Barry Howard Schneider

• Ph. D., psychologist
• Professor Emeritus at University of Ottawa

Bystanders who witness a bully-victim exchange at their school differ from bystanders who witness many incidents of violence in their community, due to the web of mutual relationships that exist within a school setting. Research conducted in many countries has revealed a variety of ways in which peers too often support and encourage bullies, thereb...

We explored teachers' understanding of children with aggressive or socially withdrawn behaviour in their classes and we associated our findings with a status of rejected, neglected, or popular, as provided by peer nominations. Five kindergarten and elementary school teachers scored their 143 pupils with the Child Behaviour Checklist for Withdrawal...

The goal of this study was to track the progress of Italian children at risk for school failure enrolled in preschools based on the Reggio-Emilia approach. Risk factors considered included family socioeconomic status (SES), child receptive language, and child gender. Participants were 211 children ( M age = 60.8 months, 116 girls) in Reggio-inspire...

The exposure of children and adolescents to trauma is one of the most important public health challenges. These childhood experiences play a role in children’s attachment patterns with their parents and peers. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between exposure to trauma and the degree of attachment representations in schoo...

Culture may interact with personality to facilitate or inhibit entrepreneurial behaviors. 296 undergraduates in the United States and 257 in Spain completed the Big Five Personality Inventory and the Entrepreneurial Attitudes Scale for Students (Mean age = 20.16 years; SD = 3.39). We hypothesized that across cultures, conscientiousness and openness...

Since Allport’s optimal conditions for reducing prejudice by interpersonal contact were defined, numerous empirical studies have confirmed the efficacy of intergroup contact in reducing prejudice towards outgroups. Given that the Internet is changing the way people communicate and interact daily, it is very possible that the Web plays an important...

Youth suicide rates in Cuba are very high compared with most other countries, despite considerable improvement in recent years. The purpose of our study was to determine whether hopelessness and shame distinguish adolescent suicide attempters from non-attempters, over and above the effects of depression and suicidal ideation. Participants were 844...

This study focuses on the effectiveness of an app-based, monitored intervention using the Liad@s app in a residential youth-care setting. The aim of this intervention is to reduce maladaptive beliefs and attitudes linked to dating violence: distortions or myths about romantic love and hostile and benevolent dimensions of sexism. A quasi-experimenta...

Locus of control—the expectation that one is in control of one’s outcomes in life—is linked to well-being. The authors explored one of the possible antecedents of locus of control such as secure children’s attachment. The hypothesis was that locus of control acts as a mediator of the association between children’s attachment and their mental health...

The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between the quality of student–teacher relationship and attention problems, taking into account two different attention problems (Attention Dysregulation and Attentive Detachment), and the mediating role of Emotion Regulation. Through a multi-informant methodology, teachers rated 161 school-aged...

Italy had traditionally been considered a family‐oriented culture where support from relatives is primary. The major purpose of this study was to clarify the benefits of social support inside and outside the family for schoolteachers in Italy, focusing on the teacher burnout and work engagement. Findings indicated that the family was by far the mos...

Lack of awareness of one’s negative social reputation is linked to aggressive behavior among older school-age children. The present study extends this research to the first year of elementary school. The first goal was to compare generalized and dyadic perspectives in studying discrepancies between children’s actual and perceived rejection. The sec...

Background: Adolescent victims of bullying often present high levels of maladjustment, such as depression, anxiety, and the inability to manage anger. Both forgiveness and friendship have been found to be moderating agents for the debilitating psychological effects seen in the victims of bullying. Our aim was to explore the roles of forgiveness an...

Previous observational studies conducted in highly structured, analog situations indicate that children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) mismanage their relationships with same-age peers and friends. Such structured situations may not, however, fully represent the true nature of children’s play, which is typically characterized...

A common and salient characteristic of behaviorally inhibited, socially withdrawn, and socially anxious children is the tendency to experience difficulties within the context of the peer group. Accordingly, it is perhaps not surprising that many interventions designed to assist such at-risk children have directly involved peers in some regard. In t...

Expressive writing (EW) can be an effective way to alter maladaptive emotional reactions to stressful life events, although little is known about how pre-adolescents may benefit from it. In this quasi-experimental study, we compared measures of depression, anger, forgiveness, positive and negative affect in pre-adolescents before and after EW in bo...

