Behavioral Sciences最新文献

Social understanding relies upon children's experience of the world and their communicative interaction with others. Opportunities to engage in cooperative social interaction, such as friendships, can foster the development of social understanding. Children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia often have friendships of poorer quality. The present study examined relationships and differences in social understanding and friendship quality in children with ADHD or dyslexia, in comparison to neurotypically developing children (NTD). Participants were 192 primary-school students (M_age = 9.77, SD = 1.21) from Attica, Greece. Social understanding was measured with second-order and advanced theory of mind (ToM) tasks, and the Bryant's Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents, while friendships were examined with the Friendship Quality Questionnaire. Children with ADHD scored significantly lower across all positive characteristics of friendship quality, empathy and advanced ToM than those with dyslexia, who in turn scored significantly lower than NTD children. Moreover, children with ADHD performed significantly worse in the second-order ToM tasks compared to children with NTD or dyslexia, while NTD children scored significantly lower in the friendship conflict betrayal subscale compared to both ADHD and dyslexia groups. Multiple regression analyses controlling for learning disability status, gender, and age showed that ToM and perceived empathy predict friendship quality characteristics in all groups of children. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of children's friendship relationships and give insight to parents and professionals involved in children's education, provision, and mental health care.

Family caregivers of dementia patients experience grief, not only after the death of the patient, but also during the course of the disease. The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Greek version (full and short) of the Marwit-Meuser Caregiver Grief Inventory (MM-CGI and MM-CGI Short Form) before death in a sample of Greek caregivers of persons with dementia. In particular, the study attempts to test the internal consistency reliability as well as the structural and convergent validity of the inventory. The inventory was administered to 515 family caregivers (offsprings and spouses) along with a socio-demographic information form, the Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI), the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II), and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) exploratively to a subset of dementia patients cared for by survey participants. The application of confirmatory factor analyses revealed a slightly different structure of the Greek version of the MM-CGI, but they fully verified the structure of the Greek version of the MM-CGI-SF. Both the internal consistency reliability and the convergent validity of the subscales of the Greek version of the MM-CGI-SF were good. The findings of the present study indicate that the short version of the Marwit-Meuser Caregiver Grief Inventory is a reliable and valid tool for the early assessment of aspects of grief among the Greek population of family caregivers of dementia patients, in order to potentiate the prevention of their depression and anxiety.

Problems frequently arise in intimate relationships, and people need to find ways to manage them if they want their relationships to continue. The purpose of the current research was to identify the strategies that people use to manage relationship problems, employing a mixed-methods approach, specifically, in a sample of 224 Greek-speaking participants. Study 1 employed qualitative research methods and identified 93 actions that people perform to manage relationship problems. Study 2 employed quantitative research methods in a sample of 526 Greek-speaking participants and classified these actions into three main strategies. The most likely to be used main strategy was "Solve the problem", where participants attempted to solve the problem by discussing and negotiating it with their partners, making compromises, improving physical intimacy, and avoiding acting in the heat of the moment. The second most likely to be used main strategy was "External input", where participants aimed to obtain advice and support from others, including friends, relatives, and psychologists. The least likely to be used strategy was "Avoid the problem", where participants attempted to manage their problems by ignoring or avoiding them. Participants indicated that they were likely to use a combination of strategies to manage their problems. Men and women were generally in agreement over which strategy to use, while age effects were found for several strategies.

Moral education significantly impacts the psychological well-being of college students by cultivating moral awareness, social responsibility, and moral values. However, existing studies have mainly focused on its cognitive effects (e.g., value formation and moral judgment development), with less attention to its impact on the affective level (e.g., positive and negative emotions). Longitudinal studies on its long-term effects are also limited. To address this gap, the present study conducted two waves of a longitudinal survey involving 423 Chinese university students. The results showed that baseline moral education levels significantly predicted subsequent psychological well-being, including higher psychological prosperity, more positive emotions, and fewer negative emotions. Additionally, gender moderated the relationship between moral education and psychological well-being: females showed significantly higher levels of well-being than males after receiving moral education. This study provides deeper insights into how moral education affects the psychological well-being of college students and offers theoretical and practical recommendations for enhancing emotion regulation and implementing psychological well-being interventions.

Unsatisfactory sleep is a worldwide concern, as evidenced by the high prevalence of insomnia symptoms and diagnosis in the general population, and an issue that has also risen among adolescents. These circumstances are a cause of worry due to, among other factors, the observed bidirectional association of sleep disturbances and the risk of substance use disorder development. In this regard, across the globe, several reports indicate that substance consumption is at an all-time high, with alcohol, nicotine, and cannabis leading the charts. Additionally, the age of onset has dropped, with reports suggesting that first contact is usually during adolescence. Although the nature of the link between poor sleep and substance use disorder development is still not fully understood, it is possible that an overactive orexinergic system could play a role, as it has been observed that treatment with orexinergic antagonists improves insomnia symptoms and that postmortem studies show an increase in orexin immunoreactive neurons in sections obtained from habitual opioid consumers. We further argue that it is during adolescence that this maladaptive loop can be established, priming for the development of substance use disorders.

