Family Interaction as a Function of Experimental Task

To assess consistency family interaction across different experimental tasks, the present study evaluated family patterns of talking and interrupting, as elicited from discussions of a Plan Something Together Task, a set of TAT cards, and an Unrevealed Difference Questionnaire. With few exceptions, data analyses indicated that such family patterns are not altered significantly as a function of experimental tasks and, therefore, suggest considerable interactional stability across differing contexts. Characteristics of the present study (as well as related investigations of task effects) are discussed in terms of implications for future research efforts.     

Selective attention in vibrotactile tasks: detecting the presence and absence of amplitude change

Selective spatial attention has a greater effect on detection of the absence of an amplitude change than it has on detection of the presence of such a change. Attention to one of four fingertips was manipulated by an 80% valid tactile cue in two-interval forced-choice tasks. In one task, the target was a vibrotactile amplitude change appearing among constant-amplitude distractors; in the other task, targets of constant amplitude had to be detected amid amplitude changes at the other fingertips. Cuing had a greater effect on the latter task than it did on the former. This asymmetry is consistent with the presence-absence asymmetry found in visual search and does not depend on the difficulty of the two tasks. A statistical model shows that a pooled activity mechanism could account for these experimental results.     

Hyperactivity in boys with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): the association between deficient behavioral inhibition, attentional processes, and objectively measured activity

Contemporary models of ADHD hypothesize that hyperactivity reflects a byproduct of inhibition deficits. The current study investigated the relationship between children's motor activity and behavioral inhibition by experimentally manipulating demands placed on the limited-resource inhibition system. Twenty-two boys (ADHD = 11, TD = 11) between the ages of 8 and 12 years completed a conventional stop-signal task, two choice-task variants (no-tone, ignore-tone), and control tasks while their motor activity was measured objectively by actigraphs placed on their nondominant wrist and ankles. All children exhibited significantly higher activity rates under all three experimental tasks relative to control conditions, and children with ADHD moved significantly more than typically developing children across conditions. No differences in activity level were observed between the inhibition and noninhibition experimental tasks for either group, indicating that activity level was primarily associated with basic attentional rather than behavioral inhibition processes.     

Phonological and Orthographic Processing of Hebrew Words: Electrophysiological Aspects

Brain activity among 15 male, college-level, normal readers in Israel was examined during phonological and orthographic word-recognition tasks. Both electrophysiological (event-related potentials, or ERPs) and behavioral measures were obtained. Data indicated that (a) behavioral accuracy was almost perfect for all the experimental tasks, and (b) although P200 and N400 ERP components were elicited in the experimental tasks, the latencies of those components were significantly longer and their amplitudes significantly higher in the phonological task. Variations in vowel information had no effect on word recognition in either type of task. The results suggest that among skilled readers of Hebrew, phonological processing during word recognition may be more effortful and may demand greater cognitive resources than orthographic processing. Furthermore, the additional phonological information represented in vowels appears to contribute little to word recognition in this population. These findings support earlier research on skilled reading in Hebrew as well as current theoretical models of reading.     

Does unconscious information affect cognitive activity?: a study using experimental priming

In a series of three experiments the influence that information unrecognised by the subjects has on the effectiveness of occurring cognitive activity is studied. With this aim 3 types of stimulus were compared which for one reason or another were not afforded sufficient attention, namely: unconscious meanings of polysemantic information, stimuli presented at the subliminal level, and intentionally ignored distractors. All the listed types of stimuli are united in that the subjects were not able to give an account of them, i.e., these stimuli were not processed attentively. It is assumed that each of the types of stimuli studied is in actuality perceived, which can be judged by the impact they have on occurring cognitive activity. The purpose of the present research is the comparison of this impact: apart from the determination of the impact of unperceived stimuli on the information directly associated with them (priming-effect registration), also identified is the presence/absence of an overall interference effect rendered by the unperceived stimuli on the performance of occurring cognitive activity. To this end, each experiment had a control condition the aim of which was the creation of the possibility for the subjects to perceive stimuli unnoticed under experimental conditions. An experimental priming paradigm was used in combination with image-classification and lexical-decision tasks. The results of the experiments conducted demonstrate that all types of stimuli 'slipping the attention' are assimilated, but their effect on occurring cognitive activity is varied. Thus, subliminally presented information aids, and distractors, on the contrary, hinder the solution of tasks associated with them, whereas unperceived meanings of polysemantic information hinder not only the solution of the tasks directly associated with them, but also the performance of any other cognitive activity for which they serve as a context. The effect of subliminal stimuli on occurring cognitive activity in the present research is explained by the spreading activation in the memory, the effect of distractors--by the inhibition of irrelevant representations in the information-processing system. For an explanation of the consequence of unperceived meanings of polysemanticity, not only an inhibition model was used, but also an unconscious negative choice model which assumed the necessity of making a special decision on non-perception.     

