Empathy in Toddlers: The Role of Emotion Regulation, Language Ability, and Maternal Emotion Socialization Style

Proposed Specifiers for Conduct Disorder (PSCD) scale: A Latent Profile Analysis with At-Risk Adolescents

The Proposed Specifiers for Conduct Disorder (PSCD; Salekin in Pers Disord: Theory Res Treat 7:180-191, 2016) scale was designed to assess interrelated psychopathic trait domains in conjunction with symptoms of Conduct Disorder (CD) in children and adolescents (i.e., grandiose-manipulative, callous-unemotional, daring-impulsive). Variable-centered studies have provided support for a four-factor PSCD structure (Salekin et al. in Psychol Assess 34(10):985-992, 2022) in line with other adolescent and adult studies. The current person-centered study used latent profile analysis of the PSCD domains to examine whether theoretically meaningful and empirically robust PSCD subtypes emerged from a diverse sample (70.9% White, 20.1% Black, 3.6% Hispanic, and 5.4% other) of adolescents (modal age = 17) in a military style residential facility (N = 409; Males = 80.6%). As hypothesized, a four-class solution was best, consistent with adult psychopathy subtyping research (Hare et al. in Handbook of Psychopathy 39-79, 2018; Roy et al. in Pers Disord: Theory Res Treat, in press). The PSCD subtype profiles were uniform across sex and race/ethnicity. Adolescents evincing a psychopathic trait propensity profile (elevated on all four PSCD domains) displayed the greatest number of arrests and higher overall externalizing psychopathology, compared to the other three latent classes, as well as higher internalizing psychopathology compared to adolescents with general delinquency. The PSCD provides a sound measure of psychopathic trait propensities in youth and our results offer investigators and clinicians a means for understanding person-centered psychopathic traits versus antisocial profiles among at-risk adolescents. Taken together, the current results may offer a viable approach for examining specific treatment targets based on PSCD subtype profiles.

Maternal supportive responses to adolescents' negative emotions serve as protective factors for adolescents' hostile attribution bias longitudinally

Existing literature has documented that parenting links to children's hostile attribution biases (HAB). However, little is known about the role played by parental emotion socialization in children's HAB. To address this research gap, the present study investigated the role of parental responses to children's negative emotions (PRCNE) in predicting adolescents' HAB using a longitudinal study. Adolescents (N = 203; Mage  = 13.61 years old at Time 1), who were recruited from a city in mainland China, reported on their mothers' PRCNE and their own HAB at two waves over a year. The results showed that mothers' supportive responses (composed of emotion-focused responses and problem-focused responses) significantly predicted adolescents' reduced HAB over time; however, PRCNE including expressive encouragement, minimization, and nonsupportive responses (composed of punitive responses and parental distress) had no significant relation with adolescents' HAB. These findings add to the existing literature investigating antecedents to adolescents' social information processing deficits and biases.

Cognitive reappraisal and empathy chain-mediate the association between relative deprivation and prosocial behavior in adolescents

Background

Relative deprivation is one of the factors that influences the development of personality and behavior. However, it is still unclear whether and how relative deprivation decreases the prosocial behavior in adolescents. This study aimed to examine the association between relative deprivation and adolescent prosocial behavior and the role of emotion regulation strategies and empathy in modifying this association.

Methods

The present study included 609 secondary school students (M = 15.42 years, SD = 0.653) in Fujian Province, China. All participants completed the Relative Deprivation Questionnaire, Emotion Regulation Scale, the Basic Empathy Scale, and Prosocial Behavior Scale. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 7.4.

Results

Relative deprivation was negatively correlated with cognitive reappraisal, but positively correlated with expressive suppression. Cognitive reappraisal was positively correlated with empathy and prosocial behavior, but expressive suppression was not. Empathy was positively correlated with prosocial behavior. Relative deprivation decreased prosocial behavior through (a) cognitive reappraisal, (b) empathy, and (c) chain mediation of cognitive reappraisal and empathy. No significant mediating effect of expressive suppression was found.

