The origins of belonging : Social motivation in infants and young children

Our reliance on our group members has exerted a profound influence over our motivation: successful group functioning requires that we are motivated to interact, and engage, with those around us. In other words, we need to belong. In this article, I explore the developmental origins of our need to belong. I discuss existing evidence that, from early in development, children seek to affiliate with others and to form long-lasting bonds with their group members. Furthermore, when children are deprived of a sense of belonging, it has negative consequences for their well-being. This focus on social motivation enables us to examine why and in what circumstances children engage in particular behaviours. It thus provides an important complement to research on social cognition. In doing so, it opens up important questions for future research and provides a much-needed bridge between developmental and social psychology

Compassion Training: The Missing Link in Healthcare Education?

Compassion is an essential skill in whole person care. But, can it be cultivated through training?Current research in neuroscience elucidates the mechanisms of empathy and compassion and provides a new framework for professional education. It suggests that clinical detachment is neither effective for ensuring good care, nor a realistic strategy to prevent burnout. Cultivating compassion on the other hand, increases non-judgmental awareness, builds resilience, and enables us to respond more effectively to others’ needs with greater empathy (Frickson, 2008, Klimecki, 2102, Lutz, 2004). Moreover, it is a skill we can learn (Wasner et al, 2005, Lutz 2009). Despite these findings, however, training in compassion is largely absent in current professional curricula.Presenters will review current findings on compassion and its benefits, and demonstrate how we can train in it using examples from two unique compassion skills-training curricula: (1) a training for pediatric residents working in an inner-city hospital and (2) a certificate program in contemplative end-of-life care for hospice/palliative care workers. These models are inspired by the contemplative tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, with its long-standing and effective methodologies for deepening the human capacity for compassion. This approach has formed the basis of many scientific studies on compassion and the emerging field of contemplative-based, secular training models (Lutz, 2009). Participants engage in contemplations on compassion as well as mindfulness and meditation. The aim is to support clinicians to generate self-compassion - the foundation for building resilience and extending compassionate care – thereby improving communication and the overall quality of care.The workshop will introduce key principles, feature hands-on experience of selected methods, and include a discussion of the potential impact on the greater healthcare system.A wider implementation of compassion training promises to be the missing link for building a fulfilling clinical practice and strengthening our capacity to provide effective whole-person care

Children's Bullying Experiences Expressed Through Drawings and Self-Reports

Traditionally, studies assessing children's experiences of bullying and victimization have focused on the use of questionnaires and peer-nominations. The present study aimed to investigate this phenomenon by using two complementary assessment tools, namely self-reported questionnaires and children's drawings. The sample consisted of 448 boys and girls drawn from the 4th to 6th grade classrooms of ten primary schools in Central Greece. Children were asked to: (a) draw a scene of peer victimization taking place in their school and (b) complete self-reported questionnaires regarding bullying behaviour, victimization and participant roles in bully/victim incidences. Although the results showed that the relation between drawing and self-report measures is not a straightforward one, they do reveal some interesting associations primarily related to gender differences. In other words, it was found that boys outnumbered girls in both bullying behaviour and victimization. Regarding the employed forms of victimization, boys tended to depict themselves in more physical aggression scenes than girls, while girls tended to draw themselves in more verbal victimization scenes than boys

Pupils’ perceptions of bullying and disruptions to concentration and attention to school work

This article is not available through ChesterRep.This article discusses how disrupted concentration and attention to school work due to bullying can impact on academic success. Using pupil perceptions as the source of data, the two main aims were to quantify the proportion of pupils affected by bullying in this way, and to solicit their views on possible solutions. Subsidiary aims were to test for gender and school year differences in these variables. Among the 485 participants as a whole, only modest levels of disruptions attributable to bullying were evident but more disturbing was the finding that on nine out of eleven separate questions, around one in twenty pupils reported that this happened ‘lots of times’