Adolescent Loneliness and Social Skills:Agreement and Discrepancies Between Self-, Meta-, and Peer-Evaluations

Contains fulltext : 160961.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Lonely adolescents report that they have poor social skills, but it is unknown whether this is due to an accurate perception of a social skills deficit, or a biased negative perception. This is an important distinction, as actual social skills deficits require different treatments than biased negative perceptions. In this study, we compared self-reported social skills evaluations with peer-reported social skills and meta-evaluations of social skills (i.e., adolescents' perceptions of how they believe their classmates evaluate them). Based on the social skills view, we expected negative relations between loneliness and these three forms of social skills evaluations. Based on the bias view, we expected lonely adolescents to have more negative self- and meta-evaluations compared to peer-evaluations of social skills. Participants were 1342 adolescents (48.64 % male, M age = 13.95, SD = .54). All classmates rated each other in a round-robin design to obtain peer-evaluations. Self- and meta-evaluations were obtained using self-reports. Data were analyzed using polynomial regression analyses and response surface modeling. The results indicated that, when self-, peer- and meta-evaluations were similar, a greater sense of loneliness was related to poorer social skills. Loneliness was also related to larger discrepancies between self- and peer-evaluations of loneliness, but not related to the direction of these discrepancies. Thus, for some lonely adolescents, loneliness may be related to an actual social skills deficit, whereas for others a biased negative perception of one's own social skills or a mismatch with the environment may be related to their loneliness. This implies that different mechanisms may underlie loneliness, which has implications for interventions.11 p

MIMO Systems and Antennas for Terminals

MIMO technology has facilitated tremendous performance improvements in wireless communications, allowing the data rate to increase linearly with the number of antennas used, at no additional expense in transmit power or spectrum. However, the tremendous performance gain can only be achieved by multi-antenna designs that provide low coupling and correlation, as well as high total efficiency. Such design criteria are especially challenging for small terminal devices. The situation becomes even more complicated with increasing bandwidth requirements for terminals in existing and upcoming mobile communication standards. Beginning with the history of MIMO terminal antenna and its evaluation methods, this chapter is geared towards providing useful guidelines to researchers and practitioners alike on how to design efficient MIMO antennas for terminals. The focus is on decoupling and decorrelation techniques, including RF circuit level decoupling, antenna structure decoupling and characteristic mode based decoupling. Future directions in MIMO antenna design and some corresponding open problems are also described

The developmental psychopathology of social anxiety and phobia in adolescents

The highest incidence rates for social anxiety disorder (SAD) occur during the period from late childhood to early adulthood. A number of factors that increase vulnerability for the development of SAD have been proposed in the literature, including genes, temperament, biological factors, cognitive factors, parent factors, life events, peer experiences, performance deficits, general learning mechanisms, and cultural factors. These proposed aetiological factors have been given different weightings in theoretical accounts of the aetiology of SAD. Genes, temperament, cognitive factors, parent factors, life events, and peer experiences are generally emphasised in theoretical accounts, while biological factors, performance deficits, general learning mechanisms, and cultural factors have received less emphasis. The proposed aetiological factors have also been empirically examined to varying extents in the literature. In general, the majority of research into the proposed aetiological factors has been limited by the use of cross-sectional designs and the recruitment of individuals already diagnosed with SAD. Further research is needed to obtain better evidence to evaluate the aetiological role of the proposed factors. Such research will ultimately help to develop efficacious early intervention and prevention strategies for SAD