behavioural adjustment
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Author(s):  
Lifen Zhao ◽  
Steven Sek-yum Ngai

Although discrimination is widely acknowledged to impair developmental outcomes among ethnic minority adolescents, literature differentiating discrimination based on personal characteristics and group membership is lacking, especially in Chinese contexts, and the mechanisms of those relationships remain unclear. In response, the study presented here examined whether self-esteem mediates the relationship between perceived academic discrimination and developmental outcomes among such ethnic minority adolescents, and whether ethnic identity mediates the relationship between perceived ethnic discrimination and developmental outcomes. Multistage cluster random sampling performed in Dali and Kunming, China, yielded a sample of 813 Bai adolescents whose data was analysed in structural equation modelling. The results indicate that perceived academic discrimination had a direct negative effect on adolescents’ mental health, while perceived ethnic discrimination had direct negative effects on their behavioural adjustment and social competence. Perceived academic discrimination also indirectly affected adolescents’ behavioural adjustment, mental health, and social competence via self-esteem, whereas perceived ethnic discrimination indirectly affected their behavioural adjustment and social competence via ethnic identity. These findings deepen current understandings of how perceived discrimination, self-esteem, and ethnic identity affect the developmental outcomes of ethnic minority adolescents and provide practical recommendations for policymakers and social workers to promote those outcomes in China.


SLEEP ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiefan Ling ◽  
Xuanyi Lin ◽  
Xiao Li ◽  
Ngan Yin Chan ◽  
Jihui Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract Study Objectives Insomnia and depression are common comorbid conditions in youths. Emerging evidence suggests that disrupted reward processing may be implicated in the association between insomnia and the increased risk for depression. Reduced reward positivity (RewP) as measured by event-related potential (ERP) has been linked to depression, but has not been tested in youths with insomnia. Methods Twenty-eight participants with insomnia disorder and without any comorbid psychiatric disorders and 29 healthy sleepers aged between 15-24 completed a monetary reward task, the Cued Door task, whilst electroencephalographic activity was recorded. RewP (reward minus non-reward difference waves) was calculated as the mean amplitudes within 200ms to 300ms time window at FCz. Two analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) were conducted with age as a covariate on RewP amplitude and latency, respectively. Results Participants with insomnia had a significantly lower RewP amplitude regardless of cue types (Gain, Control, and Loss) than healthy sleepers, F (1, 51) = 4.95, p = .031, indicating blunted reward processing. On the behavioural level, healthy sleepers were more prudential (slower reaction time) in decision making towards Loss/Gain cues than their insomnia counterparts. Trial-by-trial behavioural adjustment analyses showed that, compared with healthy sleepers, participants with insomnia were less likely to dynamically change their choices in response to Loss cues. Conclusions Dysfunctional reward processing, coupled with inflexibility of behavioural adjustment in decision-making, is associated with insomnia disorder among youth, independent of mood disorders. Future studies with long-term follow-up are needed to further delineate the developmental trajectory of insomnia-related reward dysfunctions in youth.


Author(s):  
Sema Öngören

Abstract This research aims to examine the practices of school counsellors working in preschool education towards children’s school adjustment in academic, social, emotional, and behavioural dimensions. The research is a qualitative study with participants consisting of 30 school counsellors working in preschool education. The participants were determined using the criterion sampling method, which is a purposeful sampling method. The data were collected using an interview form with four questions. These data were analysed by content analysis method. It was revealed that the counsellors carried out various practices in academic, social, emotional, and behavioural areas for the adjustment of children to school. It was found that academic adjustment activities were cooperation with the family, individual guidance, and behaviour assessment. Social adjustment activities were social skills activities, group guidance, peer support, and individual guidance. Emotional adjustment activities were individual guidance and cooperation with the family. Behavioural adjustment activities were group guidance, cooperation with the family, individual guidance, school rules, and behaviour assessment.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Skora ◽  
James J A Livermore ◽  
Federica Nisini ◽  
Ryan Bradley Scott

Performance monitoring is a vital aspect of successful learning and decision-making. Performance errors are reflected in the autonomic nervous system, indicating the need for behavioural adjustment. As part of this response, errors cause a pronounced deceleration in heart rate, compared to correct decisions, and precede explicit awareness of the stimulus-outcome contingencies. However, it is unknown whether those signals are present and able to inform instrumental learning without conscious awareness of the stimuli, where explicit performance monitoring is disabled. With mixed evidence for unconscious instrumental learning, determining the presence or absence of autonomic performance monitoring can shed light on its feasibility.Here, we employed an unconscious instrumental conditioning task, where successful learning is evidenced by increased approach responses to visually masked rewarding stimuli, and avoidance of punishing stimuli. An electrocardiogram (ECG) assessed continuous cardiac activity throughout the learning process. Natural fluctuations of awareness under masking permitted us to contrast learning and cardiac deceleration for trials with, versus without, conscious stimulus awareness. Our results demonstrate that on trials where participants did not consciously perceive the stimulus, there was no differentiation in cardiac response between rewarding and punishing feedback, indicating absence of performance monitoring. In contrast, consciously perceived stimuli elicited the expected deceleration upon error commission. This result suggests that, in unconscious instrumental learning, the brain cannot acquire implicit knowledge of stimulus values, rendering correct instrumental choices impossible. This evidence provides support for the notion that consciousness might be required for flexible adaptive behaviour, and that this may be mediated through bodily signals.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Senderecka ◽  
Jakub M. Szewczyk

