Callous unemotional traits and the relationship between aggressive parenting practices and conduct problems in Singaporean families

Research into parenting influences on child conduct problems in Asian countries has been limited compared to that conducted in Western countries, especially with regard to interplay between parenting and callous unemotional (CU) traits (e.g., lack of guilt and empathy). This study examined associations between dimensions of aggressive parenting practices (psychological aggression, mild and severe physical aggression), dimensions of child aggression (proactive, reactive), and child CU traits, in Singapore. Participants were children and adolescents with clinic-referred externalizing problems (N = 282; 87.6% boys), aged 7–16 years. Mild and severe parental physical aggression was found to be uniquely associated with children’s proactive aggression, whereas parental psychological aggression was uniquely associated with both proactive and reactive aggression. Consistent with previous evidence regarding CU traits as moderators of the relationship between negative parenting and child conduct problems, physically aggressive parenting was found to be more strongly associated with children’s proactive aggression among children with low levels of CU traits, than those with high CU traits. These findings support the need for ongoing research into CU traits in Asian cultures, focused on heterogeneous risk pathways to antisocial behavior and individual differences in response to family-based interventions.     

“体育运动与攻击行为”的分析

运用文献资料法、逻辑分析法对攻击行为发生的心理机制进行回顾,通过参考一般攻击行为模型的逻辑框架,在“健康中国”背景下,分析体育运动对攻击行为的影响。研究显示:引发攻击行为的因素包括内部因素:个体人格、认知、情绪、生理唤醒水平;外部因素:运动情景因素。体育运动能够改善个体攻击性的人格、认知和情绪,提高生理唤醒水平;参与低强度、低竞争性、低任务条件下的非接触性、娱乐活动和有组织、优良环境下的体育活动对于减少个人攻击行为水平更加帮助。在价值导向上,体育应回归其教育本质上,淡化功利与竞争意识;公共传媒应净化舆论环境,广泛宣传体育运动背后的精神价值及其人文理念,以促进公民身心与人格的全面健康发展。     

Coparental Communication as a Mediator of Interparental Conflict and Young Adult Children's Mental Well-Being

This study tested young adults’ perceptions of supportive and antagonistic coparental communication as mediators of interparental conflict (i.e., demand/withdraw patterns and aggression) and young adults’ mental well-being. Participants included 493 young adult children from intact and divorced families. Although young adults from divorced families reported higher levels of interparental conflict and antagonistic coparental communication than those from intact families, no significant differences emerged in the pattern of associations among the latent constructs in both groups. Bootstrapping analyses revealed that demand/withdraw patterns and mothers’ aggression had both direct effects and indirect effects on young adults’ mental well-being through antagonistic coparental communication. Consequently, coparental communication may function as a risk mechanism linking the adverse effects of witnessing interparental conflict to children's adjustment.     

Take This Job and … : Quitting and Other Forms of Resistance to Workplace Bullying

Adult bullying at work is an unbelievable and, at times, shattering experience, both for those targeted as well as for witnessing colleagues. This study examines the narratives of 30 workers, some of whom where targeted and all of whom saw others bullied. Their responses paint a complex picture of power in bullying situations that reframe the “power-deficient target” into agents who galvanize a variety of resources on their own or others’ behalf but also place them at considerable risk. In some cases, employees evaluate the abusive situation and quickly resign. Others protest but, if resistance fails to stop abuse, they also leave organizations. The paths of resistance, case outcomes, and dialectic nature of resistance and control are discussed.     

Intergenerational effects of war trauma among Palestinian families mediated via psychological maltreatment

We tested the hypothesis that intergenerational effects of parents’ war trauma on offspring's attachment and mental health are mediated by psychological maltreatment. Two hundred and forty children and their parents were sampled from a war-prone area, Gaza, Palestine. The parents reported the number and type of traumatic experiences of war they had had during their lifetime before the child's birth and during a current war when the child was 10–12 years old. The children reported their war traumas, experiences of psychological maltreatment, attachment security, and symptoms of posttraumatic stress (PTSS), depression, and aggression. The direct and indirect intergenerational effects of war trauma were tested in structural equation models. The hypotheses were confirmed for father's past war exposure, and disconfirmed for mother's war exposure. The father's past war trauma had a negative association with attachment security and positive association with the child's mental health problems mediated by increased psychological maltreatment. In contrast, the mother's past war trauma had a negative association with the child's depression via decreased psychological maltreatment. The mother's current war trauma had a negative association with the child's depression and aggression via decreased psychological maltreatment. Among fathers, past war exposure should be considered as a risk factor for psychological maltreatment of children and the associated attachment insecurity and mental health problems. Among mothers, war exposure as such could be given less clinical attention than PTSS in the prevention of psychological maltreatment of children.     

