By behaving altruistically, individuals voluntarily reduce their benefits in order to increase their partners'. This deviation from a self-interest-maximizing function may be cognitively demanding, though. This study investigates whether altruistic sharing in 4- to 6-year-old children, assessed by a dictator game (DG), is related to three measures of executive functioning, that is, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. We found that children who turned out to be altruistic in the DG performed better on an inhibition task than non-altruists did. This finding lends support to the hypothesis that altruistic sharing might be somewhat constrained by the child's ability to inhibit a natural tendency to preserve his or her own resources. Much research is needed to understand the role of inhibitory control in the development of costly sharing and the consolidation of inequity aversion.
Background
Little research in sub‐Saharan Africa has looked at factors that predict mental health problems in adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV). This study examines the psychological impact of HIV in adolescents in Namibia, including risk and protective factors associated with mental health.
Methods
Ninety‐nine fully disclosed ALHIV between the ages of 12 and 18 were interviewed at a State Hospital in Windhoek. A structured questionnaire assessed mental health, using the SDQ (Goodman, 1997), sociodemographic factors, poverty, social support, adherence and stigma.
Results
Mean age was 14.3 years, 52.5% were female and most were healthy. Twelve percent scored in the clinical range for total mental health difficulties and 22% for emotional symptoms. Poverty was associated with more total mental health difficulties, t(96) = −2.63, p = .010, and more emotional symptoms, t(96) = −3.45, p = .001, whereas better social support was a protective factor, particularly caregiver support (r = −.337, p = .001). Adherence problems, HIV‐related stigma and disclosing one's own HIV status to others were also associated with more total mental health difficulties. Poverty (β = −.231, p = .023) and stigma (β = .268, p = .009) were the best predictors for total mental health difficulties, whereas stigma (β = .314, p = .002) predicted emotional symptoms. Social support had a protective effect on peer problems (p = .001, β = −.349).
Conclusions
Several contextual factors associated with poorer mental health in ALHIV are identified.
In behavioral science, developmental discontinuities are thought to arise when the association between an outcome measure and the underlying process changes over time. Sudden changes in behavior across time are often taken to indicate that a reorganization in the outcome-process relationship may have occurred. The authors proposed in this article the use of piecewise hierarchical linear growth modeling as a statistical methodology to search for discontinuities in behavioral development and illustrated its possibilities by applying 2-piece hierarchical linear models to the study of developmental trajectories of baboon (Papio hamadryas) mothers' behavior during their infants' 1st year of life. The authors provided empirical evidence that piecewise growth modeling can be used to determine whether abrupt changes in development trajectories are tied to changes in the underlying process.
The mental health needs of children and adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV) in Namibia are poorly understood, despite the dramatic improvement in their survival. ALHIV in resource poor contexts face particular risk factors, such as poverty, orphanhood, and poor social support. This study examines the mental health of ALHIV in Namibia, and the factors that contribute to mental health problems. A case-control design assessed emotional and behavioural symptoms of distress, risk and protective factors among adolescents aged 12-18 years. Case participants were 99 HIV-positive adolescents. Case controls were 159 adolescents from the same community who were not known to be HIV seropositive at the time of the study. Control group participants were selected from schools using a stratified random sampling. A larger proportion of HIV-positive adolescents were orphaned (62.6% vs. 20.8%, p < .001); the groups showed no differences in poverty factors. HIV-positive adolescents scored lower than the control group on total perceived social support (p < .05) and caregiver support (p < .05), but no differences in perceived friend support and support from a self-selected person were present. HIV-positive adolescents reported significantly more total emotional and behavioural difficulties (p = .027) and conduct problems (p = .025), even after controlling for socio-demographic factors. However, after controlling for the effects of orphanhood, group differences in mental health outcomes were no longer significant. Furthermore, mediation analysis suggested that social support completely mediated the relationship between HIV status and mental health (standardised pathway coefficients = .05, p = .021). Policies and programmes that aim to strengthen social support and take orphanhood status into consideration may improve the mental health of adolescents living with HIV.
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