Bilateral transfer in mentally retarded children of ages 7 to 17 years

The purpose of this study was to describe the effect of age on bilateral transfer of mildly mentally retarded girls (IQs of 70 to 90) after practice on a 45-rpm rotary pursuit task. Subjects were 96 girls from 7 to 17 yr. old. Each performed 14 trials on a rotary pursuit task (30-sec. trials, 10 sec. between trials), half performing the first seven trials with the nonpreferred hand, using the preferred hand on the next seven trials. The order was reversed for the remaining subjects. Nonsignificant differences between Trial 1 scores of the two groups indicated that the task was novel. Trial 1 scores of both groups were positively associated with age (r = 0.5). There was no transfer to preferred hand, with negative transfer occurring to the nonpreferred hand. It was concluded that, for the task used in this study, mentally retarded girls do not experience positive bilateral transfer as do normal, age-matched girls.     

Processes linking weight status and self-concept among girls from ages 5 to 7 years

This study assessed the relationship between girls' weight status and self-concept and examined peer teasing and parent criticism as potential mediators of this relationship. Data were collected for 182 girls and their parents when the girls were 5 and 7 years old. At each age, girls' body mass index, self-concept, peer weight-related teasing (child report), and parents' criticism of girls' weight status (spouse report) were assessed. At ages 5 and 7, girls who were more overweight reported lower self-concept. Peer teasing and parent criticism mediated the relationship between weight status and self-concept at age 7, but not at age 5. In addition, the duration and timing of parent criticism across ages 5 and 7 mediated the association between girls' weight status at age 5 and perceived peer acceptance at age 7.     

A longitudinal study of sex differences in intelligence at ages 7, 11 and 16 years

This paper presents the results of a longitudinal study of sex differences in intelligence as a test of Lynn’s (1994) hypothesis that from the age of 16 years males develop higher average intelligence than females. The results show that at the ages of 7 and 11 years girls have an IQ advantage of approximately 1 IQ point, but at the age of 16 years this changes in the same boys and girls to an IQ advantage of 1.8 IQ points for boys.     

Stability of laboratory-assessed temperamental emotionality traits from ages 3 to 7

A key component of temperament models is the presumed temporal stability of temperament traits. Although a substantial literature using parent report measures has addressed this claim, very few investigations have examined the stability of temperament using alternative measurement strategies, particularly those that involve direct assessment of emotional expressions. This study reports on the relative stability and heterotypic continuity of temperament traits measured via laboratory tasks and maternal report in a sample of children assessed at ages 3, 5, and 7, focusing on Positive Emotionality and Negative Emotionality. Relative stability of Positive Emotionality and Negative Emotionality traits ranged from moderate to high for laboratory and maternal report measures. Measures of emotional expressions exhibited levels of stability comparable to or higher than traits defined by other behavioral patterns (e.g., sociability and engagement).     

Failure to construct and transfer correct representations across probability problems

Previous studies carried out on "purely random" situations (with dice or poker chips) show the difficulties encountered by people in such situations, however simple they may be. In fact, in this type of situation, prior knowledge guides spontaneous representations, and the "errors" observed could be explained by the activation of "implicit models" which form the basis of erroneous representations. 42 statistically na?ve undergraduates were given several variants of a probability problem on which errors are common. In a learning phase, subjects were given four problems involving geometric figures which were pairwise related by complementarity and equivalence relations. In a subsequent transfer phase, they were given a fifth problem involving poker chips, which was structurally isomorphic to the fourth geometric-figures problem. The findings show that people do not realize the relations between problems, and that transfer occurred only for the subset of subjects who performed correctly on the training problems of the learning phase. These results appear to have some significant implications in teaching mathematical concepts.     

