Some Factors Operating at the Moment of Resumption of Interrupted Tasks

The present investigation examined the relationship between college students' locus of control and attitudes toward energy conservation. It was predicted that the more external orientation would relate to the person's belief that energy resources were controlled by powerful others whose manipulation created energy shortage, and personal conservation would not help the situation. The present study also compared 1977 students' reactions to the Warren Commission Report to those of the sixties, to study changing attitudes among college students. Three hundred forty-seven male and female college students were administered the Rotter I-E scale and a questionnaire that included items dealing with energy and the Warren Commission Report. Analysis of variance supported the hypothesis: males were found to be more internal than females, and those who believed in energy shortage and conservation were more internal than those who believed otherwise. A similar analysis of the responses to the Warren Report showed no significant effects. Comparison of 1977 students to those of the sixties noted significantly more external orientation and increased attitudes of disbelief.     

Substitution with Interrupted Tasks of Differing Valence

The study was designed (a) to develop a form of the Home Life Scale for university men, an instrument which provides a measure of perceptions of their home life in their families of orientation; and (b) to examine the perceptions of university men in relation to selected background characteristics and to their attitudes concerning father-son relationships. No significant relationships were observed between (a) home life perceptions and (6) age, marital status, father's occupation and education, source of family income, and socioeconomic status of parents; nor were any significant relationships observed between (a) attitudes concerning father-son relationships and (b) age, marital status, father's occupation and education, source of family income, and socioeconomic status of parents. How-ever, a significant relationship (p = .05) was observed between home life perceptions and attitudes concerning father-son relationships, indicating that those Ss who hold negative perceptions concerning their families of orientation reflected the most permissive attitudes concerning father-son relationships. Such a finding suggests that men who view their own families of orientation unfavorably may wish to create in their families of procreation a warmer, less restrictive atmosphere.     

Temperamental factors in human development

The initial dispositions to approach or to avoid unfamiliar events are 2 temperamental characteristics of children--among the many that have been described--that appear to be moderately stable over time and associated with distinct, physiological profiles that may be under partial genetic control. The display of high versus low levels of both motor activity and crying to unfamiliar in 4-month-old infants predicts these 2 temperamental profiles in the 2nd year. This fact implies, but does not prove, that variation in the excitability of those brain areas that mediate motor activity and crying participates in the actualization of the temperamental categories called inhibited and uninhibited to the unfamiliar.     

Cognitive Factors Affecting the Use of Social Decision Heuristics in Resource-Sharing Tasks

Two experiments investigated the use of equal division as a social decision heuristic in a group resource-sharing task. We proposed that group members use equality as a decision heuristic to the extent that environmental cues making the rule salient are present and to the extent that competing cues are absent. In Study 1, subjects were provided with justification for being the first group member to withdraw resources from a common pool. The results showed that subjects for whom the justification was prototypical of resource-sharing situations were more likely to violate equality than were subjects with nonprototypical justifications. Study 2 investigated the extent to which arbitrary role assignments within a group affect choice behavior. As predicted, subjects assigned the role of "supervisor" made resource requests that exceeded an equal share, whereas subjects assigned the roles of either "leader" or "guide" made choices that corresponded almost precisely with equal division. Our results underscore the importance of examining implicit knowledge structures about resource-sharing situations and their implications for choice.     

创造性任务情境下社会惰化影响因素研究

研究一,采用单因素组间设计(合作组、名义组、个人组)检验创造性任务情境下是否存在社会惰化效应,结果显示:合作组状态下个体努力水平显著低于名义组,与个人组差异不显著;研究二,采用三因素组间设计(4×2×3)探讨创造性任务情境下社会惰化影响因素,结果显示:目标难度、绩效评估变量主效应显著且存在交互作用,而中期评估变量主效应不显著。研究结果提示:高难度目标、评估个体对群体的贡献可减弱创造性任务情境下的社会惰化效应。     

Temperamental consequences of infant difficultness

Two central issues pertaining to the construct of infant temperamental “difficultness” were investigated in this longitudinal project. First, the cross-time convergent validity of two parent-report measures of temperament was examined. Second, the temperamental consequences of difficultness during infancy were studied by prospectively following children from infancy to adolescence. Additionally, using MANOVA and structural equation modeling, gender comparisons were conducted to determine whether or not the construct of difficultness was similar for males and females. Analyses were based on parent reports (Ns=96−110) of infant difficultness on the Infant Characteristics Questionnaire (ICQ) when children were 18 months of age. The nine temperament dimensions of the New York Longitudinal Study model were also assessed by parent report inventories when children were 2, 3, 3.5, 5, 8, 10, and 12 years old. Results showed no pervasive evidence of gender differences in infant difficultness. Convergent validity between the ICQ and subsequent temperament measures was evidenced by significant cross-time canonical correlations reaching to moderate magnitude and significant bivariate correlations between infant difficultness and specific temperament dimensions. Temperamental difficultness during infancy predicted subsequent adverse temperamental qualities such as unadaptability and negative mood at every age from 2 through 12 years.     

