PSY 516: SUMMARY OF DISCUSSION QUESTIONS, WEEK 5 Farrington, D.P. (2009). Conduct disorder, aggression and delinquency. In Lerner, R.M. & Steinberg, L. (Eds.) Handbook of adolescent psychology: Third edition (1) (pp. 683 - 722). John Wiley and Sons. · Why are boys more inclined to conduct disorder than girls? And why is the prevalence of conduct disorder among boys mostly increased at age 15-17? · What is the cause of increased school bullying at this time? · What interventions on antisocial behavior (Farrington mentioning: Early Home Visiting, Preschool Programs, Parent Training, Skills Training, Peer Programs, Scholl Programs, Anti-Bullying Programs or Multimodal Programs) are used in the Czech Republic? Exist here something similar or there aren't any interventions on antisocial behavior (in the sense of a prevention program)? · What is the best way to measure agresivity? Are there any differences between boys and girls agresivity exposure? · Are in Czech Republic more common physical or psychological attacks (for example word attack)? Which one of these attacks is worse for solving for children and teachers? · Why are boys exposed to bigger risk factors of deliquent behavior than girls are? Cant high IQ and higher educational abilities be the reason of delinquent behavior? · People say that children are more aggressive today. They speak a lot about chicane (bullying) at schools. Do you think that children are really more aggressive today? Or do you think that these opinions can be a result of the media influence? · Do you think that staying in prison or some similar facility for troubled children can improve children´s behaviour? What form of punishment do you prefer? · What key is used to select families to programs? Is there a risk of social disadvantage of families, social label? · What is a limit age when we can start talk about a delinquent child? · How can we motivate parents to attend programs of these kinds? · What is the cause of large difference in conduct problems among girls and boys? · When girls as well as boys live in disadvantaged neighborhoods with a high number of criminality and bad conditions generally. Is valid the opinion that boys are exposed to risk factors more often than girls?? · Biologic factors aren´t explored in a chapter. Though I am interested in your opinion about gen of evil? Do you believe this theory? Do a person with this gen become by thug automatically? · What causes that a critical period when adolescents tend to commit crimes such as robberies, vandalism, or fights begins earlier for boys then for girls? And what causes that a rate of problems during a period of time is stable high or decreasing for boys and stable low for girls? · What causes that boys are in general exposed to greater risk factors for committing an offence? How could that be prevented? · In presented chapter it was written that maybe there should be a different diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder for girls and boys. What do you think - in what ways could the girl's CD differ? · Do you know what the differences between conduct disorder (CD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are? · What kind of therapy could be the best choice for dealing with conduct disorder in childhood? · How would you describe relationship between persisting trait of aggresiveness and learned behavior? · What is the most common way of deliqency´s measurement according to Farrington? · Name the most crucial personality dimension that according to Farrington and other research predicts the antisocial behavior? · What do you think might be the main reasons for finding-out that in research of Lahey et al. (2000), according to parents´ reports, the prevalence of conduct disorder did not vary significantly during specified period (6 months), but according to adolescents´ self-reports, it increased with age? · According to findings of Kokko and Pulkkinen (2005), male and also female aggression is significantly stable over time (aggression at ages 8 and 14 predicted aggression at ages 36 and 42). What do you think – are forms of aggression discovered as more typical for boys (physical and verbal aggression, both hostile and instrumental) and more typical for girls (relational aggression: malicious rumors, not talking to other children, excluding some peers from group) also stable or women and men are more similar in forms of aggression than girls and boys? · Farrington in his work discuss the predictors of deliquency – influence of family (parents) and peers. Some children, even they grow in such „risky“ environments, don’t become deliquent. In your opinion,, why it is so? · Reading the list of risk factors, is there something you would see as a main (most influential) predictor of deliquency? Moffitt, T.E. & Caspi, A. (2007). Evidence from behavioral genetics for environmental contributions to antisocial conduct. In Grusec, J.E. & Hastings, P.D. (Eds.) Handbook of socialization: Theory and research (pp. 96 - 123). New York, NY, US: Guilford Press · On the one hand there is genetics and on the other hand there exist environmental contributions to antisocial conduct. I think we can partially influence the environment factors, but how we can influence the genetic factors? Is it then even possible to effectively control and prevent antisocial conduct? · Is it really possible to get out of the family chain where is conveyed bad patterns in behavior? · I am interested in the relation between ethnicity of adoptive parents and their children in connection with influence of environment. What is influence of public on origin of children´s aggression when children are different ethnicity than majority? This question is directed for children who are educated in appropriate family environment. · This question is connected with adoption of Romany children in Czech republic. Do gens affect major influence on their aggression? How do you explain fact, that Romany children, who are adopted in abroad, they have not these problems (problems with aggression, conduct problems...)