated that children’s age 7 social skills partially explain several associations between age 5 fear and anger reactivity and adolescent adjustment. Moreover, age 5 anger reactivity, low-, and high-intensity positivity were associated with adolescent adjustment via age 7 EC. The findings from this interdisciplinary, long-term longitudinal study have significant implications for prevention and intervention work aiming to understand the role of emotional reactivity in the etiology of adjustment and psychopathology.

Constructions marking information structure in French have been widely documented within the constructionist framework. C’est ‘it is’ clefts have been demonstrated to express the focus of the sentence. Nevertheless, it remains unclear how children are able to acquire clefts, and how they develop information structure categories. The aim of this study is to investigate the acquisition of clefts in French through the usage-based framework, to understand (i) whether IS categories emerge gradually like other linguistic categories, and (ii) how children build IS categories. For this, I analysed 256 c’est-clefts produced by three children between age 2 and 3. I show that most early clefts are produced by children with the chunk c’est moi associated with the concrete function of requesting to perform an action themselves. This chunk then becomes a frame with slot, extending the function to other human referents and discourse participants with the function of requesting adults to perform an action. Another large portion of early clefts seems to belong to a frame with slot c’est X whose function is to identify the agent who carried out an action. These findings suggest that the information structure category of focus emerges gradually.

The study of romantic partners’ experiences of stress and coping has exploded with nearly 11,000 empirical studies on this topic within the past two decades alone. Despite its prevalence, researchers, clinicians, and policy makers alike are questioning how inclusive is our current knowledge base on partners’ stress and coping? The purpose of this review is to examine literature on this topic from the past two decades to offer perspectives on whose vantage point has the research been conducted and what types of questions have been valued and for whom? To answer these questions, a scoping review was conducted of articles published in the last two decades (2002–2021) that focused on associations of partners’ stress, support, and/or coping with relationship quality and presented research questions on two or more demographic identities. Fifty-six empirical articles met the inclusion criteria. Results were not surprising given the lack of diversity in psychological science; most manuscripts used theories and models that were developed by Western scholars and the research questions focused on general processes independent of peoples’ identities or focused on a singular aspect of identity. Limitations and future directions of this review are presented, specifically as they pertain to the need for a more critical analysis of the types of stressors people may experience and how those with diverse identities, particularly multiple minoritized identities, may experience and cope with such stressors in the context of their relationship.

To detect differential item functioning (DIF), Rasch trees search for optimal splitpoints in covariates and identify subgroups of respondents in a data-driven way. To determine whether and in which covariate a split should be performed, Rasch trees use statistical significance tests. Consequently, Rasch trees are more likely to label small DIF effects as significant in larger samples. This leads to larger trees, which split the sample into more subgroups. What would be more desirable is an approach that is driven more by effect size rather than sample size. In order to achieve this, we suggest to implement an additional stopping criterion: the popular Educational Testing Service (ETS) classification scheme based on the Mantel–Haenszel odds ratio. This criterion helps us to evaluate whether a split in a Rasch tree is based on a substantial or an ignorable difference in item parameters, and it allows the Rasch tree to stop growing when DIF between the identified subgroups is small. Furthermore, it supports identifying DIF items and quantifying DIF effect sizes in each split. Based on simulation results, we conclude that the Mantel–Haenszel effect size further reduces unnecessary splits in Rasch trees under the null hypothesis, or when the sample size is large but DIF effects are negligible. To make the stopping criterion easy-to-use for applied researchers, we have implemented the procedure in the statistical software R. Finally, we discuss how DIF effects between different nodes in a Rasch tree can be interpreted and emphasize the importance of purification strategies for the Mantel–Haenszel procedure on tree stopping and DIF item classification.

