Children's beliefs about long-term health effects of alcohol and cocaine use.

OBJECTIVE: To assess age differences in children's beliefs about the long-term health effects of alcohol and cocaine, to use such beliefs to predict attitudes toward and intentions to use these substances, and to establish whether accurate beliefs are more predictive than inaccurate ones. METHODS: Children ages 6 to 12 (N: = 217) responded to an open-ended question about the effects of long-term alcohol and cocaine use and to 12 structured questions asking whether each produces alcohol-like, cocaine-like, and tobacco-like effects. RESULTS: Differentiation among alcohol, cocaine, and tobacco effects was limited but increased with age. Beliefs about health effects had no impact on alcohol attitudes and intentions, but intentions to drink were stronger among older and white children. Anti-cocaine attitudes and intentions were associated with being older and non-White and with having accurate knowledge of cocaine's true health effects-but also with believing falsely that cocaine has tobacco-like effects and that drugs in general have catastrophic effects. CONCLUSIONS: With age, and as predicted by Werner's orthogenetic principle, children differentiated more sharply between substances. Although negative misconceptions can contribute to anti-drug attitudes and intentions, children should nonetheless be taught about the distinct effects of different substances on health.

Emotion regulation in two-year-olds: strategies and emotional expression in four contexts.

A descriptive study of the modulation of negative emotion in the toddler period was conducted by examining expressions of negative emotion and the strategies used to reduce or change these expressions. 6 strategies were identified and evaluated in terms of their frequency of use in different situations, relations with emotional expressiveness, and cross-situational consistency. 37 2-year-olds were seen in 2 laboratory contexts (delay and separation) each with 2 variants. Emotion regulation strategies and emotional expressiveness were coded from videotapes of children's behavior in these 4 situations. Findings suggest that active engagement was most commonly used and most negatively associated with child distress. Use of strategies varied by context, and there was more cross-situational consistency in use of strategies that were more negatively or positively associated with distress within a given context than in use of particular strategies without consideration of their within-context significance.

A model of motivational orientation for youth sport: some preliminary work.

This project was an attempt to test a model of motivational orientation in the youth sport setting. Although previous developmental work in this area had examined a number of intra- and interpersonal variables thought to influence children's motivational orientation, few studies have tested an integrated model. Questionnaires assessing perceived competence, perceived control, competitive trait anxiety, and motivational orientation were completed by 108 boys. Additionally, 12 coaches were observed for two games in order to record coaching behaviors during competition. The model tested demonstrated an excellent fit of data. In particular, the model showed that both coaching behaviors and children's trait anxiety causally influenced perception of control. Moreover, perceived control causally determined both perceived competence and motivational orientation. Lastly, the influence of coaching behavior and trait anxiety on perceived competence were mediated by perceived control. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Age-related differences in inter- and intrapersonal variables related to motivation in a group sport setting.

Age-related differences in perceived competence, perceived control, and anxiety among 10- to 11-year-old boys and 12- to 13-year-old boys who participated in an American Youth Soccer Organization league were examined. Coaching behaviors thought to be related to these intrapersonal variables were also assessed, and the differences between the coaches in the two divisions were evaluated. There were no age-related differences in perceived competence. The children in the younger division endorsed both external perceptions of control and internal attributions for success more strongly than the older children did. The younger children in each division exhibited significantly more anxiety than their older teammates did, although there were no significant across-division effects. All the coaches exhibited more instructive behaviors than encouragement, and more individual-directed behaviors than team-direction behaviors, but the proportions of both instruction and individual-directed behaviors were relatively higher for the coaches in the older division than they were for the coaches in the younger division.

Temperament, emotion, and social interactive behavior in the strange situation: a component process analysis of attachment system functioning.

This study examines the contributions of temperamentally and nontemperamentally based emotional reactions to the organization of social interactive behavior within the Strange Situation to better understand the emotional underpinnings of attachment system functioning. At 12 1/2 and 19 1/2 months, temperamental fear (assessed via maternal report) was related to independent per-episode dimensions of social interactive and distress behavior. Fear was moderately correlated with both distress and interactive dimensions at each age. Path-analytic models revealed that temperamental fear had direct effects on interactive behavior and also indirect effects mediated by preceding distress reactions. However, residualized measures of "context-specific" distress (with temperamental variance removed) were still highly consistent across Strange Situation episodes and also significantly predicted subsequent social interactive behavior; furthermore, stable distress reactions from 12 1/2 to 19 1/2 months significantly predicted concurrent stability in social interactive behavior. We discuss likely sources of "context-specific" emotional influences on Strange Situation behavior and also age-related differences in these findings.