Conclusion

The results indicate that relative deprivation decreases adolescent prosocial behavior, and that cognitive reappraisal and empathy are the potential psychological mechanisms that affect the association between relative deprivation and adolescent prosocial behavior.

How to choose a preceptor: aspects to consider based on a grounded theory study

BACKGROUND

Nurses in clinical practice settings share responsibility with academy teachers in the education of nursing students in clinical teaching. This dynamic is essential for the students' learning and their skill development. During preceptorship, the nurse has to mobilize the available resources to act competently and effectively. The purpose of this article is to identify the aspects that should be considered when selecting a nurse preceptor.

METHODS

A qualitative study was carried out based on Grounded Theory using Strauss and Corbin's version. The study took place in a medicine ward and a surgery ward of a hospital in the Lisbon metropolitan area. The authors conducted fourteen semi-structured interviews with nurses who were at different stages of Benner's Professional Development Model and with different outlooks on nursing preceptorship. The initial script was reorganized after the pilot test. It was also adjusted after the first exploratory interviews and after the in-depth interviews in order to reflect the interviewees' work experience and outlooks on preceptorship. The interviews had an average duration of 45 min and were audio recorded. Theoretical sampling was conducted considering the needs identified in data coding until we reached theoretical saturation. Data analysis began after the first interview, first by open coding, followed by axial and selective coding, always in a logic of constant comparison with theory. Ethical principles, scientific integrity and methodological rigour were ensured throughout the study.

RESULTS

Two categories emerged that were supported by all nurses: skills and individual characteristics. The former includes communication skills, relational skills, reflective skills, technical-scientific skills, and emotional skills, while the latter includes perceptiveness, responsibility, motivation, and professional initiative.

CONCLUSION

Nurses value both the individual characteristics they possess and the skills they have developed throughout their career. The recognition of the aspects found in this study for the selection of nurse preceptors allows for an informed and reasoned decision making, with a view to the success of the preceptorship and to the improvement of the quality of nursing education.

Matching between maternal knowledge about infant development and care for children under one year old

OBJECTIVE

to analyze maternal knowledge about infant development and its matching to the care offered to children during their first year of life.

METHOD

a longitudinal and prospective study, in the stages of pregnancy and of the child's 12th/13th month of life. Interviews were applied to 121 women in a Brazilian city, based on 21 items selected from the Knowledge of Infant Development Inventory, related to the first year of life. Calculation of rates of correct answers was used, as well as regression by Ordinary Least Squares and White's standard error.

RESULTS

the participants who answered correctly more aspects have more years of study, are older and present high family incomes. When the "having a partner or not" variable was considered, the correct answers presented a discrete fluctuation. Regarding the themes, there were more correct answers to aspects about health, safety and infant development milestones. Primiparous mothers were more likely to wean, overprotect and have children using electronic devices, and less likely to seek information about child care.

CONCLUSION

there was matching between some maternal knowledge and execution of child care. The connection between them is relevant to indicate in detail the unknowns and uncertainties and to improve positive knowledge, contributing to promoting early childhood development.

Mother-Child Social Cognition Among Multicultural Families in South Korea

Objective

Despite the rapidly growing number of multicultural families in South Korea, factors influencing parenting and mother-child interactions have not been well-understood. To our knowledge, the present study is the first to have examined how maternal social-cognitive capacity is associated with children's social cognition (e.g., theory of mind and emotion recognition) among multicultural families dwelling in South Korea.

Methods

Forty-seven multicultural mother-child dyads were recruited. The comprehensive measures on social cognition were administered to both the mothers and children, and social functioning and emotion regulation were administered to the children.

Results

A series of hierarchical regressions indicated that mothers' social cognition significantly explained children's ability to recognize static and dynamic emotional expressions, accounting for 27 and 34% of the variance, respectively. Furthermore, mothers' social cognition was significantly correlated to children's social functioning and emotion regulation. However, mothers' social cognition and children's theory of mind were non-significantly related.

Discussion

The current study examined the effects of social cognition of immigrant mothers on their children's socio-emotional development. As the findings indicated an important role of maternal factors (i.e., social cognition) for children's social cognition and their functions, psycho-social approaches (e.g., social cognition parenting education and training) should be incorporated in services for multicultural families.

