Preschool children with externalizing behaviors: Experience of fathers and mothers

Childhood behavior disorders are related to family stress and maladjustment. Little is known, however, about the adjustment of families with preschool-aged children at risk for subsequent behavior disorders. Moreover, fathers' perceptions of child problem behavior and their reactions to it generally have been neglected. Subjects were mothers and fathers of 52 preschool-aged children assigned to one of three groups: control, moderate externalizing, and high externalizing. Higher child externalizing behavior was associated with greater negative family impact, lowered parenting sense of efficacy, and child-rearing practices that were more authoritarian and less authoritative. Mothers and fathers did not differ in actual perceived level of child behavior problems, although both believed that mothers saw more problems. Child Group × Parent interactions indicated that mothers experienced increased stress and a need for help with moderate as well as high child externalizing behaviors, whereas fathers were not elevated on these measures unless the child's externalizing behaviors were high. Implications of these findings for early family intervention are considered.This study is part of the Preschool Project, conducted at UCLA's Fernald Child Study Center, Co-PIs Bruce L. Baker and Barbara Henker. We appreciate the involvement of Barbara Henker, Erin Gallagher, Laurel Smith, and Terry Webster. We also appreciate the very helpful anonymous feedback from the two journal reviewers.     

Aging and goal-directed emotional attention: distraction reverses emotional biases

Previous findings reveal that older adults favor positive over negative stimuli in both memory and attention (for a review, see Mather & Carstensen, 2005). This study used eye tracking to investigate the role of cognitive control in older adults' selective visual attention. Younger and older adults viewed emotional-neutral and emotional-emotional pairs of faces and pictures while their gaze patterns were recorded under full or divided attention conditions. Replicating previous eye-tracking findings, older adults allocated less of their visual attention to negative stimuli in negative-neutral stimulus pairings in the full attention condition than younger adults did. However, as predicted by a cognitive-control-based account of the positivity effect in older adults' information processing tendencies (Mather & Knight, 2005), older adults' tendency to avoid negative stimuli was reversed in the divided attention condition. Compared with younger adults, older adults' limited attentional resources were more likely to be drawn to negative stimuli when they were distracted. These findings indicate that emotional goals can have unintended consequences when cognitive control mechanisms are not fully available.     

Visual and phonological components of working memory in children

Previous studies have shown that young children's immediate memory for a short series of drawings of objects is mediated by a visual component of working memory, whereas older children rely chiefly upon a phonological component. Three experiments investigated the hypothesis that older children rely also, but to a lesser extent, on visual working memory. Experiment 1 confirmed previous evidence that 11-year-olds' memory is disrupted by phonemic similarity of object names, but is unaffected by visual similarity of the objects themselves. However, when articulatory suppression was used to prevent phonological coding, levels of recall were sensitive to visual rather than phonemic similarity. Experiment 2 compared the effects of interpolating an auditory-verbal or a visual postlist task on memory for drawings viewed either with or without suppression. The visual task had a clear disruptive effect only in the suppression condition, where it interfered selectively with recall of the most recent item. Experiment 3 compared the effects of interpolating an auditory-verbal or a mixed-modality (visual-auditory) postlist task when subjects were not required to suppress. There was greater interference from the mixed-modality task, and this effect was confined to the last item presented. These experiments are taken as confirming the presence of a small but reliable contribution from visual memory in 11-year-old children's recall. As in younger children, visual working memory in 11-year-olds is sensitive to visual similarity and is responsible for a final-item visual recency effect. The results also show that older children's use of visual working memory is usually masked by the more pervasive phonological component of recall. Some implications for the structure of working memory and its development are discussed.     

Neural Network Models as Evidence for Different Types of Visual Representations

Cook (1995) criticizes the work of Jacobs and Kosslyn (1994) on spatial relations, shape representations, and receptive fields in neural network models on the grounds that first-order correlations between input and output unit activities can explain the results. We reply briefly to Cook's arguments here (and in Kosslyn, Chabris, Marsolek, Jacobs & Koenig, 1995) and discuss how new simulations can confirm the importance of receptive field size as a crucial variable in the encoding of categorical and coordinate spatial relations and the corresponding shape representations; such simulations would testify to the computational distinction between the different types of representations.     

