Mark Meerum Terwogt

Bullying and victimization among school-age children: Stability and links to proactive and reactive aggression

The main aim of the study relates to the links between bullying and victimization on the one hand and reactive and proactive aggression on the other. In addition, we also investigated stability and incidence of bullying and victimization. At age 7, 236 children were rated on bullying and victimization using peer reports. At age 8, 242 children were rated again. Two hundred and fifteen children (114 girls and 101 boys) were present at both time points. Reactive and proactive aggression was assessed by teachers. The results showed that bullies and bully/victims were both reactively and proactively aggressive, while victims were only reactively aggressive. A moderate degree of stability of bullying and victimization was found, with bullying being more stable than victimization. Boys were more often bullies than girls and more stable than girls in victimization. Stable victims and stable bully/victims were more reactively aggressive than their unstable counterparts. The relevance of the outcomes to preventing future maladjustment and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Children's Knowledge of the Situations that Provoke Emotion

In two studies, the development of childrens knowledge of the situations that provoke emotion was examined. In the first study, English and Dutch children aged 5, 7, 10 and 14 years were presented with 20 common emotion terms and asked to describe situations likely to provoke each emotion. For children of both nationalities, knowledge of the determinants of emotion was not restricted to emotions that can be easily linked with a discrete facial expression. It rapidly extended to more complex emotions such as pride, worry, or jealousy. A second study undertaken with children living in an isolated Himalayan village confirmed and extended these basic findings. Additional analysis of both the accuracy with which children suggested determinants, and inter-relationships among those determinants suggested that children acquire such knowledge quite abruptly for any given emotion term.

COLORS AND EMOTIONS: PREFERENCES AND COMBINATIONS

Within three age groups (7-year-old children, 11-year-old children, and adults), preferences for colors and emotions were established by means of two distinct paired-comparison tasks. In a subsequent task, participants were asked to link colors to emotions by selecting an appropriate color. It was hypothesized that the number of times that each color was tied to a specific emotion would be predictable from the separate preferences for colors and emotions. Within age groups, participants had consistent preferences for colors and emotions, but preferences differed from one age group to another. Especially in the youngest group, the pattern of combinations between colors and emotions appeared to be meaningfully related to the preference order for colors and emotions.

Children's detection and awareness of textual anomaly

Abstract Children of 8 and 11 years were assessed in two experiments for their sensitivity to textual anomaly. In Experiment 1, subjects read stories containing two target lines, one appropriate and the other anomalous in relation to previously given information. Both age groups read the anomalous line more slowly than the appropriate line, but in a subsequent test of comprehension monitoring, the older group was more likely than the younger group to pick out the anomalous line as not fitting in with the rest of the story. Experiment 2 produced similar results: both 8- and 11-year-old children read an anomalous line more slowly, but 11-year-olds were more likely than 8-year-olds to cite the anomalous line or part of it when questioned about the possible presence of a line that did not fit in with the rest of the story. The results indicate that an age change in comprehension monitoring as indexed by citation or selection of a textual anomaly need not be contingent upon a parallel age change in constructive processing as indexed by modulation of reading rate.

Emotion regulation and internalizing symptoms in children with autism spectrum disorders

The aim of this study was to examine the unique contribution of two aspects of emotion regulation (awareness and coping) to the development of internalizing problems in 11-year-old high-functioning children with an autism spectrum disorder (HFASD) and a control group, and the moderating effect of group membership on this. The results revealed overlap between the two groups, but also significant differences, suggesting a more fragmented emotion regulation pattern in children with HFASD, especially related to worry and rumination. Moreover, in children with HFASD, symptoms of depression were unrelated to positive mental coping strategies and the conviction that the emotion experience helps in dealing with the problem, suggesting that a positive approach to the problem and its subsequent emotion experience are less effective in the HFASD group.

Attention to facial emotion expressions in children with autism

High-functioning children in the autism spectrum are frequently noted for their impaired attention to facial expressions of emotions. In this study, we examined whether attention to emotion cues in others could be enhanced in children with autism, by varying the relevance of children’s attention to emotion expressions. Twenty-eight high-functioning boys with autism and 31 boys from a control group were asked to sort photos depicting smiling or frowning faces of adults. As found in earlier studies, in neutral conditions children with autism were less attentive to emotion expressions than children from a control group. This difference disappeared when children were explicitly asked to make a socially relevant decision. These findings suggest that the attention of children with autism to emotion expressions in others is influenced by situational factors. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Emotion understanding in children with frequent somatic complaints

The assumption that an impaired ability to identify and express emotions (“alexithymia”) is related to a lack of physical well-being in children was investigated. Two groups of children (mean age 10 years), who differed in their reported frequency of somatic complaints, were asked to fill out a mood questionnaire and respond to emotion-evoking situations. The findings showed that the number of somatic complaints in children was unrelated to their ability to identify their own emotions when asked about hypothetical conflicting situations. Yet, both groups identified different emotions. Children with more somatic complaints reported more fear and fewer anger reactions. They also reported experiencing more negative emotion-evoking situations with peers. Fear suggests a stronger tendency for withdrawal, whereas the anger reaction of the healthier group implies a stronger tendency to approach (negative) emotion evoking situations. Consequently, the conflicting situation continues for the first group, whereas the second group will be more likely to solve it. Strong or long-lasting arousal has a negative effect on bodily functioning: it can disturb biological subsystems and bring about organic changes. The possibility that fewer social skills, for expressing emotions in a socially constructive way, or fewer coping strategies in the group who reported more somatic complaints also influence the intensity and duration of negative emotions is discussed.

Theory of mind-based action in children from the autism spectrum

In this study we investigated whether task interest facilitated the application of Theory of Mind capacities in high-functioning children from the autism spectrum. Children were invited to carry out two simple tasks. Sabotage of both tasks by a third party resulted in the experimenter appearing to have a false belief. Whereas pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDDNOS) children tended to correct the experimenters false belief in the rewarded task condition, children with autism were not influenced by task condition. These results highlight the role played by social and communicative factors in the application of Theory of Mind knowledge in the former clinical group.

The development of conduct problems and depressive symptoms in early elementary school children: The role of peer rejection

Conduct problems in childhood often co-occur with symptoms of depression. This study explored whether the development of conduct problems becomes indirectly linked to depressive symptoms in a sample of 323 kindergarten children, followed over a period of 2 school years. Results showed that the development of conduct problems was indirectly linked to the development of depressive symptoms via experiences of peer rejection. These links were similar for boys and girls. Results underscore that part of the development of childhood symptoms of depression in the early years of school can be explained by a cascade effect in which the development of conduct problems results into poor peer experiences, which ultimately predict depressive symptoms.

Anger communication in deaf children

In this study, we investigated how deaf children express their anger towards peers and with what intentions. Eleven-year-old deaf children (n=21) and a hearing control group (n=36) were offered four vignettes describing anger-evoking conflict situations with peers. Children were asked how they would respond, how the responsible peer would react, and what would happen to their relationship. Deaf children employed the communicative function of anger expression differently from hearing children. Whereas hearing children used anger expression to reflect on the anguish that another child caused them, deaf children used it rather bluntly and explained less. Moreover, deaf children expected less empathic responses from the peer causing them harm. Both groups did, however, expect equally often that the relationship with the peer would stay intact. These findings are discussed in the light of deaf childrens impaired emotion socialization secondary to their limited communication skills.