Depression is one of the most frequent psychic impairments prevalent among bullying targets. It is typically characterized by an internal, global, and stable explanatory style. However, whether bullying targets with depression would apply this style to explain their social conflicts at work was unclear. Therefore, individuals who had been bullied and developed depression were compared to individuals with depression who had not been bullied. Both groups differed significantly regarding their explanatory style, as individuals with bullying experience made more external attributions to explain social conflicts they had experienced both at work and in their private lives. This preference did not change over the course of a 6-week in-patient psychotherapy programme.

Selbstkontrolle ermöglicht die Unterdrückung oder Modifikation automatischer Reaktionstendenzen. Selbstkontrolle korreliert mit vielen Konstrukten aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen. Zur Erfassung dispositioneller Selbstkontrollkapazität bei Kindern werden bislang vor allem klinisch orientierte Verfahren verwendet. Um auch im Normalbereich Unterschiede in der Selbstkontrollkapazität messen zu können, wurde die bei Erwachsenen bereits bewährte deutsche Kurzform der Self-Control Scale (SCS‐K‐D; Bertrams & Dickhäuser, 2009 ) für die Fremdbeurteilung von Kindern modifiziert und in drei Studien bei Kindern zwischen 6 und 12 Jahren erprobt. Die psychometrischen Kennwerte und die faktorielle Struktur der modifizierten Fassung stimmen mit der der SCS-K-D überein und die Retest-Reliabilität der Skala ist befriedigend. Validitätshinweise ergeben sich aus negativen Korrelationen mit Symptomen externalisierender Störungen. Die Skala differenziert nicht nur zwischen Kindern mit und ohne Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit-/Hyperaktivitätsstörung (ADHS), sondern zeigt auch noch innerhalb der Gruppen Selbstkontrollunterschiede auf. Die Fremdbeurteilerversion der SCS-K-D ermöglicht die ökonomische Erfassung der dispositionellen Selbstkontrollkapazität bei Kindern im Normal- und klinischen Bereich.

Impulse control is measured both with personality questionnaires and in cognitive laboratory tasks, yet previous results concerning the convergence of these two types of instruments are inconsistent. The current study measured impulse control of children with and without ADHD with a personality questionnaire and a go/no-go task as well as with parent ratings of ADHD symptomatology. Scores on the two measures correlate weakly with one another, yet both correlate moderately to strongly with parent ratings – and both explain unique variance of parent ratings. Accordingly, the simple sum of the standardized scores from the two measures outperforms the single measures in diagnostic accuracy and association with ADHD symptomatology. Results show that a conjoint application of personality and cognitive measures of impulse control is useful for an extended assessment of ADHD. The adequacy of personality and cognitive measures for assessing distinct facets of impulse control is discussed with regard to theoretical models of impulsivity and with regard to ADHD symptomatology.

Executive functions, higher-order cognitive functions needed for goal-directed behavior, have been studied extensively in the search for endophenotypes for ADHD, yet results have been inconclusive. We examine the performance of children with ADHD in task switching as an as yet understudied potential endophenotype. A group of 20 children with ADHD and a group of 23 children without ADHD (ages 7-12) performed a task-switching paradigm and a Go/No-Go Task. Children with ADHD displayed significantly greater specific switch costs, that is, compared to control children they were especially impaired directly after task switches. There were no group differences with respect to the general switch costs, which are estimated by comparing performance on single task blocks to the block where both tasks are intermixed. Specific switch costs and Go/No-Go error rate were significantly correlated; yet, group differences in the task-switching paradigm remained significant even when inhibition was controlled for. This pattern of results suggests that children with ADHD are neither generally impaired in executive function nor only impaired with respect to inhibition. Instead, they display a highly specific deficit with regard to the flexible suppression and amplification of different task rules according to the context. Our conclusion that task switching has the potential to be added to the list of ADHD endophenotypes is strengthened by the independence of task-switching deficits and inhibition.