A child-centred exploration of the relevance of family and friends to theory of mind development

Theory of Mind (ToM) is said to develop at around 4 years old. But some studies suggest it develops considerably earlier than this, with others suggesting it develops much later. Although several recent studies have found that social factors (like gender, family size, number of siblings, and number of friends) can impact on ToM, other studies contradict those findings. We wondered whether addressing several procedural issues and ensuring the task concerns real protagonists in real time, would bear on the above issues. Here, 114 children of 3-6 years completed four ToM tasks incorporating controls from experimental psychology, including randomly varying the order of ToM and non-ToM questions across participants. Now, children passed ToM tasks from around 5 years old, rather than 4 years or earlier. Girls did not develop ToM any earlier than boys. There was clear correlational evidence for the older-sibling effect and effects of friends but no reliable effects of nuclear or extended family. However, when these factors were set in the context of one another, the sibling effect was driven by a negative influence from younger siblings (as opposed to older siblings) and the friends effect was driven by friends at school (as opposed to friends at home). Finally, "friends" was a stronger predictor than siblings but memory (a cognitive factor) and age (a maturational factor) were the strongest predictors of all.     

Clinical Judgment in Case Conceptualization and Treatment Planning Across Mental Health Disciplines

This study compared clinical judgment on case conceptualization and treatment planning (TP) tasks among psychologists, mental health counselors, and social workers using Clinical Treatment Planning Simulations depicting anxiety and affective disorders. Orientation and work setting did not significantly influence judgment; experience exerted a “modest” curvilinear effect Mental health counselors scored higher than social workers and similar to psychologists on both tasks. The best predictors of TP scores for the anxiety disorder were interventions addressing stress management and family dynamics; strong predictors for the affective disorder included focus on family dynamics and the therapeutic relationship. Implications of findings for training are discussed.     

Hyperactivity in boys with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): The association between deficient behavioral inhibition,attentional processes,and objectively measured activity

Contemporary models of ADHD hypothesize that hyperactivity reflects a byproduct of inhibition deficits. The current study investigated the relationship between children's motor activity and behavioral inhibition by experimentally manipulating demands placed on the limited-resource inhibition system. Twenty-two boys (ADHD = 11, TD = 11) between the ages of 8 and 12 years completed a conventional stop-signal task, two choice-task variants (no-tone, ignore-tone), and control tasks while their motor activity was measured objectively by actigraphs placed on their nondominant wrist and ankles. All children exhibited significantly higher activity rates under all three experimental tasks relative to control conditions, and children with ADHD moved significantly more than typically developing children across conditions. No differences in activity level were observed between the inhibition and noninhibition experimental tasks for either group, indicating that activity level was primarily associated with basic attentional rather than behavioral inhibition processes.     

Role salience and support as moderators of demand/conflict relationships in China

This study examined the effects of role demand on both work–family conflict and family–work conflict, and the moderating effects of role salience and support on these relationships. Based on 391 dual-career (managerial and blue-collar employees) couples from a Taiwanese company in China, the results of this survey study showed clear gender differences in the patterns of relationships observed. For men, the most important demands that negatively impacted on work–family conflict were frequency of overtime and frequency of socializing for work purposes (yingchou), and supervisory support buffered the negative impact of frequent overtime. For women however, strong supervisory support and low work role salience were more important for reducing work–family conflict, and there was no significant main effect found for any of the role demand factors. Furthermore, women with high work role salience were more likely to feel the impact of yingchou on work–family conflict. In the family domain, the most influential demand for men was hours spent on household tasks, but for women, it was the frequency of family-related leave. Interestingly, males reported higher family role salience than females and spouse support intensified rather than buffered the positive impact of hours spent on household tasks on family–work conflict for males.     

