Journal of Genetic Psychology最新文献

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness and sustainability of the Social Skills-Based Early Intervention Program designed for socially introverted preschool children. The study group consisted of a total of 20 children, including 10 in the experimental group and 10 in the control group, all aged between 36 and 72 months and attending a preschool institution. The children in the experimental group participated in the Social Skills-Based Early Intervention Program for eight weeks, three days a week, one hour each day. When examining the post-test scores of the children in both the experimental and control groups, it was found that the difference in anxiety-introversion scores was significantly in favor of the experimental group. Following the Social Skills-Based Early Intervention Program, changes were observed in the play behaviors of children in the experimental group; instead of playing alone, they began participating in group games with their peers. It was noted that the children used their social communication skills during play, exhibiting behaviors such as joining a game, initiating a game, and inviting others to play. The results of this study are believed to provide a stepping stone for more comprehensive research into early intervention programs targeting the social skills of socially introverted preschool children especially those who are excessively shy, anxious, or exhibit behavioral inhibition.

In recent years, research has increasingly explored the role of sadness in children's emotional and social functioning, providing original evidence of the adaptive function sadness plays in socioemotional development. However, contemporary Western society has largely overlooked the value of sadness, often pathologizing it or promoting its suppression in favor of constant happiness. This study examines the associations among state sadness (defined as an emotion contingent on specific events), sympathy, and prosocial behavior in middle childhood. A total of 505 children aged 7-10 years old reported the intensity of sadness experienced during a significant personal event and while recalling peers' sad experiences. Children also completed measures of sympathy and prosocial behavior. Using Structural Equation Modeling with Latent Variables, results showed that both personal and peer-related state sadness were positively associated with sympathy, which in turn was strongly related to prosocial behavior. No direct links emerged between sadness and prosociality, suggesting the central mediating role of sympathy in this relationship. These findings highlight how sadness, contingent on meaningful experiences, may reflect emotional sensitivity and be connected to morally relevant responses. Rather than simply a sign of suffering to be avoided, sadness can represent a significant component of social and moral development, with important implications for the psychological development of children and educational practices that support healthy emotional expression.

Recognizing the limitations of mirror self-recognition as a measure of self development, we use a multidimensional caregiver report measure known as the self-concept questionnaire (SCQ), consisting of four different factors (self-description/evaluation, self-recognition, emotional response to wrongdoing and autonomy) to replicate the previously identified developmental correlates of objective self-awareness for 199 14- to 54-month-old children. Primary caregivers were recruited via an online research platform to answer a survey regarding the development of their child, including the SCQ, and standardized measures of attachment, cognitive development, and social behavior. Correlation and linear regression analyses demonstrated that the established cognitive and social predictors of mirror self-recognition are also related to wider aspects of self-awareness, as measured by the SCQ. Older infants, with strong attachment bonds who placed greater demands on their caregiver and engaged in more pretend play, imitation, self-regulation, and prosociality were likely to have a more developed sense of self. These factors accounted for over 60% of the variance in overall SCQ scores, with pretend play, prosociality, and relational demands making independently significant contributions to the model. To determine causality, we suggest that future observational studies broaden their understanding of the development of the self beyond the mirror mark test of self-awareness and focus on the longitudinal mapping of the social and cognitive process of self-other-differentiation.

Agreement between IQ scores derived from human figure drawing tests and standard general intelligence tests has been of interest to psychological investigators and practitioners. Some early studies found associations between drawing performance and motor skills, but few recent investigations have detected meaningful relationships with cognitive ability. Furthermore, few twin studies have considered a genetic component to scores on drawing tests. The present study is the first to undertake these analyses using adult reared-apart twins. Both drawing-derived IQ scores and Wechsler IQ scores were available for reared-apart monozygotic (MZA, N = 71) twin pairs and reared-apart dizygotic (DZA: N = 53) twin pairs from the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart (MISTRA). Intraclass correlations for the drawing-derived performance scores were modest, but significantly higher for MZA (r_i = .31, p < .01) than DZA twin pairs (r_i = .02, ns), p < .001. Intraclass correlations for the Draw-a-Person IQ score (DAP:IQ) showed the same pattern. Finally, the correlation between the drawing-derived IQ scores and Wechsler IQ scores was quite small with a low effect size, but statistically significant (r = .15, p = .02). These findings suggest modest genetic influence on drawing performance. Like most previous studies of nontwins, little meaningful or practical association between the two IQ measures was indicated.

