Tomorrow versus a year from now: Do children represent the near and distant future differently?

Adults represent the near future more concretely and vividly than the distant future, with important implications for future-oriented behavior (e.g., planning, self-control). Although children are adept at describing future events at around 5 years of age, we know little about how temporal distance (i.e., "near" vs "distant") affects their future event representations. In a series of three experiments, we sought to determine the effects of temporal distance, age, and event frequency on children's future event representations. Participants, 5- to 9-year-olds, were asked to describe frequent (e.g., snack) and infrequent (e.g., party) events, with half of children imagining that these events would happen in the near future and the other half imagining that they would happen in the distant future. We investigated the effect of temporal distance on numerous event representation indicators (e.g., clarity, details, pronouns), all theoretically grounded in previous literature. Although children perceived near events as closer in time than distant events (Experiments 2 and 2b) and temporal distance affected the clarity of event representations (Experiment 2), most indicators were not affected by temporal distance. In contrast, event frequency (examined in Experiment 1) played an important role in children's event representations, with infrequent events being described more concretely than frequent events. Results suggest that young children may begin perceiving differences in temporal distance but that this does not translate to their event representations (e.g., clarity, pronouns) until later in development. Implications for children's future thinking and future research are discussed.

Testing the Latent Structure of the Autism Spectrum Quotient in a Sub-clinical Sample of University Students Using Factor Mixture Modelling.

In the present study, factor mixture models (FMMs) were used to examine the latent structure underlying the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) among a sample of 633 undergraduate students. FMM represents a combination of latent-class, person-centered approaches and common-factor, variable-centered approaches to modeling population heterogeneity. Findings suggest the presence of either two or six latent classes with distinct profiles across the set of 50 AQ items. In addition, within each class, individuals can be further differentiated according to their scores on five latent factors. These results suggest the presence of phenotypical heterogeneity at the sub-clinical level in addition to that which is known to exist at the clinical level.

Meta-Analysis on Interventions for Children Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence.

Several reviews have been conducted on children's outcomes following exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV), but there remain inconsistent findings. We conducted a meta-analysis on child emotional and behavioral outcomes of IPV exposure interventions, based on published reviews that included a child component. We also explored relative effect sizes by examining moderators of the effect sizes across studies. This meta-analysis included 21 evaluation studies across 12 published reviews, which were located using a multiple database systematic search of English publications between 2000 and 2019. Studies were required to evaluate IPV interventions that included children, to gather quantitative pre- and post-intervention data on child outcomes, to use standardized instruments, and to present data in a format that could be used in a meta-analysis. Results indicated an overall pre- to post-intervention medium effect size (d = 0.49), with effect sizes ranging from small to large depending on the specific outcome. Improvements at follow-up were maintained for internalizing behaviors but decreased for trauma-related symptoms and social, externalizing, and total behaviors. However, externalizing and total behavior outcomes still had significant effect sizes in the small-to-medium range (d = 0.36 and 0.44). There were greater intervention effects when treatment was not exclusively trauma-specific. It appears that IPV exposure interventions are generally effective for improving children's emotional and behavioral well-being, although interventions would benefit from greater tailoring to children's specific needs. Interventions may also benefit from incorporating various content areas (both trauma-specific and non-trauma-specific) and from greater focus on ensuring the maintenance of treatment gains.

How Do Knowledge and Attitudes About Children's Rights Influence Spanking Attitudes?

Children's rights are about treating children with equality, respect, and dignity. Attitudes concerning children's rights have been linked to support for nurturance and self-determination. However, there is little research on how dimensions of children's rights are associated with other parenting constructs, such as attitudes toward physical punishment. This study examined the relationship between knowledge of and attitudes toward children's rights and attitudes toward spanking in a Canadian sample of 329 undergraduate students who completed an online study. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated a significant negative association in that more favorable attitudes toward children's rights predicted less favorable attitudes toward spanking. There also was a significant moderating effect of child rights knowledge on this relationship, such that greater knowledge enhanced the effects of attitudes toward children's rights on spanking attitudes. These results raise awareness of the combined role of both knowledge of and attitudes toward children's rights in influencing spanking attitudes. The results also suggest that one pathway decreasing favorable attitudes toward spanking may be to increase the general public's knowledge of children's rights.

Moderating effect of trait emotional intelligence on the relationship between parental nurturance and prosocial behaviour.