This simulation study investigated to what extent departures from construct similarity as well as differences in the difficulty and targeting of scales impact the score transformation when scales are equated by means of concurrent calibration using the partial credit model with a common person design. Practical implications of the simulation results are discussed with a focus on scale equating in health-related research settings. The study simulated data for two scales, varying the number of items and the sample sizes. The factor correlation between scales was used to operationalize construct similarity. Targeting of the scales was operationalized through increasing departure from equal difficulty and by varying the dispersion of the item and person parameters in each scale. The results show that low similarity between scales goes along with lower transformation precision. In cases with equal levels of similarity, precision improves in settings where the range of the item parameters is encompassing the person parameters range. With decreasing similarity, score transformation precision benefits more from good targeting. Difficulty shifts up to two logits somewhat increased the estimation bias but without affecting the transformation precision. The observed robustness against difficulty shifts supports the advantage of applying a true-score equating methods over identity equating, which was used as a naive baseline method for comparison. Finally, larger sample size did not improve the transformation precision in this study, longer scales improved only marginally the quality of the equating. The insights from the simulation study are used in a real-data example.

The objective of this study is to understand the long-term mental sequelae for families over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic by longitudinally investigating the well-being of children with and without complex medical histories and their parents. Well-being of 200 children (between 7 and 18 years of age; 73 typically developing, 46 born very preterm, 73 with complex congenital heart disease) and 175 of their parents was assessed prior to and during the first (April–May 2020), second (October–November 2020), third (April–May 2021), and fourth wave (October–November 2021) of the pandemic with standardized questionnaires. Linear mixed models were used to investigate longitudinal changes in child and parent well-being compared to before the pandemic. Social and COVID-19-specific determinants were investigated as predictors of impaired well-being. To illustrate clinical relevance, the proportion of children and parents scoring > 1 SD below normative mean/median was reported. Compared to before the pandemic, child proxy-reported well-being was lower during the first but not the second, third, and fourth waves. Child self-reported well-being was not lower during the pandemic compared to before. Parent well-being dropped during the first wave and remained low throughout the subsequent waves. Proxy-reported child and self-reported parent well-being was lower in families with sparse social support and poor family functioning. Parents of typically developing children reported lower well-being than parents of children born very preterm or with a complex congenital heart disease. In November 2021, 20% of children (both self- and proxy-report) and 24% of parents scored below the normal range compared to 11% (child self-report), 10% (child proxy-report), and 16% (parent self-report), respectively, before the pandemic. The pandemic continues to impact the well-being of parents of school-aged children with and without complex medical histories more than 1 year after its outbreak. Children’s well-being was specifically affected during the first wave of the pandemic and has recovered thereafter. Families with sparse social support and poor family functioning are particularly at risk for compromised well-being and support should be provided to them.

In a national sample of 5087 Spaniards, we examine the prevalence of 10 specific misperceptions over five separate science and health domains (climate change, 5G technology, genetically modified foods, vaccines, and homeopathy). We find that misperceptions about genetically modified foods and general health risks of 5G technology are particularly widespread. While we find that partisan affiliation is not strongly associated with any of the misperceptions aside from climate change, we find that two distinct dimensions of an anti-elite worldview—anti-expert and conspiratorial mindsets—are better overall predictors of having science and health misperceptions in the Spanish context. These findings help extend our understanding of polarization around science beyond the most common contexts (e.g. the United States) and support recent work suggesting anti-elite sentiments are among the most important predictors of factual misperceptions.

The potential benefits and mechanistic effects of working memory training (WMT) in children are the subject of much research and debate. We show that after five weeks of school-based, adaptive WMT 6-9 year-old primary school children had greater activity in prefrontal and striatal brain regions, higher task accuracy, and reduced intra-individual variability in response times compared to controls. Using a sequential sampling decision model, we demonstrate that this reduction in intra-individual variability can be explained by changes to the evidence accumulation rates and thresholds. Critically, intra-individual variability is useful in quantifying the immediate impact of cognitive training interventions, being a better predictor of academic skills and well-being 6-12 months after the end of training than task accuracy. Taken together, our results suggest that attention control is the initial mechanism that leads to the long-run benefits from adaptive WMT. Selective and sustained attention abilities may serve as a scaffold for subsequent changes in higher cognitive processes, academic skills, and general well-being. Furthermore, these results highlight that the selection of outcome measures and the timing of the assessments play a crucial role in detecting training efficacy. Thus, evaluating intra-individual variability, during or directly after training could allow for the early tailoring of training interventions in terms of duration or content to maximise their impact.

