Study: Toddlers Can Distinguish Between Bullies and Leaders

For many years, research has linked educational achievement to life trajectories, such as occupational status, health or happiness.

But if performing well in school predicts better life outcomes, what predicts how well someone will do throughout school?

“Around two-thirds of individual differences in school achievement are explained by differences in children’s DNA,” said Dr. Margherita Malanchini, a psychology postdoctoral fellow at the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

“But less is known about how these factors contribute to an individual’s academic success overtime.”

Dr. Malanchini and co-authors analyzed test scores from primary through the end of compulsory education of more than 6,000 pairs of twins.

They found educational achievement to be highly stable throughout schooling, meaning that most students who started off well in primary school continued to do well until graduation.

Genetic factors explained about 70% of this stability, while the twins shared environment contributed to about 25%, and their non-shared environment, such as different friends or teachers, contributed to the remaining 5%.

“That’s not to say that an individual was simply born smart,” the scientists said.

“Even after accounting for intelligence, genes still explained about 60% of the continuity of academic achievement.”

“Academic achievement is driven by a range of cognitive and non-cognitive traits,” Dr. Malanchini said.

“Previously, studies have linked it to personality, behavioral problems, motivation, health and many other factors that are partly heritable.”

However, at times grades did change, such as a drop in grades between primary and secondary school. ..."

“Our findings should provide additional motivation to identify children in need of interventions as early as possible, as the problems are likely to remain throughout the school years,” said Dr. Kaili Rimfeld, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London.

Study: Toddlers Can Distinguish Between Bullies and Leaders

Sep 5, 2018 by News Staff / Source

“Our results provide evidence that infants in the second year of life can already distinguish between leaders and bullies,” said University of Illinois Professor Renee Baillargeon.

“Infants understand that with leaders, you have to obey them even when they are not around; with bullies, though, you have to obey them only when they are around.”

Professor Baillargeon and co-authors analyzed infants’ eye-gazing behavior, a standard approach for measuring expectations in children too young to explain their thinking to adults. This ‘violation-of-expectation’ method relies on the observation that infants stare longer at events that contradict their expectations.

“Previous studies had shown that infants can recognize power differences between two or more characters,” Professor Baillargeon said.

“For example, infants will stare longer at scenarios where larger characters defer to smaller ones. They also take note when a character who normally wins a confrontation with another suddenly loses.”

“But little was known about infants’ ability to distinguish between different bases of power.”

To get at this question, the team developed a series of animations depicting cartoon characters interacting with an individual portrayed as a leader, a bully or a likeable person with no evident power.

The researchers first tested how adults responded to the scenarios and found that the adults identified the characters as intended.

Next, they measured the eye-gazing behavior of infants as they watched the same animations.

“In one experiment, the infants watched a scenario in which a character portrayed either as a leader or a bully gave an order (Time for bed!) to three protagonists, who initially obeyed. The character then left the scene and the protagonists either continued to obey or disobeyed,” Profesor Baillargeon said.

“The infants detected a violation when the protagonists disobeyed the leader but not when they disobeyed the bully. This was true also in a second experiment that repeated the scenarios but eliminated previous differences in physical appearance between the leader and the bully.”

A third experiment tested whether the infants were responding to the likeability of the characters in the scenarios, rather than to their status as leaders or bullies.

“In general, when the leader left the scene, the infants expected the protagonists to continue to obey the leader,” Professor Baillargeon said.

“However, when the bully left, the infants had no particular expectation: the protagonists might continue to obey out of fear, or they might disobey because the bully was gone. The infants expected obedience only when the bully remained in the scene and could harm them again if they disobeyed.”

“Finally, when the likeable character left, the infants expected the protagonists to disobey, most likely because the character held no power over them.”

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POW!!

Study: Toddlers Can Distinguish Between Bullies and Leaders