Objective: Extensive research has implicated identification with characters in mass media in the emergence of disordered eating behavior in adolescents. We explored the possible influence of the models offered by television (TV) on adolescents’ body image, body uneasiness, eating-disordered behavior, depression, and anxiety. Methods: Three hundred...

Background: Many studies have shown that victimisation by bullies is linked with psychopathology. Research has also demonstrated that forgiveness is associated with the mental health of victims of bullying. Method: Our objective was to explore the multiple components of forgiveness (i.e., benevolence, decreased avoidance of the perpetrator and dimi...

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Anger is a powerful emotion shared by victims and bullies in both physical and electronic forms of bullying. However, little is known about the specific roles of trait anger and state anger in involvement in bullying episodes. The purpose of this study was to verify which component of anger, trait or state, is more strongly related to physical and...

This research examined links among academic ability, social-perspective coordination, and friendship quality, within the context of gifted adolescents’ friendships. The sample consisted of 120 early adolescents (59 girls, 61 boys), 81 of whom were identified as gifted. Academic ability, sex, and grade significantly predicted social-perspective coor...

Depression in childhood and adolescence is often accompanied with social rejection by peers, which accentuates the course of that emotion. Despite the documented association between anger and depression, little is known about the impact of the interaction of both emotions on peer relations. The main objective of this study is to explore the interpe...

Impaired relations with peers are endemic among children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and a chronic source of frustration for professionals attempting to help them. Children with ADHD are almost four times as likely to be rejected by their peers and twice as likely to have no friends as comparison children (Hoza et al., 2005...

The purpose of the present study was to examine the moderating role of child–teacher relationship quality (i.e., closeness, conflict, and dependence) in the association between children's shyness and indices of socio-emotional adjustment and maladjustment. The participants were Italian preschool children (63 boys; 66 girls) and two lead teachers pe...

A central tenet of Bowlby's attachment theory is that early child-caregiver attachment is reflected in the quality of the child's interpersonal relationships throughout life. Schneider, Atkinson, and Tardif (2001) conducted a meta-analysis of studies conducted up to 1998 to corroborate that contention. They found a significant but small to moderate...

The study was conducted with 413 adolescents (179 females), who completed the Adolescent Friendship Attachment Scale (AFAS), the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA), and the Multidimensional Self Concept Scale (MSCS). AFAS subscales predicted differently the three dimensions of self-esteem: Secure Friendship predicted both social and com...

Systematic, mandated facilitation of school transitions is an important but understudied aspect of the Reggio-Emilia approach to early childhood education admired internationally as best practice. We studied the links between Northern Italian transition practices and academic achievement, school liking, cooperativeness, and problem behaviors. We fo...

We examined how the real-life dyadic friendships of 87 children with ADHD and 46 comparison children (76 % boys) aged 7-13 years evolved during a 6-month follow-up period. The methods included friendship quality self-report measures and direct observation of friends' dyadic behaviors in three structured analogue tasks. At Time 2, the friends of the...

The goal of the current study was to investigate whether parental involvement is an important predictor of student outcomes within the Cuban school system, where extensive support for pupils’ progress and adjustment are available from the peer group, community, and family. The participants were 188 children in Grades 2 and 3 from four localities in...

Today many young people form and maintain what they consider friendships through the net. Internet friendship appears to some as modifying the meaning of real friendship and replacing it with something more trivial. In this paper we explore the complexity of online friendship. We start by seeking to gain an understanding of why and how friendship r...

The goal of the study was to explore the content of on-line and off-line peer interactions among shy and non-shy adolescents. Participants were 148 ten-to-eighteen year old adolescents in Rome, Italy (n = 98) and Ottawa, Canada (n = 50). Participants completed self reports of shyness and loneliness and web logs of their interactions with friends bo...

This paper presents the validation of Preschool Competition Questionnaire (PCQ). The PCQ was completed by the childcare teachers of 780 French-speaking children between the ages of 36 and 71 months. The results of exploratory factor analysis suggest three dimensions involving neither physical nor relational aggression: other-referenced competition,...

A rejecting and overprotective parenting style is considered to be an important risk factor for the development of anxiety disorders. This study examined the role of perceived parental bonding as a potential environmental risk factor for panic disorder (PD) in unaffected offspring with parental PD. Children with a biological parent with PD (n = 71)...