Objective: Large-scale epidemiological research often uses self-reports to determine the prevalence of illicit substance use. Self-reports may suffer from inaccurate reporting but can be verified with objective measures. This study examined the following: the prevalence of illicit and non-medical substance use with self-reports and hair toxicology, the convergence of self-reported and objectively quantified substance use, and the correlates of under- and overreporting. Method: The data came from a large urban cohort study of young adults (n = 1,002, mean age = 20.6 years, 50% female). The participants provided 3 cm of hair (covering the previous 3 months) and reported their illicit and non-medical substance use and their sociodemographic, psychological, and behavioral characteristics. Hair toxicology analyses targeted cannabinoids, ketamine, opiates/opioids, stimulants including 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, and relevant metabolites. Results: Self-reports underestimated the prevalence of most substances by 30% to 60% compared to hair tests. The average detection ratio (hair test/self-report) was 1.50. Hair tests were typically more sensitive than self-reports. Underreporting was associated with a low level of that substance in hair. Self-reported delinquency and psychopathology were correlated with an increased likelihood of concordant positive self-reports and hair tests compared to underreporting. Overreporting was associated with infrequent self-reported use. Conclusion: Our study suggests that self-reports underestimate young adults’ exposure to illicit substances and non-medical use of prescription drugs. Consequently, estimates of associations between substance use and risk factors or outcomes are likely biased. Combining self-reports with hair tests may be most beneficial in study samples with occasional substance use. Researchers can use specific factors (eg, detection ratios) to adjust prevalence estimates and correlations based on self-reports., Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 62 (7), ISSN:0890-8567

Assessing our confidence in the choices we make is important to making adaptive decisions, and it is thus no surprise that we excel in this ability. However, standard models of decision-making, such as the drift-diffusion model (DDM), treat confidence assessment as a post hoc or parallel process that does not directly influence the choice, which depends only on accumulated evidence. Here, we pursue the alternative hypothesis that what is monitored during a decision is an evolving sense of confidence (that the to-be-selected option is the best) rather than raw evidence. Monitoring confidence has the appealing consequence that the decision threshold corresponds to a desired level of confidence for the choice, and that confidence improvements can be traded off against the resources required to secure them. We show that most previous findings on perceptual and value-based decisions traditionally interpreted from an evidence-accumulation perspective can be explained more parsimoniously from our novel confidence-driven perspective. Furthermore, we show that our novel confidence-driven DDM (cDDM) naturally generalizes to decisions involving any number of alternative options - which is notoriously not the case with traditional DDM or related models. Finally, we discuss future empirical evidence that could be useful in adjudicating between these alternatives., Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, ISSN:1531-5320, ISSN:1069-9384

Data on implementation of school-based interventions adds highly valuable information to corresponding evaluation studies. Measuring implementation outcomes, such as fidelity or acceptability, prov...

Un erratum d'aquest article s'ha publicat a Journal of Child Language, 2023;50(2):494. DOI: 10.1017/S0305000921000933 i també està disponible a http://hdl.handle.net/10230/56217 Over recent decades much research has analyzed the relevance of 9- to 20- month-old infants’ early imitation skills (object- and language-based imitation) for language development. Yet there have been few systematic comparisons of the joint relevance of these imitative behaviors later on in development. This correlational study investigated whether multimodal imitation (gestural, prosodic, and lexical components) and object-based imitation are related to narratives and sociopragmatics in preschoolers. Thirty-one typically developing 3- to 4-year-old children performed four tasks to assess multimodal imitation, object-based imitation, narrative abilities, and sociopragmatic abilities. Results revealed that both narrative and sociopragmatic skills were significantly related to multimodal imitation, but not to object-based imitation, indicating that preschoolers’ ability to imitate socially relevant multimodal cues is strongly related to language and sociocommunicative skills. Therefore, this evidence supports a broader conceptualization of imitation behaviors in the field of language development that systematically integrates prosodic, gestural, and verbal linguistic patterns. This study benefited from funding awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) (PGC2018-097007-B-100 “Multimodal Language Learning (MLL): Prosodic and Gestural Integration in Pragmatic and Phonological Development”) and by the Generalitat de Catalunya (2017 SGR_971) to the Prosodic Studies Group. Iris Hübscher was supported by a postdoctoral research fellowship by the URPP Language and Space (University of Zurich) during the preparation of this work. Mariia Pronina also acknowledges an FI grant from the Generalitat de Catalunya (ref. 2019FI_B1 00120).

