Dit onderzoek meet met behulp van zelfrapportage of er een relatie is tussen cognitieve- en emotieregulatiemechanismen, leeftijd en alcoholgebruik. De onderzoeksgroep bestond uit 808 participanten...Show moreDit onderzoek meet met behulp van zelfrapportage of er een relatie is tussen cognitieve- en emotieregulatiemechanismen, leeftijd en alcoholgebruik. De onderzoeksgroep bestond uit 808 participanten van 13-30 jaar oud. Leeftijd werd verdeeld in twee groepen: jongeren (tot en met 20 jaar) en jongvolwassenen (vanaf 21 jaar). Alcoholgebruik werd verdeeld in drie groepen: niet-drinkers (drinkt momenteel geen alcohol), recreatieve drinkers (drinkt momenteel alcohol maar niet minstens één keer per week 6 of meer eenheden op een dag) en zware drinkers (drinkt momenteel minstens één keer per week zes of meer eenheden alcohol op een dag). Zware drinkers bleken significant meer problemen te hebben met executief functioneren dan recreatieve- en niet-drinkers. Jongeren hebben significant meer problemen met executief functioneren dan jongvolwassenen. Jongeren hebben tevens significant meer problemen met emotieregulatie dan jongvolwassenen. Er bleken geen significante interacties tussen leeftijd en alcoholgebruik in de voorspelling van problemen met executief functioneren en problemen met emotieregulatie. Deze resultaten geven meer inzicht in factoren die betrokken zijn bij alcoholgebruik. Toekomstig onderzoek zou naast vragenlijsten gebruik moeten maken van objectieve metingen van cognitieve- en emotieregulatiemechanismen en zou longitudinaal moeten zijn om causale uitspraken te kunnen doen.Show less
Er is nog weinig bekend over angsten bij kinderen met autisme. Ondanks dat de DMS-IV comorbiditeit tussen angststoornissen en ASS niet mogelijk acht, zijn er aanwijzingen dat het wel degelijk voor...Show moreEr is nog weinig bekend over angsten bij kinderen met autisme. Ondanks dat de DMS-IV comorbiditeit tussen angststoornissen en ASS niet mogelijk acht, zijn er aanwijzingen dat het wel degelijk voor komt. Overmatige angst zou een grootte impact kunnen hebben op de ontwikkeling van kinderen met autisme en behandeling zou hier op afgestemd moeten worden. Het doel van deze studie is onderzoeken of de mate van angst van kinderen met autisme (N=79) verschilt van de mate van angst van kinderen met een normale ontwikkeling (N=251) in de leeftijd van vier tot en met achttien jaar. De angst wordt gemeten aan de hand van de Sociaal Emotionele Vragenlijst, deze wordt ingevuld door een ouder of verzorger. De vragenlijst meet drie vormen van angst, te weten algemene angst, sociale angst en depressieve angst. Daarnaast wordt er onderzocht wat de invloed van sekse, leeftijd en verstandelijk niveau is op de mate van angst. Uit de resultaten volgt dat kinderen en adolescenten met autisme op alle drie de vormen van angst meer angst ervaren dan kinderen en adolescenten met een normale ontwikkeling. Leeftijd en sekse hebben geen invloed op de mate van angst. Verstandelijk niveau daarentegen wel. Op het gebied van sociale angst ervaren kinderen met een beperkt en een bovengemiddeld verstandelijk niveau meer angst dan kinderen met een gemiddeld verstandelijk niveau. Dit patroon is te zien bij kinderen met autisme en kinderen zonder autisme. Kinderen zonder autisme met een beperkt verstandelijk niveau ervaren de hoogste mate van sociale angst. Op het gebied van depressieve angst ervaren kinderen met autisme en een gemiddeld verstandelijk niveau de meeste angst. Bij de kinderen zonder autisme neemt de depressieve angst toe als het verstandelijk niveau afneemt. Vervolg onderzoek zou zich moeten richten op het ontwikkelen van behandelmethodes toegespitst op kinderen met autisme die te kampen hebben met overmatige angsten, zodat via deze interventiemethoden kan worden voorkomen dat de angsten kinderen belemmeren in hun ontwikkeling.Show less
Children with increased global self-worth obtain better school results than children with low self-worth. Therefore it can be beneficial to provide children with a training that can potentially...Show moreChildren with increased global self-worth obtain better school results than children with low self-worth. Therefore it can be beneficial to provide children with a training that can potentially increase their self-competence. The feeling of self-worth is build up from multiple domains, such as in school, with their peers and their performance practicing sports. Executive functioning (EF) is a term containing a variety of learning skills that can help children in their learning process, which can increase children’s feeling of self-worth in their performance at school. The most basal EF inhibition, cognitive flexibility and working memory are researched in this study. The project Talentenkracht aimed at improving EF by training teachers from primary schools to increase explorative learning by asking children more explorative questions. This current study looked at whether the training had a positive effect on EF and whether this effect caused an increase on self-efficacy beliefs in children