This study examined whether error-related brain responses are sensitive to the degree of error inevitability, a factor which seriously affects the attribution of moral responsibility for an error. We were especially interested in error-related negativity (ERN), which is an electrophysiological marker of subjective evaluation of error significance and its motivational value. In addition, we focused on post-error slowing, which is a post-error behavioural adjustment. We hypothesized that the more avoidable the error, and consequently the greater its significance and motivational value, the larger the ERN amplitude, the shorter the ERN latency, and the greater the post-error slowing should be. To elicit errors whose inevitability varies, we used the stop-signal task. The inevitability of errors in this task depends on whether the stop signal is presented before or after a point beyond which the completion of the movement cannot be cancelled. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that the higher motivational value of avoidable errors was indeed reflected in larger and earlier ERNs. Moreover, avoidable errors led to greater adjustments in subsequent behaviour aimed at preventing similar failures in the future. These findings show that early performance monitoring, as reflected by ERN, involves an evaluation of error inevitability. In a broader perspective, these results indicate that the elementary basis for distinguishing between culpable (avoidable) and non-culpable (unavoidable) errors may occur in the brain several dozen milliseconds after error commission.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 4647
Author(s):  
Dolores Seijo ◽  
David Tomé ◽  
Jessica Sanmarco ◽  
Alina Morawska ◽  
Francisca Fariña

(1) Background: The aim of this study is to obtain an instrument, with robust psychometric properties validated with a Spanish sample, that allows for the evaluation of the emotional and behavioural adjustment of children, as well as the perceived ability of parents to manage their children’s problems. (2) Methods: Data from 2618 Spanish parents of 2–12-year-old children were used to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Child Adjustment and Parent Efficacy Scale. In order to develop the intensity scale, exploratory and confirmatory analyses were carried out, and the reliability, validity, and invariance of the measurement model were estimated. (3) Results: A structure of 25 items grouped into two factors are shown, which allows for the evaluation of emotional and behavioural problems and children’s competencies. The model adjustment indicators were satisfactory. Favourable evidence was obtained for the reliability of the measurement model from two perspectives, internal consistency and composite reliability. The discriminant validity was satisfactory, as was the homogeneity of the measurement model based on child gender. Regarding the self-efficacy scale, confirmatory analysis procedures were also carried out, verifying a good factorial structure. (4) Conclusions: Results support a scale with robust psychometric properties that measure child adjustment and parent self-efficacy. The instrument can help to improve family effectiveness and be useful for schools and teachers to promote the well-being of children. The instrument could also be good to evaluate in special contexts, like custody evaluations in a legal or forensic context.


Author(s):  
Sam Parsons ◽  
Alice Sullivan ◽  
Emla Fitzsimons ◽  
George Ploubidis

Poor physical health and behavioural and emotional problems in childhood have a lasting impact on well-being in adolescence and adulthood. Here we address the relationship between poor parent and child physical and mental health in early childhood (age 5) and conduct, hyperactivity and emotional problems in mid-childhood (age 10/11). We compare results across two generations of British children born 30 years apart in 1970 (n = 15,856) and 2000/2 (16,628). We take advantage of rich longitudinal birth cohort data and establish that a child’s own poor health was associated with conduct, hyperactivity and emotional problems in mid-childhood in both generations, and that with the exception of conduct problems in the 1970 cohort these relationships remained when family socio-economic status and individual characteristics were accounted for. Poor maternal mental health was similarly associated with conduct, hyperactivity and emotional problems in both generations; poor parental physical health with a child having later hyperactivity and emotional problems in the younger generation. Results also indicated that earlier behaviour problems had more influence on later problems for children in the more recent cohort. Given the increasing proportion of children and adolescents with mental health problems and that socio-economic disadvantage increases physical and mental well-being concerns within families, policy solutions must consider the holistic nature of a child’s family environment to prevent some children experiencing a ‘double whammy’ of disadvantage. The early years provide the best opportunity to promote children’s resilience and well-being and minimise the development of entrenched negative behaviours and their subsequent costs to society.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Poor parental physical and mental health each have a negative association with behavioural adjustment in (two generations of British) children.</li><br /><li>A child’s poor health has a negative association with later behavioural adjustment in (two generations of British) children.</li><br /><li>The relationships remain even after family background and a child’s earlier behaviour scores are taken into account.</li></ul>


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (6) ◽  
pp. 20190931
Author(s):  
Jack G. Rayner ◽  
Will T. Schneider ◽  
Nathan W. Bailey

Evolutionary loss of sexual signals is widespread. Examining the consequences for behaviours associated with such signals can provide insight into factors promoting or inhibiting trait loss. We tested whether a behavioural component of a sexual trait, male calling effort, has been evolutionary reduced in silent populations of Hawaiian field crickets ( Teleogryllus oceanicus ) . Cricket song requires energetically costly wing movements, but ‘flatwing’ males have feminized wings that preclude song and protect against a lethal, eavesdropping parasitoid. Flatwing males express wing movement patterns associated with singing but, in contrast with normal-wing males, sustained periods of wing movement cannot confer sexual selection benefits and should be subject to strong negative selection. We developed an automated technique to quantify how long males spend expressing wing movements associated with song. We compared calling effort among populations of Hawaiian crickets with differing proportions of silent males and between male morphs. Contrary to expectation, silent populations invested as much in calling effort as non-silent populations. Additionally, flatwing and normal-wing males from the same population did not differ in calling effort. The lack of evolved behavioural adjustment following morphological change in silent Hawaiian crickets illustrates how behaviour might sometimes impede, rather than facilitate, evolution.


Endocrine ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-437
Author(s):  
Valeria Messina ◽  
Tatja Hirvikoski ◽  
Leif Karlsson ◽  
Sophia Vissani ◽  
Lena Wallensteen ◽  
...  

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