Perspective Taking Ability in Psychologically Maltreated Children: A Protective Factor in Peer Social Adjustment

Perspective taking is conceptualized as a multidimensional construct characterized by three components: cognitive, affective, and visual. The experience of psychological maltreatment impairs the child's emotional competence; in particular, maltreated children present difficulty in understanding and regulating emotions and in social understanding ability. In addition, the literature contains several contributions that highlight maladaptive behaviors of children with a history of maltreatment in peer interactions in the school context. Perspective taking ability has rarely been studied in maltreated children and the existing studies have produced different and often conflicting results that require further insights. On the grounds of these premises, the main objective of the present research is to investigate perspective taking ability in preschool children from maltreating and non-maltreating family contexts and its role in social adjustment, in terms of prosocial and aggressive behavior toward peers inside the kindergarten. A second objective is to verify the effectiveness of a training aimed to promote perspective taking ability in victims of psychological maltreatment. This research, organized into two separate studies, involved 249 preschool children: 206 children from non-maltreating family contexts and 43 brought up in psychologically maltreating families. Perspective taking was measured via the administration of several tests, and prosocial behavior and aggressiveness were observed via non-participant observations in the school context. The training involved maltreated children in small-group meetings based on familiar and appealing activities within the mother-child community. The overall results show that children's perspective taking ability, in particular the affective perspective taking, contributed to social adjustment. In fact, greater affective perspective taking ability was correlated to a higher frequency of prosocial behaviors toward peers and minor frequency of aggressiveness. Finally, the results of the training (pre/post-test comparison) showed an increase in perspective taking, especially in the affective dimension, and a consequent increase in prosocial behaviors and a decrease in aggressive ones. Therefore, the affective perspective taking ability seems to represent a very significant protective factor, which should be focused and strengthened in order to improve the social adaptation of preschool children who are victims of psychological abuse.

Adolescents' Resilience During COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Mediating Role in the Association Between SEL Skills and Mental Health

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of social and emotional learning (SEL) skills and resilience in explaining mental health in male and female adolescents, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Three self-report questionnaires were administered to 778 participants aged between 11 and 16 years (mean age = 12.73 years; SD = 1.73) and recruited from 18 schools in Northern Italy. The SSIS-SELb-S and the CD-RISC 10 assessed SEL and resilience skills respectively, while the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was used to measure mental health in terms of internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and prosocial behavior. We found that SEL and resilience skills were positively and significantly associated with each other, negatively associated with internalizing and externalizing problems, and positively related to prosocial behavior. Three linear regression analyses showed the significant role of resilience, age, and gender in explaining the variance of internalizing problems; the significant role of SEL skills, resilience, age, and gender in explaining the variance of externalizing problems; and the role of SEL skills, age, and gender in explaining prosocial behavior. Importantly, we found that resilience fully mediated the relationship between SEL skills and internalizing problems, partially mediated the relationship between SEL skills and externalizing problems and didn't mediate the relationship between SEL skills and prosocial behavior. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations of the study as well as its practical implications.

Sex and gender differences in the development of empathy

The topic of typical sex and gender difference in empathy is examined in both a developmental and neuroscientific perspective. Empathy is construed as a multi-layered phenomenon with various degrees of complexity unfolding in ontogeny. The different components of empathy (i.e., affective, cognitive, and prosocial motivation) will be discussed as they interact and are expressed behaviorally. Significant sex/gender differences in empathy are discussed in relation to putative bottom-up or top-down processes underlying empathetic responses. The early onset and the pervasive presence of such sex/gender differences throughout the lifespan are further discussed in light of social and neurobiological modeling factors, including early socialization, brain's structural/functional variances, as well as genetics and hormonal factors.

