Culture is important for the development of social skills in children, including empathy. Although empathy has long been linked with prosocial behaviors and attitudes, there is little research that links culture with development of empathy in children. This project sought to investigate and identify specific culturally related empathy elements in a sample of Dene and Inuit children from Northern Canada. Across seven different grade (primary) schools, 92 children aged 7 to 9 years participated in the study. Children’s drawings, and interviews about those pictures, were uniquely employed as empirical data which allowed researchers to gain access to the children’s perspective about what aspects of culture were important to them. Using empathy as the theoretical framework, a thematic analysis was conducted in a top-down deductive approach. The research paradigm elicited a rich data set revealing three major themes: sharing; knowledge of self and others; and acceptance of differences. The identified themes were found to have strong links with empathy constructs such as sharing, helping, perspective-taking, and self–other knowledges, revealing the important role that culture may play in the development of empathy. Findings from this study can help researchers explore and identify specific cultural elements that may contribute to the development of empathy in children.
Introduction: We aimed to investigate the association between schizotypy and intentionality bias, the tendency to interpret ambiguous actions as being intentional, for social and nonsocial actions separately. This bias contributes to interpersonal difficulties, and has been associated with psychotic symptoms, such as delusions. However, results have been inconsistent for an association between putative psychosis proneness, schizotypy, and intentionality bias. Further, the multidimensional nature of schizotypy has not been considered. Agreeableness was measured to examine the specificity of the relationship, and inhibition to examine its potential role as a mediator.Methods: Two online studies are reported (n = 280 and n = 163) in which participants made intentionality judgements about ambiguous actions described in sentences. They also completed questionnaire measures of schizotypy and agreeableness, and inhibitory efficiency (a sentence completion task).Results: Schizotypy was associated with perceiving ambiguous actions as intentional, particularly in social contexts, after controlling for agreeableness. The association with social intentionality was stronger for schizotypy subscales capturing paranoia and unusual beliefs.Inhibitory efficiency as not a significant predictor of intentionality bias.Conclusion: These finding suggest intentionality biases for social and non-social events are distinguishable. In relation to schizotypy, social situations appear to generate perceptions of intentionality. Intentionality bias represents a phenotypic cognitive risk for psychosis which should be further investigated.
Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) is a student let program designed to support students transitioning into university and tackling traditionally difficult first year core subjects. The model is collaborative with student leaders facilitating activities and discussions driven by student need. Consistently research has found that students can benefit, in terms of increased grades, from attending PASS, however findings for online delivery modes are mixed. These studies have generally only compared face to face (F2F) with online modes of PASS-like programs for one subject. No study has compared different subjects from varying disciplines to investigate if the benefits of PASS online are the same for all students. PASS at UOW conducted a pilot study of synchronous online sessions, tested across three different first year university subjects. A total of 1.471 students enrolled into these subjects, with 409 attending some form of PASS. Result revealed PASS students gained significantly higher average final marks compared to students who did not attend any type of PASS, regardless off subject. However, results for PASS varied depending upon mode of delivery engaged in (F2F or online) and also with subject. Although not all differences were statistically significant, trends suggest a student/subject interaction that may vary the amount of benefit gained from PASS online formats. Possible drivers for these results are discussed as well as consideration given to cohort effects and student skills for online learning modes.
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