Do generation and regulation of emotions interact? Examination of their relationships in young adults

Emotions can be generated in response to inherently emotional perceptual properties of a stimulus (‘bottom up’) and in response to cognitive interpretations of an event (‘top down’). Similarly, emotion regulation (ER) strategies may deploy bottom-up or top-down processes, however the specific nature of these processes remains unclear. In this study we sought to replicate and extend previous studies that have investigated the interaction between ER and emotion generation. Specifically, we examined the relationship between both methods of emotion generation and ER in a sample of 75 undergraduate students who completed self-report questionnaires and a behavioral task of ER. We attempted to extend previous research by testing whether the positive effect of cognitive reappraisal on top-down generated emotions was specific to reappraisal or true of multiple ER strategies. Overall there was a main effect of generation such that top-down generated emotion was better regulated by cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and appraisal strategies. We also found a main effect of ER such that cognitive reappraisal was perceived as the most successful ER strategy. We argue that ER is a state-dependent process that includes dynamic cycles between emotion generation and regulation processes. We further discuss expressive suppression as a top-down emotion regulation strategy in the context of our study despite debated literature.     

Religiosity of young adults: does childhood maltreatment make a difference?

Previous research on the association between maltreatment in childhood and later religious beliefs and behaviours suggests that maltreatment may have either negative or positive influences on religiosity. However, methodological limitations of previous studies may limit their generalisability. The present study attempted to address these limitations. We examined associations between childhood physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and several dimensions of adult religiosity in a large sample of college students (N = 763). Associations between child maltreatment and religiosity were weak (rs ≤ 0.09). After controlling for possible demographic confounds, the only significant association was between childhood emotional abuse and religious questing.     

Do domestic dogs show any evidence of being able to count?

Numerical competence has been demonstrated in a wide range of animal species. The level of numerical abilities shown ranges from simple relative numerousness judgements to true counting. In this study we used the preferential looking technique to test whether 11 pet dogs could count. The dogs were presented with three simple calculations: "1+1=2"; "1+1=1"; and "1+1=3". These calculations were performed by presenting the dogs with treats that were placed behind a screen that allowed manipulation of the outcome of the calculation. When the dogs expected the outcome they spent the same amount of time looking at the result of the calculation as they did on the initial presentation. However, when the result was unexpected dogs spent significantly longer looking at the outcome of the calculation. The results suggest that the dogs were anticipating the outcome of the calculations they observed, thus suggesting that dogs may have a rudimentary ability to count. Electronic Publication     

Potentiation in young infants: The origin of the prior knowledge effect?

In two experiments with 6-month-old infants, we found that prior learning of an operant task (remembered for 2 weeks) mediated new learning of a modeling event (remembered for only 1 day) and increased its recall. Infants first learned to associate lever pressing with moving a toy train housed in a large box. One or 2 weeks later, three target actions were modeled on a hand puppet while the train box (a retrieval cue) was in view. Merely retrieving the train memory strengthened it, and simultaneously pairing its retrieved memory with the modeled actions potentiated their learning and recall. When paired 1 week later, deferred imitation increased from 1 day to 4 weeks; when paired 2 weeks later, it increased from 1 day to 6 weeks. The striking parallels between potentiated learning in infants and the prior knowledge effect in adults suggests that the prior knowledge effect originates in early infancy.     

Do apes and monkeys rely upon conceptual reversibility?

The ability to seriate nesting cups as a sensorimotor task has posed interesting questions for cognitive scientists. Greenfield et al. [(1972) Cognit Psychol 3:291–310] found parallels between children's combinatorial activity with nesting cups and patterns of phonological and grammatical constructions. The parallels suggested the possibility of a neurally based developmental homology between language and instrumental action [Greenfield (1991) Behav Brain Sci 14:531–595]. Children who predominantly used subassembly, a hierarchical method of combining cups, succeeded at seriating nesting cups more often than those who did not. Greenfield and others [e.g., Piaget and Inhelder (1969) The psychology of the child. Basic Books, New York; DeLoache et al. (1985) Child Dev 56:928–939] argued that success in seriation reflects the child's growing recognition of a reversible relationship: a particular element in a series is conceived of as being smaller than the previous element and larger than the subsequent element. But is a concept of reversibility or a hierarchical form of object manipulation necessary to seriate cups? In this article, we review studies with very young children and nonhuman primates to determine how individuals that do not evidence conceptual reversibility manage the seriation task. We argue that the development of skill in seriation is experientially, rather than conceptually, driven and that it may be unnecessary to link seriation with cognitive conceptions of reversibility or linguistic capacities. Rather, in ordering a set of objects by size, perceptual-motor learning may enable contemplative refinement. Accepted after revision: 10 September 2001 Electronic Publication     

Do distractors interfere with memory for study pairs in associative recognition?