New measure o f perceived motorcompetence for children ages 4 to 6 years

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a test for the assessment of perceived motor competence in young children ages 4 to 6 years old. The structure of the Children's Perception of Motor Competence Scale was analyzed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis with 495 children between 4 and 6 years of age. A second-order model was selected and consisted of one scale of Perceived General Motor Competence and two subscales, Perceived Gross Motor Competence and Perceived Fine Motor Competence. The number of items was 22. This test showed acceptable internal reliability: global scale (alpha = .81), Perceived Gross Motor Competence (alpha = .80), and Perceived Fine Motor Competence (alpha = .65). Children manifested accuracy in the assessment of the competence. Perceived motor competence was related to actual motor competence as measured by the Movement ABC Test and by an observational scale used by Physical Education teachers. There were no sex differences. The Children's Perception of Motor Competence Scale could be considered an interesting assessment test for identifying current self-perceptions of motor competence in young children.     

Changes in ratings of figure preference in girls ages five to seven years

12 girls ages 5 to 7 years indicated their figure preferences two times, 15 months apart. There was no difference in selection of current and ideal figures at Time 1, but 15 months later the girls rated their ideal figure significantly smaller than the current figure as have older girls and women.     

Parental reports of global physical health at ages 3 and 6 predict self‐reported depressive symptoms 17 years later

Research studies testing longitudinal relations between childhood physical health measures and adulthood sub‐clinical depressive symptoms are rare. In the Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study, longitudinal relations of parental reports of the global physical health of the child (1 = good, 2 = moderately good, 3 = average/not good) and of absent days from daycare due to physical illness during the past year (1 = no absent days, 2 = 1–5 days, 3 = 6–10 days, 4 = 11 days or more) with self‐reported depressive symptoms (a modified version of the Beck Depression Inventory) were studied over 17 years. The sample was population‐based, consisting at the study entry of 3‐ and 6‐year‐olds (n = 567) free of any chronic physical or mental illnesses. The results indicated that parent‐reported global physical health of the child during the childhood period significantly predicted the participant's self‐reported depressive symptom scores at follow‐up 12 and 17 years from the baseline (ps < .03). The risk of having depressive symptom scores at the top quartile of age‐ and gender‐specific distributions at follow‐up 12 and 17 years from the baseline, and both follow‐ups simultaneously was 1.97‐ to 4.49‐fold (95% confidence intervals: 1.15–11.96) for participants with a moderately good to average/not good global physical health at the study entry relative to participants with a good global physical health. Absent days from daycare were not associated with depressive symptoms. Despite its subjectivity, the results support the validity of parental reports and suggest that parent‐reported global physical health rating of the child early in development may indicate a risk for later depressive symptoms.     

Patterns of perceptual change in the ages 7 to 15 years: a cross-sectional study of the Rod-and-Frame Test and the spiral aftereffect technique

Abstract.— Studied cross-sectional changes in Rod-and-Frame Test (RFT) deviation scores and spiral aftereffect (SAE) duration scores in 124 boys and 124 girls aged 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15 years. The gradual decrease in magnitude of RFT deviation with age reached its minimum at the age of 13. A sex difference, disappearing with age, was adequately described by a measure of performance change, boys counteracting to a higher extent than girls the frame influence as the RFT trials proceeded. An increase in SAE duration, found previously with 5-year-olds, appeared here with 111-year-olds but later in a series of ten trials rather than initially as with the younger children. Relations between RFT and SAE scores were mainly found with 7-year-olds, i.e. at an age when per-ceptual-figural regulations may still dominate the cognitive organization of some children. The SAE results are viewed within a multi-line developmental model characterizing cognitive growth as a dialectic process of progressive shifts between objectivized and self-centered modes of representation.     

