Building a Pink Dinosaur: the Effects of Gendered Construction Toys on Girls’ and Boys’ Play

Play with building toys such as LEGO® sets promotes spatial learning in children. The present study examined the effects of the color of the bricks (either pink or blue) and the femininity/masculinity of the object built on boys’ and girls’ play with LEGO® sets. Children (n = 116, M _age  = 7.27 range = 5–10) were given the opportunity to build with LEGO® brick sets, both instructed and free play tasks. For the instructed task, the type of object (feminine: cat; masculine: dinosaur) and color of the bricks (pink, blue) were counterbalanced across participants. Their play was coded for accuracy of following the instructions and time to complete the task. In the free play task, brick color (pink, blue) was counterbalanced across participants, and structures were coded for femininity/masculinity and the number of bricks used. Overall, children took longer to build a feminine object with blue bricks than with pink bricks. In the free-play task, boys built more masculine objects than girls did, regardless of the color of bricks they were given. Results showed that boys completed the LEGO® tasks faster than did girls, controlling for interest in and experience with LEGO® play. These findings suggest that toy color and type can impact how children interact and play with toys.     

A Controlled Study of Clicker‐Assisted Memory Enhancement in College Classrooms

Personal response systems, commonly called ‘clickers’, are widely used in secondary and post‐secondary classrooms. Although many studies show they enhance learning, experimental findings are mixed, and methodological issues limit their conclusions. Moreover, prior work has not determined whether clickers affect cognitive change or simply alert students to information likely to be on tests. The present investigation used a highly controlled methodology that removed subject and item differences from the data to explore the effect of clicker questions on memory for targeted facts in a live classroom and to gain a window on the cognitive processes affecting the outcome. We found that in‐class clicker questions given in a university psychology class augmented performance on delayed exam questions by 10–13%. Experimental results and a class survey indicate that it is unlikely that the observed effects can be attributed solely to attention grabbing. Rather, the data suggest the technology invokes the testing effect. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Direct-to-Consumer Personal Genomic Testing: A Case Study and Practical Recommendations for “Genomic Counseling”

Technological advances and information-seeking consumers have pushed forward the movement of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing. Just like with other types of testing, there are potential risks, benefits and limitations. A major limitation of DTC testing is the incomplete view it provides regarding lifetime risk for common, complex diseases, since most tests only analyze 1–2 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and do not include evaluation of medical or family histories, which is necessary to risk assessment. Further, it is not currently well-established whether personal genomic testing results will lead toward improved health behaviors, adverse psychological effects or potential overuse of the health care system. To display these and other issues, we present an in-depth case study of an individual who ordered DTC genetic testing and subsequently sought genetic counseling. This case presents a unique learning experience for the field of genomic counseling, as the patient did not fit the typical assumptions regarding ‘early adopters’ of DTC testing. It also allowed the genetics health care providers involved in the case to identify gaps in current genetic counseling practice that need to be filled and approaches to employ for successful delivery of genomic counseling. Based on our experience, we developed practical recommendations for genomic counseling, which include novel approaches to case preparation, use of electronic tools during the counseling session, and focusing on education as the major component of the genomic counseling session, in order to provide patients with the knowledge necessary to independently interpret and understand large amounts of genomic testing information provided to them.     

Parent and Family Impact of Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Review and Proposed Model for Intervention Evaluation

Raising a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be an overwhelming experience for parents and families. The pervasive and severe deficits often present in children with ASD are associated with a plethora of difficulties in caregivers, including decreased parenting efficacy, increased parenting stress, and an increase in mental and physical health problems compared with parents of both typically developing children and children with other developmental disorders. In addition to significant financial strain and time pressures, high rates of divorce and lower overall family well-being highlight the burden that having a child with an ASD can place on families. These parent and family effects reciprocally and negatively impact the diagnosed child and can even serve to diminish the positive effects of intervention. However, most interventions for ASD are evaluated only in terms of child outcomes, ignoring parent and family factors that may have an influence on both the immediate and long-term effects of therapy. It cannot be assumed that even significant improvements in the diagnosed child will ameliorate the parent and family distress already present, especially as the time and expense of intervention can add further family disruption. Thus, a new model of intervention evaluation is proposed, which incorporates these factors and better captures the transactional nature of these relationships.     

The Effect of Praise, Positive Nonverbal Response, Reprimand, and Negative Nonverbal Response on Child Compliance: A Systematic Review

Lack of compliance has both short- and long-term costs and is a leading reason why parents seek mental health services for children. What parents do to help children comply with directives or rules is an important part of child socialization. The current review examines the relationship between a variety of parenting discipline behaviors (i.e., praise, positive nonverbal response, reprimand, negative nonverbal response) and child compliance. Forty-one studies of children ranging in age from 1? to 11?years were reviewed. Reprimand and negative nonverbal responses consistently resulted in greater compliance. Praise and positive nonverbal responses resulted in mixed child outcomes. The findings are discussed based on theory and populations studied. The authors propose a mechanism that may increase children’s sensitivity to both positive and negative behavioral contingencies.     

Worms under cover: relationships between performance in learning tasks and personality in great tits (Parus major)

In animals, individual differences in learning ability are common and are in part explained by genetic differences, developmental conditions and by general experience. Yet, not all variations in learning are well understood. Individual differences in learning may be associated with elementary individual characteristics that are consistent across situations and over time, commonly referred to as personality or temperament. Here, we tested whether or not male great tits (Parus major) from two selection lines for fast or slow exploratory behaviour, an operational measure for avian personality, vary in their learning performance in two related consecutive tasks. In the first task, birds had to associate a colour with a reward whereas in the second task, they had to associate a new colour with a reward ignoring the previously rewarded colour. Slow explorers had shorter latencies to approach the experimental device compared with fast explorers in both tasks, but birds from the two selection lines did not differ in accomplishing the first task, that is, to associate a colour with a reward. However, in the second task, fast explorers had longer latencies to solve the trials than slow explorers. Moreover, relative to the number of trials needed to reach the learning criteria in the first task, birds from the slow selection line took more trials to associate a new colour with a reward while ignoring the previously learned association compared with birds from the fast selection line. Overall, the experiments suggest that personality in great tits is not strongly related to learning per se in such an association task, but that birds from different selection lines might express different learning strategies as birds from the different selection lines were differently affected by their previous learning performance.