Correspondencia entre el conocimiento materno sobre el desarrollo infantil y el cuidado de los niños menores de un año

Resumen Objetivo: analizar el conocimiento materno sobre el desarrollo infantil y su correspondencia con el cuidado que se le brinda al niño en el primer año de vida. Método: estudio longitudinal, prospectivo, en las etapas de gestación y de los 12/13 meses del niño. Se les realizaron entrevistas a 121 mujeres de un municipio brasileño, basadas en 21 ítems seleccionados del Inventario de Conocimiento sobre Desarrollo Infantil, relacionados con el primer año de vida. Se utilizó el cálculo de las tasas de aciertos, la regresión de Mínimos Cuadrados Ordinarios y el error estándar de White. Resultados: las participantes que tuvieron una mayor cantidad de aciertos tienen más escolaridad, más edad e ingreso familiar alto. Los aciertos vinculados a la variable “tener pareja o no” mostraron una ligera oscilación. En cuanto a los temas, se registraron más aciertos en los ítems sobre salud, seguridad e hitos del desarrollo infantil. Las madres primíparas presentaron mayor probabilidad de destete, sobreprotección y de que el niño estuviera en contacto con dispositivos electrónicos, y menor probabilidad de buscar información sobre el cuidado infantil. Conclusión: hubo correspondencia entre algunos conocimientos maternos y los cuidados que le brindaron al niño. La conexión entre ellos es importante para indicar detalladamente las incógnitas y las dudas y mejorar el conocimiento positivo, que contribuye a promover el desarrollo infantil temprano.

Correspondência entre conhecimentos maternos sobre desenvolvimento infantil e cuidados de crianças menores de um ano

Resumo Objetivo: analisar os conhecimentos maternos sobre o desenvolvimento infantil e sua correspondência aos cuidados ofertados à criança no primeiro ano de vida. Método: estudo longitudinal, prospectivo, nas etapas da gestação e 12º/13º mês da criança. Foram aplicadas entrevistas a 121 mulheres de um município brasileiro, baseadas em 21 itens selecionados do Inventário de Conhecimento sobre o Desenvolvimento Infantil, relativos ao primeiro ano de vida. Utilizou-se o cálculo de taxas de acertos, regressão por Mínimos Quadrados Ordinários e erro padrão de White. Resultados: as participantes que acertaram mais aspectos possuem mais anos de estudo, mais idade e renda familiar elevada. Os acertos quando considerada a variável “ter ou não companheiro/a” apresentaram discreta oscilação. Quanto às temáticas, acertaram mais aspectos sobre saúde, segurança e marcos do desenvolvimento infantil. Mães primíparas apresentaram maior probabilidade de desmame, superproteção e da criança ter contato com aparelhos eletrônicos, e menor probabilidade de buscar informações sobre cuidados infantis. Conclusão: houve correspondência entre alguns conhecimentos maternos e a execução dos cuidados da criança. A conexão entre eles é relevante para indicar detalhadamente os desconhecimentos e as incertezas e aprimorar os saberes positivos, contribuindo para promover o desenvolvimento na primeira infância.

Musical Training in the Development of Empathy and Prosocial Behaviors

Music not only regulates mood but also promotes the development and maintenance of empathy and social understanding. Since empathy is crucial for well-being and indispensable in social life, it is necessary to develop strategies to improve empathy and prosocial behaviors. To fulfill this aim, researchers have extensively investigated the effect of intensive musical training on the development of empathy. Here, we first summarize evidence showing the powerful influence of musical training on the development of empathy and then discuss psychological mechanisms responsible for those observations. The conclusions drawn from most previous studies were mainly based on behavioral measurements, while the neural basis of musical training in the development of the empathic brain is still unclear. Fortunately, brain imaging research has contributed greatly to our understanding of the neural underpinnings associated with musical training and its possible connection to the development of the empathic brain. One of the most distinctive signatures of musical training is structural and functional changes of multiple brain regions, and such changes might be related to some of the empathic behaviors observed in musically trained children. Therefore, intensive musical training in childhood may increase levels of empathy, and applied research is required to optimize the training strategy before implementing music education in empathy regulation. Moreover, future longitudinal studies are needed to better understand neural mechanisms underlying the causal effect of musical training on empathy development. These findings have important implications for understanding the development of the empathic brain and for improving prosocial behaviors.