Temperamental emotionality in preschoolers and parental mood disorders

A number of models developed in the adult psychopathology literature (i.e., L. A. Clark & D. Watson, 1991) have asserted that low levels of positive emotionality (PE) are predisposing factors or precursors for depression and represent a form of temperamental risk for depression. Further support for this claim would derive from evidence linking low PE to known indicators of risk for depression. The authors examined the association between temperamental emotionality in young children and parental mood disorders. One hundred unselected preschool-aged children completed a battery of emotion-eliciting tasks tapping aspects of PE, negative emotionality (NE), and behavioral inhibition (BI). Parental psychopathology was assessed with semistructured diagnostic interviews. Low PE in children was associated with maternal, but not paternal, mood disorder. The low PE-maternal depression link was relatively specific, as there were few associations between low PE and other forms of parental psychopathology or between NE and BI and parental mood disorders.     

情境和任务对空间认知参考框架选择的影响

通过运动迷津和语言描述任务,考察情境和任务对大学生空间参考框架选择的影响。结果表明,开放空间和目标物同背景融为一体有利于被试选择绝对参考框架。习惯空间术语对空间参考框架选择有影响,但影响程度视情境和任务之间关系而定。     

Temperamental and personality variables in child and adolescent depressive symptomatology

In this study, we analyzed the relationship between temperament and personality factors and depression in children and adolescents. Temperament was assessed with the Dimensions of Temperament Survey Revised (DOTS-R), personality with the Big Five Questionnaire-Children (BFQ-C), and depressive symptomatology with the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI). The sample was made up of 535 participants (274 boys and 261 girls), aged 8 to 15 years. Results show that temperament and personality are significantly related to depressive symptomatology in children and adolescents. Those with difficult temperaments showed more depressive symptomatology, as did those with high levels of emotional instability or low levels of extraversion, openness, agreeableness or conscientiousness. Multiple regression analyses revealed greater relevance of personality variables than of temperament variables.     

Organisation and Recall in Verbal Tasks and in Subject-performed Tasks

In memory for subject-performed tasks (SPTs), subjects encode a list of simple action phrases (e.g. "lift the pen", "open the book") by performing these actions during learning. Performing tasks has proved to be a much more efficient type of encoding than verbal tasks (VTs), in which subjects only listen to the action phrases in order to memorise them. It is assumed that good item-specific encoding after SPTs plays an important role in the SPT effect. The role of relational encoding for the SPT effect is less clear, as is the question of whether SPT encoding is automatic or controlled. Two experiments were conducted to address these issues. Subjects learned lists which were categorically structured in VTs and SPTs, under focal attention or divided attention. The results indicated that relational encoding does not differ between VTs and SPTs, and that free recall is impaired in both cases by divided attention, more so in VTs than in SPTs. It is concluded that the SPT effect is primarily based on item-specific information rather than on relational information, and that VTs are more dependent than SPTs on active encoding.     

Temperamental precursors of infant attachment with mothers and fathers

The degree to which parent sensitivity and infant temperament distinguish attachment classification was examined. Multilevel modeling was used to assess the effect of parent sensitivity and infant temperament on infant–mother and infant–father attachment. Data were collected from mothers, fathers, and their infants (N = 135) when the infant was 3-, 5-, 7-, 12-, and 14-months old. Temperament was measured using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised ( Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003); parent sensitivity was coded during the Still Face Paradigm ( Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978); attachment was coded using the Strange Situation ( Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). Results indicate that mothers and fathers were less sensitive with insecure-avoidant infants. Whereas only one difference was found for infant–mother attachment groups and temperament, five significant differences emerged for infant–father attachment groups, with the majority involving insecure-ambivalent attachment. Infants classified as ambivalent with fathers were higher in perceptual sensitivity and cuddliness and these infants also showed a greater increase in low-intensity pleasure over time compared with other infants. Results indicate the importance of both parent sensitivity and infant temperament, though operating in somewhat different ways, in the development of the infant–mother and infant–father attachment relationship.     

Embodying the False-Belief Tasks

Embodied approaches to mindreading have tended to define themselves in contrast to cognitive approaches to social mindreading. One side effect of this has been a lack of engagement with key areas in the study of social cognition??in particular the topic of how we gain an understanding of the referential nature of others?? thoughts, and how that understanding develops from infancy. I argue that embodied accounts of mindreading are well equipped to enter into this debate, by making use of the notion of a joint mental state, but that doing so will require taking a less antagonistic attitude towards mainstream cognitive approach.     

Editing the Reactive Genome: Towards a Postgenomic Ethics of Germline Editing

The reported birth of genetically modified twins in late 2018 has given new fuel to debates about the ethics of germline genome editing (GGE). There is a broad consensus among stakeholders that clinical uses of GGE should be temporarily banned as the technology is not yet deemed safe for use in humans. However, the idea of a complete ban is dismissed by many based on the expectation that more research will eventually allow scientists to make the technology safe without having to put humans at risk first. In this article, I will analyse this assumption and argue that it is undermined by recent developments in the postgenomic life sciences. In particular, I will argue that in a postgenomic view of germline editing a complete ban on specific uses of the technology is warranted, because the research needed to assess the safety of these interventions would not be morally defensible.     

