• Researcher: Bram Orobio de Castro

Aggressive behavior problems place a burden on children, their relatives, and society. Their prognosis is poor, with increased risk for future antisocial behavior and high costs to society. Aggressive behavior is predicted by specific social information-processing patterns (SIP) and interventions targeting these patterns are relatively effective.

For many children, the actual SIP processes leading up to aggression only occur when they are highly aroused and engaged. Thus, understanding aggressive behavior requires individual assessment of SIP in realistic, engaging, aggression-provoking situations. Likewise, effective treatment requires careful tailoring to children’s individual SIP, and practice in the very situations that provoke a child’s aggressive behavior in real life. Understandably, research has struggled with the issues of capturing individual differences in SIP in actual provocative situations and tailoring intervention to individual SIP of aggressive youth.

The past decade, we have started to overcome these issues in concert by assessing and manipulating SIP in engaging social conflict situations, for example in a recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I adapted SIP theory to accommodate the effects of emotional engagement. We developed procedures to test SIP in staged peer conflicts, rigged online competitions, analyzed physiological processes and eye movements in SIP, and changed SIP using precisely targeted manipulations. This knowledge is currently applied and tested in widely implemented interventions.

Nonetheless, these advances are still but proxies to actual assessment of – and intervention with – individual children’s SIP as it unfolds in actual provocative social interactions. Aim of the present project is to assess and change SIP in actual social conflicts as they unfold. We will use interactive virtual reality exposure to aggression provoking social interactions to

1. assess individual SIP patterns of children with aggressive behavior problems in highly arousing virtual reality social interactions;
2. develop and test individually tailored cognitive behavioral treatment in interactive virtual reality environments.

The findings will provide a new framework to understand the differential development of aggressive behavior and will be directly implemented to prevent and treat behavior problems. The innovative assessment of processes implicated in aggression and their change through tailored manipulation may radically improve intervention.

• Period: August 2016 – December 2021
• Funding: This project was kindly funded with an NWO VICI to Bram Orobio de Castro, in cooperation with CleVR, Altrecht, GGZ Delfland, GGZ Noord-Nederland, Levvel, Opvoedpoli, RioZorg, and Youz. Researchers: Our team currently consists of Sophie Alsem (AIO), Rogier Verhoef (AIO), Anouk van Dijk (Ass Prof), Esmee Verhulp (Ass Prof), Janna v Keulen (Ass), Sander Thomaes (promotor), and Bram Orobio de Castro (PI), in cooperation with children, parents, and clinicians.

• Researcher: Eddie Brummelman

Society faces large and persistent levels of educational inequality. Around the world, children from poor and working-class backgrounds are far more likely to underperform in school than children from middle-class or affluent backgrounds. Why do they underperform? And how can we reduce these inequalities? During my fellowship, I will use my expertise in self-view development to study the pressing problem of inequality. My research shows that, from a young age, children form views of themselves and their abilities. What role do these self-views play in the emergence and maintenance of inequality? This research is a first step in exploring this idea. It will combine methods from different disciplines (e.g., psychology, sociology, economics, and educational science).

Shyness is very common among young children and it has important consequences for children’s social life. It is, therefore, important to understand how shyness develops and what social functions it serves. In the Project Shyness, we run several studies to better understand the development of shyness from infancy to childhood, what role parents play in the development of their children’s shyness, and the social benefits and costs of childhood shyness. The Project Shyness is ran at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education at the University of Amsterdam and funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) Talent VENI grant.

In our studies, we include babies and children of different ages. Because of that, some studies take place in the Family or Baby lab of the University of Amsterdam and some studies take place outside the labs (for example, in the NEMO Science Museum).

We define shyness as a self-conscious emotion that everyone can experience from time to time when exposed to other people’s attention. It reflects the ambivalence between social interest and social wariness. Shyness is typically displayed through a coy-smile—briefly looking away while smiling— and displaying a quickly appearing and disappearing blush. When dysregulated, however, it is characterized by negative affect, looking away longer, and prolonged blushing.

Typical displays of shyness in children, such as coy-smiles and quickly appearing and disappearing blushing, communicate to others that the child cares about social norms and rules and about others’ opinions of them. These coy-smiles displays make other people assess children more positively and, at the same time, they motivate the child to behave prosocially. Thus, we think that displaying shyness in the form of coy-smiles and quickly appearing and disappearing blushing is adaptive and facilitates healthy social functioning of children.

Some children display dysregulated shyness and some children display no signs of shyness when they are exposed to others’ attention. This can, for example, happen when performing in front of others, or meeting new people. We call this atypical shyness. Dysregulated and absent shyness disables children to engage with others successfully and may be related to the development of psychopathology.

• Promovendus: Eliala Salvadori
• Promotors: Frans Oort, Cristina Colonnesi

Emotional and referential communication are the two most significant manifestations of social engagement from early infancy. However, little is known about the synchrony and the developmental interplay of these abilities, and about their predictive value of later social-communicative functioning.

This project will use longitudinal and experimental designs to explore the stability and synchrony between emotional communication and pointing gesture from 4 to 18-months in a normal and in at-risk population. Systematic micro-level coding systems will be used. Results will not only contribute to our knowledge on socio-cognitive development, but they will also advantage the development of screening tools and interventions.

This project is part of the NWO Research Talent Programme.

• Promovendus: Annick Zijlstra
• Promotors: Bram Orobio de Castro, Maroesjka van Nieuwenhuizen

Newborns of mothers with mild to borderline intellectual functioning (MBID) and multi-problems are at extremely high risk for unsafe parenting. To prevent unsafe circumstances for these newborns, it is important to detect highly vulnerable future mothers (and their partners) with MBID already during pregnancy, to support them in this stage, and to ensure a safe environment for their newborn, with an effective intervention.

Veilige Start (Safe Start) is an intervention developed for and with this group and aims to ensure a safe environment for the (unborn) child at home with his/her parents. Currently, it has not been examined if the intervention meets the needs of this group and the effects of the intervention has not been evaluated yet. The present project will therefore examine the needs for support, protective, and risk factors in women with MBID and multi-problems (and their partners) around pregnancy and use this information to further develop the intervention and examine its effects on child safety and well-being, parenting, and family functioning.

This project is part of and subsidized by the ZonMw Program Onbedoelde zwangerschap en kwetsbaar (jong) ouderschap (Unintentional pregnancy and vulnerable (young) parenthood).

• Promovendus: Mieke Oldeman
• Promotors: Bram Orobio de Castro, Eva van Reijmersdal, Eline Smit

The prevalence of anxiety- and depression-related complaints in adolescents and emerging     adults has risen over the last decade, but youth face barriers when seeking professional help. Many therefore rely on social media for mental health information. Online short videos (OSVs) are a new form of online health information, which may come with risks and benefits for susceptible adolescents and emerging adults (e.g., misinformation and accessible    psychoeducation respectively).

In this project, we aim to understand to what extent, under which circumstances, and for whom mental health information in OSVs may be beneficial or detrimental. We will explore the information needs and mental health-related OSV consumption of adolescents and emerging  adults with anxiety- and depression-related complaints, and how their OSV consumption is related to their well-being. These findings will be used to develop and test a brief intervention to improve mental well-being.