Previous studies already showed that oxytocin promotes prosocial behavior. In addition, former research suggested that the effect of oxytocin depends on contextual and individual features. The...Show morePrevious studies already showed that oxytocin promotes prosocial behavior. In addition, former research suggested that the effect of oxytocin depends on contextual and individual features. The current study examined the effect of intranasally administered oxytocin on donating money to charity and whether experiences of negative parenting (love withdrawal and harsh discipline) in the past moderated this relationship. It was hypothesized that participants who received oxytocin would donate more money than participants who received a placebo. In addition, it was hypothesized that participants without a history of negative parenting would donate more money than participants who did experience negative parenting in the past and that the effect of oxytocin on donating money was stronger for participants without a history of negative parenting, compared to participants who did experience negative parenting in the past. The sample consisted of 57 female undergraduate students. Participants randomly received either an oxytocin or a placebo nasal spray at the beginning of the session. To measure experiences with negative parenting, questionnaires were used to measure experiences with parental use of love withdrawal and harsh discipline in the past. Because the participants underwent a long experiment, they received 50 Euros afterwards to thank them for their participation. At the end, after they had received the money, participants were shown a video of UNICEF and were asked to donate some money to charity. No main effects of oxytocin, experiences of parental use of love withdrawal and harsh discipline in the past on the amount of money donated were found. Experiences with parental use of harsh discipline as a moderator also failed to reach significance. But experiences with parental use of love withdrawal moderated the relationship between administered oxytocin and donating money. The positive effect of oxytocin (donating more money after oxytocin administration than after placebo administration) was mainly found for participants who experienced less love withdrawal in the past.Show less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
open access
2020-04-25T00:00:00Z
Objective: Poor emotion regulation in early development has been related to negative child outcomes and is expected to be influenced by interactions with primary caregivers. This study examines the...Show moreObjective: Poor emotion regulation in early development has been related to negative child outcomes and is expected to be influenced by interactions with primary caregivers. This study examines the relation between infant emotion regulation and maternal self-regulation. Method: The sample consisted of 132 infant-mother dyads. Maternal emotion regulation (ER) problems and executive functioning (EF) problems were assessed during pregnancy by means of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and the Behavioral Rating Inventory of Executive Function—Adult version. At six months of age, infant’s behavioral and physiological stress responses were observed during the Still Face Paradigm (SFP). Results: In response to the still face, infants showed an increase in heart rate and negative affect, and a decrease in positive affect and gaze. Infants of mothers with more ER problems showed more reactivity on heart rate, and arching and squirming. During the still face, infant self-soothing behavior increased. In response to the reunion positive affect, gaze, self-soothing behavior and negative affect increased, while arching and squirming behavior decreased. Infants of mothers with more ER problems, but few EF problems, showed less gaze during the still face, and higher levels of negative affect in general. Conclusion: This study underlines that a mother’s capacities to self-regulate influence the infant’s stress system and the emotional development of their infant. Helping mothers to enhance their own ER capacities could possibly decrease the risk for future psychopathology for their infants.Show less
Cases of physical and emotional child abuse and neglect are not uncommon and raise questions about why parents are compelled to use violence and negative disciplining techniques to solve family...Show moreCases of physical and emotional child abuse and neglect are not uncommon and raise questions about why parents are compelled to use violence and negative disciplining techniques to solve family conflict. This study focuses on the possible factors that are involved in the process that leads parents to refrain from using sensitive parenting techniques and instead fall back to negative parenting. The Social Information Model (SIP model) by Milner is used as a basis in explaining the possible moderating and mediating relationships between the variables parental attributions, chaos and negative discipline. In this study 48 mothers with children between the ages of 2 to 5 years old participated. Variables were measured by means of various questionnaires and a computer task to measure parental attributions. Results show that there are significant relationships between chaos and negative (overreactive) discipline and negative parental attributions and negative (overreactive) discipline. There was no mediating role found for parental attributions in the relationship between chaos and negative discipline. There was also no moderating role found for the relationship in the relationship between negative parental attributions and negative overreactive discipline. This study attempted to assess possible moderating and mediating effects that could explain why some parents use negative disciplining when confronted with challenging child behaviors, compared to others. Since negative (overreactive) disciplining is often seen as a predictor for child abuse in general, these results are of great importance in preventing and intervening in cases of (suspected) child abuse. Prevention and intervention programs should focus on the role of negative parental attributions and chaos within the home to help troubled families. Further research is needed to investigate other possible moderating and mediating variables that possibly explain why some parents use negative (overreactive) discipline.Show less
