Children's Perceptions of Their Teacher's Responses to Students' Peer Harassment: Moderators of Victimization-Adjustment Linkages

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23098073?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.Children’s relational schemas have been found to account for, and moderate, links between peer victimization and psychosocial difficulties. The present study extends this research by examining whether children’s mental representations of their teachers’ responses to students’ peer harassment moderate associations between peer victimization and internalizing distress and school avoidance. Data were collected from 264 children (124 boys and 140 girls) in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. A number of significant victimization × perceived teacher response interactions emerged, although the nature of these moderated associations often varied by children’s sex. For boys, victimization was associated with greater internalizing distress only when they viewed their teacher as advocating assertion, avoidance, or independent coping. In fact, perceiving teachers to use low levels of these strategies appeared to protect victimized boys from internalizing problems. In comparison, although girls similarly evidenced greater internalizing problems when they viewed the teacher as using these strategies, no evidence was found of a buffering effect at low levels of perceiving the teacher as advocating avoidance, assertion, or independent coping. The results highlight the role of perceptions of the teacher in explicating individual differences in adjustment problems associated with peer victimization

Peer-Victimization and Mental Health Problems in Adolescents: Are Parental and School Support Protective?

The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency and effects of peer-victimization on mental health problems among adolescents. Parental and school support were assumed as protective factors that might interact with one another in acting as buffers for adolescents against the risk of peer-victimization. Besides these protective factors, age and gender were additionally considered as moderating factors. The Social and Health Assessment survey was conducted among 986 students aged 11–18 years in order to assess peer-victimization, risk and protective factors and mental health problems. For mental health problems, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was used. Effects of peer-victimization on mental health problems were additionally compared with normative SDQ data in order to obtain information about clinically relevant psychopathology in our study sample. Results of this study show that peer-victimization carries a serious risk for mental health problems in adolescents. School support is effective in both male and female adolescents by acting as a buffer against the effect of victimization, and school support gains increasing importance in more senior students. Parental support seems to be protective against maladjustment, especially in peer-victimized girls entering secondary school. Since the effect of peer-victimization can be reduced by parental and school support, educational interventions are of great importance in cases of peer-victimization

Affective associations with negativity: Why popular peers attract youths' visual attention

Item does not contain fulltextVisual attention to high-status peers is well documented, but whether this attentional bias is due to high-status individuals' leadership and prosocial characteristics or due to their more agonistic behaviors has yet to be examined. To identify the affective associations that may underlie visual attention for high-status versus low-status peers, 122 early adolescents (67 girls; Mage = 11.0 years, SD = 0.7) completed a primed attention paradigm. Visual attention was measured using eye tracking as participants looked simultaneously at photographs of two classmates: one nominated by peers as popular and one nominated by peers as unpopular. Prior to each trial, the early adolescents were presented with a positive prime, the word "nice"; a negative prime, the word "stupid"; or no prime. Primary analyses focused on first-gaze preference and total gaze time The results showed a stronger first gaze preference for popular peers than for unpopular peers in the no-prime and negative prime trials than in the positive prime trials. The visual preference for a popular peer, thus, was attenuated by the positive prime. These findings are consistent with the notion that youths may visually attend to high-status peers due to their association with more negative characteristics and the threat they may pose to youths' own social standing and ability to gain interpersonal resources.10 p

Children’s Perceptions of Their Teacher’s Responses to Students’ Peer Harassment: Moderators of Victimization-Adjustment Linkages

Children’s relational schemas have been found to account for, and moderate, links between peer victimization and psychosocial difficulties. The present study extends this research by examining whether children’s mental representations of their teachers’ responses to students’ peer harassment moderate associations between peer victimization and internalizing distress and school avoidance. Data were collected from 264 children (124 boys and 140 girls) in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. A number of significant victimization × perceived teacher response interactions emerged, although the nature of these moderated associations often varied by children’s sex. For boys, victimization was associated with greater internalizing distress only when they viewed their teacher as advocating assertion, avoidance, or independent coping. In fact, perceiving teachers to use low levels of these strategies appeared to protect victimized boys from internalizing problems. In comparison, although girls similarly evidenced greater internalizing problems when they viewed the teacher as using these strategies, no evidence was found of a buffering effect at low levels of perceiving the teacher as advocating avoidance, assertion, or independent coping. The results highlight the role of perceptions of the teacher in explicating individual differences in adjustment problems associated with peer victimization

Introduction to the Special Issue Contexts, Causes, and Consequences New Directions in Peer Victimization Research

Peer victimization research has proliferated over the past few decades as researchers worldwide have identified risk factors, and documented both shortterm and long-term consequences, associated with peer harassment. This special issue represents a second generation of peer victimization research in which contextual variables are considered as potential moderators of both risk and outcomes. Context is broadly defined to encompass not only physical location and space, but also developmental periods, social environs, and individual characteristics. The first half of this issue focuses on known risk factors, such as aggression, social withdrawal, anxiety, and peer rejection, with two of these studies demonstrating how peer group context (e.g., bystander behavior and social group norms) moderates children’s risk. The second half focuses on mediating processes and contextual factors, such as school engagement, children’s perceptions of teachers’ responses to bullying, social hopelessness, and perceived family support. In sum, the papers compiled for this special issue reflect the complexity of the bullying phenomena and illuminate promising new directions of research to further our understanding of this ubiquitous problem

Peer Victimization and Neurobiological Models: Building Toward Comprehensive Developmental Theories

The articles in this special issue represent progress toward a more comprehensive developmental model of peer victimization and neurobiology. In this commentary, we highlight features of each article that reveal nuances in such a developmental model as related to sex, form of peer victimization, developmental course and period, and neurobiological response system and stimulus. We also encourage further research with an emphasis on longitudinal studies that cross developmental periods and elucidate directions of causality and mechanisms of change, expanded attention to individual and environmental variables that may explain or contextualize effects, assessments of multiple neurobiological systems, and tests of replication, as well as innovation. We acknowledge the challenges of such research and thank the authors for their important contributions to the literature on peer victimization and neurobiology