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Biomedical subjects

Margaret Kerr

Publications and source records attributed to Margaret Kerr.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2007

Staying in or moving away from structured activities: Explanations involving parents and peers.

Adolescent participation in structured activities, meaning those with adult leaders, regular meetings, and skill-building activities, is related to good adjustment. Participation in unstructured, unsupervised, peer-oriented activities is related to poor adjustment. Structured activity participation is high in early adolescence and then declines, raising the question of why youths leave structured activities. The authors examined explanations involving parents and peers. They used longitudinal data from 861 youths (ages 13-17 years). Results showed that, compared with youths who stayed in structured activities, those who switched to hanging out on the streets were less likely to have peers in structured activities and had less positive feelings about the home context and more negative interactions with parents. In addition, delinquency predicted switching to hanging out in the streets and never joining structured activities in the first place. The results concerning parents support a theoretical explanation of how parents might unintentionally affect youths' leisure choices. Furthermore, the authors found some indications that positive feelings at home might protect youths who switch from structured activities to hanging out on the streets from increases in delinquency.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Linking adult psychopathy with childhood hyperactivity-impulsivity-attention problems and conduct problems through retrospective self-reports.

The purpose of the present study was to test whether adult criminals with psychopathy diagnoses, more than those without, have histories of hyperactivity-impulsivity-attention problems (HIA) and conduct problems (CP). We compared psychopathic and nonpsychopathic violent criminal offenders on retrospective reports of conduct problems before the age of 15 and hyperactivity-impulsivity-attention problems before the age of 10. We used a sample of 186 adult men sentenced to prison in Sweden for 4 years or more for violent, nonsexual crimes. The mean age was 30.7( SD = 9.4). The results showed that a combination of childhood HIA problems and CP was typical for adult psychopathic offenders. They were four times more likely than chance to have had a combination of HIA problems and CP during childhood and only one-fifth as likely than chance to have had neither problem. Nonpsychopathic offenders, on the other hand, were five times more likely than chance to have had neither problem and only one-quarter as likely than chance to have had both problems.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2005

Psychopathy and intelligence: a second look.

Empirical studies using the PCL-R (Hare, 2003) have shown no intelligence differences between psychopaths and nonpsychopaths. However, Cleckley (1976) argued that psychopaths often show superior intelligence. The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that the correlation between intelligence and severity of criminal development is the opposite in psychopaths than in nonpsychopathic criminals using a sample of 370 men sentenced for violent (nonsexual) crimes. That pattern would provide a way of explaining the discrepancy between Cleckley's view and later empirical work. The results showed that for nonpsychopaths, higher total IQ and particularly verbal intelligence meant a later start in violent crime. For those diagnosed as psychopaths, however, this association was reversed.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

"Very Important Persons" in adolescence: going beyond in-school, single friendships in the study of peer homophily.

Using a sample of 1227 Swedish adolescents we examined peer relations across contexts and for multiple peer targets (three "Very Important Persons", VIPs). Specifically, we examined the relations between antisocial behaviour and the types of relationships individuals had with their VIPs (e.g. friend, romantic partner), the contexts in which they had met, and where they spent time (e.g. school, neighbourhood, club). Additionally, we tested an "additive homophily" hypothesis, or the idea that youths would show unique similarities to multiple peers. Results showed that individuals who nominated romantic partners as their first VIPs were the most antisocial (both boys and girls), and individuals who had met and spent time with their first VIPs in the neighbourhood were also the most antisocial. Similar results were found for the antisocial behaviour of the first VIP. Finally, results supported the additive homophily hypothesis, showing that significantly more variance in individual behaviour is explained when including second and third VIPs.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

Why a leisure context is linked to normbreaking for some girls and not others: personality characteristics and parent-child relations as explanations.

In a study of adolescents in the 1970s, girls were high in normbreaking if they attended youth recreation centers and were heavily involved with peers or boys (Stattin et al., 2003). The present study investigated whether these results could be replicated on a modern sample, and then examined parent-child relationships and personality characteristics as explanations why some girls and not others go to the youth centers and become heavily involved with peers and boys. Participants were 1279 14-year olds from a city in central Sweden. The results showed that personality characteristics and experiences at home partly explained youth center attendance, and personality characteristics partly explained involvement with boys, but neither explained why those who attended the centers and were involved with boys were highest on normbreaking. Thus, personality characteristics and experiences at home seem to be involved when girls choose the youth center context, but socialization by peers at the centers might better explain normbreaking among center goers.

Adolescent↗