The Association Between Violence Exposure and Aggression and Anxiety: The Role of Peer Relationships in Adaptation for Middle School Students

The extent and consequences of exposure to violence on child and adolescent adjustment are well documented. Empirical studies have focused on identifying the risk and protective factors that may increase or decrease the likelihood of poor outcomes. In terms of resilience and adaptation, some adolescents appear to be capable of coping with the stress of exposure to violence, while others are not. Coping with violence exposure requires both internal and external resources that ultimately determine how adaptive or maladaptive the outcome will be. Given that adolescence is a time during which peer relationships become increasingly important, they may serve as external coping resources. The present study hypothesizes that various facets of peer relationships (i.e., friends' behavior, friendship reciprocity, peer acceptance, and peer intimacy/closeness) will have an effect on the relationship between community and family violence exposure and psychological and behavioral outcomes, specifically, aggression and anxiety, as both have been consistently and empirically linked to violence exposure. Data were collected from 667 middle school students, followed from 6th grade to 8th grade, living in a high crime school district in New York City. Data were also collected from their parents and classmates. Prosocial friends and their influence on the cognitive processing of social information, leading to fewer hostile attributions, were expected to help adolescents cope by minimizing the negative impact of exposure to violence on aggression. Further, reciprocated friendships, peer acceptance, and close, intimate friends were expected to lessen the negative impact of exposure to violence on anxiety. Controlling for gender, six models were tested positing separate moderating and mediating effects of the aforementioned variables on the associations between violence exposure and aggression and also anxiety. Friends' Antisocial behavior was found to mediate the relationship between violence exposure and later aggressive behavior. Hostile attribution alone did not explain the relationship between violence exposure and later aggression, but when Friends' Antisocial behavior and hostile attribution were examined in the same model, together they mediated the association between violence exposure and later aggressive behavior. Of note, Friends' Antisocial behavior was a stronger predictor than hostile attribution. Greater social acceptance moderated the relationship between violence exposure and later reported anxiety when violence exposure was low. Peer intimacy/closeness, while demonstrating a direct effect on anxiety, failed to moderate the association between violence exposure and anxiety. Finally, Friends' Prosocial Behavior could not be tested for whether it buffered the effect of violence exposure on later aggression because the data did not meet criteria for performing tests of moderation. However, Friends' Prosocial behavior was related to other study variables in the expected direction; it was significantly negatively associated with violence exposure, hostile attribution bias, and Friends' Antisocial behavior. Therefore the emphasis on friends' prosocial behavior in current prevention efforts to reduce aggressive outcomes is warranted

Voicing Across Cultures: The Role of Communication Style and Relationships In Employee Voice and Subsequent Influence

Constructive input from a diverse workforce can enhance firm performance. However, cultural norms and differences in communication behavior expectations may prevent concerns and suggestions from being expressed, or from being implemented when they are expressed. The purpose of the current study is to bridge the Human Resources, Organizational Behavior, Communications, and International Management literatures in an attempt to understand how subordinates with different communicaton norms voice and how (or whether) managers use the content of the voiced messages. Two models are presented examining prohibitive and promotive voice as central variables in the relationship between subordinate communication style and subordinate influence over managerial decisions. The models also present manager communication style and the relationship factors of leader-member exchange, psychological safety, and felt obligation for constructive change as moderators of the more general relationships proposed. Results of a field study including subordinates and managers from six continents produced several findings. In line with hypotheses, subordinate communication style had a direct effect on prohibitive voice, while its effect on promotive voice was moderated by leader-member exchange quality. Also, leader-member exchange quality and manager communication style moderated the relationship of each voice type with influence over managerial decisions. Implications and limitations are discussed

