Confrontational Behavior Research Articles

Neurofeedback Effect on Perceptual-Motor Skills of Children with ADHD

Objectives: This study investigates the impact of neurofeedback on perceptual-motor skills of 5 to 12 years old children with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD). Methods: In this clinical study, 40 children between the ages of 5-12 years, who were patients of the Tavanesh Clinic and diagnosed with ADHD, were randomly chosen and divided into two groups of control and test. 20-neurofeedback intervention sessions were performed. The tools utilized in this study included Bruninks–Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency and Child behavior checklist (CBCL) survey questionnaire. For evaluation after the intervention, Bruninks–Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency scale for children, along with CBCL questionnaire surveys were asked to fill up by the participants’ mothers. Results: After the intervention, the analysis of the scores in all perceptual-motor skills showed significant differences in both groups, but no significant difference was observed in the subtest of strength. The CBCL survey questionnaire revealed that the average scores on attention disorder, aggression, lack of attention and hyperactivity, externalizing and general problems in the test group is significantly less than that of the control group. However, in the confrontational behavior (internalization), there was no statistically significant difference between the test and control groups. There was a correlation between the change of motor skills and change of behavioral patterns in ADHD children. Discussion: Neurofeedback intervention can have positive effects on improving the perceptualmotor skills of children with ADHD. A B S T R A C T Article info:

Assessment of communities landholding assertiveness effects on sustained residential properties development in Nigeria: a case of Port Harcourt conurbations

Many times the confrontational behaviour of communities and their agents frustrates housing estates developments and thereby dare efforts to remedy the housing estates units' deficit and the sustainability. Especially, in the cultural attitudes and beliefs existing and practiced by the community's people when residential properties are to be improved. The paper's aim is to assess the influence of community's cultural practice in sustainability of residential properties project development. 130 (Nr) Likert-scale questionnaire design and self-administered to the study participants, with response rate of 75% (98 Nr) were achieved and used for the analysis and rendition. The study found that the confrontational and bullying approach used by the communities and/or its agents in practice significantly hinder sustainable residential property development in the Port Harcourt conurbations. The community's-developers/owners compact agreement building and management driven approach, supported by appropriate government policies is recommended as the best option to practice in the specific. Promoting sustainable capacity development programmes and technical training acquisition to the community's people would assist to reduce or eliminate the reckless and illegal attitudes and manners of exploitation by the community. The study reflects by exposing the effects of community culture to the relevant stakeholders in residential property development and sustainability.

Developing a Coach Education Course: A Bottom-Up Approach

A frequent critique of coach education courses is that they are designed by scholars with little input from coaches about what they think they need. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and content of a coach education course that was grounded in stakeholder needs. Dutch amateur football coaches felt ill-equipped to handle conflicts and confrontational behaviors by players and/or parents. Therefore a coach education course was created to help coaches develop tools they could use to improve their interpersonal skills. The tools were drawn from the teaching strategies of Forgatch and DeGarmo (1999) and Rational-Emotive Education (REE) (Knaus, 1974).

Adding insult to injury: partner depression moderates the association between partner-regulation attempts and partners' motivation to resolve interpersonal problems.

Intimates regularly confront their partners to motivate them to change undesirable behaviors. Nevertheless, contextual perspectives suggest that qualities of the partner may determine the implications of such attempts. Consistent with these ideas, a pilot study of romantic relationships, an observational study of newlyweds, and a diary study of married couples demonstrated that partner depression moderates the association between confrontational partner-regulation behaviors and partners' motivation, such that confrontational behaviors were associated with marginally greater motivation to resolve problems among partners who were experiencing relatively few depressive symptoms, but significantly less motivation among partners who were experiencing relatively more depressive symptoms. Furthermore, Study 2 provided evidence for the mechanism of these effects--relationship self-efficacy. Finally, these studies also demonstrated that benevolent behaviors were particularly motivating for partners who were experiencing more depressive symptoms. These findings highlight the important roles played by depression, relationship self-efficacy, and context in interpersonal communication.

Opening the black box of the role of accounting practices in the fuzzy front-end of product innovation

This paper has focused on the question “What is the role of accounting practices in the fuzzy front-end of product innovation?” Previous accounting research has primarily focused on the product development phase, neglecting the critical, early fuzzy front-end phase. Our findings, based on a case study of a producer of components to airplane engines, contribute to this literature by showing that keeping within the expenditure budget together with technical quantifications replaced the need for financial quantifications when the R&D department justified their work. Non-financial accounting practices thereby operated as a mediating instrument that mediated between the R&D department and internal and external actors regarding expectations about time and commercial potential. The study also contributes to the literature on product innovation in networks by detailing how accounting practices helped in making sure that the produce perspective was confronted with the use perspective and thereby secured attention to business aspects in the innovation process. In addition, accounting practices helped in constructing relatively coherent chains of trustworthy arguments necessary to mobilize support and resources from internal and external actors. Finally we contribute to the bricolage literature by detailing how accounting practices support network bricolage, and the importance of innovators being able to perform selective bricolage where bricolage is complemented with more confrontational behavior to move the innovation process forward.

