The stability of mastery motivation and its relationship with home environment in infants and toddlers

Mastery motivation (intrinsic drives to explore and master one's environment) is a key developmental element. The aims of this study were to investigate (1) the stability of mastery motivation between 2 and 3 years of age for two genders; and (2) the associations between early home environment and toddlers’ mastery motivation in children with typical development.

Methods

Data of 102 children developing typically from a birth cohort study at Northern Taiwan were analyzed in two parts: (1) stability part: mastery motivation of children were measured at 2 and 3 years of age; (2) environment part: child-parent dyads were assessed from birth, 4 months, 6 months, and 2-3 years of age. Outcomes variables were measured at ages 2 and 3 years by the Dimension of Mastery Questionnaire-17th version. Main predictive variables were measured by Home Observation for Measuring Environment Inventory (HOME) to collect data of the qualities of home environment at 6 months and 2 years; by the Revised Infant Temperament Questionnaire to obtain 4-month activity levels; and by the Comprehensive Developmental Inventory for Infants and Toddlers to obtain 2-year developmental quotient (DQ).

Results

There was moderate stability of mastery motivation from 2 to 3 years, and girls’ stability was higher than boys’. 6-Month HOME rather than 2-year HOME measures were positively and significantly correlated with instrumental mastery motivation even when controlling for gender, activity level, and DQ.

Conclusion

Mastery motivation had moderate stability during the toddler period. The quality of home environment in infancy appeared to have a significant impact on toddler's mastery motivation. To promote mastery motivation, caregivers should provide better quality of home environment for infants/toddlers during the very early years.     

Agnosticism gone awry: Why developmental robotics must commit to an understanding of embodiment and shared intentionality

We argue that developmental robotics, in its integration of developmental psychology and robotics, has the potential to encounter unexpected and unexamined conceptual difficulties. In particular, the various uses of embodiment and shared intentionality single out certain robots and behaviors as more or less relevant for the modeling of social cognition. As these terms have relatively orthogonal histories, there is no account for how their use will interact to shape methodology. We provide a brief discussion of how they may do so. Moreover, theorists often avoid explicit endorsement of some use or another. Although this agnosticism is understandable, we use the model of Dominey and Warneken (2011) as an illustrative example of why it is potentially dangerous. While Dominey and Warneken have succeeded in encouraging theorists to adopt clearer formulations of shared intentionality, their model suffers from important difficulties in interpretation, which, we argue, are a consequence of their uses of embodiment and shared intentionality respectively.     

Computational modeling/cognitive robotics complements functional modeling/experimental psychology

This position paper explores the possible contributions to the science of psychology from insights obtained by building and experimenting with cognitive robots. First, the functional modeling characteristic of experimental psychology is discussed. Second, the computational modeling required for cognitive robotics is described, and possible experiments with them are illustrated. Next, we argue that cognitive developmental robots, robots that “live” through a development phase where they learn about their environments in several different modes, can provide additional benefits to the science of psychology. Finally, the reciprocal interactions between computational modeling/cognitive robotics and functional modeling/experimental psychology are explored. We conclude that each can contribute significantly to the other.     

Social comparison processes in organizations

We systematically analyze the role of social comparison processes in organizations. Specifically, we describe how social comparison processes have been used to explain six key areas of organizational inquiry: (1) organizational justice, (2) performance appraisal, (3) virtual work environments, (4) affective behavior in the workplace, (5) stress, and (6) leadership. Additionally, we describe how unique contextual factors in organizations offer new insight into two widely studied sub-processes of social comparison, acquiring social information and thinking about that information. Our analyses underscore the merit of integrating organizational phenomena and social comparison processes in future research and theory.     

The Concurrent,Continuous Fluent Calculus

The Fluent Calculus belongs to the established predicate calculus formalisms for reasoning about actions. Its underlying concept of state update axioms provides a solution to the basic representational and inferential Frame Problems in pure first-order logic. Extending a recent research result, we present a Fluent Calculus to reason about domains involving continuous change and where actions occur concurrently.     

幸福感研究新视角——社会幸福感概述

幸福感研究实际上存在三种思路,即主观幸福感、心理幸福感、社会幸福感。所谓社会幸福感是指个体对与他人、集体、社会之间关系质量的评估,他包括社会整合、社会认同、社会贡献、社会实现、社会和谐五个维度。社会幸福感为现代幸福感研究提供了新的视角。     

Entropy,Visual Diversity,and Preference

The author reports relationships between subjective impressions of visual diversity or pleasure with statistical entropies of stimuli. The stimuli were 34 rows of houses that varied in color, scale, and shape, or in shape and articulation. Entropies ranged from 0.0 to 5.6 bits. Fifty-seven participants rated the stimuli on scales of pleasant/unpleasant and uniform/diverse. The relationship between rated diversity and entropy was strong and linear. The relationship between rated pleasure and entropy was either linear or asymptotic, but no evidence was found for an inverted U relationship.     

Validating the theory of mental self-government in a non-academic setting

This study pioneered the investigation of the efficacy of the theory of mental self-government in a non-academic setting. Three hundred and thirty-three people from various business sectors in Guangzhou, PR China, volunteered to participate in the research. The participants responded to the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised and to a range of questions concerning their actual and perceived work environments. Results indicated that the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised is reliable and valid for assessing the thinking styles of the participants. Furthermore, the participants’ reported work environments statistically predicted their thinking styles. Results supported Sternberg’s claim that the theory of mental self-government is a general theory of styles that applies to both academic and non-academic settings. Implications of the findings are discussed for organizational psychologists, human resource management personnel, providers of management training and development, as well as for the ordinary workforce.     

Would situational stress be harmful for anyone? The influence of situational factors and trait empathy on women’s response to infant crying

Individual differences in responsiveness toward infant crying are well understood. Little research, however, has examined the effects of situational risk factors (e.g., social stress, cognitive load) and possible interactions between situational and dispositional factors on response toward infant crying. This study examined if trait empathy (conceptualized as empathic concern; EC, and personal distress; PD) moderate situational factors’ relationship with people’s intentions in response to infant crying. Social stress was manipulated using the Trier Social Stress Test. Cognitive load was manipulated by requiring participants to keep syllable-strings of either two or eight syllables in mind while listening to an infant crying. Participants responded to question items examining their caregiving and neglect intentions in response to the crying stimulus. Multilevel regression analyses demonstrated that trait empathy (empathic concern in particular) was strongly associated with neglect intention under cognitive load. Participants with high EC showed strong neglect intention with increasing cognitive load. Furthermore, results also showed that social stress increased neglect intentions and reduced care intentions; these effects were more remarkable among participants with both low EC and low PD. These results suggest that dispositional factors moderate situational factors’ effect on response to infant crying.