Research master thesis | Developmental Psychopathology in Education and Child Studies (research) (MSc)
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Individual differences in behavior are best explained through a multisystem approach by integrating neurobiological, neurocognitive, and social environmental factors. This longitudinal study...Show moreIndividual differences in behavior are best explained through a multisystem approach by integrating neurobiological, neurocognitive, and social environmental factors. This longitudinal study examined whether early physical aggression could be predicted by stress regulation, inhibitory control, risk background, and sex. In addition, this study is among the first to investigate whether the four stress response patterns of the Adaptive Calibration Model (Del Giudice et al., 2011) could be generalized to 12-month-old children by studying: autonomic nervous system (ANS), sympathetic nervous system (SNS), parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), and hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis. ANS was indexed by heart rate, SNS by salivary alpha-amylase and pre-ejection period, PNS by respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and HPA axis by salivary cortisol. The sample consisted of 214 mother-child dyads (116 boys) with an equal number of high- and low-risk backgrounds. Physical aggression was assessed through maternal reports at 12, 20, and 30 months of age. At 12 months, children performed an inhibitory control task and the fear task (robot paradigm) was used to measure baseline, response, and recovery levels of the stress systems. Latent profile analysis revealed three profiles: (1) ANS Responders, (2) Moderate Arousal, and (3) Hormonal Responders. No significant differences were found between the profiles with regard to inhibitory control, average age of mother and child, number of boys and girls, and number of high- and low-risk children. Results showed that higher physical aggression scores were associated at 12 months with ANS Responders and lower inhibitory control, at 20 months with Hormonal Responders, boys and high-risk, and at 30 months with boys and high-risk. In addition, an interaction effect was found at 20 months: higher inhibitory control in girls was associated with lower physical aggression scores, but not in the Hormonal Responders. The discussion highlights the importance of using a multisystem approach to explain individual differences in early physical aggression.Show less
There have been few studies conducted into the effect of victimisation in the context of the bystander effect, wherein one person is mistreated while onlookers take no action to help. Previous...Show moreThere have been few studies conducted into the effect of victimisation in the context of the bystander effect, wherein one person is mistreated while onlookers take no action to help. Previous research indicates that potential impacts may include a feeling of ostracism or an adjustment of perceived social norms. This study explored how participants would react in a dictator game wherein they are given less money than their peers, in circumstances where the peers do or do not try to help, measured by their retaliation against the perpetrator, their psychological needs evaluation and ratings of fairness and justifiedness. No significant differences were found between the two conditions. However, as some research previously suggested, there are differences in coping strategies and responses to mistreatment between individuals. This study found that retaliators also had poorer psychological needs scores for control and self-esteem, rating the perpetrator’s behaviour as unjustified whilst their own vengeful retaliation was, according to them, justified. Future avenues for research are explored.Show less
Background: Social-emotional skills are pivotal for children’s intra- and interpersonal well-being. Social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions have been shown to improve these skills, with self...Show moreBackground: Social-emotional skills are pivotal for children’s intra- and interpersonal well-being. Social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions have been shown to improve these skills, with self-awareness (SA) being the most influential intervention component. However, these interventions apply varying conceptualizations and operationalizations of SA. Therefore, the defining characteristics of SA interventions and their effect on children’s well-being are unknown. Identifying these could help educators, policy makers and researchers to optimise content and accessibility of SA intervention to the benefit of children’s mental health. Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to analyse the characteristics and effectiveness of currently available interventions targeting SA in children, and to examine children’s cultural background as potential moderator. Method: Eight electronic databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, EMBASE, EMCARE, ERIC, Cochrane Controlled Register of Trials (CENTRAL), Web of Science and Academic Search Premier) were searched for intervention studies investigating SA interventions in September 2019. Children’s SA was the primary outcome of interest, positive and negative mental health were the secondary. Of 7050 identified studies, 42 were included in the systematic review and 29 in the meta-analysis. Results: It was found that SA interventions had a small to moderate effect on children’s SA (g = 0.31 (0.05), 95% CI [0.21, 0.40], p < .001). Furthermore, they had a positive effect on children’s mental health. Cultural background did not significantly moderate SA intervention effectiveness. There was no evidence for publication bias. Conclusion: Overall, interventions targeting SA can positively influence the level of SA and mental health in children irrespective of their cultural backgrounds.Show less
