Self-Reported Moral Emotions and Physical and Relational Aggression in Early Childhood: A Social Domain Approach

This study examined discrepancies between 4- and 7-year-olds’ (n = 135; M_age = 5.65) self-reported affect following hypothetical moral versus social-conventional transgressions and their associations with teacher-rated physical and relational aggression concurrently and 9-months later. Negative emotion ratings in response to prototypical moral transgressions were not associated with children's aggression. When transgressions were described as no longer prohibited by rules and authority figures, children reporting more negative affect in response to moral as compared to conventional violations were less physically aggressive at Wave 1 and showed relative and mean-level declines in physical aggression over time. Relational aggression was not associated with self-reported emotions. Findings indicate the importance of distinguishing between types of transgressions and forms of aggression in studying moral emotions.     

Comparison of learning disabled and general education children on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities

This study examined the diagnostic value of the MSCA in discriminating between learning disabled and general education children. The data were analyzed by several methods, including mean score comparisons, profile analysis, and discriminant analysis. The results indicated that learning disabled children performed differently—1 to 1 1/2 SDs lower—than general education children on the MSCA GCI and on all five major scale indexes. Some consistent differences between the two groups also were revealed at the subtest level. However, in examining the individual MSCA scale index profiles, it was found that a similar amount of scatter was present in the profiles of learning disabled and general education children. Furthermore, no specific pattern of scale indexes could be determined as typical for learning disabled children. These results are seen as not lending the necessary support to the use of MSCA profile as a diagnostic tool in identifying learning disabled children. The present findings are discussed in detail, and several rather consistent trends of performance on the MSCA are identified for learning disabled children.     

The BASES expert statement on emotion regulation in sport

Emotions experienced before and during sports competition have been found to influence sports performance. Emotion regulation is defined as the automatic or deliberate use of strategies to initiate, maintain, modify or display emotions (Gross & Thompson, 2007) and is proposed to occur when a discrepancy exists between current and desired emotions. Two distinct motivations to regulate emotion - hedonic and instrumental (in short, for pleasure or for purpose) - have been proposed (Tamir, 2009). The instrumental approach might provide a more fruitful area of investigation for sports researchers as some athletes hold beliefs that supposedly pleasant emotions such as happiness and calmness associate with poor performance and supposedly unpleasant emotions such as anxiety and anger associate with good performance (Hanin, 2010). Athletes are more likely to try to regulate an emotion if they believe that doing so will facilitate performance. Strategies that encourage re-appraisal of factors that trigger emotions are proposed to be preferable. In this British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (BASES) expert statement, a summary of the key theoretical issues are offered leading to evidence-based recommendations for practitioners and researchers.     

Internet Approach versus Lecture and Lab‐Based Approach for Teaching an Introductory Statistical Methods Course: Students’ Opinions

The use of the Internet as a teaching tool continues to grow in popularity at colleges and universities. We consider, from the students’ perspective, the use of an Internet approach compared to a lecture and lab‐based approach for teaching an introductory course in statistical methods. We conducted a survey of introductory statistics students. Contradictory to what was hypothesized by the authors, they favoured keeping the lecture and lab‐based approach for teaching the class.