Behavioral and social cognitive processes in preschool children's social dominance

This longitudinal, naturalistic study addressed behavioral and social cognitive processes implicated in preschool children's social dominance. In the first objective, we examined the degree to which peer aggression, affiliation, and postaggression reconciliation predicted social dominance across a school year. Consistent with predictions, all three predicted dominance early in the year while only affiliation predicted dominance later in the year, suggesting that aggression, affiliation, and reconciliation were used to establish social dominance where affiliation was used to maintain it. In the second, exploratory, objective we tested the relative importance of social dominance and reconciliation (the Machiavellian and Vygotskian intelligence hypotheses, respectively) in predicting theory of mind/false belief. Results indicated that social dominance accounted for significant variance, beyond that related to reconciliation and affiliation, in predicting theory of mind/false belief status. Results are discussed in terms of specific behavioral and social cognitive processes employed in establishing and maintaining social dominance.     

By any means necessary: the effects of regulatory focus and moral conviction on hostile and benevolent forms of collective action

In two studies, we investigate the effect of individuals' promotion and prevention focus on engagement in collective action. We show that responding to group-based disadvantage out of a sense of moral conviction motivates prevention-oriented- but not promotion-oriented- individuals to engage in collective action. Furthermore, holding such strong moral convictions about the fair treatment of their group causes the prevention-oriented to disregard societal rules against hostile forms of collective action (i.e., forms of action that are aimed at harming the interests of those held responsible for the group's disadvantage). Study 1 showed that prevention-oriented individuals, but not promotion-oriented individuals, with a strong moral conviction about the fair treatment of their group are willing to support both hostile and benevolent forms of collective action. Study 2 replicated this effect and showed that for prevention-oriented individuals but not for promotion-oriented individuals, holding a strong moral conviction about the fair treatment of the group overrides moral objections to hostile forms of collective action in the decision to support these forms of action.     

Drugs, mental instruments, and self-control

The instrumental model offered by Müller & Schumann (M&S) is broadened to apply not only to drugs, but also to other methods of self-control, including the use of mental constructs to produce adaptive changes in behavior with the possibility of synergistic interactions between various instruments.     

Basic Information Processing Abilities at 11 years Account for Deficits in IQ Associated with Preterm Birth

Although it is well established that preterms as a group do poorly relative to their full-term peers on tests of global cognitive functioning, the basis for this relative deficiency is less understood. The present paper examines preterm deficits in core cognitive abilities and determines their role in mediating preterm/full-term differences in IQ. The performance of 11-year-old children born preterm (birth weight < 1750 g) and their full-term controls were compared on a large battery of 15 tasks, covering four basic cognitive domains — memory, attention, speed of processing and representational competence. The validity of these four domains was established using latent variables and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Preterms showed pervasive deficits within and across domains. Additionally, preterm deficits in IQ were completely mediated by these four cognitive domains in a structural equation model involving a cascade from elementary abilities (attention and speed), to more complex abilities (memory and representational competence), to IQ. The similarity of findings to those obtained with this cohort in infancy and toddlerhood suggests that preterm deficits persist — across time, across task, and from the non-verbal to the verbal period.     

The influence of attachment and temperament on venipuncture distress in 14-month-old infants: the Generation R Study

Objective

This study examined the effects of attachment and temperament on infant distress during venipuncture.

Method

The study was embedded in the Generation R Study, a prospective population-based study. Two different research procedures (i.e., blood sampling and the Ainsworth Strange Situation Procedure) yielded measures of venipuncture distress and attachment security and disorganization in 246 infants aged 14 months. Four temperament traits (distress to limitations, fear, recovery from distress, and sadness) were assessed using the maternally reported Infant Behavior Questionnaire - Revised, at the age of 6 months.

Results

There were no differences between mean levels of distress during venipuncture in infants classified as having insecure attachment, but there was a trend for disorganized attachment. The temperament traits were not related to distress. However, children with a disorganized attachment and higher temperamental fear had more venipuncture distress.

Conclusion

When different risk factors are present simultaneously, infant distress is heightened.     

Psychometric evaluation of the Dutch Persecutory Ideation Questionnaire (PIQ) and its relation to aggression

Patients with schizophrenia and a violent past more often have persecutory delusions than other types of delusions. The main aim of the present study was to examine the relation between persecutory ideation and self-reported aggression in a community based and clinical population. A second aim was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the Persecutory Ideation Questionnaire (PIQ; McKay, Langdon, & Coltheart, 2006). From the general population, 269 persons were included as well as 79 inpatients from different psychiatric facilities. In the community based sample, the PIQ appeared to be a reliable and valid instrument to measure persecutory ideation. Evaluation of the PIQ in a sample with patients with a psychotic disorder showed that the PIQ had good criterion validity. In addition, results showed that persecutory ideation was significantly related to self-reported aggression in the community based, and in the clinical sample. Moreover, in the community based sample, this association was higher than that between positive psychopathological experiences in general and aggression in the community based sample. In sum, persecutory ideation can be measured reliably with the PIQ, and there seems a robust relation between persecutory ideation in particular and aggression in both clinical and community based samples.     

Positive affect increases cognitive control in the antisaccade task

To delineate the modulatory effects of induced positive affect on cognitive control, the current study investigated whether positive affect increases the ability to suppress a reflexive saccade in the antisaccade task. Results of the antisaccade task showed that participants made fewer erroneous prosaccades in the condition in which a positive mood was induced compared to the neutral condition (i.e. in which no emotional mood was induced). This improvement of oculomotor inhibition was restricted to saccades with an express latency. These results are in line with the idea that enhanced performance in the positive affect condition could be caused by increased dopaminergic neurotransmission the brain.     

Now you see it, now you don't: evidence for age-dependent and age-independent cross-modal distraction

Age-related deficits in selective attention have often been demonstrated in the visual modality and, to a lesser extent, in the auditory modality. In contrast, a mounting body of evidence has suggested that cross-modal selective attention is intact in aging, especially in visual tasks that require ignoring the auditory modality. Our goal in this study was to investigate age-related differences in the ability to ignore cross-modal auditory and visual distraction and to assess the role of cognitive control demands thereby. In a set of two experiments, 30 young (mean age = 23.3 years) and 30 older adults (mean age = 67.7 years) performed a visual and an auditory n-back task (0 ≤ n ≤ 2), with and without cross-modal distraction. The results show an asymmetry in cross-modal distraction as a function of sensory modality and age: Whereas auditory distraction did not disrupt performance on the visual task in either age group, visual distraction disrupted performance on the auditory task in both age groups. Most important, however, visual distraction was disproportionately larger in older adults. These results suggest that age-related distraction is modality dependent, such that suppression of cross-modal auditory distraction is preserved and suppression of cross-modal visual distraction is impaired in aging.