The relationship between reduplicated babble onset and laterality biases in infant rhythmic arm movements

This study examined changes in rhythmic arm shaking and laterality biases in infants observed longitudinally at three points: just prior to, at, and just following reduplicated babble onset. Infants (ranging in age from 4 to 9 months at babble onset) were videotaped at home as they played with two visually identical audible and silent rattles presented at midline for 1.5 min each. Rate of rattle shaking increased sharply from the pre-babble to the babble onset session; but there was no indication that this increase was specific to the right arm. This finding suggests that the link between babble onset and increased rhythmic arm activity may not be the product of language-specific mechanisms, but is rather part of a broader developmental process that is also perceptual and motor.     

Do as I do: 7-month-old infants selectively reproduce others' goals

In the current study, we tested whether 7-month-old infants would selectively imitate the goal-relevant aspects of an observed action. Infants saw an experimenter perform an action on one of two small toys and then were given the opportunity to act on the toys. Infants viewed actions that were either goal-directed or goal-ambiguous, and that represented either completed or uncompleted goals. Infants reproduced the goal of the experimenter only in those cases where the action was goal-directed, in both the complete and incomplete goal conditions. These results provide the first evidence that infants as young as 7 months of age selectively imitate actions based on their goal-directedness, and that they are able to analyze the goals of even uncompleted actions. Even during the first year of life, infants' sensitivity to goal-directed action is expressed not only in their responses in visual habituation procedures, but also in their overt actions.     

Understanding cognitive failures: what's dissociation got to do with it?

Intuitively, cognitive failures and dissociation seem to encompass overlapping mental phenomena. This study used a large sample to examine the nature of the relationship between these constructs. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses were performed on the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ). The single factor resulting from the EFA of the CFQ correlated significantly with all factors from the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES). A conjoint item-level factor analysis using all items from both measures was performed, and two factors resulted. The first included all items from the CFQ and appeared to describe an absorption-like phenomenon. The second factor's highest positively loading items assessed more pathological forms of dissociation. Based on our results, we conclude that the CFQ and DES are assessing similar cognitive processes and that cognitive failures, as measured by the CFQ, overlap with nonpathological dissociation.     

The relationship between gender role orientation and perceived self-competency in male and female adolescents

Sex Roles - Relationships among gender, gender role orientation, grade, and perceived self-competency were examined in this study. Subjects were almost entirely Caucasian and included one hundred...     

Effects of threat cues on attentional shifting, disengagement and response slowing in anxious individuals

According to cognitive models of anxiety, attentional biases for threat may cause or maintain anxiety states. Previous research using spatial cueing tasks has been interpreted in terms of difficulty in disengaging attention from threat in anxious individuals, as indicated by contrasts of response times (RTs) from threat cue versus neutral cue trials. However, on spatial cueing tasks, differences in RT between threat cue and neutral cue trials may stem from a slowing effect of threat on RT, as well as effects on allocation of visuospatial attention. The present study examined the effects of threat cues on both attentional cueing and response slowing. High and low anxious individuals completed a central cue task, which assessed threat-related response slowing, and a spatial cueing task, which assessed attentional biases for angry, happy and neutral faces. Results indicated that interpretation of the anxiety-related bias for threat depended on whether the effect of response slowing was taken into account. The study illustrates an important problem in using the modified spatial cueing task to assess components of threat-related attentional bias. As this experimental method may reflect both threat-related attentional cueing and response slowing effects, it cannot be assumed to provide pure measures of shift or disengagement components of attention bias.     

Occasional reinforced responses during extinction can slow the rate of reacquisition of an operant response

Three experiments with rats examined reacquisition of an operant response after either extinction or a response-elimination procedure that included occasional reinforced responses during extinction. In each experiment, reacquisition was slower when response elimination had included occasional reinforced responses, although the effect was especially evident when responding was examined immediately following each response-reinforcer pairing during reacquisition (Experiments 2 and 3). An extinction procedure with added noncontingent reinforcers also slowed reacquisition (Experiment 3). The results are consistent with research in classical conditioning (Bouton, M. E., Woods, A. M., & Pineño, O. (2004). Occasional reinforced trials during extinction can slow the rate of rapid reacquisition. Learning & Motivation, 35, 371-390) and suggest that rapid reacquisition after extinction is analogous to a renewal effect that occurs when reinforced responses signal a return to the conditioning context. Clinical implications are also discussed.     

Relations Between Emotion Regulation, Parenting, and Psychopathology in Young Maltreated Children in Out of Home Care

Young maltreated children, birth to three years, represent the age group with the highest rates of maltreatment in the United States (ACYF 2007). There are few studies to date that have investigated early childhood maltreatment and its effects on emotion regulatory processes and psychopathology. In response, the current investigation uses a dyadic assessment procedure to examine the relationship between parenting, emotion regulation, and symptoms of psychopathology among maltreating and non-maltreating parent–child interactions. The participants in this study were 123 children (66 maltreated and 57 nonmaltreated) from ages 1–3. Child and parent affect and child effortful control were observed during a parent–child interaction task. Symptoms of psychopathology were measured using the Child Behavior Checklist. The maltreated children exhibited more anger, more internalizing symptomatology, and less positive affect compared to non-maltreated children. Among maltreated children, emotion dysregulation was associated with internalizing symptomatology. Moreover, these data reveal parental positive affect was associated with lower child internalizing symptomatology and parental anger was associated with higher child internalizing symptomatology in the entire sample. This investigation offers evidence that emotion dysregulation subsequent to poor dyadic interactions is associated with early child maltreatment. These data suggest that maltreated children experience difficulties in emotion regulation which may be related to their higher levels of behavioral symptomatology.     

Illusory control as a function of the motivation to avoid randomly determined aversive outcomes

Previous research has provided evidence that the need to attain appetitive outcomes positively affects the certainty of winning that outcome in purely chance-based games. Three experiments were conducted to test the notion that the need to avoid an aversive outcome affects winning confidence in the same fashion. In Experiment 1, participants were given the opportunity to avoid having to give an introductory remark (low need) or an impromptu speech (high need) to a group of peers by winning a chance-based card-drawing game. As predicted, confidence-in-winning ratings were found to be a positive function of outcome need. In Experiment 2, participants faced a similar card-drawing procedure but this time could avoid ostensibly having their arms submersed in either room temperature water (low need) or cold water (high need) need. Again as expected, results showed that participants in the high need condition not only displayed greater winning confidence but also believed more skill was involved in playing the purely chance-based game. In Experiment 3, the methodology of Experiment 1 was replicated incorporating a skill measure. The results of this experiment mirrored those of Experiment 2. Results of these investigations are discussed in terms of control theory.

Stereoscopic shape discrimination is well preserved across changes in object size

A single experiment evaluated human observers’ ability to discriminate the shape of solid objects that varied in size and orientation in depth. The object shapes were defined by binocular disparity, Lambertian shading, and texture. The object surfaces were smoothly curved and had naturalistic shapes, resembling those of water-smoothed granite rocks. On any given trial, two objects were presented that were either the same or different in terms of shape. When the “same” objects were presented, they differed in their orientation in depth by 25°, 45°, or 65°. The observers were required to judge whether any given pair of objects was the “same” or “different” in terms of shape. The size of the objects was also varied by amounts up to ±40% relative to the standard size. The observers’ shape discrimination performance was strongly affected by the magnitude of the orientation changes in depth - thus, their performance was viewpoint dependent. In contrast, the observers’ shape discrimination abilities were only slightly affected by changes in the overall size of the objects. It appears that human observers can recognize the three-dimensional shape of objects in a manner that is relatively independent of size.