We investigated possible differences between Dutch monolingual and Dutch-English bilingual children ages 11 to 13, in terms of working memory, reading comprehension and the influence of the former...Show moreWe investigated possible differences between Dutch monolingual and Dutch-English bilingual children ages 11 to 13, in terms of working memory, reading comprehension and the influence of the former on the latter. We addressed three possible manifestations of these differences. First, we studied whether bilinguals and monolinguals perform differently on working memory tests. Our study, however, did not find any significant differences between the two groups. Second, we studied differences in performance of monolingual and bilingual children in understanding while reading sentences. We compared accuracy and reaction times on a reading comprehension task including sentences with temporal connectives. No differences between groups were detected at the level of accuracy. In reaction times, however,the analyses revealed significant interactions between groups and position of the temporal connective in the sentence. These interactions occurred for different connectives in monolingual and bilingual children, suggesting that the groups have different approaches to reading comprehension. Third, we explored a possible correlation between working memory and reading comprehension for the whole sample, first merged and then split by groups of monolinguals and bilinguals. The results showed medium to strong negative correlations between working memory tasks and reading comprehension tasks for the whole sample as well as for each of the groups. These correlations, however, are manifested differently in monolingual and bilingual children, a fact that provides another indication of different comprehension mechanisms for each of the groups. Our pilot study indicates, therefore, that bilingualism is associated to differences in reading comprehension mechanisms and in how these mechanisms correlate with working memory capacities. Further elucidation of these differences, by more extensive investigations, could be useful for the design of adapted educational approaches.Show less
Little is known about perception of child maltreatment in Greece. Although maltreatment in European countries is well documented, knowledge concerning this phenomenon remains sparse in Greece. This...Show moreLittle is known about perception of child maltreatment in Greece. Although maltreatment in European countries is well documented, knowledge concerning this phenomenon remains sparse in Greece. This study examined mothers’ and teacher’s evaluation of severity of four types of maltreatment: physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional abuse and emotional neglect. It was also examined whether mothers and teachers differ in their evaluation of maltreatment and if their perceptions are influenced by demographics and previous maltreatment experience. 41 Greek mothers of children 2 to 6 years old, 20 Greek teachers and 2 professionals working in Youth Care centers in Greece distributed Maltreatment Q-sort (MQS) and filled in Children Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and Background information Questionnaire. Within subjects contrast showed that mothers evaluated significantly more harmful physical abuse than the other types of maltreatment and physical neglect than emotional neglect and emotional abuse. Teachers also showed significant differences on subscales of MQS apart from physical neglect and emotional abuse. Mothers and teachers did not strongly differ in how they evaluated maltreatment and mothers showed higher convergence with the professionals’ view of maltreatment. Identity, number of children and maltreatment experiences are related to participants’ perception of maltreatment. Understanding perception of maltreatment is vital, as its perception has implications for reporting maltreatment and identifying intervention needs of vulnerable children. Furthermore, understanding maltreatment’s perception may help social service agencies to practice successful intervention programs. The current study is the first that directly studies the perception of four types of maltreatment and can be the basis for further research. Keywords: perception, maltreatment, Greece, mothers, teachers, MQSShow less
Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
open access
2020-12-31T00:00:00Z