The aim of this study was to explore possible parent and peer influences on adolescents’ valuing of academics and intrinsic academic motivation in cultures varying in traditional emphasis on the family unit (Cuba, Canada, and Spain). Perceived parent and peer support, parents’ expectations, and valuing of academics significantly predicted adolescen...

The whole-school approach to bullying prevention is predicated on the assumption that bullying is a systemic problem, and, by implication, that intervention must be directed at the entire school context rather than just at individual bullies and victims. Unfortunately, recent meta-analyses that have looked at various bullying programs from many cou...

A biopsychosocial approach to mental health necessitates the integration of different perspectives into client care and requires that professionals from different disciplines be able and willing to collaborate with one another. The authors conducted an Internet survey of Canadian psychologists (n = 1,040) and psychiatrists (n = 247) about their exp...

The goal of the study was to explore the content of on-line and off-line peer interactions among shy and non-shy adolescents. Participants were 148 ten-to-eighteen year old adolescents in Rome, Italy (n = 98) and Ottawa, Canada (n = 50). Participants completed self reports of shyness and loneliness and web logs of their interactions with friends bo...

The goal of the present study was to explore patterns of communication between adolescents and their friends across both "online" and "in-person" contexts. The participants were adolescents (n = 727) aged 11-16 years attending middle schools in urban and rural areas of Italy. Participants completed daily logs of their in-person and online contacts...

To distinguish Cuban children clinically referred because of ADHD from an at-risk community sample and a community control group in terms of symptoms, associated difficulties and impairment of family and peer relations. Parents and teachers of 1,036 children (6-8 years old) completed an established ADHD rating scale and a behavioral screening measu...

This multimethod study provides detailed information about the friendships of 87 children (76% boys) with ADHD and 46 comparison children aged 7-13 years. The methods included parent and teacher ratings, self-report measures and direct observation of friends' dyadic behaviors in three structured analogue tasks. Results indicated that, in contrast w...

The goal of the present study was to explore patterns of communication between adolescents and their friends across both "online" and "in-person" contexts. The participants were adolescents (n = 727) aged 11-16 years attending middle schools in urban and rural areas of Italy. Participants completed daily logs of their in-person and online contacts...

This study focused on the implications of parents' structuring of their children's home lives for the friendships of their children. Participants were 224 elementary-school children (108 girls and 116 boys) from four grade levels in two schools in Aix-en-Provence, France. Most of the families were of middle or high socio-economic status. The partic...

The goal of this study was to explore the role of childcare history as a potential moderating factor in the development of anxiety in early elementary school. Data were drawn from multiple cycles of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. At Time 1, the sample included n = 3,100 children aged 4 to 5 years. Based on parent ratings...

The aim of the present study was to develop and provide a preliminary evaluation of a social-skills-based early intervention program specifically designed to assist extremely inhibited preschoolers. Participants were a sample of n=22 extremely inhibited preschool-aged children, who were randomly assigned to either the Social Skills Facilitated Play...

Reviews the book, Understanding peer influence in children and adolescents edited by Mitchell J. Prinstein and Kenneth A. Dodge (see record 2008-08239-000). Peer influence on children and adolescents is the subject of many myths and fears. Many parents and teachers loathe it because they understand it as a force beyond their control and as a forc...

This study explored the nature and basis of teachers’ concerns regarding several behavioural and social difficulties experienced by their secondary-school students. It was hypothesized that teachers would be most concerned about students presenting externalizing behavioural or academic difficulties but not those displaying internalizing problems. W...

The goal of the present study was to explore the social behaviours of inhibited children in familiar social contexts, including: (1) free play with peers at preschool and (2) social activities at home and in the community. The initial participants were N = 248 preschool children between the ages of 42 and 66 months. From this initial data, two smal...

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Poverty is known to influence parenting values, parenting stress, psychological adjustment, and social support according to North American research. The purpose of this study was to determine whether poverty might work in similar ways in a collectivistic Latin culture. The participants were primary caregivers in two distinct communities in the Domi...