aged 9 to 12. In total 79 children from two schools participated, of which 46 children from one school were in the group where the teachers were trained and 33 children were from another school and formed the control group. The data was collected with the Amsterdamse Neuropsychologische Taken (ANT) to test EF and Competentiebelevingsschaal voor Kinderen (CBSK) for self-efficacy beliefs. No correlation was found between EF and self-efficacy beliefs at baseline or with changes in scores over time. In addition, there was an increase in inhibition and cognitive flexibility, not in working memory, but no increase in EF caused by the training. Since previous researches show there’s a relation between EF and self-efficacy beliefs and between EF and behavioural problems it’s important to further research the impact of EF on emotional development and how to improve EF with lowest scoring children.Show less
Qualitative impairments in social interactions is one of the problems children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) faced with. In a normal development there is a connection between the points the...Show moreQualitative impairments in social interactions is one of the problems children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) faced with. In a normal development there is a connection between the points the eyes are fixated on and the child’s social behavior. Previous research has found that children with ASD have atypical eye contact. The thesis of this present study was: “Can fixation on different emotions be related to social dysfunctioning and connected to autistic characteristics of young children and can the Theory of Mind (ToM) be used to explain this? The sample consisted of 18 children between 3,5 and 6 years old,with varying degrees of autistic behavior The research was based on a number of ASD-characteristics, the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) was used for this. The social cognition was measured by the ToM tasks from the NEPSY. The visual fixation patterns during watching videos of different emotions by these children were registered by the Tobii application. The results of the study show children with more autistic characteristics scored significantly different on fixation on objects, fixation on eyes (when they have a low score on Social Awareness) and Joint Attention (by a low score on Social Communication), but they did not show less attention to fixation on social areas (total fixation duration on faces, eyes, mouth and Joint Attention). So the fixation on different emotions can in specifics ways be connect to social dysfunctioning. No association was found between the fixation and the ToM. It is strongly recommended tot replicated this research, comparing a far larger clinical group of children with ASD to a control group. In this additional research more theories should be used to explain results and more. The additional research may well fully explain ASD in future, as a basis for developing suitable treatment, so children with ASD can develop optimally.Show less
Klinefelter Syndrome (KS; 47, XXY) is a sex chromosome aneuploidy that affects male physical, cognitive and psychological development. KS has been related to difficulties in social interactions and...Show moreKlinefelter Syndrome (KS; 47, XXY) is a sex chromosome aneuploidy that affects male physical, cognitive and psychological development. KS has been related to difficulties in social interactions and executive dysfunctions. This study investigates several executive functions (inhibition, cognitive flexibility, planning, working memory and sustained attention), social skills and the relationship between these two variables in men with KS. Eighteen men with KS and 29 controls between the age of 16 and 60 years old, participated in this study. Social skills were measured by the Social Responsiveness Scale rated by informants (SRS-A). Executive functions were assessed by the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) questionnaire and by tasks of the Amsterdam Neuropsychological Tasks (ANT) and by one task of the Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome (BADS-NL). The clinical group rated poorer social skills than the controls. They also had weaker executive functions compared by controls (measured by the BRIEF). The ANT tasks revealed that from the executive functions, the Klinefelter group only had more difficulties in sustained attention compared by controls. Working memory was significantly (positively) correlated to social skills. The present findings suggest that KS is related to executive dysfunctions measured by the BRIEF and a weak working memory was related to poorer social skills. The results from this study provided insight in which cognitive structure is related to social skills in male with KS and could thereby contribute in the treatment and prevention of problems in social skills.Show less
