Ostracism, the act of being excluded or ignored by another individual or group (Williams, 1997;Williams et al., 2002), is a powerful, pervasive, and complex phenomenon that transcends time and affects individuals throughout their lifespan, with some of the most damaging exclusionary experiences occurring during childhood (Williams, Forgas, & von Hippel, 2005). The current paper: a) discusses some of the problems associated with empirically investigating ostracism with a child sample using the widely used and well-validated ostracism paradigm, Cyberball (Williams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000); b) outlines methodological guidelines designed to improve the effectiveness of using Cyberball to investigate the effects of ostracism in children; and c) discusses a post-Cyberball assessment of primary need-threat that is appropriate for use with a child sample (Primary Needs Questionnaire-Child-PNQ-C; Hawes et al., 2012).

The aim of this study was to examine associations between ostracism, internalising problems, and threat to primary needs (belonging, control, selfesteem, meaningful existence) in children (N = 165, M age = 9 years). Ostracism was simulated experimentally using the Cyberball paradigm-a computer-based ball-throwing game-and threats to primary needs were indexed using a modified version of the primary needs questionnaire (PNQ-C; Hawes et al., 2012). Overall, children with greater internalising problems reported greater need-threat following Cyberball. Importantly however, in the domain of 'belonging', the relationship between internalising problems and need-threat was moderated by inclusionary status. Specifically, children with high levels of internalising problems exhibited greater need-threat than children low in internalising problems when included by peers; yet following ostracism, children with high internalising problems were no longer distinguishable from those with low internalising problems in terms of threat to belonging.

In the present study, we aimed to compare the primary-need depletion elicited by three common ostracism paradigms: autobiographical recall (e.g., Zhong & Leonardelli in Psychological Science 19:838-842, 2008), Cyberball (Williams, Cheung, & Choi in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79:748-762, 2000), and O-Cam (Goodacre & Zadro in Behavior Research Methods 42:768-774, 2010). A total of 152 participants (52 males) were randomly allocated to one of the three paradigms, and their subsequent primary needs were measured (belonging, control, self-esteem, and meaningful existence). O-Cam was found to induce greater total primary-need depletion than did Cyberball and recall, which did not differ significantly from each other. Moreover, when examining the pattern of individual need depletion elicited by each paradigm, O-Cam was found to induce significantly greater depletion of belonging, control, and meaningful existence than did the recall paradigm, and significantly greater depletion of control and self-esteem than did Cyberball. No other comparisons were found to be significant, including the comparisons between the recall and Cyberball paradigms for each individual primary need. Collectively, the findings will assist ostracism researchers in making informed choices regarding (a) which paradigm is appropriate to implement with respect to their research aims, and (b) whether the interchangeable use of paradigms within a program of research is appropriate practice.