Visual material plays a central role in lectures to illustrate the spoken word or to show objects of knowledge. Historically, the question arises as to when which methods were used and what their functions were and still are today. In a further diagrammatic perspective on the setting of the lecture, however, other aspects of pictoriality must be included: For example, there is a tradition of storing, commenting on, processing and editing lectures by the audience, which leads, for example, to transcripts that transform the lecture medially. Yet these techniques are embedded in an ensemble of diagrammatic practices of lecture organisation, which can be understood as „instructions for use“ for both lecturers and listeners. From a diagrammatic perspective, it becomes clear that the diagrammatic orders applied in and by lectures are not simply ornaments of the lecture, but have a knowledge-constitutive effect.

Previous research has identified harsh parenting practices, such as corporal punishment, as a predictor of adolescent behaviour problems such as increased aggression. However, not all children who experience childhood corporal punishment develop increased aggression, making the illumination of factors moderating this link an important question for informing prevention. In the current study, an autoregressive cross-lagged panel model was used to examine teacher-child relationships as both a direct and interactive protective factor (via weakening the effects of corporal punishment exposure) in adolescent aggression. Data was used from the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso). Self-reported data was collected at three time points: age 11 (n = 1144, 49% female) age 13 (n = 1366, 49% female) and age 15 (n = 1447, 48% female). Results suggested having a positive teacher-child relationship was a direct protective factor against concurrent aggression. However, there was not consistent evidence for a moderating effect of teacher-child relationships. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Comparing solution methods fosters strategy flexibility in equation solving. Productive classroom discourse such as Accountable Talk (AT) orchestrated by teachers can improve students’ justifications during classroom discussions and achievement. Do students’ subject matter justifications during classroom discourse mediate the effect of teachers’ professional development (PD) programs focused on comparing and AT on students’ mathematics achievement? We investigated whether two PD programs (comparing or comparing+AT) compared to a control group increased the number of students justifications, and whether this affected mathematics achievement (strategy flexibility, procedural knowledge, and conceptual knowledge). The study (739 9th and 10th grade students in 39 classes) had an experimental pre-post control group design. Both PD programs significantly increased students justifications compared to the control group. The results of our multilevel path models showed significant small mediation effects in the comparing+AT group on procedural and conceptual knowledge. No mediation effects were found in the comparing group.

For more than three decades, cognitive load theory has been addressing learning from a cognitive perspective. Based on this instructional theory, design recommendations and principles have been derived to manage the load on working memory while learning. The increasing attention paid to cognitive load theory in educational science quickly culminated in the need to measure its types of cognitive load — intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load which additively contribute to the overall load. In this meta-analysis, four frequently used cognitive load questionnaires were examined concerning their reliability (internal consistency) and validity (construct validity and criterion validity). Results revealed that the internal consistency of the subjective cognitive load questionnaires can be considered satisfactory across all four questionnaires. Moreover, moderator analyses showed that reliability estimates of the cognitive load questionnaires did not differ between educational settings, domains of the instructional materials, presentation modes, or number of scale points. Correlations among the cognitive load types partially contradict theory-based assumptions, whereas correlations with learning-related variables support assumptions derived from cognitive load theory. In particular, results seem to support the three-factor model consisting of intrinsic cognitive load, extraneous cognitive load, and germane cognitive load. Results are discussed in relation to current trends in cognitive load theory and recommendations for the future use of cognitive load questionnaires in experimental research are suggested.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) patients are at risk for alterations in the cerebral white matter microstructure (WMM) throughout development. It is unclear whether the extent of WMM alterations changes with age, especially during adolescence when the WMM undergoes rapid maturation. We investigated differences in WMM between patients with CHD and healthy controls from childhood until early adulthood in a pooled sample of children, adolescents, and young adults. The association between WMM and EF was assessed. Patients with CHD (