A cross-cultural perspective on consumer perceptions of service failures’ severity: a pilot study

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the cultural variability in assessing the severity of a service failure. Design/methodology/approach – Two separate studies were conducted. The first investigates differences in the perception of service failures across two cultural pools of subjects (allocentrics versus idiocentrics) and within a same country. The second contrasts two levels of comparisons: a cross-cultural values’ level and a cross-country level, to assess differences in the perception service failures’ severity. Findings – Results showed that cultural values differences, when investigated at the individual level (i.e. idiocentrism versus allocentrism) are more significant to understand the influence of culture on the perception of severity, that is, allocentrics perceive more severity in the service failure than idiocentrics. However, a cross-country comparison (i.e. USA versus Puerto Rico) does not show significant differences. Research limitations/implications – Customers may assess, with different sensitivities, the severity of a service failure. These differences are mainly explained by differences in cultural values’ orientations but not differences across countries. Even originating from a same country, customers could perceive with different degrees the seriousness of a same service failure as they may cling to different cultural values. Hence, it is increasingly important to examine the cultural differences at the individual-level rather than a country level. Practical implications – Firms serving international markets as well as multiethnic ones would have advantage to understand cultural differences in the perception of the severity at the individual level rather than at the societal or country level. This is more helpful to direct appropriate service recovery strategies to customers who may have higher sensitivity to the service failure. Originality/value – Little is known about the effect of culture on the severity evaluation, although investigating cross-cultural differences in the assessment of severity is relevant to understand whether offenses are perceived more seriously in one culture than another and then if these offenses will potentially arise confrontational behaviors or not.

Private flirts, public friends: Understanding romantic jealousy responses to an ambiguous social network site message as a function of message access exclusivity

Research indicates that social network site use can amplify romantic jealousy, but studies have yet to identify the causes a for these reactions. An experiment was conducted to examine how message exclusivity affects jealousy responses to a hypothetical scenario. A total of 191 undergraduates were randomly assigned to imagine their potential emotional and behavioral responses to an ambiguous message given by their partner to a romantic rival, either in a private Facebook message (high exclusivity) or posted publicly as a message on the rival’s Facebook wall (low exclusivity). Those participants reading about high exclusivity messages reported more negative emotion and were more likely to imagine being confrontational. Threat perception and negative emotion both predicted confrontational behavior. There was an indirect effect of message access exclusivity on threat perception through negative emotion; there was no direct association between exclusivity and threat perception. This research has implications for the study of message processing on social network sites and the conceptualization of masspersonal communication.

Effects of social defeat on sleep and behaviour: Importance of the confrontational behaviour

We studied the short- and long-term effects of a double social defeat (SD) on sleep parameters, EEG power, behaviour in the open field emergence test, corticosterone responsiveness, and acoustic startle responses. Pre-stress levels of corticosterone were assessed before all rats were surgically implanted with telemetric transmitters for sleep recording, and allowed 3weeks of recovery. Rats in the SD group (n=10) were exposed to 1hour SD on two consecutive days, while control rats (n=10) were left undisturbed. Telemetric sleep recordings were performed before SD (day −1), day 1 post SD, and once weekly for 3weeks thereafter. The open field emergence test was performed on day 9 and weekly for 2weeks thereafter. Blood samples for measures of corticosterone responsiveness were drawn after the last emergence test (day 23). Acoustic startle responses were tested on day 24 post SD. Overall, SD rats as a group were not affected by the social conflict. Effects of SD seemed, however, to vary according to the behaviours that the intruder displayed during the social confrontation with the resident. Compared to those SD rats showing quick submission (SDS, n=5), SD rats fighting the resident during one or both SD confrontations before defeat (SDF, n=5) showed more fragmented slow wave sleep, both in SWS1 and SWS2. They also showed longer latency to leave the start box and spent less time in the open field arena compared to SDS rats. In the startle test, SDF rats failed to show response decrement at the lowest sound level. Our results indicate that how animals behave during a social confrontation is more important than exposure to the SD procedure itself, and that rapid submission during a social confrontation might be more adaptive than fighting back.