Can people be motivated to experience an emotion solely due to the belief that this emotion reinforces their ideology? This study investigated whether people would be motivated to experience...Show moreCan people be motivated to experience an emotion solely due to the belief that this emotion reinforces their ideology? This study investigated whether people would be motivated to experience ideology-congruent and -incongruent emotions, if they believed these would reinforce their (left or right) ideology. A repeated-measures design showed that across ideologies, people were more motivated to experience fear when they believed it was ideology-reinforcing than when they had no such belief. Contrary to the hypothesis, for hope, the data suggested motivation to be high regardless of people’s beliefs about its usefulness for their ideology. This study also investigated potential differences between leftists and rightists in their motivation to experience ideology congruent and incongruent emotions. Whilst the data suggested rightists to be generally more motivated to experience both hope and fear, these results had to be disregarded, due to a great gender and age difference between the samples of the leftist and rightist supporters, which influenced the results. The significance and implications of the current findings are discussed.Show less
Even though it is well-known that certain antipsychotic medication such as olanzapine and clozapine can cause weight gain, metabolic disturbances, and other physical and mental complications in...Show moreEven though it is well-known that certain antipsychotic medication such as olanzapine and clozapine can cause weight gain, metabolic disturbances, and other physical and mental complications in people with a psychotic disorder, the relationship between antipsychotic medication and exercise remains not clear. The main goal of this study is to investigate whether there is an association between using a certain type of antipsychotic medication and the amount of exercising in people with a psychotic disorder. First, this study examines whether people with a psychotic disorder that use atypical antipsychotic medication exercise less compared to those that use typical antipsychotic medication. Second, whether people with a psychotic disorder that use clozapine and olanzapine exercise less compared to those that use another type of antipsychotic medication. The data used originates from a longitudinal cohort study named GROUP, a total of 523 people with a psychotic disorder who participated are used in this study. From these 523 participants, a number of 69 used typical antipsychotic medication and 454 participants used atypical antipsychotic medication. In addition, a total of 241 participants from these 523 participants used clozapine or olanzapine, and 282 participants used other antipsychotics. Further, t-tests are used in the analysis to answer the research questions. The results show there is no significant difference in both groups with regards to the two hypotheses. This implies there is no association between using a certain type of antipsychotic medication and the amount of exercising in people with a psychotic disorder.Show less
The Preventive Intervention Trajectory (Preventief Interventie Team; PIT) is a project which intervenes preventively in children who have a risk of future criminal behavior. Interventions focus on...Show moreThe Preventive Intervention Trajectory (Preventief Interventie Team; PIT) is a project which intervenes preventively in children who have a risk of future criminal behavior. Interventions focus on reducing externalizing problem behavior in these children. It is important to know which factors have an influence on the effectivity of the PIT. Current research focused on the association between self-worth and externalizing problems. Previous research is inconsistent, which suggests there is a possibility that the association between self-worth and externalizing problems is a quadratic association. Current research examined the possibility that children with average self-worth would have less externalizing problems at timepoint one than children with high and low self-worth. Children with low, average and high self-worth were compared on (reduction of) externalizing problems before treatment, on the short term (six months), and on the long term (twelve months). Results showed that there is was no significant linear association between self-worth and externalizing problems before treatment, which supports the suggestion that there might be a quadratic association. However, ANOVA-analysis revealed that there was also no significant quadratic or linear relation. Externalizing problems in children reduced significantly on the short and long term. However, no significant linear or quadratic relation between self-worth and the reduction in externalizing problems on the short and long term was found, indicating that there is no association between self-worth and (the reduction of) externalizing problems. Future research should include a larger sample to verify the current findings.Show less