Toward a comprehensive test battery for face cognition: Assessment of the tasks

Despite the importance of face recognition in everyday life and frequent complaints about its failure, there is no comprehensive test battery for this ability. As a first step in constructing such a battery, we present 18 tasks aimed at measuring face perception, face learning, face recognition, and the recognition of facially expressed emotions. A sample of 153 healthy young adults completed all tasks. In general, reaction time measures showed high estimates of internal consistency; tasks focused on performance accuracy yielded reliabilities that were somewhat lower, yet high enough to support their use in a battery of face cognition measures. Some of the tasks allowed computation of established experimental effects in a within-subjects design, such as the part-whole effect. Most of these experimental effects were confirmed in our large sample, and valuable effect size estimates were obtained. However, in many cases these difference measures showed poor estimates of internal consistency.     

Forgetting curves in long-term memory: evidence for a multistage model of retention.

An experimental study with 20 normal healthy young adult subjects was performed to evaluate the interaction of type of memory tasks, type of learning modalities, and length of acquisition/recall interval. Four different tasks were employed (serial learning, paired learning, rote learning, and visuolinguistic transfer), some requiring a single trial learning modality others a multitrial learning modality. Acquisition/recall intervals were immediate, intermediate (3 min), and delayed. The experimental design allowed for the comparison of effects from five different delayed recall intervals (2, 8, 12, 24, and 48 hr). Results demonstrated a specific interaction on learning rates due to different ceiling effects for the different types of memory tasks. Forgetting rates, on the other hand, demonstrated a specific effect due to type of memory tasks and learning modalities only for differences between immediate and intermediate recall. These differences remained stable during the longer intervals and were not affected by length of interval. A multistage composition of long-term retention was suggested to explain these results, and a practical indication to build experimental procedures to study memory in the clinical field was evidenced.     

任务重要性对前瞻记忆的迁移恰当加工效应的影响

为考察任务重要性对前瞻记忆迁移恰当加工（Transfer-appropriate Processing,以下简称TAP）效应的影响,随机选取在校大学生48名,采用基于双重任务的实验研究范式,探究了任务重要性对前瞻记忆TAP效应的影响。研究结果表明：任务的重要性对前瞻记忆TAP效应有显著的影响。当进行中任务较重要时,TAP效应存在;而当前瞻记忆任务较重要时,TAP效应没有出现     

Developmental perspectives and family therapy: The marital life cycle

Developmental perspectives have been part of family therapy for more than two decades with a primary focus on the family life cycle and individual development. Most efforts at recognizing a marital life cycle have subsumed marital tasks under rubrics based primarily on parental roles. This paper offers a marital life cycle based on marital development with specific tasks for each of four stages-the marital breakup and remarriage phases are not included here-and provides implications for therapy.     

重复知盲效应的理论之争及脑机制

重复知盲现象自被发现至今已走过四分之一世纪, 这期间重复知盲的产生机制一直是争论的焦点, 并有标记个体化理论、类型节点不应期理论、竞争理论、提取失败理论和建构/归因理论等多种理论解释。大量研究证明, 重复知盲是一种视知觉失败现象, 但也有研究认为它是一种记忆失败现象。很多研究还发现, 重复知盲不仅受到呈现时间和间隔刺激个数的限制, 还受到实验材料的性质、刺激的空间位置及人们的反应方式等多种因素的影响。近些年来, 随着ERP和fMRI等技术的利用, 从更深层次揭示了重复知盲产生的脑机制。同时, 重复知盲也作为一种实验范式应用于视觉加工领域的研究中。目前关于重复知盲仍然有很多问题值得探索。     

Early orthographic influences on phonemic awareness tasks: Evidence from a preschool training study

Experienced readers show influences of orthographic knowledge on tasks ostensibly tapping phonemic awareness. Here we draw on data from an experimental training study to demonstrate that even preschoolers show influences of their emerging orthographic abilities in such tasks. A total of 40 children were taught some letter-sound correspondences but not others. A selective effect of this training was found on their phonemic awareness task performance for the trained items. These findings point to the multidetermined nature of performance on tasks normally considered as measuring phonemic awareness and have implications for theories of the role of phonemic awareness in reading acquisition.     