More f#!%ing rudeness: reliable personality predictors of verbal rudeness and other ugly confrontational behaviors

Purpose– The purpose of this research is to (1) to identify personality variables that reliably predict verbal rudeness ( i.e by replicating previous findings) and (2) to investigate what personality variables predict more general ugly confrontational behaviors.Design/methodology/approach– In Study 1, the authors used an online survey to collect information regarding individual differences in social desirability, self-esteem, narcissism, blirtatiousness, behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, conventional morality (CM), thin-skinned ego defensiveness (TSED), affect intensity for anger and frustration (AIAF), and verbal rudeness. In Study 2, the authors used a similar online survey to collect the same information, but extended the survey questionnaire to include measures of entitlement, psychopathology, Machiavellianism, and a retrospective checklist of ugly confrontational behaviors.Findings– In Study 1, regression analyses revealed that CM, behavioral inhibition, and behavioral activation reward responsiveness were significant negative predictors of rudeness. AIAF, TSED and behavioral activation drive were significant positive predictors of rudeness. In Study 2, regression analyses revealed that CM was again a significant negative predictor of rudeness. AIAF, and narcissism were significant positive predictors of rudeness. CM also negatively predicted ugly confrontational behaviors, whereas AIAF, blirtatiousness, and Machiavellianism were positive predictors.Originality/value– Although several measures of aggression exist, the current studies of rudeness and ugly confrontational behavior specifically assess tendencies to abuse strangers. These studies begin to establish a personality profile of the type of person that might abuse strangers.

Effects of social defeat on sleep and behavior: Importance of the confrontational behavior

We studied the short- and long-term effects of a double social defeat (SD) on sleep architecture, EEG power and behavior. A few studies have shown that rats that fight back or oppose the resident during the social conflict seem less affected by the defeat than those that show quick submission and passivity. Our hypothesis was that rats showing rapid submission in the social defeat would exhibit the most pronounced alterations in sleep architecture and behavior. All rats were surgically implanted with telemetric transmitters for sleep recording. Rats in the SD group ( n = 10) were exposed to 1 h SD on two consecutive days, while control rats ( n = 10) were left undisturbed. Telemetric sleep recordings were performed before SD (day −1), day 1, day 14 and day 21 post SD. The open field emergence test was performed on day 9, day 16 and day 23. Acoustic startle responses were tested on day 24. Overall, SD rats as a group were not affected, neither short-term nor long- term, by the social conflict with regard to sleep architecture, EEG power or behavior. Effects of SD seemed to vary according to the behaviors that the intruder displayed during the confrontation with the resident. Compared to those SD rats showing quick submission (SDS, latency to defeat: 56 ± 20 s, n = 5), SD rats fighting the resident during one or both SD confrontations before defeat (SDF rats, latency to defeat: 158 ± 45 s, n = 5) showed more fragmented SWS, both in SWS1and SWS2 ( p < 0.05, both) at day 1. This effect became more robust after day 14 ( p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively) and day 21 ( p < 0.01, both). Descriptively, SDS and SDF rats showed different sleep architecture prior to SD. SDF rats were less awake, had more SWS2, less SWS1, and more REM sleep. The pattern of differences in SWS1 and SWS2 was maintained throughout the experiment, suggesting that this might reflect a trait rather than an effect of social conflict. REM sleep descriptively increased in the SDS group compared to their own baseline prior to SD on day 1 and day 14. The change across days was not seen in SDF rats. In the emergence test, SDF rats showed longer latency to leave the start box at day 23 ( p < 0.05) and spent less time in the arena compared to those showing quick submission and passivity at day 16 and day 23 ( p < 0.05, both). The SDF rats failed to show response decrement in the startle test at the lowest sound level ( p < 0.01). Our results indicate that aggressivity in a social conflict induces chronic fragmented sleep. A rapid submission during a social confrontation induces less sleep change and this behavior might reflect greater flexibility and to be more adaptive than fighting back. University of Bergen and Norwegian Competence Center for Sleep Disorders.

A Game-Based Survey for Security Issues in Vehicular Ad Hoc Network

A rapid growth in the number of vehicles contributes to more and more attention on vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) recently, and ensuring security plays a significant role in maintaining its stable operation. Because of some variable environmental factors, its impossible to evaluate a precise value of packets transmission success rate. To reduce the influence of errors on detection, we develop a novel two-person zero-sum intrusion detection game model for formulating confrontation behavior between intrusion detection system (IDS) and malicious node.