Background: Communication is important, especially in cancer care. Good communication can positively influence patient outcomes, whereas poor communication can cause harm. Due to COVID- 19 physical...Show moreBackground: Communication is important, especially in cancer care. Good communication can positively influence patient outcomes, whereas poor communication can cause harm. Due to COVID- 19 physical contact decreased leading to remote communication. In addition, general health care was downscaled, resulting in patients potentially receiving limited information about (treatment) changes. Currently, we do not know whether these changes are considered harmful and whether that depends on certain characteristics. Objective: This study aims to determine to which extent communication themes and communication situations within these two themes, are deemed harmful and by whom during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the relationship between patients’ age, gender, education and information need, and the changed communication (remote consultations and limited information about (treatment) changes) and specific communication situations. Methods: An online survey study was conducted based on a scoping review and input from researchers, clinicians, and patient representatives. Participants were eligible if they were 18 years or older, had advanced (incurable) cancer and had sufficient command of the Dutch language. Participants were presented with six potentially harmful communication situations (grouped under the themes remote consultations and limited information about (treatment) changes) which they assessed as harmful or not (yes/no). The background characteristics were dichotomised, and the relationships were measured using (logistic) regression analyses. Results: The sample existed of 47 participants, aged between 44-81. Most participants (57%–87%) perceived the communication situations as harmful. The relationships between age, gender, education, and information need and remote consultations, limited information about (treatment) changes and specific communication situations were all non-significant (p > .01). The relationship between education and not checking if the discussed information is remembered was marginally significant, c2(1, N = 46) = 6.21, p = .013 and recorded an odds ratio of 7.29 (95% CI: 1.31 – 40.54). Conclusions: As we suspect telehealth to increase, we suggest creating specific guidelines for remote contact using harmful communication examples and helpful alternatives. Furthermore, we advise physicians to provide explanations about treatment changes and as to why patients are not (or less) involved in decision-making when information provision is limited. Larger and more representative research is needed to replicate and substantiate our findings.Show less
There is a need for replication studies in psychology, yet resources are scarce. Study selection strategies are required that can guide researchers in which studies to prioritise for replication....Show moreThere is a need for replication studies in psychology, yet resources are scarce. Study selection strategies are required that can guide researchers in which studies to prioritise for replication. The goal of this paper was to examine potential selection strategies and to identify possible issues with these strategies. Therefore a quantitative method for Replication Value (RV), inspired by Isager (2019), was proposed. RV determines the relative importance of replicating a study and was defined as impact over uncertainty. The studies in this paper formulated and compared different operationalizations of RV. Web of Science (WoS) was used to extract relevant data on a random sample of papers from WoS’s social psychology category. The first study examined a RV formula using minimal information, with yearly citations as a measure for impact and sample size as a measure for uncertainty. Study 1 also introduced Statcheck as a method to examine potential relations between RV-ranking and erroneous reporting. Study 2 elaborated on study 1, combining p-values with sample size as a measure for uncertainty. As part of this study, p-curve analysis was conducted to find relations between evidential value and paper ranking. Study 3 elaborated further, adding Altmetric score, a measure for societal influence of a paper, as a measure for impact. For all studies, similarity between RV-rankings was examined using Rank-Biased Overlap (RBO). Results tentatively indicate that sample size and citations are measures that can be useful when creating RV-formulas. Adding p-values to the RV-equation wasn’t beneficial, because it hardly changed the ranking of higher ranking papers. The addition of Altmetric score did change the RV-ranking and might be of interest to researchers interested in emphasising societal impact. Overall, this paper lays a groundwork for future RV research, mainly by exploring possible metrics involved in RV equations, but also by pointing out potential issues when using RV equations.Show less
The social dilemma called the anticommons dilemma represents a context in which a scarce resource has multiple owners who can exclude one another from harvesting from that resource. Not much...Show moreThe social dilemma called the anticommons dilemma represents a context in which a scarce resource has multiple owners who can exclude one another from harvesting from that resource. Not much attention has been paid to factors that lead to non-cooperative decisions in this context. Consequently, the present study investigates how the salience of collective consequences (externalities awareness) influences (non-)cooperative choice behavior in people differing in social value orientations (SVO). After SVO was measured and one of the two externalities awareness conditions was presented, the participants (N = 168) had to indicate a minimum price to give a co-owner access to the resource (WTA) in a modified anticommons paradigm. It was expected that when externalities were made salient individuals would display higher levels of cooperation, by indicating lower WTA’s, compared to when externalities were not made salient. Moreover, it was expected that when externalities were not made salient prosocials would display higher levels of cooperation than proselfs, whereas when externalities were made salient this difference would be smaller. Although the effect of externalities awareness and the interaction effect of this factor with SVO was non-significant, exploratory analyses indicated severe underuse of the common resource. The limitations of this study and suggestions for future research are discussed.Show less
