Child psychology

Recent success of mindfulness-based interventions in adult and clinical populations, as well as in classroom settings, has spurred the need for a more thorough understanding of mindfulness as a trait that can affect early development of self-regulatory characteristics. The current study used previously collected data on 4th and 5th graders to explore the relationships between trait mindfulness, self-regulation, and stress reactivity, measured using cortisol levels. Self-regulation was measured using effortful control (attention, inhibitory control, and activation control), conscientiousness, agreeableness, negative emotion regulation, and openness to experience. Cortisol findings were significant for negative emotion regulation. Results revealed several significant positive associations between trait mindfulness and several self-regulatory characteristics among people who did and did not respond to a stressor. Further research is necessary to tease apart the unique contribution of individual self-regulatory characteristics, including trait mindfulness, on stress reactivity.

Jealousy results from the fear of loss of an important relationship partner or his/her
exclusive attention (Neu, 1980; Tov-Ruach, 1980). Infants are dependant on their
caregivers for basic needs and emotional support. Therefore, if an infant perceives that a
rival threatens the parent-child dyad relationship, it is possible that the infant will respond
in a jealous manner just as adults do when their important relationships are threatened .
Although infants have limited emotional understanding, Palmer and Palmer (2002)
suggest that jealousy evolved out of other resource-protecting drives. Because parental
care is a valuable resource, supporting survival, infants may have at least precursory
jealousy capabilities. Research on infant jealousy is minimal however, Hart and
Carrington (2002) characterized approach responses to the loss of maternal attention to a
life-like doll as jealousy. The purpose ofthe current repeated-measures research design is
to provide a conceptual replication of previous infant jealousy research. Whether infant jealousy responses are moderated by individuals approach or withdrawal tendencies, is
still to be determined and is another focus of the current research. Temperamental
characteristics may influence emotional responses and asymmetrical frontal brain activity
is associated with individual differences in emotional responding (see Coan & Allen,
2004 for a review). Therefore baseline electroencephalography (EEG) is collected in the
current research followed by subjecting 15 infants (mean age = 12.87 months) to two
maternal ignoring conditions, one involving the mother attending to a social object (lifelike
doll) and a control condition in which the mother attends to a non-social object
(book). Results show that infants respond differentially to the two conditions with
increased approach behaviors, arousal, and negative affect in the doll condition. The
infants' responses in the social-object condition are identified as jealousy, suggesting that
infants are capable of at least some complex emotional experiences.
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Deontic reasoning is a domain of reasoning concerning permissions, obligations,
and prohibitions often utilizing conditional logic (Wason, 1968). Correct identification of
rule violations is bolstered by the addition of a social valence to the rule for both adults
(Tooby & Cosmides, 1992) and children (Harris & Nunez, 1996). This “deontic
advantage” for violation-detection is taken as evidence for evolved social-cognitive
mechanisms for reasoning about cheaters in the context of social contracts (Fiddick,
2004), and the early development of this advantage supports an evolutionary account of
such abilities (Cummins, 2013). The current research hypothesized that differential
attention to rule elements underlies the early emergence of the deontic advantage.
Accuracy to a change-detection paradigm was used to assess implicit attention to
various rule elements after children were told 4 different rules (2 social contracts, 2
epistemic statements). Thirteen 3-year-olds, twenty 4-year-olds, and sixteen 5-year-olds completed the experiment. Each participant completed 64 change-detection trials embedded within a scene depicting adherence to or violation of the rule. Results indicate that 4 and 5 year-olds consistently attend to the most relevant rule information for making decisions regarding violation (F(6, 124)=3.86, p<.01, ηp 2 = .144) and that they use observed compliance/non-compliance with the rule to further direct attention (F(6, 138)=3.27, p<.01, ηp 2 = .125). Furthermore, accuracy of change-detection to scenes of rule violation increases from ages 4 to 5, but not 3 to 4. However, a novel finding emerged suggesting that children use the absence of benefit to direct attention, suggesting possible “being-cheated” detection, rather than cheater-detection (F(9, 345) = 21.855, p<.001, ηp 2 = .322). This work is the first to investigate a deontic effect on attentional processes and opens a new avenue of inquiry to understanding the internal and external variables contributing to the development of deontic reasoning. Follow up studies are currently underway to clarify how children use these environmental cues and in/out group membership to direct attention to rule violations.

Using Dodge's (1986) model of social information processing, evaluations of alternative responses to provocations were examined in 48 third through sixth graders on three dimensions: global evaluations, expected outcomes, and perceived self-efficacy. Several hypotheses were generated for each dimension in relation to four competent and incompetent response types. To test the hypotheses, children were first classified as to their victim status and aggression status, and were then given a series of short provocation scenarios and questions designed to measure their evaluations of specified response alternatives. The results provided some support for the proposition that victim children may evaluate certain responses differently from nonvictims. It was suggested that future research may reveal further victim-nonvictim differences by use of more personalized and affectively intense provocation situations.

This research was designed to test the hypothesis that, compared to nonaggressive children and girls, aggressive children and boys would assign more value to the beneficial outcomes of aggression and less value to the detrimental outcomes of aggression. A secondary goal of the research was to orthogonally examine the effects of subject sex and target sex on children's cognitions about the outcomes of aggression, as these two factors have been confounded in previous studies by asking children to report cognitions about aggressing against a same-sex target. Eighty-eight subjects were selected from the third through sixth grades to represent equal numbers of aggressive and nonaggressive boys and girls. The valuation questionnaire to which children responded consisted of six domains of consequences presented in vignettes in which the child is asked to imagine that s/he has been provoked by a classmate and is thinking about aggressing against that peer. The outcome domains were derived from social learning theory and included tangible rewards, status concerns, retaliation concerns, victim suffering, peer disapproval, and negative self-evaluation. Results confirmed the hypotheses that, compared to nonaggressive children and girls, aggressive children and boys cared more about the beneficial status gains of aggression and less about retaliation, victim suffering, peer disapproval, and negative self-evaluations. In addition, subject sex effects were not diminished by the orthogonal manipulation of target sex, although male targets did elicit greater concerns about retaliation and tangible rewards. A subject sex by target sex interaction suggested, however, that concerns about aggressive outcomes were more pronounced with same-sex targets, especially for boys. Finally, a second, shorter questionnaire explored possible relationships between outcome valuations and expectations by asking children to rate both the importance and likelihood of each of the six domains of consequences in four additional vignettes. Results indicated some differences among aggressive and nonaggressive boys and girls in the extent to which the ratings were correlated, suggesting that a more complete understanding of the social cognitive mediators of aggression in children might be gained from independent assessment of both outcome valuations and expectations.