A Water Poverty Analysis of the Niger Basin, West Africa

This report documents the findings of Work Package 1 for the Niger Basin Focal Project: A water poverty analysis. Research outputs presented here include maps of high poverty incidence and water related vulnerability. The statistical analysis revealed considerable spatial variation in water related poverty in addition to significant differences in the intra and inter-national factors associated with poverty. Poverty was measured as levels of child mortality, child morbidity and an asset wealth index to improve sensitivity in a primarily subsistence economy. Whilst the absolute quantity of water resources was important in some areas, the social and economic capacity to use and access this water was often more important

Studying effects of preshearing on hand layup

Advanced composites are used extensively in many high performance applications. As they are taken up in a wider range of applications, the volume of demand is pushing manufacturing methods, especially hand layup of woven prepreg cloth, to their limits. An alternative approach to hand layup over complex geometries is proposed. The regular method of layup involves generating shear using grasps and pressures in the prepreg as and when it is needed during layup, leading to a sometimes complex and time consuming process. In the method proposed, all the shear deformation is created in the ply prior to any contact between the prepreg and the mold surface. Guidelines were drawn onto the prepreg surface to enable the correct shear distribution to be ‘presheared’ by hand. These were created by processing the outputs from a simple kinematic drape simulation within MATLAB. Once preshearing was completed, the ply is laid up onto the mold using regular hand layup techniques. The process was tested alongside regular manual lamination across three example parts and using video analysis effects of the process were investigated via a variety of metrics. This revealed that significant time savings and reduced likelihood of manufacturing variations are possible with this approach. There was also a significant simplification of the layup process, leading participants to comment that a previously ‘difficult’ layup had become ‘easy’. An improved bespoke system for communicating the required preshearing was subsequently developed, and successfully trialed on a fourth example part. Preshearing has the potential to make hand layup more economically viable for years to come. As well as the productivity and cost benefits, preshearing shows promise as a training aid, especially for beginner laminators. Concepts for integrating preshearing into existing industrial practice and its further potential in the field of automation are also discussed

Suppressing sensorimotor activity modulates the discrimination of auditory emotions but not speaker identity

Our ability to recognize the emotions of others is a crucial feature of human social cognition. Functional neuroimaging studies indicate that activity in sensorimotor cortices is evoked during the perception of emotion. In the visual domain, right somatosensory cortex activity has been shown to be critical for facial emotion recognition. However, the importance of sensorimotor representations in modalities outside of vision remains unknown. Here we use continuous theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTBS) to investigate whether neural activity in the right postcentral gyrus (rPoG) and right lateral premotor cortex (rPM) is involved in nonverbal auditory emotion recognition. Three groups of participants completed same-different tasks on auditory stimuli, discriminating between the emotion expressed and the speakers' identities, before and following cTBS targeted at rPoG, rPM, or the vertex (control site). A task-selective deficit in auditory emotion discrimination was observed. Stimulation to rPoG and rPM resulted in a disruption of participants' abilities to discriminate emotion, but not identity, from vocal signals. These findings suggest that sensorimotor activity may be a modality-independent mechanism which aids emotion discrimination. Copyright © 2010 the authors

Collegial Feedback: Navigating the Obstacles

The purpose of this PLM is to provide a conceptual framework for effective collegial feedback and to enhance the educational process. It was devised to empower individuals through building capacity in identifying possible obstacles to effective collegial feedback and to acquaint individuals with resources and strategies to overcome obstacles in collegial feedback. This PLM was designed for educators who have to provide feedback, including mentors, instructional coaches, and peer observers. Because it aligns with the adult learners’ ways of knowing, it is geared toward those who give feedback to adults rather than K-12 students. View professional learning module.https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/improve/1024/thumbnail.jp

3D Magnetotelluric Inversion Using a Limited-Memory quasi-Newton Optimization

The limited-memory quasi-Newton method with simple bounds is used to develop a novel, fully 3D magnetotelluric (MT) inversion technique. This nonlinear inversion is based on iterative minimization of a classical Tikhonov regularized penalty function. However, instead of the usual model space of log resistivities, the approach iterates in a model space with simple bounds imposed on the conductivities of the 3D target..