This study investigates the relationship between rejection sensitivity and social feedback learning rate. Rejection sensitivity is an aspect of social anxiety disorder which is especially prevalent...Show moreThis study investigates the relationship between rejection sensitivity and social feedback learning rate. Rejection sensitivity is an aspect of social anxiety disorder which is especially prevalent in adolescents. SAD has a significant relationship with social feedback learning rate and this study aims to go a step further and research whether rejection sensitivity is a leading factor in this relationship. Participants fill in the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale as well as the Children’s Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire. Afterwards they will do a speech task which includes a public speaking section and is judged by confederate judges who will rate them on their performance. The participants rate themselves before and after the feedback from the judges. The difference between individual’s rating before and after the feedback will be measured and this will form the basis of our data for analysis. During the analysis a correlational relationship will be analyzed between rejection sensitivity, its sub measures and social feedback learning rate. The hypothesis of the study is that individuals with higher rejection sensitivity score will have higher negative social feedback learning rates. Results show no significant relationship between the variables.Show less
School playgrounds serve as crucial environments for children to engage socially and form friendships, which are integral to their socioemotional development. However, children with Autism Spectrum...Show moreSchool playgrounds serve as crucial environments for children to engage socially and form friendships, which are integral to their socioemotional development. However, children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) frequently encounter unique challenges with social interactions, leading to increased time spent in isolation. The difference in social interactions between children with ASD and those without has not been extensively studied. Given the social skill difficulties that children with ASD exhibit, this research emphasizes the impact of social contact on reciprocal friendship formation, highlighting the differences between school-aged children with and without ASD. The data was collected from 100 students, aged 6 to 14, at two Dutch special education primary schools, with a balanced number of students with and without ASD. Social contacts during recess were quantitively measured using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) sensors on school playgrounds, and reciprocal friendship was assessed through peer nominations. Results indicate that children with ASD spent shorter overall time in social contact during recess, yet they still had the same number of reciprocal friends as children without ASD. There was no significant relationship between reciprocal friendship and the quantity of social contact, suggesting that increased social contact does not facilitate friendship formation. This lack of relationship was similarly found in children with and without ASD. Our results indicate that the quality of the interaction may matter more than the frequency, showing that future studies should focus on the quality of the interaction more than the frequency. Longitudinal studies are needed to understand the social dynamics of children with ASD in regular school settings and special education schools. Additionally, the long-term effectiveness of interventions, such as peer- implemented naturalistic strategies, peer-mediated Pivotal Response Training, and training 2 programs for educators, should be examined. This research is crucial for developing effective strategies to support the social development of children with ASD.Show less
Engaging in social interaction with peers helps children acquire necessary social skills, highlighting the importance of school environments that promote social interaction. Prior research has...Show moreEngaging in social interaction with peers helps children acquire necessary social skills, highlighting the importance of school environments that promote social interaction. Prior research has identified playground features that could promote social interaction in allistic (non-autistic) children, and types of joint play autistic children were found to engage longer time in. Additionally, prior research has hypothesized that sensory complaint levels could influence the time autistic children spend in playground areas with certain features. However, research focused on identifying types of playground features that could promote longer time in social interaction in autistic children has been limited. This study aimed to identify playground features that could promote longer time in social interaction in autistic children, alongside investigating whether the sensory complaint level of certain playground areas influences interaction time. Autistic children (six to 12 years old; N = 38), including three girls and 35 boys from a Cluster 4 school for children with behavioral and/or social-emotional disorders in the Dutch special educational system, were sampled during recess in which measurements were conducted on two consecutive days for each class for 15-50 minutes per session. We utilized proximity-sensing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) badges and GPS loggers to record total interaction time in four playground areas, and an adapted version of the Informal Social Space Rating Scale to measure sensory complaint level. We found no sufficient evidence that playground features/playground areas had an effect on interaction time and sensory complaint level in autistic children. Furthermore, we found sensory complaint level to be weakly associated with the amount of time spent in interaction in a playground area in autistic children. We evaluated various internal and external factors that may have affected our findings.Show less