In an associative recognition task, distractors generally consist of a rearrangement of the items composing the study pairs. This makes it possible that processing the distractors generates retroactive interference on memory for the study pairs. In Experiment 1, we explored this possibility in ayes/no recognition test concerning previously learned arbitrary associations between visual symbols and auditory syllables. Rearranged pairs had a deleterious impact on the accuracy and the speed of responses to related correct pairs. This effect did not vary as a function of the number of training blocks, and furthermore, in Experiment 2, the same effect was observed for overlearned small multiplication facts. These results suggest that exposure to potentially confounding information generates interference even if this information is known to be incorrect. Some implications are outlined, especially with regard to the widespread use of multiple-choice tests in knowledge evaluation.     

Do children with grapheme-colour synaesthesia show cognitive benefits?

Grapheme-colour synaesthesia is characterized by conscious and consistent associations between letters and colours, or between numbers and colours (e.g., synaesthetes might see A as red, 7 as green). Our study explored the development of this condition in a group of randomly sampled child synaesthetes. Two previous studies (Simner & Bain, 2013, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 603; Simner, Harrold, Creed, Monro, & Foulkes, 2009, Brain, 132, 57) had screened over 600 primary school children to find the first randomly sampled cohort of child synaesthetes. In this study, we evaluate this cohort to ask whether their synaesthesia is associated with a particular cognitive profile of strengths and/or weaknesses. We tested our child synaesthetes at age 10–11 years in a series of cognitive tests, in comparison with matched controls and baseline norms. One previous study (Green & Goswami, 2008, Cognition, 106, 463) had suggested that child synaesthetes might perform differently to non-synaesthetes in such tasks, although those participants may have been a special type of population independent of their synaesthesia. In our own study of randomly sampled child synaesthetes, we found no significant advantages or disadvantages in a receptive vocabulary test and a memory matrix task. However, we found that synaesthetes demonstrated above-average performance in a processing-speed task and a near-significant advantage in a letter-span task (i.e., memory/recall task of letters). Our findings point to advantages for synaesthetes that go beyond those expected from enhanced coding accounts and we present the first picture of the broader cognitive profile of a randomly sampled population of child synaesthetes.     

Do young and older adults rely on different processes in source memory tasks? A neuropsychological study

Source memory has consistently been associated with prefrontal function in both normal and clinical populations. Nevertheless, the exact contribution of this brain region to source memory remains uncertain, and evidence suggests that processes used by young and older adults may differ. The authors explored the extent to which scores on composite measures of neuropsychological tests of frontal and medial temporal function differentially predicted the performance of young and older adults on source memory tasks. Results indicated that a frontal composite measure, consistently associated with source memory performance in older adults, was unrelated to source memory in young adults, although it was sensitive to a demanding working memory task. The memory composite score, however, predicted performance in the young group. In addition, item and source memory were correlated in young but not older people. Findings are discussed in terms of age-related differences in working memory and executive functions, and differential binding processes necessary for item and source memory. The requirement to integrate item and source information at encoding appears to place greater demands on executive or working memory processes in older adults than in younger adults.     

Do young children rehearse? An individual-differences analysis

The issue of whether young children rehearse in auditory memory tasks was investigated across a series of three studies comparing individual differences in articulation rates and memory spans. Applying the principles of the working-memory model, children with faster rates of speaking should have superior memory spans if they engage in rehearsal. Two of the experiments, with 4-year-old children, failed to establish any significant association between articulation rate and memory span, although both the memory span and articulation rate procedures were found to be highly reliable in this age group A third experiment confirmed that, as expected, articulation rates and memory spans were significantly associated with one another in adult subjects. The results indicate that, contrary to recent theories of children’s short-term-memory development, 4-year-old children do not engage in subvocal rehearsal during auditory memory span tasks.     