In deze studie is de relatie tussen identiteit, discriminatie en radicalisering onder jongeren met een Islamitische achtergrond onderzocht. Data is verzameld door convenience sampling bij moskeeën...Show moreIn deze studie is de relatie tussen identiteit, discriminatie en radicalisering onder jongeren met een Islamitische achtergrond onderzocht. Data is verzameld door convenience sampling bij moskeeën en onderwijsinstellingen in de regio Noord- en Zuid- Holland. De uiteindelijke steekproef (N = 69) bevat respondenten in de leeftijd van 14 tot en met 21 jaar (M = 17.72, SD = 2.4). De respondenten vulden de vragenlijsten in op straat, scholen of moskeeën. De resultaten van de regressie analyses tonen geen relatie tussen Islamitische identiteit en radicalisering. Discriminatie modereert de relatie tussen Islamitische identiteit en radicalisering niet en nationale identiteit en Islamitische identiteit modereren de relatie tussen discriminatie en radicalisering eveneens niet. Er is wel een hoofdeffect van discriminatie op radicalisering. De uitkomsten suggereren dat niet de Islamitische identiteit maar discriminatie radicalisering kan voorspellen. Daarnaast suggereert dit onderzoek dat Islamitische jongeren een lage mate van nationale identiteit beleven naast een hoge Islamitische identiteit, waarbij louter de Islamitische identiteit voldoende is als buffer tegen maatschappelijke uitdagingen als discriminatie en radicalisering.Show less
Background – children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have an increased risk to develop challenging behaviour and the question is whether this risk is partly due to the language deficits...Show moreBackground – children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have an increased risk to develop challenging behaviour and the question is whether this risk is partly due to the language deficits most children with ASD have to face. Methods – data were collected on the expressive and pragmatic language abilities en internalising and externalising behaviour problems of 23 children with ASD (8;2 – 13;5 year; 3 girls and 23 boys). The relationship between those variables was examined using several multiple regression analyses, in which age and gender were the possible moderating factors. Results – a positive association was found between expressive language and externalising behaviour problems. A negative association was found between pragmatic language and internalising behaviour problems. No independent association was found between expressive and internalising behaviour problems, but taking in account pragmatic language, a positive association was found. There was no influence for age and gender. Discussion – an association was found between language and behaviour problems in children with ASD. The nature of the relationship en possible causality need to be further examined though. The results suggest an influence of the common discrepancy between expressive and pragmatic language abilities is more important than the absolute language abilities.Show less
Approximately ten to thirty percent of the children don’t get enough sleep. This can cause problems with learning and cognition. Evening-types often experience more sleep problems than morning...Show moreApproximately ten to thirty percent of the children don’t get enough sleep. This can cause problems with learning and cognition. Evening-types often experience more sleep problems than morning-types. This study investigates the relationship between chronotype and cognitive performances (sustained attention, inhibition and working memory) and whether this relationship is mediated by sleep duration. The sample consisted 452 children (208 males and 244 females; mean age 10.49 years). Parents filled in the Children’s Chronotype Questionnaire to measure chronotype. They also filled in a sleeping diary for a week to measure sleep duration. The children made multiple computer tasks: the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) to measure sustained attention, the PVT Go/No-Go to measure inhibition and a Digit Span task to measure working memory. Eveningness was associated with less sleep (β = -.10). Second, sustained attention and inhibition were not associated with chronotype. Evening-types performed better on the working memory task (β = .10). Third, children with less sleep performed better on the sustained attention (β = .16) and working memory task (β = -.25), but worse on the inhibition task (β = .12). This results show that sleep duration did not mediated the relation between chronotype and sustained attention and inhibition. But the relationship between chronotype and working memory is partially mediated by sleep duration. Evening-types remember a longer string of numbers than morning-types, this can be partially explained because the evening-types sleep shorter. It is important to investigate why these children perform better, despite the shorter sleep duration. Maybe sleep quality has a bigger influence on the cognitive performances than sleep duration. Last, it is important for parents to realize that sleep is important for the development of their children, because prevention is better than intervention.Show less