Labeling guides object individuation in 12-month-old infants

A new manual search method was used to investigate the impact of naming on object individuation in 12-month-old infants. In Experiment 1, on a two-word trial, an experimenter looked into a box while the infant was watching and provided two labels (e.g., "Look, a fep!" and "Look, a wug!"). On a one-word trial, the experimenter instead repeated the same label (e.g., "Look, a zav!"). After the infant retrieved one object from the box, subsequent search behavior was recorded. Infants searched more persistently (i.e., for a longer duration) after hearing two labels than one, suggesting that hearing two labels led the infants to expect two objects inside the box. In Experiment 2, infants' search behavior did not differ depending on whether they heard one or two emotional expressions, suggesting that the facilitation effect observed in Experiment 1 may be specific to linguistic expressions. Thus, we provide the first evidence that infants as young as 12 months are able to use intentional and referential cues to guide their object representations. These findings also suggest that a rudimentary version of the mutual-exclusivity constraint may be functional by the end of the first year.     

The perception of handshapes in American Sign Language

Despite the constantly varying stream of sensory information that surrounds us, we humans can discern the small building blocks of words that constitute language (phonetic forms) and perceive them categorically (categorical perception, CP). Decades of controversy have prevailed regarding what is at the heart of CP, with many arguing that it is due to domain-general perceptual processing and others that it is determined by the existence of domain-specific linguistic processing. What is most key: perceptual or linguistic patterns? Here, we study whether CP occurs withsoundless handshapes that are nonethelessphonetic in American Sign Language (ASL), in signers and nonsigners. Using innovative methods and analyses of identification and, crucially, discrimination tasks, we found that both groups separated the soundless handshapes into two classes perceptually but that only the ASL signers exhibited linguistic CP. These findings suggest that CP of linguistic stimuli is based on linguistic categorization, rather than on purely perceptual categorization.     

Articulatory constraints on interpersonal postural coordination

Cooperative conversation has been shown to foster interpersonal postural coordination. The authors investigated whether such coordination is mediated by the influence of articulation on postural sway. In Experiment 1, talkers produced words in synchrony or in alternation, as the authors varied speaking rate and word similarity. Greater shared postural activity was found for the faster speaking rate. In Experiment 2, the authors demonstrated that shared postural activity also increases when individuals speak the same words or speak words that have similar stress patterns. However, this increase in shared postural activity is present only when participants' data are compared with those of their partner, who was present during the task, but not when compared with the data of a member of a different pair speaking the same word sequences as those of the original partner. The authors' findings suggest that interpersonal postural coordination observed during conversation is mediated by convergent speaking patterns.     

The relationship between moral philosophy and medical ethics reconsidered

Medical ethics often is treated as applied ethics, that is, the application of moral philosophy to ethical issues in medicine. In an earlier paper, we examined instances of moral philosophy's influence on medical ethics. We found the applied ethics model inadequate and sketched an alternative model. On this model, practitioners seeking to change morality "appropriate" concepts and theory fragments from moral philosophy to valorize and justify their innovations. Goldilocks-like, five commentators tasted our offerings. Some found them too cold, since they had already abandoned applied ethics; others too hot, since they still find the applied ethics model to their taste. We reply that the appropriation model offers an empirically testable account of the historical relationship between moral philosophy and medical ethics that explains why practitioners appropriate concepts and fragments from moral philosophy. In contrast, the now fashionable common morality theory neither explains moral change nor why practitioners turn to moral philosophy.     

Kinesthetic aftereffects and individual differences in carryover effects

Prior research has found that individual differences in long-lasting carryover effects occur in the kinesthetic aftereffect (KAE) task both when the aftereffect inducing block was wider (I greater than T) and narrower (I less than T) than the test block. The present study found that such individual differences in carryover effects also occur for a no-aftereffect-induction control condition, with a magnitude approximately equal to that found for the I greater than T and I less than KAE variants used here.