Discrimination of sea-bird sounds vs. garden-bird songs: Do Scottish and German-Saxon infants show the same preferential looking behaviour as adults?

Birdsong and human speech share some genetic origins (Haesler, Rochefort, Georgi, Licznerski, Osten, & Scharff, 2007 Haesler, S., Rochefort, C., Georgi, B., Licznerski, P., Osten, P. and Scharff, C. 2007. Incomplete and inaccurate vocal imitation after knockdown of FoxP2 in songbird basal ganglia nucleus area X. PLOS Biology, 5: e312–e321.  [Google Scholar]; Vargha-Khadem, Gadian, Copp, & Mishkin, 2005 Vargha-Khadem, F., Gadian, D. G., Copp, A. and Mishkin, M. 2005. FoxP2 and the neuroanatomy of speech and language. Nature Review of Neuroscience, 6: 131–138. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In two studies (N = 67 infants and N = 28 adults) in Scotland (UK) and Saxony (Germany), perceptual discrimination of innate, repetitive, lower frequency sea-bird sounds vs. learned, melodic, higher frequency garden-bird songs was tested in infants in their first year as well as in adults, using the conditioned head-turn procedure (CHTP; e.g., Jusczyk, Friederici, Wessels, Svernkerud, & Jusczyk, 1993 Jusczyk, P. W. and Krumhansl, C. L. 1993. Pitch and rhythmic patterns affecting infants' sensitivity to musical phrase structure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 19: 627–640.  [Google Scholar]). Infants and adults reliably distinguished between the two types of sounds. Independently of environment, infants paid more attention to sea-bird sounds than to garden-bird songs, while adults showed the reverse preference. Further analysis revealed additional insights into the underlying processes.     

Do young chimpanzees have extraordinary working memory?

Do chimpanzees have better spatial working memory than humans? In a previous report, a juvenile chimpanzee outperformed 3 university students on memory for briefly displayed digits in a spatial array (Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007). The authors described these abilities as extraordinary and likened the chimpanzee's performance to eidetic memory. However, the chimpanzee received extensive practice on a non-time-pressured version of the task; the human subjects received none. Here we report that, after adequate practice, 2 university students substantially outperformed the chimpanzee. There is no evidence for a superior or qualitatively different spatial memory system in chimpanzees.     

How accurately do young children and adults discriminate the gender of natural faces?

The effects of gender-relevant facial features and hairstyles on discrimination of sex of photographed men and women were examined. The stimuli were 36 photographs of natural faces: 9 masculine-males, 9 feminine-males, 9 masculine-females, and 9 feminine-females. Each of the nine faces had one of three hairstyles, hair concealed, short hair, or long hair. 33 children (M age=5:10) and 28 adults were asked to identify the sex of each stimulus. Children had difficulties with cross-gender faces and cross-gender hairstyles, such as a feminine-male face with long hair. Adults' discriminations were accurate except for masculine-female faces, while children's decisions depended both on hairstyle and internal facial features. Children's discriminations might be based both on their perceptual skill in detecting critical visual features and their knowledge of men and women.     

Do young children have adult syntactic competence?

Many developmental psycholinguists assume that young children have adult syntactic competence, this assumption being operationalized in the use of adult-like grammars to describe young children's language. This "continuity assumption" has never had strong empirical support, but recently a number of new findings have emerged - both from systematic analyses of children's spontaneous speech and from controlled experiments - that contradict it directly. In general, the key finding is that most of children's early linguistic competence is item based, and therefore their language development proceeds in a piecemeal fashion with virtually no evidence of any system-wide syntactic categories, schemas, or parameters. For a variety of reasons, these findings are not easily explained in terms of the development of children's skills of linguistic performance, pragmatics, or other "external" factors. The framework of an alternative, usage-based theory of child language acquisition - relying explicitly on new models from Cognitive-Functional Linguistics - is presented.     