Experience with a talker can transfer across modalities to facilitate lipreading

Rosenblum, Miller, and Sanchez (Psychological Science, 18, 392-396, 2007) found that subjects first trained to lip-read a particular talker were then better able to perceive the auditory speech of that same talker, as compared with that of a novel talker. This suggests that the talker experience a perceiver gains in one sensory modality can be transferred to another modality to make that speech easier to perceive. An experiment was conducted to examine whether this cross-sensory transfer of talker experience could occur (1) from auditory to lip-read speech, (2) with subjects not screened for adequate lipreading skill, (3) when both a familiar and an unfamiliar talker are presented during lipreading, and (4) for both old (presentation set) and new words. Subjects were first asked to identify a set of words from a talker. They were then asked to perform a lipreading task from two faces, one of which was of the same talker they heard in the first phase of the experiment. Results revealed that subjects who lip-read from the same talker they had heard performed better than those who lip-read a different talker, regardless of whether the words were old or new. These results add further evidence that learning of amodal talker information can facilitate speech perception across modalities and also suggest that this information is not restricted to previously heard words.     

Investigating the boundaries of reading units across ages and reading levels

In Experiments 1 and 2 first-, third-, and seventh-grade children and college subjects circled the letter a while reading passages constructed of words familiar to first graders. First graders made more errors on the letter a embedded in a word than on the word a, whereas the converse was true of the other age groups. In Experiments 3 and 4 first-, second-, fourth-, and seventh-grade children and college students read passages and circled the letter t, making more errors on the common word the than on other words and on correctly spelled than on misspelled words. The effect of misspelling the other words increased with age and reading skill. Our combined results suggest that reading unit size increases with age and reading ability and that, whereas younger children, like adults, unitize common words, the unitization of less common words increases as word configurations become more familiar.     

Bilateral transfer as a function of mental imagery

Three experiments are reported which investigate the role of mental imagery in the bilateral transfer from right to Ie ft hand of rotary pursuit skill. In Experiment 1 both mental imagery and physical rehearsal showed significant positive transfer relative to a control condition. However, work decrement may have accumulated and transferred in the physical rehearsal group thereby depressing this group's left-hand performance. Experiment 2 was conducted under conditions designed to allow work decrement to dissipate prior to transfer to the contralateral limb. The data still showed no difference between physical rehearsal and mental imagery. One interpretation of these data is that work decrement was present under both the physical rehearsal and mental imagery manipulations in Experiment 1. The data from Experiment 3 confirmed this interpretation as well as replicated the positive transfer effects found for mental imagery in Experiments 1 and 2. The data are discussed in terms of central versus peripheral explanatory mechanisms.     

Dyadic processes between mothers and preterm infants: Development at ages 2 to 5 years

In order to identify antecedents to cognitive, language, and social competence from 2 to 5 years of age in preterm children at biological and social risk, this study used multiple procedures, administered in the laboratory, at 13 and 20 months, to measure components of the social interactions between 51 mothers and their preterm infants. Two variables, maternal responsiveness to infant vocalization and infant irritability, were found to be significant predictors of later competence. Whereas greater maternal responsiveness, as expected, led to increased language and social skills, greater infant irritability during stressful situations also foretold later increased competence in expressive and receptive language and social cognition. Children born at higher birthweights and with longer gestations were more likely to be more irritable than those born at very low birthweights. The findings suggest different implications for negative affect in preterms who have experienced respiratory distress as contrasted to full-term children, but indicate similar positive consequences for maternal verbal responsiveness.     

Laboratory strength measures of talented and less talented Greek children ages 9 to 10 years

The purpose was twofold: (1) to assess whether laboratory tests can distinguish talented groups and less talented groups of children identified by their total scores in a battery of field tests and (2) to evaluate whether scores in field and laboratory tests are correlated. 36 children (ages 9 to 10 years) were divided into groups of higher and lower total scores on standing long jump, medicine ball throw, and sprint. Both groups were tested for maximum isometric force, force produced at the initial 100 msec., reactive force index, drop jump height, squat jump height, and maximum pedaling rate. Analysis showed the talented group had significantly (p < or = .05) higher scores on maximum isometric force, force produced in the initial 100 msec., and drop jump height than less talented children. Moderate to high correlations were found among scores for field performance tests with maximum pedaling rate. In conclusion, the laboratory tests distinguished the talented and less talented children in maximal isometric force, the force produced at the initial 100 msec., the reactive force index, and the drop jump height.     