Working memory is frequently impaired in children with complex congenital heart disease (CHD), but little is known about the functional neuronal correlates. Sleep slow wave activity (SWA; 1-4.5 Hz EEG power) has previously been shown to reliably map neurofunctional networks of cognitive abilities in children with and without neurodevelopmental impairments. This study investigated whether functional networks of working memory abilities are altered in children with complex CHD using EEG recordings during sleep. Twenty-one children with complex CHD (aged 10.9 [SD: 0.3] years) and 17 typically-developing peers (10.5 [0.7] years) completed different working memory tasks and an overnight high-density sleep EEG recording (128 electrodes). The combined working memory score tended to be lower in children with complex CHD (CHD group: -0.44 [1.12], typically-developing group: 0.55 [1.24]

Many teachers report high levels of occupational stress. Teachers’ basic need satisfaction is essential for teachers’ well-being at work. Social support from school principals is assumed to play an important role for teachers’ basic need satisfaction. However, the underlying mechanisms of the relationship between social support from school principals and teachers’ basic need satisfaction are mostly unknown. Previous research suggests that job demands and job resources may play an important mediating role. Therefore, we examine whether teachers’ perceived job demands and job resources serve as mediators between social support from the school principal and teachers’ basic need satisfaction. Using longitudinal data of N = 1071 teachers over the course of one school year, we applied structural equation modelling to test the hypothesised mediation model. Results showed that the relationship between social support from the school principal and teachers’ basic need satisfaction was mediated by teachers’ perceived job demands and job resources. Particularly, the job demand ‘unclear organisational conditions’ and job resource ‘social support from colleagues’ indicated the strongest effects on teachers’ basic need satisfaction. These findings emphasise the responsibility of school principals to provide social support to their teachers and create a well-structured and supportive workplace. In doing so, school principals contribute to a work environment in which teachers can thrive., +repphzhbib2022F

Intelligence, as well as working memory and attention, affect the acquisition of mathematical competencies. This paper aimed to examine the influence of working memory and attention when taking different mathematical skills into account as a function of children’s intellectual ability. Overall, intelligence, working memory, attention and numerical skills were assessed twice in 1868 German pre-school children (t1, t2) and again at 2nd grade (t3). We defined three intellectual ability groups based on the results of intellectual assessment at t1 and t2. Group comparisons revealed significant differences between the three intellectual ability groups. Over time, children with low intellectual ability showed the lowest achievement in domain-general and numerical and mathematical skills compared to children of average intellectual ability. The highest achievement on the aforementioned variables was found for children of high intellectual ability. Additionally, path modelling revealed that, depending on the intellectual ability, different models of varying complexity could be generated. These models differed with regard to the relevance of the predictors (t2) and the future mathematical skills (t3). Causes and conclusions of these findings are discussed., Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe; 786

Funder: Jacobs Foundation; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003986, Funder: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (CH), Developmental trajectories of common mental health issues such as ADHD symptoms, internalising problems, and externalising problems can often be usefully summarised in terms of a small number of 'developmental subtypes' (e.g., 'childhood onset', 'adolescent onset') that may differ in their profiles or levels of clinically meaningful variables such as etiological risk factors. However, given the strong tendency for symptoms in these domains to co-occur, it is important to consider not only developmental subtypes in each domain individually, but also the joint developmental subtypes defined by symptoms trajectories in all three domains together (e.g., 'late onset multimorbid', 'pure internalising', 'early onset multimorbid'). Previous research has illuminated the joint developmental subtypes of ADHD symptoms, internalising problems, and externalising problems that emerge from normative longitudinal data using methods such as group-based trajectory modelling, as well as predictors of membership in these developmental subtypes. However, information on the long-term outcomes of developmental subtype membership is critical to illuminate the likely nature and intensity of support needs required for individuals whose trajectories fit different developmental subtypes. We, therefore, evaluated the relations between developmental subtypes previously derived using group-based trajectory modelling in the z-proso study (n = 1620 with trajectory data at ages 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15) and early adulthood outcomes. Individuals with multimorbid trajectories but not 'pure' internalising problem elevations showed higher levels of social exclusion and delinquency at age 20. These associations held irrespective of the specific developmental course of symptoms (e.g., early versus late onset versus remitting). There was also some evidence that intimate partner violence acts as a form of heterotypic continuity for earlier externalising problems. Results underline the need for early intervention to address the pathways that lead to social exclusion and delinquency among young people with multiple co-occurring mental health issues.