Differential effects of identification with family and peers on coping with developmental tasks in adolescence

Adolescents from three Italian cities responded to a questionnaire concerning the particular peer-group with which they were associated and identification with their family, aspects of the process of coping with seven developmental tasks, and demographic characteristics. The participants were 1600 male and female teenagers, with a mean age of 16.28 years, who were approached at schools and various meeting places in three Italian cities. The study shows that effective coping with developmental tasks depends largely on the degree of identification with both family and peer-group. Those who identify with both social groupings show advantages in various critical situations. Adolescents only identifying with either family or peers get emotional and instrumental support from that group but not from the other, thus, they are supported in some critical situations but not in others. Adolescents who are unwilling or unable to identify with their family and/or their peers are less successful in managing the transition to adulthood than others who are close to their parents and peers. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, the type of group adolescents join, be it a formal group or an informal street group, has no significant effect on their coping strategies.     

Affective and Autonomic Reactivity During Parent–Child Interactions in Depressed and Non-Depressed Mothers and Their Adolescent Offspring

Depression presents risks that are profound and intergenerational, yet research on the association of depression with the physiological processes that might be associated with impaired mental and physical health has only recently been contextualized within the family environment. Participants in this multi-method case–control study were 180 mother-adolescent dyads (50% mothers with a history of depression treatment and current depressive symptoms). In order to examine the association between maternal depression and affective and autonomic reactivity amongst these mothers and their adolescent offspring we collected self-reported measures of positive and negative affect, as well as measures of cardiovascular and electrodermal autonomic activity, during mother-adolescent interaction tasks. Findings indicated that depressed mothers and their adolescent offspring exhibited greater self-reported negative affect reactivity during a problem-solving interaction and blunted (i.e., low) sympathetic activity as measured via skin conductance level across both interaction tasks. These effects remained significant after controlling for a range of potential covariates, including medication use, sex, age, adolescents own mental health symptoms, and behavior of the other interactant, along with correcting for multiple comparisons. Findings indicate that depressed mothers and their adolescent offspring both exhibit patterns of affect and physiology during interactions that are different from those of non-depressed mothers and their offspring, including increased negative affect reactivity during negative interactions and blunted sympathetic activity across both positive and negative interactions. These findings have potential implications for understanding the role of family processes in the intergenerational transmission of risk for depressive disorders.

     

Some effects of progressively lowering electromyographic levels with feedback procedures on the frequency of stuttered verbal behaviors

Feedback procedures were used to progressively decrease the EMG activity of three stutterers during connected speech tasks. Single subject experimental designs were used which allowed for procedural changes as dictated by each subject's performance. All three subjects demonstrated clinically significant decreases in disfluencies and generalization of the treatment effects for an oral reading task, while one of the subjects also showed this effect for a conversational speech task. The subjects' strategies for manipulating the feedback tone seemed to be related to reduction in many of the motoric and prosodic complexities of speech which may have been importantly related to enhancing and maintaining fluency.     

Short-term Memory in Time Interval Production

This article summarizes results from several studies on the effect of nontemporal processing on concurrent time estimation. These studies use an experimental paradigm that was developed to interpolate various nontemporal tasks in time interval production. Produced intervals were specifically lengthened by increasing the amount of short-term memory processing performed in a concurrent search task. The interference was shown with many short-term memory tasks, using various durations and methods in the temporal task. The effect on temporal production seems to be positively related to the level of difficulty of the short-term memory task. Finally, processing item or order information affects simultaneous time production, whereas its maintenance has no effect. An interference analysis of these phenomena suggests that interruption in time estimation is caused by both temporal and nontemporal tasks simultaneously requiring processing in short-term memory.