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Personality is generally considered to be biologically founded in temperament, and temperamental qualities have proven to be relatively stable across childhood and into adulthood (Caspi, Roberts & Shiner, ). Temperament predicts important developmental outcomes such as academic performance (Muris, ), and social functioning (Eisenberg, Fabes, Guthrie & Reiser, ), and it has also been found to be strongly related to the etiology and maintenance of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in children (Muris, Meesters & Blijlevens, ; Nigg, ). To allow for the possibility of making early interventions, identification of potential risk factors (such as temperamental dispositions) is of great importance (Rettew & McKee, ). As temperament is multidimensional and has many different manifestations, parents and teachers are valuable sources in providing information about children's temperament (Rothbart & Bates, ; Tackett, Slobodskaya, Mar et al., ), and caregiver questionnaires are frequently used in child personality research. However, such questionnaires are only useful if their reliability and validity have been established. The aim of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire ( TMCQ; Simonds, Kieras, Rueda & Rothbart, ), which focuses specifically on the ages between 7 and 11 years. The TMCQ is the least validated of the Rothbart measures, and although reliability data have been presented, together with some validity data, for a computerized self-report version of the questionnaire (Simonds & Rothbart, ), information about the reliability and validity for the caregiver version is scant. In the present paper, we report such data for a Swedish sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sample of 209 children was followed longitudinally to examine the impact of growing perspective-taking skills on positive and negative emotionality in middle and late childhood. Perspective-taking skills were assessed through interviews. Teachers rated children's emotional reactivity and capacity to regain a neutral state following emotional arousal. Analyses of contemporaneous data revealed that more developed perspective-taking skills were associated with moderate levels of emotional reactivity. In addition, in children with high emotional reactivity, good perspective-taking skills were associated with good capacity to regain a neutral affective state following emotional arousal. Longitudinal analyses revealed that children who made gains in perspective-taking skills over a two-year-period became more moderate in negative emotional reactivity and improved their ability to down-regulate strong positive emotions. The overall findings support the notion that children use perspective-taking skills as a tool for optimal regulation of emotional responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mothers ( N= 35) and their adult children completed questionnaires and were interviewed in order to examine relationships between mothers’ caregiving representations and their adult children's attachment representations, and relationships between attachment/caregiving representations and beliefs about mothering. Mothers’ and their children's accounts of and present thinking about their past relationship were highly similar, indicating that the two parts develop concordant states of mind regarding their relationship. In contrast, there was no relationship between mothers’ and their adult children's beliefs about mothering, suggesting that such beliefs are not simply passed on from generation to generation within families. Attachment/caregiving classification interacted with generation in influencing a belief that biological facts determine maternal behavior, young adults with preoccupied attachment being particularly prone to reject this idea. Attachment/caregiving classification also had a significant effect on participants’ tendency to adhere to an idealized conception of mothering, this tendency being associated with a dismissive attachment/caregiving representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's mental representations of situations involving another child's distress were examined in two studies. Study 1 examined 3- to 7-year-old children's ( n= 44) ideas about what victims and bystanders would think, feel and do in hypothetical situations. In Study 2, 7- to 8-year-olds ( n= 40) described their own cognitive response to situations in which they were confronted with another's distress. In both studies, representational bias was examined in relation to children's display of prosocial and aggressive behavior and in relation to their acceptance of distressed peers. Although not entirely consistent, findings indicate that three types of representational biases are associated with low levels of considerate behavior and with relatively low acceptance of distressed peers: (a) mentally representing the victim's problem without giving thought to its implications for the victim, (b) significantly reducing the emotional significance of the problem and (c) exaggerating negative aspects of the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental changes in the conceptualization of empathy were studied by testing and interviewing kindergartners, first graders, and fourth graders One part of the study showed that all age groups expect a child to empathize with liked peers more than with disliked peers Whereas kindergartners expect emotional reactions to be equally strong in response to both types of peers, older children predict weak and qualified empathic reactions to disliked peers Taken in conjunction with the children's explanations of their emotion choices, this result suggests age differences with regard to the integration of separate items of information A second part of the study showed that few kindergartners know how to control empathic arousal purely by means of thoughts Mentalistic strategies used by older children to maximize or minimize empathic arousal are presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied the influence of diclofenac on the pharmacokinetics of cloxacillin in healthy volunteers, 60 years or older, as well as the possible effect of cloxacillin and diclofenac on urinary protein excretion. In a randomized, double-blind, cross-over study 15 subjects were given 1 g cloxacillin, and placebo or 75 mg diclofenac, as single intravenous doses. Plasma concentrations of cloxacillin were followed over 10.5 hr, and urine excretion of cloxacillin over 24 hr. The effect of the drugs on urinary excretion of protein indicators of glomerular (albumin, IgG) and tubular (protein HC) function was also studied. Total plasma clearance of cloxacillin was with placebo 219+51 (mean + S.D), and with diclofenac 212+39 ml/min./1.73 m2 (ns); renal clearance was 97+21 and 96+24 ml/min./1.73 m2, respectively (ns). The terminal t1/2 of cloxacillin was 1.03+0.42 hr with placebo, and 1.12+0.37 with diclofenac (ns). The mean ratio of AUC0-∞'s (cloxacillin plus diclofenac/cloxacillin plus placebo) was 1.03 (90% CI: 0.99, 1.08). Urinary excretion of the proteins was low and was not increased by cloxacillin or diclofenac. In healthy volunteers, 60 years or older, diclofenac does not alter cloxacillin pharmacokinetics, and neither cloxacillin nor diclofenac in single intravenous doses cause renal dysfunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]