Prior research has found evidence for a positive effect of student-teacher bonds on children’s behavior. However, little research has investigated these relations following a transactional model of child development. This study investigated the bidirectional associations between student-teacher relationships and oppositional behaviors towards teachers using the ‘Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood’ (n = 1527; median ages 11, 13 and 15; 49% female). Results of a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model suggested that, among boys, positive student-teacher bonds at age 13 were associated with fewer teacher-reported oppositional behaviors two years later. The results indicated that negative interactions with teachers may be part of vicious cycles of poor relationships and increased levels of oppositional behavior, particularly for boys in late adolescence.

The research was supported by a Swiss National Science Foundation grant (PZ00P1_179912, PI Markus Kneer). Data and materials are available on the Open Science Framework at: osf.io/dpsq9/?view_only=54a7c150e03d4d78819b2954cee3a240., At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not stem from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels--but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favored utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas—and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarization surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how hypothetical scenarios in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) should strive for more experiential and psychological realism, otherwise their results might not generalize to real-world moral dilemmas., Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) European Commission PZ00P1_179912

The companions in crime hypothesis suggests that co-offending moderates the link between peer delinquency and adolescent delinquency. However, this hypothesis has rarely been investigated longitudinally. Hence, this study investigated the co-development of friends’ delinquency and adolescents’ delinquency, as well as the co-development of friends’ delinquency and short-term mindsets (impulsivity and lack of school future orientation). Whether this co-development is stronger when adolescents engage in co-offending was also investigated. Three data waves with two year lags from an ethnically-diverse adolescent sample (at wave 1: N = 1365; 48.6% female; Mage = 13.67; age range = 12.33–15.09 years) in Switzerland were used. The results from parallel process latent growth modeling showed that the co-development between friends’ delinquency and adolescents’ delinquency was stronger when adolescents engaged in co-offending. Thus co-offending likely provides direct access to a setting in which adolescents continue to model the delinquency they learned with their peers.

Openness to experience has become of special interest in the field of creativity research. Theoretical frameworks consider openness as one important individual feature that contributes to creative outcomes. Empirical results support this assumption, showing openness to be positively related to various creativity measures. However, studies on the relationship between creative outcomes and openness mainly focus on adults and differ in their operationalization of creativity. The present study analyzes the relationship between openness and different creativity measures in late childhood using a holistic measure to assess creative potential as well as divergent thinking tasks scored for ideational fluency and flexibility. Accounting for interdependencies over the 5th school year, the results show that (a) comparable with previous findings, there are low cross-sectional correlations between openness and creativity, and (b) openness and creativity develop independently in the period considered. Only divergent thinking slightly affects openness 1 year later (β = .084, p < .01). The study extends existing research by including childhood development. The results suggest that the relationship between creativity and openness consolidates with age. Implications for creativity research and the educational context are discussed while considering the limitations of the study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Boddez, Van Dessel, and De Houwer in their paper "Learned helplessness and its relevance for psychological suffering: A new perspective illustrated with attachment problems, burn-out, and fatigue complaints" advance the idea that failing to reach a goal of personal importance unleashes detrimental processes (i.e. learned helplessness) which spill over to other (similar) goals, in the long run resulting in passivity and psychological suffering. As the authors conceptualise learned helplessness in motivational terms (lack of reinforcement, dysregulation of goal-directed response) and attach great weight to the concept of goal failure, I will comment on three issues inherent in their line of argument from a motivational perspective, that is, from the perspective of persistence and disengagement in personal goals. More specifically, first, I will address the distinction between motivational and functional helplessness, then elaborate on goal-related failure and its consequences, and finally cover the issue of generalising failure experience due to the similarity of goals.