The gendering of heterosexual religious young adults’ imagined futures

This article draws from a mixed-methods project that examined religion, youth, gender, and sexuality among young women and men aged between 18 and 25, from various religious traditions, and living in the UK. It charts how unmarried heterosexuals imagined their future lives in relation to marriage and parenthood. We deploy conceptual literature on ‘imagined future’, which is under-used in the sociology of religion, to explore what difference, if any, religious belonging makes to the futures the participants imagined. We assert that religion is part of their cultural tapestry, which broadly informed their values and actions. In other words, religion, as a component of culture, provides a ‘toolkit’ which they used in imagining futures that they deemed meaningful. This article contributes significantly to literature on gender and religious cultures and imagined future, highlighting the complex and interweaving role religion played in the way young adults in this study imagined their future gendered lives.     

The role of music in young adults’ spiritual development

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of spiritual music in Finnish young adults’ spirituality formation. The research data consist of interviews (2013, N = 10) and questionnaire answers (2011, N = 278). Spiritual music refers to music that the young adults themselves experienced supportive for their spirituality. The article indicates that the spiritual music enhanced young adults’ spirituality formation as the music was well related to the young adults’ current life questions and to experiences of early life span. According to the data, music offered tools for constructing personal world view and was experienced to strengthen confidence on higher power or life itself. As a mental resource, music had an important role in coping with life. As entertainment, spiritual music enhanced experiencing life as satisfying. As a part of public spiritual life, music advanced spiritual connection with other people. The role of spiritual music in spirituality formation was related to questions of spiritual well-being.     

Do dogs (Canis familiaris) show contagious yawning?

We report an experimental investigation into whether domesticated dogs display contagious yawning. Fifteen dogs were shown video clips of (1) humans and (2) dogs displaying yawns and open-mouth expressions (not yawns) to investigate whether dogs showed contagious yawning to either of these social stimuli. Only one dog performed significantly more yawns during or shortly after viewing yawning videos than to the open-mouth videos, and most of these yawns occurred to the human videos. No dogs showed significantly more yawning to the open-mouth videos (human or dog). The percentage of dogs showing contagious yawning was less than chimpanzees and humans showing this behavior, and considerably less than a recently published report investigating this behavior in dogs (Joly-Mascheroni et al. in Biol Lett 4:446–448, 2008).     

What counts as knowing? The development of conceptual and procedural knowledge of counting from kindergarten through Grade 2

The development of conceptual and procedural knowledge about counting was explored for children in kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 (N = 255). Conceptual knowledge was assessed by asking children to make judgments about three types of counts modeled by an animated frog: standard (correct) left-to-right counts, incorrect counts, and unusual counts. On incorrect counts, the frog violated the word-object correspondence principle. On unusual counts, the frog violated a conventional but inessential feature of counting, for example, starting in the middle of the array of objects. Procedural knowledge was assessed using speed and accuracy in counting objects. The patterns of change for procedural knowledge and conceptual knowledge were different. Counting speed and accuracy (procedural knowledge) improved with grade. In contrast, there was a curvilinear relation between conceptual knowledge and grade that was further moderated by children's numeration skills (as measured by a standardized test); the most skilled children gradually increased their acceptance of unusual counts over grade, whereas the least skilled children decreased their acceptance of these counts. These results have implications for studying conceptual and procedural knowledge about mathematics.     

Direct and indirect effects of parenting practices on socio‐moral approval of aggression in Polish young adults. Do all practices matter?

The purpose of this article was to determine the socialisation antecedents of socio‐moral approval of aggression (SMAA). In Study 1, we assessed factorial structure and reliability of the SMAA with a sample of 355 students who reported on the extent to which they approved of six forms of aggressive behaviour and six justifications of aggression. Two‐factor solutions were obtained with regard to forms and justifications of aggressive acts. Thus, approval of extreme and minor aggression was distinguished as well as legitimate and illegitimate justifications of aggression. In Study 2, we tested the path models of the socialisation antecedents that contributed to the high approval of minor and extreme aggressive acts as well as legitimate and illegitimate justifications of aggression. Data were collected from 173 undergraduate students. Path analyses showed that high levels of approval of extremely aggressive acts and of illegitimate justifications of aggression were preceded by a sequence of negative life events, beginning with frequent misbehaviour in childhood, corporal punishment used by parents and ending with delinquency in adolescence. The approval of minor aggression had little relation to socialisation factors apart from a detrimental effect of psychological aggression while approval of legitimate justifications of aggression had no socialisation antecedents.