Competitive goal orientations were rated by self, peers, and teachers for 38 gifted- and 38 regular-program, same-sex, friendship dyads (19 female and 19 male) from grades 7 and 8 (N = 152). Gifted dyads were reassessed on friendship quality and stability at the end of the school year and after the summer. Gifted students were more task-oriented an...

Poor school adjustment is a known correlate of peer rejection in childhood. However, the impact of change in sociometric status on children's academic performance over time is unclear. The aim of this study was to determine whether improvement or decline in children's sociometric status would predict corresponding changes in their academic performa...

The friendships of socially withdrawn/anxious children and early adolescents have been found to lack critical rewarding qualities. Observational research may help elucidate the obstacles they face in forming and maintaining high-quality friendships with sociable peers. We observed the interactions of 38 socially withdrawn early adolescents with the...

In individual interviews, 227 children from the first, third, fifth, and seventh grades described the behaviours that characterize shyness in their peers. The categories of behaviour most frequently described included the following: doesn't talk, stays by self, doesn't play, walks/runs away from others, hides, looks away/avoids eye contact, physica...

Culture influences the acceptability of the overt expression of anger. In many cultures, overt expression of anger is considered legitimate for males but not for females. We explored the implications of anger expression among early adolescents in Cuba, expecting that overt, explosive expression of anger would be particularly maladaptive in a societ...

Understanding the links between anger expression by children and adolescents, their health, and their interpersonal interactions is important given the evidence that anger is associated with maladjustment and illness among adults. This review covers: 1) possible origins of the awareness and expression of anger; 2) assessment of anger in children an...

After five years in elementary schools with small classes and stimulation of basic thinking skills, Italian children move to very traditional scuola media. Data obtained from 434 Italian pupils revealed that school bonding and academic motivation declined sharply after this transition. Social support by parents, but not friends, was a predictor of...

The aim of the present study was to explore the social cognitions of socially withdrawn anxious early-adolescents regarding the concept of friendship. From a pool of children referred to an after-school social skills and social contact program, 38 withdrawn/anxious participants were identified and matched with community controls. Interviews regardi...

Much has been learned about the social rejection of children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) by their schoolmates. Although these group processes are clearly important, recent advances in theory and research have revealed the importance of close friendship. In this paper, we review the current knowledge about the close friendsh...

The purpose of this study is to compare the inter-ethnic and co-ethnic friend-ships of 390 junior high school students in multi-ethnic neighborhoods of Montreal and Toronto. Friendship dyads were identified on the basis of reciprocal nomination as close friends. The quality of the friendships was measured by questionnaires completed by both members...

Reviews the book, Les troubles du comportement à l'école: Prévention, évaluation, et intervention edited by Line Massé, Nadia Desbiens, and Catherine Lanaris (2005). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Dyads of 8-year-old friends identified by sociometric friendship nominations were followed through the end of the school year to determine if they remained friends. These dyads as well as a control group of nonfriends were observed while participating in two structured tasks designed to simulate real life social situations of potential conflict. Wh...

Poor school adjustment is a known correlate of peer rejection in childhood. However, the impact of change in sociometric status over time on children’s academic performance is unclear. The aim of this study was to determine whether improvement or decline in children’s sociometric status would predict corresponding changes in their academic performa...

The purpose of this study was to explore cultural differences in children's perceptions of friendship quality and in the predictors of the subsequent continuation of their relationships. Participants were third and fourth-grade children in Florence, Italy, and Toronto, Canada. A total of 184 dyads of children who indicated that they were friends ne...

Cultural context plays an important role in the development of individual social and behavioral characteristics and peer relationships (e.g., Hinde, 1987). As a result, children in different cultures may engage in different types of social interactions and develop different types of relationships. Moreover, cultural values and beliefs, particularly...

The nature and levels of competition in which children and adolescents engage have important social and educational consequences and may be linked to their social competence and interpersonal relations. In the social-psychological literature, competition is typically viewed as producing negative outcomes at both the individual and group levels (e.g...

In this concluding chapter, we reflect on some of the challenges confronting researchers who seek to understand peer relationships within a cultural context. We focus specifically on some of the methodological issues that have been raised in the chapters and implications of these issues for future study. The chapters in this volume illustrate some...

El artículo comenta el trabajo previo de revisión teórica realizado por López acerca de la estabilidad y el cambio en los vínculos de apego a lo largo del ciclo vital, publicado en este mismo número de la revista. El autor, que en líneas generales se muestra de acuerdo con los argumentos expuestos por López, analiza en primer lugar los conceptos de...