Accumulating evidence indicates that students' sense of school belonging has a substantial positive effect on educational attainment. At the same time, life course and life span developmental theories suggest that the benefits of a sense of school belonging could be weakened by the channeling effects of education systems that assign students to distinct educational tracks that lead otherwise similar students to quite different educational destinations. The current study analyzed the extent to which the sense of school belonging predicted educational trajectories in a system that partially channels students into distinct tracks. It assessed educational trajectories as they relate to transitions at two critical junctures of the system-the transition from lower- to upper-secondary education, and from upper-secondary to tertiary (university) education. The study used data from a nationally representative panel survey that followed participants from age 15 to 30 (

The COVID-19 pandemic has been influencing people's social life substantially. Everybody, including infants and children needed to adapt to changes in social interactions (e.g., social distancing) and to seeing other people wearing facial masks. In this study, we investigated whether these pandemic-related changes influenced 12- to 15-months-old infants' reactions to observed gaze shifts (i.e., their gaze following). In two eye-tracking tasks, we measured infants' gaze-following behavior during the pandemic (with-COVID-19-experience sample) and compared it to data of infants tested before the pandemic (no-COVID-19-experience sample). Overall, the results indicated no significant differences between the two samples. However, in one sub-task infants in the with-COVID-19-experience sample looked longer at the eyes of a model compared to the no-COVID-19-experience sample. Within the with-COVID-19-experience sample, the amount of mask exposure and the number of contacts without mask were not related to infants' gaze-following behavior. We speculate that even though infants encounter fewer different people during the pandemic and are increasingly exposed to people wearing facial masks, they still also see non-covered faces. These contacts might be sufficient to provide infants with the social input they need to develop social and emotional competencies such as gaze following.

This study tested the "intervention as prevention" hypothesis: that treatment of childhood psychopathology in the community might reduce risk for adult psychopathology.Analyses were based on a prospective, population-based study of 1,420 children followed up to 8 times during childhood (ages 9-16 years; 6,674 observations) about psychiatric status and specialty mental health services use. Participants were followed up 4 times in adulthood (ages 19, 21, 25, and 30 years; 4,556 observations of 1,336 participants) to assess adult psychopathology.Participants with a childhood psychiatric disorder who used childhood specialty mental health services were at similar risk for adult emotional (odds ratio [OR] = 0.7; 95% CI = 0.3-1.4, p = .29) disorders and at higher risk for adult substance disorders (OR = 2.1; 95% CI = 1.1-4.2, p = .03) as compared those with a childhood disorder who did not use services. The risk for substance disorders was driven by children with behavioral disorders (OR = 3.6; 95% CI = 1.6-8.1, p = .002). Sensitivity analyses suggest that an unmeasured confounder would have to have an E value of 3.26 or risk ratio of 1.92 to alter this finding. Higher "dose" of services use (defined at 6+ visits) was not associated with improved outcomes.Community services use may reduce psychopathology within childhood, but they do not necessarily prevent adult psychiatric problems. These findings are consistent with the notion of mental health problems as chronic conditions that often begin in childhood but that may recur in different forms across the lifespan even when treated.

This paper discusses the role of cognitive factors in language change; specifically, it investigates the potential impact of argument ambiguity avoidance on the emergence of one of the most well-studied syntactic alternations in English, viz. the dative alternation (We gave them cake vs We gave cake to them). Linking this development to other major changes in the history of English like the loss of case marking, I propose that morphological as well as semantic-pragmatic ambiguity between prototypical agents (subjects) and prototypical recipients (indirect objects) in ditransitive clauses plausibly gave a processing advantage to patterns with higher cue reliability such as prepositional marking, but also fixed clause-level (SVO) order. The main hypotheses are tested through a quantitative analysis of ditransitives in a corpus of Middle English, which (i) confirms that the spread of the PP-construction is impacted by argument ambiguity and (ii) demonstrates that this change reflects a complex restructuring of disambiguation strategies.