Confronting Intrasexual Rivals

The current research sheds light on a physiological mechanism potentially underlying confrontational responses to infidelity. Findings suggest that responses to infidelity threats in adulthood are shaped by hormonally mediated masculinization of the brain in utero. 2D:4D digit ratio (widely regarded as an index of prenatal testosterone exposure) moderated behavioral and endocrinological responses to infidelity threat. After an infidelity prime (but not a control prime), lower (more masculine) 2D:4D was associated with a greater tendency to approach attractive same-sex targets (intrasexual rivals) and with heightened increases in circulating testosterone, a hormone related to a variety of aggressive and confrontational behaviors.

Cooperative Game Analysis of the Establishment of Global Climate Partnership

The selection of global climate partners and the establishment of global climate partnership touch vital interests all over the world. Under the global climate game, the cooperation and confrontation behavior among contracting parties is analyzed in the course of establishment of global climate partnership. Taken as a whole, the complex game process of the establishment of global climate partnership is submitted to analysis according to game theory. In the meantime, a partner selection model of climate cooperative partnership is built and some phenomena of the benefit struggles are explained in detail and policy and suggestion are drawn.

Constructive Supervisory Confrontation: What Employees Want

Confronting others with constructive criticism and feedback to hold them accountable for their actions and behavior is an important leadership skill in managing people. While the majority of literature generally supports the need for constructive supervisory confrontation in the workplace, few studies have attempted to quantify the issue of supervisory confrontation from the employees perspective. Using data from a 2010 survey of 69 mid- and lower-level employees, this study examines employee perception of two primary forms of supervisory confrontation: supportive and corrective feedback. Our research quantifies six, statistically significant areas of confrontational behavior that were valued by employees and ranks their relative importance in the workplace. Our hypothesis is that positive and supportive feedback is valued more highly by employees, and leaders who are socially and emotionally skilled will have a greater impact on employee performance. An understanding of employee perception and valuation of confrontational behavior can improve supervisory leadership, and can also promote employee job satisfaction, motivate employees, eliminate the need for constant supervision, and influence the quality of and improve workplace relationships.

Breaking barriers

Johanne Tomlinson detected connections between high anxiety levels, confrontational behaviour and self-harm in offenders in her care at a men's prison. Her observations led to the launch of an anxiety management service, which she now runs alongside her regular nursing work. Her commitment has resulted in her being named Nursing Standard's nurse of the year 2012.

Performance of UN Military Observer Teams: Does Victim Proximity Escalate Commitment to Saving Lives?

A field experiment examined the tactical peacekeeping behaviors of military-officer teams undergoing training as United Nations military observers. Teams encountered a simulated human-rights violation where two civilians were being abused. Proximity of the female civilian to the team leader was manipulated and significantly influenced teams' commitment to saving the civilians' lives. Proximity increased the frequency of behaviors that were specifically oriented toward saving the civilians' lives and did not increase confrontational behavior. Finally, trainees' performance assessments were lower if they intervened but failed to save lives than if they did little to intervene and also failed to save lives.

The Role of Female Behavior and Attributions in Predicting Behavioral Responses to Hypothetical Male Aggression

Research suggests that situational characteristics influence attributions for violent events. The present study examined the effect of confrontational female behavior on women's positive and negative attributions for their boyfriends' abusive behavior and the influence of confrontational behavior and attributions on intentions to remain involved with those partners. College women (N = 293) read descriptions of scenes that involved dating conflict and provided attribution ratings and stay/leave intentions. Results showed that female behavior predicted positive and negative attributions as well as behavioral intentions. Individual differences were less critical to the prediction of attributions or intentions. Limitations, future directions, and clinical implications are discussed.

Deliberate naughtiness

What’s the best way to handle a child who seems hell bent on winding you up? Dr Stephanie Thornton provides some explanations and tips for managing confrontational behaviour.

A Leopard Does Not Change His Spots – Evidence of Activism Persistence in the Hedge Fund Industry

This paper investigates hedge fund performance persistence through examination of actual fund behavior rather than self-reported returns. We propose new activism indexes. We show that past activism is positively correlated with fund orientation toward confrontational activist behavior with respect to future purchases. We show that hedge fund activism is positively correlated the size of required minimum investment and manager graduation from a top MBA program.

Perceptions of Social Transgressions in Adulthood

People may react differently when individuals of different ages commit a social faux pas. Younger (22 to 35 years old) and older (65 to 77 years old) participants read vignettes where age of characters committing social transgressions varied (young vs. old). Participants rated whether the offended person would respond with engagement, confrontational, and avoidant behaviors and how much people would blame or forgive the transgressor. Multilevel models revealed endorsement of avoidant behaviors with older transgressors, confrontational behaviors with younger transgressors, and engagement behaviors with both. Levels of blame and forgiveness mediated this association, with less blame and greater forgiveness of older adults. Discussion focuses on the social input model and why adults may regulate reactions to interpersonal problems with older adults.