? · If we base on hypothesis that parental genes affect bad parenthood at their children, and at the same time a bad parenthood may cause inclination to delinquency of their children and also that genetic impacts are stronger than environmental effects, how can we then leave the vicious circle? · What is the main problem in interpreting association between environmental factors and antisocial behavior considering correlation in different research? · Give an example of research method for testing causation of risk factors for antisocial behavior. · Is future bad parenting influenced more by parents gens or environment? · Is there any connection between smoking during pregnancy and children´s aggressive behavior? · Why do you think that the best designed intervention programs reduced juvenile recidivism only by about 12%? · In which way does intrauterine growth affect monozygotic twins? · In your own opinion, is it possible to say, what is more important – environment, where child is reared in, or genetic influences? If yes, which one? Please, have a think, in your behavior, is here something concrete that, according to you, you got from your parents through genes, and something what you got through rearing? · Which contributing factors do do behavioral genetics studies consider in understending causal relation between „bad parenting“ and „children’s aggresion“ ? · What is the general idea of studying twins who were reared apart? · What is the traditional behavioral-genetics studies view on environmental components? Woodlard, J.L. & Scott, E. (2009). The legal regulation of adolescence. In Lerner, R.M. & Steinberg, L. (Eds.) Handbook of adolescent psychology: Third edition (2) (pp. 345 - 371). John Wiley and Sons · Can pregnant teen girls really decide their mind about the abortion or keeping the child, when they for example don't have money or home for the child and they are therefore dependent on their parents? · Example: Pregnant adolescent girl (of age 15) and her parents don’t agree with interruption (abortion). The girl has complications which could cause that she will never have children. How would institutions in Czech Republic solve this situation? · Who is responsible by law for adolescents who are in foster-care? Biological parents or foster-parents? · What do you think about this Czech paradox - children can´t drink alcohol before they are 18 years old but their parents commonly leave them do it (for example at family parties)? · Under what circumstances do you think that abortions of adolescent mothers are necessary? · Do you think that for example eight-year-olds can be fully accountable for their behavior? (it is common in the USA) · How can society deal with children with guns in school, bulling of teachers and other significant actions? · Most countries consider an eighteen-year-old individual to be responsible and self-governing member of a society. He also loses a state protection of underage and does not have rights for its services. Does the age of 18 correspond from a psychological point of view to these changes in one’s life? · At what age is a woman able to make a decision about abortion? What role should play parents in this decision? Should a parent’s signature be necessary for underaged? Sex is according to Czech law legal since the age of 15, though a woman needs a legal representative’s signature till the age of 16 if she wants to undergo abortion (and till the age of 18 a health centre will inform legal representative about the performed abortion). · In the Czech Republic the age of criminal responsibility is set to 15. Do you think it is a sufficient limit? · Do you think that juveniles are aware about the seriousness of their criminal actions? · Is it morally correct to enable teenagers to travel to a different state for abortion? Why? · Should the state decide about abortion or is it a personal thing? Why? · How high should be the boundary of responsibility for young criminals? Why? Comparing Czech legal system and U.S. legal system: which boundary is better (18 years or 21 years boundary)? Why? · Is there a clear line between childhood and adulthood? · What are competing ideologies in access to abortion in each countries in USA? · Why do you think some states have shifted the boundary of childhood downwards for abortions? · Is it sufficient to have bypass hearing only for twelve minutes (like in Ohio)? · Why do you think, that 17 years old commit more crimes that any other age group in USA? · Are teenagers able to except the responsibility? Why? · For you, does some personality or behavior trait exist, on the basis of which you consider that somebody no longer is a child/ an adolescent, but is an adult? Do you think that achievement of required age is sufficient distinctive attribute? Do you see yourself as adult? · Could you say if you are pro or against adolescents´ own decision-making about abortion? If you could, what did influence your opinion mostly? · Do you think that adolescence should be recognized by the law as an separate category? · Would be a new category between adulthood and childhood helpful addition? · Most of the EU- countries consider the age of 18 as a beginning of the adulthood, in US it is 21, but for example you can drive the car earlier. What are the pros and cons of those approaches? · According to paper by Woolard and Scott what is the trouble with late adolescence and legal norms? · Reaching 18 years old in our society means legal adulthood. According to paper by Woolard and Scott, do you agree that it should stay this way? Or would you prefer to change it? · Is there a difference in occurance between adolescent delinquency among the religious big families and non-religious big families? · Is also crime prevealing more among the siblings from large families in the Czech Republic? · Can be the successful interventions done under the Czech conditions? · Which of the interventions do you think can be the most successful? · If the teachershas too high expectations from the studends, does it motivate them to study hard?