Children's alcohol cognitions prior to drinking onset: discrepant patterns from implicit and explicit measures.

Prior to drinking onset, children report stronger negative versus positive beliefs on self-report alcohol expectancy questionnaires, with some attenuation of this negativity as they transition into adolescence. Traditional alcohol expectancy assessments, however, capture endorsement of deliberative propositions about drinking outcomes. Measurement of implicit alcohol associations may elucidate automatic evaluations, clarifying the role of nondeliberative cognition in the initiation of alcohol use among youth. Few studies have assessed implicit alcohol cognition among children and younger adolescents, with inconsistent findings regarding the nature of these automatic associations within and between age groups. Eighty-nine 3rd and 4th graders and 91 7th and 8th graders completed an alcohol expectancy measure and two unipolar alcohol Implicit Association Tests (IAT) measuring positive and negative alcohol associations independently. On the explicit measure older compared with younger participants rated positive drinking outcomes as more likely and negative outcomes as less likely. Older compared with younger students were also more neutral/moderate in their evaluations of positive drinking outcomes. On the IATs, scores for the full sample indicated negative alcohol associations, and Negative IAT scores were higher for older compared with younger participants. However, the valence of implicit alcohol associations was qualified by the order of explicit versus implicit assessment; for those who completed the IATs prior to the explicit expectancy measure, alcohol associations were positive. Findings replicate and extend prior research conducted with preonset youth. Implications regarding the role of automatic and controlled processes in drinking onset and directions for future work on children's alcohol cognition are discussed.

Character disposition and behavior type: influences of valence on preschool children's social judgments.

The authors studied the influences of valence information on preschool children's (n = 47) moral (good or bad), liking (liked or disliked by a friend), and consequence-of-behavior (reward or punishment) judgments. The authors presented 8 scenarios describing the behavior valence, positive valence (help, share), negative valence (verbal insult, physical aggression), and disposition valence (nice or mean) of characters in social interaction with a friend. Overall, character disposition and behavior valence significantly influenced children's judgments. Moral, liking, and consequence-of-behavior judgments varied significantly by character disposition for both positive behavior scenarios. In contrast, there were fewer significant findings as a function of character disposition for negative behavior scenarios, suggesting that the negative behavior cue somewhat diminished the effect of character disposition on children's judgments. The authors discuss preschool students' coordination of information about valence of behavior and character disposition and the students' reluctance to judge that misbehavior warrants punitive consequence.

The role of sex, self-perception, and school bonding in predicting academic achievement among middle class African American early adolescents.

To date, little research has addressed within-group variables as predictors of academic achievement among middle-class African American youth. The present study helped fill this gap by investigating the role of sex, self-perceptions, and school bonding as predictors of academic success among 174 middle class early adolescent boys (n = 91) and girls residing in a large Midwestern city. Results of a path analysis indicated that gender identity fully mediated the relationship between biological sex and adolescents' perceptions of peer acceptance. Perceptions of peer acceptance were positively related to perceptions of behavior, which, in turn, were related to school bonding. School bonding was then related to academic achievement. The findings are discussed within the context of helping educators to better meet students' educational needs.

Temper tantrums in healthy versus depressed and disruptive preschoolers: defining tantrum behaviors associated with clinical problems.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether differences in the tantrum behaviors of healthy versus mood and disruptive disordered preschoolers can be detected. STUDY DESIGN: Caregivers of 279 preschool children (3 to 6 years old) completed the Preschool-Age Psychiatric Assessment (Egger HL, Ascher B, Angold A. Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA): version1.1. Durham, NC: Center for Developmental Epidemiology, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center; 1999), which was used to determine preschoolers' diagnostic classification and to measure tantrum behaviors. Preschoolers were placed in 1 of 4 diagnostic groups, healthy, pure depressed, pure disruptive, and comorbid depressed/disruptive, on the basis of the application of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition algorithms. Parametric and non-parametric analyses were used to examine characteristics of children's tantrums: intensity, frequency, context, and recovery ability. RESULTS: Disruptive preschoolers displayed violence during tantrums significantly more often than the depressed and healthy groups. The disruptive group had significantly more tantrums at school/daycare than the depressed and healthy groups. The disruptive group had a more difficult time recovering from tantrums than healthy preschoolers. In addition, depressed preschoolers were more aggressive toward objects and other people than healthy children. Finally, depressed preschoolers displayed significantly more self-harmful tantrum behaviors than preschoolers in the healthy and disruptive groups. CONCLUSION: These findings provide preliminary guidelines to parents, teachers, and practitioners in identifying tantrum behaviors that may be markers of a psychiatric disorder and therefore require mental health referral.

Predictors of retention in an alcohol, tobacco, and other drug prevention study.

This article explored retention patterns, as well as factors that predicted these patterns, in the evaluation of a relationship-based substance abuse prevention intervention study that targeted inner-city African American youth. A total of 851 contacts were made to retain 82% (n = 104) of the baseline sample (N = 127) in the evaluation. Results from multinomial regression analyses indicated that participants who were retained in the evaluation were more likely to perceive alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use as less risky and were more likely to report higher levels of family supervision than were evaluation attrits. Those who were easy to retain reported lower family conflict and fewer family relocations during the past year than those who were difficult to retain. Implications of these findings for developing retention strategies, as well as future research, are discussed.

Children's, adolescents', and young adults' reward allocations to hypothetical siblings and fairness judgments: effects of actor gender, character type, and allocation pattern.

The authors studied the reward allocation patterns, reasoning, and fairness judgments of 112 participants at 4 grade levels: kindergarten, 3rd grade, 9th grade, and college. Three story characters (an oldest, the most productive, and the physically disadvantaged) were depicted as siblings of the same gender, either sisters or brothers, who poured lemonade at a school picnic. Kindergartners' pattern of reward allocations indicated the use of an equality and productivity-based equity rule, whereas most of the older participants integrated considerations of both productivity and physical disadvantage in their allocations. Reasoning data were generally consistent with the allocation patterns. Reward allocations differed significantly by the gender of the characters, and fairness ratings differed significantly by the gender of the characters and the gender of the participant. Conclusions discuss the increasing coordination and consideration of more than one claim to the reward with development.