School-related Factors in the Development of Bullying Perpetration and Victimization: Introduction to the Special Section

Abstract

Although not limited to school contexts, bullying perpetration and victimization often emanates from social ecologies formed within the classroom. Thus, to fully illuminate risk for involvement in bullying, we must investigate contextual features of schools that heighten or minimize aggression among students and the targeting of children for peer victimization. To this end, the articles in this special section each contribute conceptually and empirically to the study of school-related factors in bullying and peer victimization. This introduction summarizes and highlights the major findings of each paper, organized around two major themes of the articles-the role of peer group ecologies and the role of the classroom teacher. We conclude our synopsis by discussing implications for intervention and the need for anti-bullying efforts that systemically address the peer group and teacher influences identified in these investigations.

Oxytocin pathways in the intergenerational transmission of maternal early life stress

“…One may speculate that mothers with an insecure attachment style, which can be a result of problematic parental care experiences in the mother’s own childhood, are more prone to perceive infant distress as aversive, which can lead to frustration or even abusive behavior towards the child (Reijneveld et al, 2004). In addition, hyper-reactivity of the amygdala in response to infant distress as has been shown in ELS-exposed mothers is a neural correlate for maternal intrusive parenting (Atzil et al, 2011), which in turn is a risk factor for higher infant anxious and depressive behaviors (Wagner et al, 2015). The relevance of these findings to the proposed intergenerational framework is immediately evident: they clearly suggest that early maternal attachment experiences (in her own childhood) or ELS may contribute to alterations in CNS OT signaling pathways, which underlie parenting and maternal responsivity.…”

The neurobiology of self-face recognition in depressed adolescents with low or high suicidality.

“…Cognitive theories emphasize the role of self-schemas in vulnerability for suicide (Alloy, Abramson, Safford, & Gibb, 2006; Beck, 1961), positing that negative self-schemas increase suicide risk by influencing the perception, encoding, retrieval, and interpretation of self-referential cues (Burke, et al, 2015; Wenzel & Beck, 2008). Evidence also suggests that individuals at risk for suicide are more likely to have negatively biased self-cognitions.…”

“…A recent study of adolescents showed that youth with suicidal ideation were also more likely to endorse negative self-traits and less likely to endorse positive self-traits compared to adolescents without suicidal ideation during a self-referential processing task, even after controlling for clinical depression (Burke, et al, 2015). Overall the extant research suggests that, in contrast to psychologically healthy individuals, those at risk for suicide show preferential endorsement of negative self-referential information, and avoidance or neglect of positive self-referential material.…”

“…However, there is emerging research showing that suicidal individuals have highly biased self-schemas, are more likely to endorse negative self-attributions, and more negative than positive self-traits, even above and beyond the impact of depression (Brunstein Klomek, et al, 2007; Burke, et al, 2015; Tang, et al, 2013). Additionally, there is evidence that youth suicide attempters, relative to depressed non-suicidal youth, exhibit aberrant neural responses to emotional faces in MCS and limbic structures [e.g., ACC; (Pan, et al, 2013)], which are thought to play a key role in the processing of self-information and emotionally-valenced stimuli.…”

“…Identifying key neural circuits distinguishing depressed youth with high suicidal ideation from other depressed youth and psychologically healthy controls may help to better predict suicide risk. Research further suggests that disturbed self-referential processing may contribute to increased risk for suicide (Burke et al, 2015). However, it remains unknown how neural alterations during self-referential processing are associated with suicidality.…”