With this case report we support our medical hypothesis that metreleptin treatment ameliorates starvation related emotional, cognitive and behavioral symptomatology of anorexia nervosa (AN) and show for the first time strong effects in a male patient with AN. A 15.9 year old adolescent with severe AN of eight-month duration was treated off-label with metreleptin. Hyperactivity was assessed with accelerometry. Visual analogue scales (VAS), validated self- and clinician rating scales and lab results tracked changes from baseline to end of the 24-day dosing period and a five-month follow-up. Substantial improvements of mood and eating disorder related cognitions and hyperactivity set in after two days of treatment. During dosing, sub-physiological testosterone and TT3 levels normalized; clinically libido reemerged. Weight did not increase substantially during the dosing period. During follow-up target weight was attained; mood did not deteriorate; hyperactivity ceased. The results substantiate the strong effects seen in female cases and underscore the need for a double-blind placebo-controlled trial to confirm the observed strong, multiple and rapid onset beneficial effects of metreleptin in AN. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00787-021-01778-7.

Violent ideations are increasingly recognized as an important psychological predictor for aggressive and violent behavior. However, little is known about the processes that contribute to violent ideations. This paper examines the extent to which polyvictimization triggers violent ideations in late adolescence and early adulthood, while also adjusting for dispositional and situational factors as well as prior violent ideations. Data came from three waves of the Zurich Project on the Social Development from Childhood into Adulthood (z-proso; n = 1465). Full-information maximum likelihood Tobit models were fitted to regress violent ideations experienced at ages 17 and 20 on multiple victimization experiences in the preceding 12 months while controlling for antecedent developmental risk factors and prior violent ideations. The results showed that violent ideations in late adolescence and early adulthood are influenced by violent thoughts, aggressive behavior, violent media consumption, moral neutralization of violence, and internalizing symptoms measured 2 years earlier. Experiences of polyvictimization significantly contributed to an increase in violent ideations both during late adolescence and in early adulthood. The exposure–response relationship between victimization and violent ideations did not significantly differ by sex. The findings are consistent with the notion that violent ideations are triggered by a retaliation-linked psychological mechanism that entails playing out other directed imaginary aggressive scenarios specifically in response to experiencing intentional harm-doing by others.

Childhood cancer and its treatment puts survivors at risk of low working memory capacity. Working memory represents a core cognitive function, which is crucial in daily life and academic tasks. The aim of this functional MRI (fMRI) study was to examine the working memory network of survivors of childhood cancer without central nervous system (CNS) involvement and its relation to cognitive performance. Thirty survivors (aged 7-16 years, ≥ 1 year after cancer treatment) and 30 healthy controls performed a visuospatial working memory task during MRI, including a low- and a high-demand condition. Working memory performance was assessed using standardized tests outside the scanner. When cognitive demands increased, survivors performed worse than controls and showed evidence for slightly atypical working memory-related activation. The survivor group exhibited hyperactivation in the right-hemispheric superior parietal lobe (SPL) in the high- compared to the low-demand working memory condition, while maintaining their performance levels. Hyperactivation in the right SPL coincided with poorer working memory performance outside the scanner in survivors. Even in survivors of childhood cancer without CNS involvement, we find neural markers pointing toward late effects in the cerebral working memory network.AbbreviationsfMRI: Functional magnetic resonance imaging; CNS: Central nervous system; MNI: Montreal Neurological Institute; SES: Socioeconomic status; SPL: Superior parietal lobe.

There is a strong relationship between fluid intelligence and working memory capacity (WMC). Yet, the cognitive mechanisms underlying this relationship remain elusive. The capacity hypothesis states that this relationship is due to limitations in the amount of information that can be stored and held active in working memory. Previous research aimed at testing the capacity hypothesis assumed that it implies stronger relationships of intelligence test performance with WMC for test items with higher capacity demands. The present article addresses this assumption through simulations of three theoretical models implementing the capacity hypothesis while systematically varying different psychometric variables. The results show that almost any relation between the capacity demands of items and their correlation with WMC can be obtained. Therefore, the assumption made by previous studies does not hold: The capacity hypothesis does not imply stronger correlations of WMC and intelligence test items with higher capacity demands. Items varying in capacity demands cannot be used to test the causality of WMC (or any other latent variable) for fluid intelligence.