Growing up in society requires people to interact and socialize with each other to live together peacefully. Empathy and prosocial behavior are desirable qualities that help develop a harmonious...Show moreGrowing up in society requires people to interact and socialize with each other to live together peacefully. Empathy and prosocial behavior are desirable qualities that help develop a harmonious society. Multiple studies have examined the effects of empathy on prosocial behavior and the advantages of supportive friendships. However, these relationships have not been studied much in emerging adulthood. This study aims to establish associative links between empathy, prosocial behavior, and best-friendship quality in emerging adulthood (n = 209, age range: 18-25 years old). Previous research established that people have an altruistic motivation to behave prosocially when faced with empathy-evoking situations, suggesting that empathy positively affects prosocial behavior. Moreover, both empathy levels and prosocial behavior are associated with friendship quality. However, contrary to previous research findings, this study found no significant relationship between empathy and prosocial behavior and no moderating effect of best-friendship quality. On the other hand, our analysis revealed a significant relationship between best-friend relationships and empathy, as well as between best-friend relationships and prosocial behavior. This aligns with previous studies on how supportive friendships can positively influence your prosocial behavior and empathy development. The findings of this study contribute to the idea that supportive friendships can promote a person’s prosocial behavior and empathy, specifically in emerging adulthood.Show less
Adolescence is characterized by a prominent increase in peer orientation and high sensitivity to peer evaluations. To date, explanations for individual differences in peer evaluation sensitivity...Show moreAdolescence is characterized by a prominent increase in peer orientation and high sensitivity to peer evaluations. To date, explanations for individual differences in peer evaluation sensitivity have not been thoroughly investigated. The present study examined whether a catastrophizing emotion regulation tendency and overprotective parenting could explain why some adolescents are more sensitive to negative peer evaluation than others. Sixty-four adolescents (mean age = 14.66; 49 females) took part in a Social Evaluative Learning through Feedback (SELF-) Profile task. Participants had to predict the valence of peer feedback in a 240-trial paradigm with four fictitious peers that differed in their probability of giving positive feedback. We hypothesized that through the mediating effect of catastrophizing, parental overprotection could predict the ratio of negative predictions of peer evaluations. We also expected that adolescents scoring higher on these self-reported concepts would have a higher ratio of negative predictions for the most negative vs. the most positive peer. Similarly, it was hypothesized that adolescents with higher catastrophizing and overprotection scores would expect more negative feedback in the SELF-Profile task beforehand and also estimate them to have been high afterward. Our results showed that total parental and paternal overprotection, but not maternal, predicted catastrophizing in adolescents. However, we did not find evidence for the hypothesized mediation models or associations between the self-reported concepts and the SELF-Profile pre- and post-ratings. Together, these findings suggest that parental overprotection and catastrophizing are related concepts but they are not sufficient in explaining negative biases in social reinforcement learning in adolescence.Show less
Abstract Parental relationships are foundational in shaping individuals' social trajectories and emotional well-being. Drawing from Social Learning Theory and Attachment Theory, this study examines...Show moreAbstract Parental relationships are foundational in shaping individuals' social trajectories and emotional well-being. Drawing from Social Learning Theory and Attachment Theory, this study examines the association between maternal and social connectedness among emerging adults aged 18-29 years old. We will specifically focus on maternal connectedness to explore the unique effect played by mothers in developing social connectedness. We hypothesized that higher levels of maternal connectedness would be associated with greater social connectedness, moderated by gender differences in emerging adults. In contrast to our hypotheses, no statistically significant correlation was found between maternal and social connectedness, nor between gender and social connectedness. However, when divided by gender, males exhibited a trend towards a stronger negative correlation between social and maternal connectedness compared to females. Our results highlight the need for additional research into the impact of mother-child connections on social connectedness. Mainly, this study advocates for more culturally sensitive, age-appropriate, and gender-aware research to deepen our understanding of the concepts of social and maternal connectedness.Show less