Verbal aggression in violent and nonviolent marital disputes

Recent research suggests that verbal aggression may function as a catalyst to violence between spouses in marital disputes. Communication skills deficiencies may predispose spouses to rely upon verbal aggression in family conflict situations instead of more constructive forms of communication such as argumentation. This suggests a need to understand better the role of verbal aggression in interspousal violence. A study is presented which compared a sample of nonabused wives to a clinical sample of abused wives in terms of self‐reports of the use of verbal aggression by the husband and wife in their most recent dispute. While there were several differences between the two groups, of the ten types of verbally aggressive messages examined, character attacks most clearly differentiated violent from nonviolent marital disputes. Two hypotheses which predicted the degree of verbal aggression in violent and nonviolent disputes and the relationship between husband and wife usage were supported. Implications are discussed especially in terms of studying interspousal violence from a communication orientation.     

The usefulness of the verbal receptivity construct in instructional communication research

Perceptions of verbal receptivity of dyadic partners have recently been incorporated into interpersonal research. Receptivity of a teacher appears likely to be associated with student learning. However, it was suspected that perceptions of teacher responsiveness, a factor found very important in previous research, might overlap with perceptions of receptivity to the point that the latter construct would not be useful for predicting additional variability in student learning.

While both verbal receptivity and responsiveness were found to be significantly correlated with both affective and cognitive learning, the data indicated that measures of verbal receptivity and responsiveness were highly correlated. Analyses of variance found that verbal receptivity contributed significantly to cognitive learning but non‐significantly to affective learning (except affect for instructor) when the effects of responsiveness were accounted for. Receptivity probably would be best considered as a subset of the larger responsiveness construct in future work in the instructional arena.     

The impact of teacher immediacy on students' motivation: Is it the same for all students?

This study investigated the impact of teachers’ use of immediacy behaviors on students’ reported motivation to study over the course of a semester. Students’ state and trait motivation to study for a class was measured at three points during a semester. Reports of teachers’ use of verbal and nonverbal immediacy were collected at two points in a semester. It was hypothesized that not all students would respond similarly to a teacher low in immediacy. Support was found for this hypothesis. Students beginning the semester with either low or moderate state motivation to study were found to have increased levels of motivation later in the semester when exposed to a highly immediate teacher. Students beginning the semester with high motivation maintained high motivation regardless of the level of immediacy they reported their teacher of having.     

Contributions of Learning Through Analogies to the Construction of Secondary Education Pupils’ Verbal Discourse about Chemical Change

This article analyzes the relationship between pupils’ level of understanding of the analogies proposed in class while working with a model of chemical change and their competence at constructing a coherent verbal discourse of that model in both its macroscopic and submicroscopic representations. The study participants were 35 pupils in their 3rd year of compulsory secondary education (14–15 years of age) who had been studying chemical change for several weeks in their subject of Physics and Chemistry. The results suggested that the pupils generally understood the proposed analogies quite well, and that a good proportion of them assimilated adequately the verbal discourse inherent in the proposed model of chemical change. There was also a statistically significant association between modeling and analogical thinking. In particular, the pupils with greater understanding of the analogies being considered were also those who tended to show a greater ability to verbalize the model of chemical change and reason with it when solving the tasks they had been set. These results concur with the literature by suggesting that a link exists between analogical thinking and modeling, and that learning with analogies has a positive influence on the construction of the chemical change model.     

Models for Aggressive Behavior: The Attributes of Violent Characters in Popular Video Games

Americans are increasingly concerned about video games, presumably due to the amount and graphicness of violence they contain. Social Cognitive Theory suggests that people are more likely to imitate characters they see as attractive or similar to self. To date, however, little research has examined attributes of violent characters in video games related to this issue. This content analysis examined 10 minutes of play from 60 of the most popular video games. Adapting the coding scheme from the National Television Violence Study (Smith et al., 1998 Smith, S. L., Wilson, B. J., Kunkel, D., Linz, D., Potter, W. J., Colvin, C. M. and Donnerstein, E. 1998. National Television Violence Study: Vol. 3. Violence in television programming overall: University of California, Santa Barbara study, 5–220. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.  [Google Scholar]; Wilson et al., 1997 Wilson, B. J., Kunkel, D., Linz, D., Potter, W. J., Donnerstein, E.Smith, S. L. 1997. National Television Violence Study: Vol. 1. Violence in television programming overall: University of California, Santa Barbara study, 3–268. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  [Google Scholar], 1998 Wilson, B. J., Kunkel, D., Linz, D., Potter, W. J., Donnerstein, E.Smith, S. L. 1998. National Television Violence Study: Vol. 2. Violence in television programming overall: University of California, Santa Barbara, 3–204. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.  [Google Scholar]), various demographic and contextual features of violent characters and violent interactions were assessed. The results show that violent game characters have attributes that are likely to increase the extent to which some players perceive them as attractive and similar. Moreover, these violent characters engage in aggression that is presented as justified or graphic.