Commentary on the previous article by Lopez on stability and change in attachment bonds across the life cycle. The author is in general agreement with the contentions made by Lopez, but expands and qualifies them by discussing such issues as vertical and horizontal stability and by reconciling the existing and conceivable future data base with the...

En: Infancia y aprendizaje : journal for the study education and development Madrid 2006, n. 29 (1) ; p. 25-30 Se comenta el trabajo de revisión teórica de Félix López sobre la estabilidad y el cambio en los vínculos de apego a lo largo del ciclo vital. Schneider se muestra de acuerdo con los argumentos expuestos por López, y analiza en primer luga...

The authors describe the development and initial psychometric properties of the Friendship Motivation Scale for Children, a new scale designed to assess four dimensions of self-determination (i.e., intrinsic motivation, identified regulation, external regulation, and amotivation) in preadolescents and early adolescents’ desire for friendships. The...

Most school transitions are characterised by sweeping changes in children's social and learning environments, often accompanied by important biological and cognitive changes; the multiple changes occurring within the child and the environment make the results of school-transition studies difficult to interpret. Italian elementary school children ex...

Elementary-school children in Cuba and Canada participated in measures of loneliness, sociometric status, friendship, aggression, and social withdrawal. Withdrawal was associated with loneliness in the Cuban data from both cohorts, Grade 4 and Grade 6. In the Canadian data, withdrawal was only linked to loneliness in Grade 6. In contrast with North...

A quantitative review was conducted of cross-national studies on peer-directed aggression to determine whether cross-national differences in aggression could be predicted from differences in national values. Cross-national differences on dimensions of cultural-level values derived from the works of Hofstede [1980, 1983], Bond [Chinese Culture Conne...

Harry Stack Sullivan maintained that competition between friends in early adolescence would generally destroy their friendship. Working with early adolescent samples in Canada, Costa Rica, and Cuba, we found that hypercompetitiveness—a form of competition involving the need to prove one's own superiority—was linked with conflict between friends, wi...

Black Canadians share many aspects of the historical experiences of African Americans, but there are also important differences. One similarity between these two groups is the persistent academic underachievement of Black adolescents. Although this is a subject of widespread concern in both countries, it has received little empirical scrutiny in Ca...

Bullying is a serious problem in schools, and school authorities need effective solutions to resolve this problem. There is growing interest in the whole- school approach to bullying. Whole-school programs have multiple components that operate simultaneously at different levels in the school community. This ar- ticle synthesizes the existing evalua...

Research on children's loneliness has been conducted mostly in Western, especially North American, cultures. The purpose of the study was to examine relations between loneliness and social adaptation among children and adolescents in four different societies. A total of 2263 children from grade 3 to grade 6, aged 9 to 12 years, in Brazil, Canada, P...

Concepts of friendshipmay reflect the collectivism or individualismof societies or differences in their social structures. We asked Canadian (N = 300) and Cuban (N = 294) adolescents to write essays about the features that distinguish their best friends. Acceptance and loyalty were frequent features in the essays from both countries. Despite many c...

Research findings over the past 30 years have specified the potentially dire social and emotional consequences of aggression toward and rejection by childhood peers. Schools are a major arena both for children’s formal educational experiences and for their interactions with peers. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of aggressive be...

The purpose of the present study was to examine relations between self-perceptions of competence and social, behavioural, and school adjustment in Brazilian, Canadian, Chinese, and Italian children. Self-perception data were collected through children’s self-reports. Information about social behaviours, peer acceptance, and school achievement was o...

Research on the social context of bullying includes children who help the victim, assist the bully or remain outsiders. 96 children from two public schools in Central Italy were classified according to an Italian version of the Participant Role Scale (Sutton and Smith, 1999) as Defenders of the Victim, Outsiders, Victims or Pro-bullies. Teacher rep...

Dyads of 4- and 5-year-old friends and nonfriends attending preschools in central Italy were identified by friendship nominations. The 217 dyads of friends and non-friends participated in 2 closed-field tasks designed to simulate real-life situations of potential conflict. In the 4-year-old cohort, there were no significant differences in the behav...