Questionnaire Measures of Empathy in Children: A Scoping Review

Children’s unique developmental and contextual needs make it challenging to measure empathy validly and reliably. This scoping review is the first to collate currently available information about self-report, other-report, and performance-based questionnaire measures of empathy for children aged up to 11 years. Following the guidelines for Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR; Tricco et al., 2018), a literature search using PsycINFO, Scopus, and Google Scholar identified 24 relevant measures of empathy in children, with publication years spanning 1958 to 2019. Questionnaires could broadly be classified into four groups, according to the extent to which they were developed with children’s developmental needs and contexts in mind, and were based on contemporary theory and research findings. There was a distinction between performance-based measures, which elicited children’s empathy-related responses to novel content and therefore assessed situational state empathy, and self- and other-report measures, which rated children’s general empathic tendencies and thus assessed dispositional trait empathy. Results highlighted the importance of researchers having clarity on their definition of empathy and choosing measures consistent with this, and the merit of utilizing a multimodal assessment approach.

Questionnaire measures of adult attachment correlate with frontal hemispheric asymmetry in sleep spindle activity

Introduction: Attachment anxiety and neuroticism were proposed to be associated with relative right frontal neural activity. Since sleep spindles are argued to reflect enhanced offline neuroplasticity, higher spindle activity measured over the right frontal areas relative to the corresponding left frontal ones could index higher attachment anxiety and neuroticism.Methods: 34 healthy subjects (male = 19; Mage = 31.64; SDage = 9.5) were enrolled in our preliminary study. Second night EEG/polysomnography records and questionnaire measures of personality (Zuckermann-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire) and adult attachment (Relationship Scales Questionnaire) were collected. Frontal slow sleep spindles were measured by the Individual Adjustment Method (IAM), whereas hemispheric asymmetry indexes of spindle occurrence rate, duration and amplitude were derived as normalized left-right differences (electrode pairs: Fp1-Fp2, F3-F4 and F7-F8).Results: Relative right lateralization of frontolateral and frontopolar slow sleep spindle density and mid-frontal slow spindle duration were associated with attachment anxiety, but spindle lateralization was less closely related to neuroticism. The relationships between frontal slow spindle laterality and attachment anxiety remained statistically significant even after controlling for the effect of neuroticism. The attachment “relationship” dimension (need for close relationships) was related to relative left dominance of frontal slow spindle activation, whereas attachment independence was not correlated with frontal slow spindle lateralization.Conclusion: Right frontal lateralization of slow sleep spindle activity can potentially serve as a marker for attachment anxiety.

A Comparison of Prebunking and Debunking Interventions for Implied versus Explicit Misinformation

Psychological research has offered valuable insights into how to combat misinformation. The studies conducted to date, however, have three limitations. First, pre-emptive (“prebunking”) and retroactive (“debunking”) interventions have mostly been examined in parallel, and thus it is unclear which of these two predominant approaches is more effective. Second, there has been a focus on misinformation that is explicitly false, but misinformation that uses literally true information to mislead is common in the real world. Finally, studies have relied mainly on questionnaire measures of reasoning, neglecting behavioural impacts of misinformation and interventions. To offer incremental progress towards addressing these three issues, we conducted an experiment (N = 735) involving misinformation on fair trade. We contrasted the effectiveness of prebunking versus debunking and the impacts of implied versus explicit misinformation, and incorporated novel measures assessing consumer behaviours (i.e., willingness-to-pay; information seeking; online misinformation promotion) in addition to standard questionnaire measures. In general, we found debunking to be more effective than prebunking, although both were able to reduce misinformation reliance. We also found that individuals tended to rely more on explicit than implied misinformation both with and without interventions.

Dissociations between interoceptive accuracy and attention: evidence from the interoceptive attention scale

Previous evidence suggests a dissociation between self-reported interoceptive accuracy and self-reported interoceptive attention. However, it remains unclear whether such dissociations are driven by differences in the interoceptive signals rated across these questionnaires, or a genuine dissociation between different facets of interoception (accuracy and attention). Across three studies, we examined the relationship between existing measures of self-reported interoceptive accuracy and self-reported interoceptive attention by developing a novel measure of self-reported interoceptive attention – the Interoceptive Attention Scale (IATS) – designed to match the interoceptive sensations included in an existing questionnaire measure of interoceptive accuracy. In addition, we examined whether the interpretation of questionnaire measures of interoception altered associations across measures. Results support the proposed distinction between self-reported interoceptive attention and self-reported interoceptive accuracy and highlight the importance of considering the interpretation of questionnaire measures of interoception.

PREVALENCE OF COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS AMONG ADOLESCENTS IN PUNJAB, PAKISTAN

This study investigated the prevalence of cognitive distortions among adolescents in Pakistan. 1258 participants recruited through purposive sampling, falling in the age range of 16-22 years and studying in different Public sector collegesof Rawalpindi Division were administered the How I Think Questionnaire. The participants were placed into the following three categories; non-clinical, borderline and clinical range based on their responses on the „HIT-Q. This Questionnaire measures four types of cognitive distortions namely minimizing / mislabeling, self-centered, assuming the worst and blaming others. Results of the study revealed that of 17.17% (216/1258) of the participants were identified in in the clinical category on self-centered subscale whereas 13.83 % (174/1258) were in the clinical category of Blaming others subscale..48 % (148/1258) responses were in the clinical category on the “assuming the worst” subscale and 14.1% in the minimizing/ mislabeling subscale. 3.00-4.89 was the clinical range for the subscale of minimizing/mislabeling and Clinical range for “assuming the worst” subscale according to manual of the HIT-Q was 3.00-4.92. Meanwhile responses also indicated that 31.8% of adolescents scored high on oppositional defiance. 37.1% in physical aggression and 60% in stealing. Results suggest that adolescents in Pakistan has severe problem of thinking in distorted way and there is dire need for counselling centers to be established in every college in Punjab Pakistan.

PBL facilitator training focusing on the skills of promoting student critical thinking

Background Critical thinking is an essential skill for medical graduates. The aim of the following study is to train the facilitators to boost critical thinking during the PBL sessions. Method Forty PBL facilitators of the college of Medicine, the year 2019-2020, were invited to fill a questionnaire and participate in a workshop. The questionnaire measures the background knowledge of the facilitators about critical thinking. The workshop started with a presentation then followed by exercises to apply different techniques for critical thinking. Results Most of the facilitators (>80%) believe that PBL supports critical thinking. > 50% are using questioning technique. None were aware of any other technique. Following the workshop, > 50% were able to suggest other relevant techniques such as debate, hypothesis and role play. Most of the facilitators admired the activity and requested similar training sessions. Conclusion Facilitators training workshop needs to be tailored toward specific PBL outcomes. Critical thinking is one of the most important targets of PBL. However, facilitators of previous facilitation experience and exposure to general PBL workshops lack the skills to support critical thinking. The currently focused workshop yields promising reflection by the participants' feedback and performance.