The present study is part of a larger collective to examine the effects of accessibility on the well-being of young adults with and without communication difficulties. This specific study talks...Show moreThe present study is part of a larger collective to examine the effects of accessibility on the well-being of young adults with and without communication difficulties. This specific study talks about the connection between sound and human perception which is formally known as psychoacoustics. Individuals with communication difficulties (CD) often have to expend more cognitive resources to process auditory signals (e.g., speech) which can cause listening-related fatigue. This form of fatigue may result in cognitive and physical exhaustion which can affect both social and emotional health. This paper aimed to apply psychoacoustics in the context of university education to investigate whether the level of listening-relate fatigue is higher in CD than non-CD university students and if this effect could be predicted from situational factors. This study used real-time data collected through an ecological momentary assessment which was filled out by 24 Leiden university students (non-CD = 11, CD =13) aging between 18 and 27. Results showed that the CD and non-CD groups did not significantly differ in fatigue level, F (1,20) = 2.167, p = .157, and that the regression model used was not a good fit (p =.143). Only the interaction between sound level and CD was found to be a significant predictor of fatigue (b = .08, t(14) = 3.04 , p = 0.01). Further investigation into this interaction effect revealed that the slope for the relationship between fatigue and sound level was in the positive direction (0.04) for the CD group and in the negative for the non-CD group (-0.04). This indicates that the presence of loud auditory signals likely lead to higher fatigue in the CD demographic but not in the non-CD demographic. Limitations of this study included a small and unrepresentative sample size and lack of data relating to the independent variables. These shortcomings could explain the non-significance of a majority of the findings. Further research should focus on investigating different situational factors (e.g., reverberation and stress) to help explain more variance in fatigue. Continuing to present how environmental and sound features increase or decrease fatigue in students with CD can encourage university to think critically about how they structure their campuses. This paper showcases the importance of soundproofing study environments to prevent prolonged exhaustion in the CD demographic.Show less
Gaze to faces plays a vital role in communicating and perceiving social cues from one’s partner during social interactions. Visual avoidance of faces has been proposed to be a behavioural indicator...Show moreGaze to faces plays a vital role in communicating and perceiving social cues from one’s partner during social interactions. Visual avoidance of faces has been proposed to be a behavioural indicator of social anxiety. Furthermore, initial evidence suggests that an interaction partner’s direct gaze is perceived as more threatening than an averted gaze. This study investigated the influence of social anxiety on face gaze behaviour and whether the gaze direction modulates the effect of social anxiety on face gaze behaviour during a face-to-face conversation. 34 participants (82.4% female, 17.6% male) and confederate took turns answering a given set of questions about general topics. The gaze direction of the confederate was systematically manipulated to either look directly towards or turn away from the participant’s face. Participants’ face gaze behaviour was recorded using the Tobii Glasses 2 wearable eye tracker device and measured by calculating the total duration of fixation on the face and the proportion of fixation counts on the face. The results indicate that participants with varying levels of social anxiety did not display different face gaze behaviour during a face-to-face conversation. Moreover, an interaction partner’s gaze direction did not enhance nor diminish the effect of social anxiety on face gaze behaviour. The current findings suggest that social anxiety has no significant influence on participants' face gaze behaviour during a face-to-face conversation. Future research may consider using controversial conversation topics in order to induce a more threatening social situation.Show less