This study examines the influence of childhood abuse on friendship quality among Chinese college students, particularly with respect to the underlying psychological mechanisms. A sample of 657 college students aged between 17 and 22 years from Shenyang, China, completed the Childhood Abuse Scale, the Friendship Quality Scale, the Self-Disclosure Index, and the Interpersonal Response Indicator. A latent variable model analysis revealed that childhood abuse significantly predicts decreased friendship quality among college students (β = -0.25, p < 0.001, 95% CI [-0.63, -0.25]). Furthermore, self-disclosure was found to have a partial mediating effect on the relationship between childhood abuse and friendship quality (mediating effect ab = -0.03, p < 0.001). Empathy was identified as a moderator in the relationship between childhood abuse and friendship quality, thus indicating that enhancing empathy could positively impact the development of friendship quality among college students. These findings suggest that friendship quality can be improved through interventions aimed at enhancing self-disclosure and empathy; furthermore, greater attention must be given to students with childhood abuse experiences.

The Approximate Number System allows individuals to approximately perceive large quantities and is usually tested by comparing different dots array. However, during non-symbolic comparisons, performance can be impacted by visual and non-numerical attributes of the stimuli. Our study aims to explore the role of the quantities and size perception in preschoolers' in a double-digit numbers task. Different groups of participants were trained with a non-symbolic training involving pairing each two-digit coupling with the corresponding numerosities, with a size training pairing each coupling with a single dot of varying size or with a memory training. The results showed significant improvements in the non-symbolic and memory training groups but not in the size training group. This suggests that associating double-digit numbers with quantities, as in non-symbolic training, enhances early preschoolers' numerical abilities.

Infants show a personal preference for fair over unfair distributors from the first months of life, demonstrating an early sense of distributive fairness. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how such infants' preferences can be influenced by maternal factors. This study explored the role of maternal social referencing on the development of fairness by presenting 11-month-old infants with familiarization events and a test trial performed by their mothers. Mothers assessed their infants' preferences by using a forced-choice task, showing specific visual cues (i.e. gaze shift and head turn) to motivate infants to choose unfair over fair distributors (Experiment 1), and without visual cues (Experiment 2). Infants manifested a head-orienting preference for unfair over fair distributors only when their mothers used visual cues. These results provided evidence for the potential influence of maternal visual cues on infants' orienting preferences for unfair distributors, thereby supporting the role of early social interactions in shifting infants' attention towards distributors.

Bearing in mind the lack of studies involving women who have sex with women (WSW), our objective was to report the prevalence of alcohol-related problems among Brazilian WSW, as well as to describe associated factors. Three hundred and thirty-five women were recruited through web-based respondent-driven sampling (RDS) from January to August 2018. RDS weighted frequencies and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated using the RDS II method. A logistic regression was performed to ascertain the effects of depression, social support, discrimination toward sexual identity, and self-esteem on the likelihood of problematic alcohol use. Around a quarter of the sample (23.73%) was identified with a drinking problem. Notably, our findings revealed that older WSW face an increased risk of problematic alcohol use. Discrimination and self-esteem played a major role in problematic alcohol use.

With studies primarily focusing on the influence of individual parents' marital satisfaction, less is known about the combined influence of fathers and mothers. Using polynomial regressions and response surface analyses, this study aims to explore the congruence and incongruence between fathers' marital satisfaction and mothers' marital satisfaction on child depression by the child's developmental stage and gender. Participants were 902 Chinese one-child families (in terms of child gender, 41.7% were girls and 58.3% were boys; in terms of child age, 49.7% were emerging adults and 50.3% were minors). Compared to the inconsistent high mother/low father marital satisfaction direction, emerging adult daughter depression was higher when in the inconsistent low mother/high father marital satisfaction direction. On congruence, emerging adult daughters were less depressed when the degree of congruence between father and mother marital satisfaction tended to be moderate. These results emphasize that depression interventions for emerging adults should consider the combined influence of fathers' and mothers' marital satisfaction.

Negative risk-taking behavior poses a significant threat to adolescent health and development. Drawing on a strengths-based framework, this study investigated whether and how gratitude-an other-focused positive emotion-serves as a protective factor against such behavior in adolescents. Specifically, we examined the mediating roles of compassionate goal orientation and dual-mode self-control (i.e. poor control and good control). A sample of 646 Chinese adolescents (drawn from one university and two secondary schools) completed validated measures of trait gratitude, negative risk-taking behavior, compassionate goal, and dual-mode self-control. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that gratitude directly predicted lower levels of negative risk-taking. Furthermore, it exerted an indirect effect through a sequential pathway: by fostering a compassionate goal orientation, which in turn reduced impulsive tendencies (poor control), ultimately leading to less risk-taking. The mediating role of enhanced reflective control (good control) was not significant. These findings underscore gratitude as a psychological resource that can mitigate adolescent risk-taking by shifting focus toward others and strengthening impulse regulation, offering insights for interventions aimed at promoting positive youth development.