Modality-Dependent and -Independent Factors in the Organisation of the Signed Language Lexicon: Insights From Semantic and Phonological Fluency Tasks in BSL

We used fluency tasks to investigate lexical organisation in Deaf adults who use British sign language (BSL). The number of responses produced to semantic categories did not differ from reports in spoken languages. However, there was considerable variability in the number of responses across phonological categories, and some signers had difficulty retrieving items. Responses were richly clustered according to semantic and/or phonological properties. With respect to phonology, there was significantly more clustering around the parameters “handshape” and “location” compared to “movement”. We conclude that the BSL lexicon is organised in similar ways to the lexicons of spoken languages, but that lexical retrieval is characterised by strong links between semantics and phonology; movement is less readily retrieved than handshape and location; and phonological fluency is difficult for signers because they have little metaphonological awareness in BSL and because signs do not display the onset salience that characterises spoken words.     

Temperamental surgency and emotion regulation as predictors of childhood social competence

The primary aims of the current study were to longitudinally examine the direct relationship between children's temperamental surgency and social behaviors as well as the moderating role of children's emotion regulation. A total of 90 4.5-year-old children participated in a laboratory visit where children's temperamental surgency was rated by experimenters and children's emotion regulation abilities were assessed. The summer before entry into first grade, children's social behaviors with unfamiliar peers were observed in the laboratory and mothers completed a questionnaire about children's social behaviors. Supporting our hypotheses, results revealed that children high in temperamental surgency developed more negative peer behaviors, whereas children low in temperamental surgency were more likely to develop behavioral wariness with peers. Emotion regulatory behaviors were found to moderate the relation between temperamental surgency and aggression, where high-surgent children who showed high levels of social support seeking were less likely to be rated by their mothers as high in aggression. Furthermore, results revealed that low-surgent children who showed high levels of distraction/self-soothing were more likely to show behavioral wariness around unfamiliar peers, whereas high-surgent children who used more distraction/self-soothing behaviors were rated by their mothers as lower in social competence.     

Tasks and timing in the perception of linguistic anomaly

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the relative timing of syntactic and pragmatic anomaly detection during sentence processing. Experiment 1 was an eye movement study. Experiment 2 employed a dual-task paradigm with compressed speech input, to put the processing routines under time pressure. Experiment 3 used compressed speech input in an anomaly monitoring task. The outcomes of these experiments suggest that there is little or no delay in pragmatic processing relative to syntactic processing in the comprehension of unambiguous sentences. This narrows the possible explanations for any delays that are observed in the use of pragmatic information for ambiguity resolution.The research reported in this paper was supported by Program Project Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories from the National Institutes of Child and Human Development, and in part by a grant to Stephen Crain and Donald Shankweiler from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation. We thank Jacques Mehler and Gerry Altmann for helpful information about speech compression algorithms. We are especially grateful to Ignatius Mattingly for his generous expert advice on speech compression and design of the experimental materials, and also for recording all the speech stimuli. Julie Boland, Brian McElree, Janet Nicol, and Martin Pickering provided very helpful advice on an earlier draft.     

Representations in Distributed Cognitive Tasks

In this article we propose a theoretical framework of distributed representations and a methodology of representational analysis for the study of distributed cognitive tasks—tasks that require the processing of information distributed across the internal mind and the external environment. The basic principle of distributed representations Is that the representational system of a distributed cognitive task is a set of internal and external representations, which together represent the abstract structure of the task. The basic strategy of representational analysis is to decompose the representation of a hierarchical task into its component levels so that the representational properties at each level can be independently examined. The theoretical framework and the methodology are used to analyze the hierarchical structure of the Tower of Hanoi problem. Based on this analysis, four experiments are designed to examine the representational properties of the Tower of Hanoi. Finally, the nature of external representations is discussed.     

心理理论的自发反应范式：方法、结果与解释

近30年来, 心理理论一直是认知发展领域关键而充满挑战的研究主题, 儿童理解他人错误信念的能力是心理理论发展的标志。诱导反应范式(elicited-response tasks)的研究结果表明4岁时儿童获得心理理论, 但是自发反应范式(spontaneous-response tasks)的研究结果表明婴儿15个月大时就已经具备心理理论。自发反应范式(spontaneous-response task) 是近些年来心理理论研究领域发展起来的研究范式。针对幼儿能通过自发反应范式却不能通过诱导反应范式这一问题, 已有三种相关的理论解释：早期能力掩盖说、内隐知识解释论和观点追踪解释论。未来心理理论研究应注意将自发反应范式运用于特殊儿童, 并进一步验证和研究心理理论的发展机制。