Perfectionism: does it help or hinder one's feedback learning performance? The present study investigated the relationship between perfectionism and feedback learning, and if reward sensitivity...Show morePerfectionism: does it help or hinder one's feedback learning performance? The present study investigated the relationship between perfectionism and feedback learning, and if reward sensitivity plays a mediating role in this relationship. We wanted to examine whether adaptive perfectionism (AP) and maladaptive perfectionism (MP) predict differences in feedback learning, tending more towards positive or negative feedback learning. Furthermore, we examined if this relationship might be influenced by one's sensitivity to different types of feedback: reward and punishment. Participants (N = 113) carried out a probabilistic learning task and completed the Almost Perfect Scale Revised and the Sensitivity to Punishment Sensitivity to Reward questionnaires. We found no differences in feedback learning between adaptive and maladaptive participants. Correspondingly, we also did not find mediating roles for reward and punishment sensitivity. However, we did find a strong significant relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and punishment sensitivity. These results remained unchanged when we carried out an exploratory analysis, using only perfectionistic participants. Because existing literature points towards strong correlations between perfectionism, feedback learning, and reward sensitivity, more research is needed to investigate the links between these constructs.Show less
Adolescence is a volatile developmental period in which peers, and especially close friends, take the spotlight in influencing behavior and learning. A common developmental disorder in adolescence...Show moreAdolescence is a volatile developmental period in which peers, and especially close friends, take the spotlight in influencing behavior and learning. A common developmental disorder in adolescence is attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which might also influence learning in the peer context. Although research on observational learning has shown that children learn better from their peers than from adults, little attention has been paid to adolescents and the role of different peer relationship types, friendship quality, and ADHD symptoms. In our study, 203 adolescents aged 10–15 years performed an observational reinforcement learning task in four conditions (i.e., individually; with a friend; a known neutral classmate; an unknown peer) and filled out sociometric nominations and questionnaires measuring friendship quality and ADHD symptoms. Results showed that adolescents learned significantly better from a peer than individually, but there was no difference in learning performance between the social observational learning conditions (i.e., friend; neutral classmate; unknown peer). Furthermore, there was no significant interaction effect of peer relationships and friendship quality on observational learning, and the relationship between ADHD symptoms and observational learning was not mediated by friendship quality. However, ADHD symptoms had a significant negative effect on observational reinforcement learning. These findings show that adolescents benefit from learning from a peer, regardless of the relationship with that peer, encouraging the implementation of peer learning in education. Finally, the results indicate that individuals with ADHD symptoms are potentially disadvantaged in their ability to learn from peers, highlighting the importance of developing interventions to foster observational learning.Show less
Angst is in 2018 opgenomen in de top tien grootste ziekte leed van de Nederlandse samenleving. Angst kan invloed hebben op cognitieve prestaties, zoals leren, waarbij feedback een essentieel...Show moreAngst is in 2018 opgenomen in de top tien grootste ziekte leed van de Nederlandse samenleving. Angst kan invloed hebben op cognitieve prestaties, zoals leren, waarbij feedback een essentieel onderdeel is. Daarnaast is het mogelijk dat het observeren van een individu de prestaties negatief beïnvloed, ook wel het publiek effect. Het is van belang om de relatie tussen angstgevoelens en het leren aan de hand van feedback, wat mogelijk beïnvloed wordt door observatie, te onderzoeken om de meest optimale situatie te creëren om de beste prestaties tot uiting te laten komen. Aan het onderzoek hebben 79 participanten deelgenomen. Het onderzoek bestaat uit de angstvragenlijst, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), en een probabilistische leertaak, waarbij gekeken is naar de accuraatheid. Het onderzoek beantwoordt de vraag wat de relatie is tussen de hoogte van angstgevoelens en de accuraatheid op de probabilistische leertaak. Wanneer er hoger gescoord wordt op de STAI wordt er minder accuraat gescoord op de taak. Wanneer er meer angstgevoelens aanwezig zijn wordt er minder accuraat geleerd aan de hand van feedback. Met de tweede onderzoeksvraag onderzoeken we wat de relatie is tussen hoogte van angstgevoelens op accuraatheid van de probabilistische leertaak wanneer een individu geobserveerd wordt vergeleken geen observatie. De hoogte van angstgevoelens heeft geen extra invloed op de accuraatheid wanneer een individu geobserveerd wordt. Er is geen significant verschil zichtbaar op de accuraatheid wanneer een individu wel of niet geobserveerd wordt. Wel is er een betrouwbaar verschil gevonden binnen de twee condities. Dus angst heeft invloed op de sociale en standaard.Show less