Background: In the UK, breast cancer affects 1 in 8 women, accounting for 31% of cancers and 15% of cancer-related deaths in women. In 2023, London's breast screening coverage was 56%, falling below the NHS target of 70%. This survey assesses psychological and behavioural factors impacting screening attendance.

Methods: Using the Theoretical Domains Framework, an online survey including 15 behavioural factors was distributed through a market research company to women eligible for breast screening (aged 47-73) across London and Southeast and West England. Logistic regression was used to predict the impact of behavioural variables on history of attendance and intention to attend future screening opportunities.

Results: Of the 922 respondents who returned the full survey, 88.6% intended to attend future screenings, and 88.1% reported previously attending screenings regularly. 'Behavioural regulation' had the strongest influence on past attendance (OR = 1.92, p < 0.001) and future intent (OR = 1.56, p = 0.003). Not intending to attend was linked to emotional consequences (OR = 0.68, p = 0.003) and environmental barriers (OR = 0.66, p < 0.001), where OR-Odds Ratio.

Conclusions: This survey identifies behavioural factors influencing breast screening participation and screening intention, providing insights that may help design interventions to increase attendance rates.

In the era of machine learning, many psychological studies use machine learning methods. Specifically, neural networks, a set of machine learning methods that exhibit exceptional performance in various tasks, have been used on psychometric datasets for supervised model fitting. From the computer scientist's perspective, psychometric independent variables are typically ordinal and low-dimensional-characteristics that can significantly impact model performance. To our knowledge, there is no guidance about the sample planning suggestion for this task. Therefore, we conducted a simulation study to test the performance of an NN with different sample sizes and the simulation of both linear and nonlinear relationships. We proposed the minimum sample size for the neural network model fitting with two criteria: the performance of 95% of the models is close to the theoretical maximum, and 80% of the models can outperform the linear model. The findings of this simulation study show that the performance of neural networks can be unstable with ordinal variables as independent variables, and we suggested that neural networks should not be used on ordinal independent variables with at least common nonlinear relationships in psychology. Further suggestions and research directions are also provided.

We tested whether merely witnessing gendered microaggressions affects group work experiences among male and female undergraduate computer science and engineering students. Across three experiments (N = 753), we randomly assigned computer science and engineering students to witness microaggressions targeting female students, or control interactions, using a video manipulation. Witnessing microaggressions-compared to the control-resulted in heightened gender-specific stereotyping concerns, with women being concerned about appearing incompetent and men being concerned with appearing sexist. For both women and men, witnessing microaggressions resulted in decreased enthusiasm for participating in group work. Moreover, for women, the relationship between decreased enthusiasm and witnessing microaggressions was partially mediated by increased concerns about being stereotyped as incompetent. Across the experiments, mixed results emerged regarding the effect of witnessing microaggressions on the recall of engineering content in the video. This research extends previous work focused on personally experiencing microaggressions to merely witnessing them, showing that positivity toward anticipated group work is diminished for both women and men when they see peers engaging in microaggressions.

The prevalence of teacher-directed violence has been well-documented around the world. However, interventions focused on the prevention of teacher victimization have received less attention. Understanding how to reduce teacher-directed violence is vital to preserving the overall well-being of teachers, supporting their teaching, reducing teacher burnout, and providing recommendations for future research. The current scoping review reports on teacher-directed violence interventions in K-12 school settings (n = 2). In addition, emerging evidence is described that provides recommendations for developing teacher-directed violence interventions (n = 6). The results from this scoping review reinforce the need for further study of teacher victimization-focused interventions to support the essential work of teachers.

This study aimed to investigate the roles of facial information processing and math anxiety in estimation performance. Across three experiments, participants completed a two-digit multiplication estimation task under the conditions of emotion judgment (Experiment 1), identity judgment (Experiment 2), and combined emotion and identity judgment (Experiment 3). In the estimation task, participants used either the down-up or up-down problem to select approximate answers. In Experiment 1, we found that negative emotions impair estimation performance, while positive and consistent emotions have a facilitating effect on estimation efficiency. In Experiment 2, we found that emotion and identity consistency interact with each other, and negative emotions actually promote estimation efficiency when identity is consistent. In Experiment 3, we found that emotion, identity consistency, and emotional consistency have complex interactions on estimation performance. Moreover, in most face-processing conditions, participants' estimation performance is not affected by their level of math anxiety. However, in a small number of cases, mean proportions under happy and fearful conditions are negatively correlated with math anxiety.