INTRODUCTION: Research on the moderating role of trait emotional intelligence (EI) has typically examined this construct in light of other risk factors and their detrimental effects on adolescents' outcomes. This study aims to expand this line of research by focusing on the enhancing effect of trait EI and its moderating effects on the relationship between parental nurturance and adolescents' prosocial behaviour. According to such view, higher trait EI was expected to enhance the positive effect of parental nurturance on adolescents' prosocial behaviour. METHOD: A nationally representative sample of 1850 Canadian adolescents completed self-reported ratings of trait EI and parenting at 10-12 years of age which were related to prosocial behaviour at 14-16 years. RESULTS: Findings indicated that, after controlling for previous ratings of prosocial behaviour at age 10-12, child's age and sex, adolescents with high trait EI who were exposed to positive rearing experiences in early adolescence reported higher levels of prosocial behaviour two years later compared to respondents with either low or average scores on trait EI. CONCLUSION: In line with our prediction, these results confirm the enhancing the effects of trait EI on the relationship between parental nurturance and future development of prosocial behaviour. These findings have important implications in regard to the important role of trait EI in predicting variation of adolescents' prosocial behaviour in response to positive parental influences.

Trauma-symptom profiles of adolescents in child welfare.

In the province of Ontario (Canada), over 28,900 adolescents are investigated by child welfare agencies each year because of suspected maltreatment. Exposure to childhood maltreatment represents a major threat to the psychological well-being of young people, particularly in terms of trauma-related stress. The present study investigated trauma symptom profiles among 479 adolescents (13-17 years) involved with the Canadian child welfare system between 2003 and 2010. Latent profile analysis identified three profiles using self-report data from the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children. Most adolescents (59%, n=281) were classified into the profile depicting minimal trauma-related symptoms, 30% (n=144) were characterized by moderate trauma-related symptoms, and 11% (n=54) were in the profile reflecting severe trauma-related symptoms. Several variables predicted profile membership. Greater severity of sexual abuse and female sex were associated with a greater likelihood of belonging to the severe trauma symptom profile than both the moderate and the minimal trauma symptom profiles. In addition, having society ward status (compared to crown ward) was related to an increased likelihood of belonging to both the severe and moderate symptom profiles relative to the minimal symptom profile. This study provides some insight into the typologies of trauma experienced among child-welfare-involved adolescents and the set of factors which relate to the specific profiles. Findings are important for informing psychological assessment practices, as well as tailored interventions, for adolescents in the child welfare system.

Testing Mediation in Structural Equation Modeling: The Effectiveness of the Test of Joint Significance.

A large number of approaches have been proposed for estimating and testing the significance of indirect effects in mediation models. In this study, four sets of Monte Carlo simulations involving full latent variable structural equation models were run in order to contrast the effectiveness of the currently popular bias-corrected bootstrapping approach with the simple test of joint significance approach. The results from these simulations demonstrate that the test of joint significance had more power than bias-corrected bootstrapping and also yielded more reasonable Type I errors.

Temperament as a moderator of the effects of parenting on children's behavior.

This study examined the role of child temperament as moderator of the effect of parenting style on children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors. A series of structural equation models were fit to a representative sample of 2,631 Canadian children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. In addition to testing for the presence of Temperament × Parenting interactions, these models also examined the direct and indirect effects of a number of additional contextual factors such as neighborhood problems, neighborhood cohesion, social support, and maternal depression. The results indicate that exposure to more positive parenting reduces behavior problems in children with difficult/unadaptable temperaments. No moderating effects of temperament on hostile parenting were found. Such results serve to highlight the pivotal role of positive features of the rearing environment as catalysts for the successful adaptation of children with difficult/unadaptable temperaments. The results of this modeling work also serve to emphasize the importance of considering the ways in which more distal factors can affect children's behavioral adaptation by contributing to changes in proximal family processes.

Short-term memory for the comparative instructions in symbolic comparison.

In the current study, a novel paradigm was used in which participants (N = 24) first compared the sizes of pairs of animals and then were asked, on half of the trials, to make a follow-up identification judgment regarding either the form of the comparative instruction that had just been used for the preceding comparison (i.e., smaller? or larger?) or the size of the stimuli in the comparison pair. To selectively enhance the difficulty associated with processing each of these aspects, on a large number of comparison trials, either the comparative instruction or the stimulus pair, respectively, was presented only very briefly. Results indicate that memory for the comparative instructions was dependent on the relative size of the stimulus pair such that participants were more likely to correctly identify the smaller form of the comparative instruction after comparing pairs of small stimulus items, as well as more likely to correctly identify the larger form of the comparative instruction after comparing pairs of large stimulus items. Such results are consistent with the view that the size of the stimulus pair contextually activates the representation of the congruent form of the comparative instruction.