Lateral information transfer across saccadic eye movements

Our perception of the visual world remains stable and continuous despite the disruptions caused by retinal image displacements during saccadic eye movements. The problem of visual stability is closely related to the question of whether information is transferred across such eye movements-and if so, what sort of information is transferred. We report experiments carried out to investigate how presaccadic signals at the location of the saccade goal influence the visibility of postsaccadic test signals presented at the fovea. The signals were Landolt rings of differ-ent orientations. If the orientations of pre- and postsaccadic Landolt rings were different, the thresholds of the test signals were elevated by about 20%–25% relative to those at the static control condition. When the orientations were identical, no such elevation occurred. This selective threshold elevation effect proved to be a phenomenon different from ordinary saccadic suppression, although it was closely related to the execution of the saccadic eye movement. The consequences for visual stability are discussed.     

The transfer of information across sensory modalities

Previous research has shown that Ss can recognize, classify, or identify the same nominal stimuli when presented via different sensory modalities. Two hypotheses, the mediational and invariant features, have been forwarded in an attempt to account for this ability. The present study was designed so that the reliable transfer of either specific or conceptual sources of information across sensory modalities would provide support for the invariant-feature hypothesis. Evidence was obtained for the transfer of both sources of information when the stimulus modality was not changed. However, neither source of transfer was evident when the stimulus modality was changed; thus, no support for the invariant features hypothesis was obtained in the present study.     

Dispositional resistance to change: measurement equivalence and the link to personal values across 17 nations

The concept of dispositional resistance to change has been introduced in a series of exploratory and confirmatory analyses through which the validity of the Resistance to Change (RTC) Scale has been established (S. Oreg, 2003). However, the vast majority of participants with whom the scale was validated were from the United States. The purpose of the present work was to examine the meaningfulness of the construct and the validity of the scale across nations. Measurement equivalence analyses of data from 17 countries, representing 13 languages and 4 continents, confirmed the cross-national validity of the scale. Equivalent patterns of relationships between personal values and RTC across samples extend the nomological net of the construct and provide further evidence that dispositional resistance to change holds equivalent meanings across nations.     

The stability of inhibited/uninhibited temperament from ages 3 to 11 years in mauritian children

Stability of inhibited/uninhibited temperament was assessed using 1,795 Mauritian children tested at ages 3, 8, and 11 years. Children were divided into uninhibited, middle, and inhibited groups at each age based on social behavior. Results indicated that, relative to uninhibited children (1) those inhibited at age 3 obtained larger inhibition scores at age 8 (p< .0001), (2) those inhibited at age 8 obtained larger inhibition scores at age 11 (p< .002), and (3) those remaining inhibited from ages 3 to 8 obtained larger inhibition scores at age 11 (p< .002). Relative to children who changed classification from ages 3 to 8, those remaining inhibited obtained larger inhibition scores (p< .05) and those remaining uninhibited obtained smaller inhibition scores (p< .015) at age 11. Inhibition scores tended to be higher in females by age 11. Results remained regardless of ethnicity. The results provide some support that inhibited/uninhibited temperament remains stable from ages 3 to 8 and may continue to age 11. The results suggest cross-cultural generalizability of these findings with implications regarding the development of anxiety disorders in the Mauritian population. The efforts of Cyril Dalais, Brian Bell, Athenea Chiriaca, and all the local members of the longitudinal study, the Mauritius Joint Child Health Project, are gratefully acknowledged. We are also especially thankful to Drs. Michael E. Dawson, David Walsh, and Bill McClure for their helpful comments and suggestions.The data used in this study were collected while the project was supported by the Medical Research Council (UK), the Wellcome Trust (UK), and the Mauritian government. The data were analyzed and findings written as part of the first author's dissertation work under the support of the NIMH Pre-doctoral Individual National Research Service Award and a USC Dissertation Fellowship Award.