Self-ratings and observer-ratings of social skill: a manipulation of state social anxiety in anxious and non-anxious children

The role of state and trait anxiety on observer ratings of social skill and negatively biased self-perception of social skill was examined. Participants were aged between 7 and 13 years (mean=9.65; sd=1.77; N=102), 47 had a current anxiety diagnosis and 55 were non-anxious controls. Participants were randomly allocated to a high or low anxiety condition and asked to complete social tasks. Task instructions were adjusted across conditions to manipulate participants’ state anxiety. Observers rated anxious participants as having poorer social skills than non-anxious controls but there was no evidence that anxious participants exhibited a negative self-perception bias, relative to controls. However, as participants’ ratings of state anxiety increased, their perception of their performance became more negatively biased. The results suggest that anxious children may exhibit real impairments in social skill and that high levels of state anxiety can lead to biased judgements of social skills in anxious and non-anxious children.

Mode-specificity and transition state-specific energy redistribution in the chemisorption of CH4 on Ni{100}

We have investigated methane (CH4) dissociative chemisorption on the Ni{100} surface by first-principles molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Our results show that this reaction is mode-specific, with the n1 state being the most strongly coupled to efficient energy flow into the reaction coordinate when the molecule reaches the transition state. By performing MD simulations for two different transition state (TS) structures we provide evidence of TS structure-specific energy redistribution in methane chemisorption. Our results are compared with recently reported state-resolved measurement of methane adsorption probability on nickel surfaces, and we find that a strong correlation exists between the highest vibrational efficacy measured on Ni{100} for the n1 state and the calculated highest fractional vibrational energy content in this mode.

Participation in and responsibility for state injustices

This paper discusses the criteria for acceptably holding citizens partly responsible for wrongs their state or its agents commit. Some proposed criteria are not, it argues, appropriately sensitive to the particular coercive relation between state and citizen. Others, which are, conceive of it wrongly and fail to match our judgments about a range of cases. Alternative criteria of breadth and joint authorship, built around Christopher Kutz's account of participation, better match these considered judgments as well as linking them to a more powerful theoretical framework. Understanding citizens' responsibility will mean understanding these criteria more fully.