The goal of the present study was to investigate whether maternal sensitivity and infant temperament were predictors of infant jealousy. The differential susceptibility hypothesis was also tested....Show moreThe goal of the present study was to investigate whether maternal sensitivity and infant temperament were predictors of infant jealousy. The differential susceptibility hypothesis was also tested. It was investigated if infant temperament could moderate the relationship between maternal sensitivity and infant jealousy. Forty-eight 10-month-olds and their mothers participated in the study. Jealousy was measured during a 10 minutes episode of free-play between mother and infant during which mothers were instructed to care for a life-like doll. The doll cried for 5 minutes of the total episode. Infants were able to play with a large variety of toys during the jealousy evoking situation. Maternal sensitivity was measured during three additional short episodes (break, free-play without toys, free-play with toys). Infant temperament was measured by the Infant Characteristic Questionnaire (ICQ). The results showed that maternal sensitivity and infant temperament were not predictors of infant jealousy within the present study. Also, no proof was found for the differential susceptibility hypothesis. Infant temperament was not a significant predictor in the relationship between maternal sensitivity and infant temperament. The results of the present study indicate that the relationships between maternal sensitivity and infant jealousy and between infant temperament and infant jealousy might not be as strong as suggested by previous studies.Show less
In the latest presidential elections of Turkey, which was realized on August 2014, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-leader of pro-Kurdish ethnic party HDP, got 9,76% of the votes. Compared to previous...Show moreIn the latest presidential elections of Turkey, which was realized on August 2014, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-leader of pro-Kurdish ethnic party HDP, got 9,76% of the votes. Compared to previous elections, this meant fifty percent increase in votes of the party. Thus, the main problem of the thesis is that in Turkey, considering the vote limitation of an ethnic party in a historical context, how could the noticeable rise in votes of HDP’s candidate Demirtas could be explained? The thesis will argue that there are several factors which contributed to the success of the HDP. First, for the last few years Kurdish political movement has been following a new strategy with which the party abandons Kurdish ethnic party claims and aims to become a party of Turkey, with increasing democratic modernization emphasis. Second, Gezi movement which occurred in 2013, showed the societal base of leftist movements in Turkey. Democratic modernization of HDP was in line with the ideals of Gezi movement and Demirtas successfully used the discourse of Gezi, whereby he enhanced the electorate base of his party. Lastly, the absence of 10% election threshold had an important role in voting behavior of the electorate and this factor had positive influence on the vote share of HDP.Show less
Events of extreme ethnic violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Rwanda shook up the international community in the 1990s. In the years after genocide and ethnic cleansing both countries employed in...Show moreEvents of extreme ethnic violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Rwanda shook up the international community in the 1990s. In the years after genocide and ethnic cleansing both countries employed in different strategies for rehabilitating ethnic groups and mitigating ethnic tensions. This thesis focuses on the electoral institutions, and thereby aims to contribute to the literature on power sharing institutions. In Bosnia international actors have attempted to reconcile ethnic groups by dividing power in the country’s most important political institutions along ethnic lines. Though Bosnia has remained peaceful in the last two decades, cooperation between the Bosniak, Croat and Serbian ethnic minorities has proven difficult. The Office of the High Representative has used his ‘Bonn powers’ frequently to pass legislation or remove politicians that frustrated the peace process. In Rwanda the story is entirely different. The Arusha Peace Agreement of 1993 entailed democratization and power sharing between the Hutu government and Tutsi rebels, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). However, in a society in civil war, where ethnic discrimination was prevalent, power sharing catalysed a genocide. Now the RPF are in firm control of Rwanda’s political institutions. The RPF aims to ban the notion of ethnicity from the political sphere.Show less
The year 2010 inaugurated a tumultuous period for a range of countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Protests compelling for democratization culminated in violent clashes between rebels...Show moreThe year 2010 inaugurated a tumultuous period for a range of countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Protests compelling for democratization culminated in violent clashes between rebels and authoritarian regimes across the region. In response to the escalation of violence in Libya, an alliance of countries established a no-fly zone for halting the exorbitant regime violence against the rebels and the population. Shortly after, NATO took over command. A similar intervention in Syria did not occur, in spite of the widespread human rights violations and grave human suffering. A comparison between the cases of Libya and Syria sheds light on the factors that shaped the different international community responses to the conflicts and also contributes to the greater puzzle of why states intervene in some atrocities but not in others. This study found that a prime factor impacting humanitarian intervention occurrence in Libya and Syria is the UN Security Council’s task to provide authorization within a context of disputed legality of humanitarian interventions. In addition, it is concluded that UNSC member’s positions with respect to intervening were guided by their political interests and to a lesser extent by their economic interests. Finally, the anticipated outcomes of the two humanitarian intervention scenarios influenced intervention behavior, which explains why only one intervention was conducted. All these factors are indispensable components of an inclusive explanation for the different responses to the civil wars in Libya and Syria.Show less
