Becoming a high‐fidelity – super – imitator: what are the contributions of social and individual learning?

In contrast to other primates, human children's imitation performance goes from low to high fidelity soon after infancy. Are such changes associated with the development of other forms of learning? We addressed this question by testing 215 children (26–59 months) on two social conditions (imitation, emulation) – involving a demonstration – and two asocial conditions (trial‐and‐error, recall) – involving individual learning – using two touchscreen tasks. The tasks required responding to either three different pictures in a specific picture order (Cognitive: Airplane→Ball→Cow) or three identical pictures in a specific spatial order (Motor‐Spatial: Up→Down→Right). There were age‐related improvements across all conditions and imitation, emulation and recall performance were significantly better than trial‐and‐error learning. Generalized linear models demonstrated that motor‐spatial imitation fidelity was associated with age and motor‐spatial emulation performance, but cognitive imitation fidelity was only associated with age. While this study provides evidence for multiple imitation mechanisms, the development of one of those mechanisms – motor‐spatial imitation – may be bootstrapped by the development of another social learning skill – motor‐spatial emulation. Together, these findings provide important clues about the development of imitation, which is arguably a distinctive feature of the human species.     

Ethnicity,Social Support,and Depression Among Elderly Chilean People

Recent evidence regarding the relationship between social support and depression in elderly people shows the important role of ethnicity. This research describes the characteristics of social support in a sample of elderly people aged 60 and above living in northern Chile (n = 493), and analyzes the differences in the relationship between social support and depression between an indigenous group (Aymara population, n = 147) and a nonindigenous group (white, Caucasian, mestizo, n = 346). Various dimensions of social support were considered: structural elements, functional social support according to source, and community participation. The results show the existence of significant differences in the characteristics and dimensions of social support depending on sex, ethnicity, and marital status. Further, the central role of the family group is observed for both Aymara and nonindigenous elderly people. The hierarchical regression models obtained result in notable differences in the role of the structural, functional, and community elements of support in explaining depression for the ethnic groups considered.     

Bridging the Distance Between Us: How Initial Responses to Sales Team Conflict Help Shape Core Selling Team Outcomes

Intra-team conflict within core selling teams can shape team outcomes. Using congruency theory, we propose how conflict responses impact the relational distance between individuals in a core selling team, creating positive/negative team outcomes. Our framework suggests managers may improve team outcomes by monitoring sales team members' responses to conflict, encouraging internal cognitive voice behaviors, and intervening in teams not using internal cognitive voice behaviors when relational or process conflict exists. Our model helps explain the paradox in which an individual who is part of a “winning” team (one achieving its team goals) may still choose to exit the team.     

Anticipatory baseline effects and information integration in visual world studies

Researchers often conduct visual world studies to investigate how listeners integrate linguistic information with prior context. Such studies are likely to generate anticipatory baseline effects (ABEs), differences in listeners' expectations about what a speaker might mention that exist before a critical speech stimulus is presented. ABEs show that listeners have attended to and accessed prior contextual information in time to influence the processing of the critical speech stimulus. However, further evidence is required to show that the information actually did influence subsequent processing. ABEs can compromise the validity of inferences about information integration if they are not appropriately controlled. We discuss four solutions: statistical estimation, experimental control, elimination of “on-target” trials, and neutral gaze. An experiment compares the performance of these solutions, and suggests that the elimination of on-target trials introduces bias in the direction of ABEs, due to the statistical phenomenon of regression toward the mean. We conclude that statistical estimation, possibly coupled with experimental control, offers the most valid and least biased solution.     

Social support in the short- and middle-term prediction of welfare volunteers' permanence

This work explores the significance of different types and sources of social support in the short- and middle-term prediction of volunteer permanence. Volunteers ( N = 1362) belonging to 109 different Spanish organizations were surveyed to gather social support data and other information related to factors traditionally associated with sustained volunteerism prediction. In spite of the fact that a relationship between social support and permanence was found, logistic regression analysis showed that social support variables did not appear to be relevant to make this kind of prediction at short term, because the only factors associated with volunteers' permanence in the multivariate model obtained were the volunteers' previous time in the organization, their intention of remaining in service, and their sex and religious attitudes. In contrast, at middle term, social support and, in particular, informational social support from other volunteers was significant, integrating the multivariate model with the other aforementioned factors, except for sex.     

Form effects on the estimation of students' oral reading fluency using DIBELS

This study examined the effects of passage and presentation order on progress monitoring assessments of oral reading fluency in 134 second grade students. The students were randomly assigned to read six one-minute passages in one of six fixed orders over a seven week period. The passages had been developed to be comparable based on readability formulas. Estimates of oral reading fluency varied across the six stories (67.9 to 93.9), but not as a function of presentation order. These passage effects altered the shape of growth trajectories and affected estimates of linear growth rates, but were shown to be removed when forms were equated. Explicit equating is essential to the development of equivalent forms, which can vary in difficulty despite high correlations across forms and apparent equivalence through readability indices.     

Marital Status and Outcome in Patients with Coronary Heart Disease

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of marital status to health outcomes in 818 post-MI, coronary artery bypass surgery, and angioplasty patients (651 males, 157 females) from seven Northern California hospitals who completed 12 months of a nurse-managed, home-based multifactorial risk reduction program. Compared to married patients, nonmarried patients were significantly less likely to complete the program than married patients, more likely to smoke at baseline, and drank significantly less alcohol at baseline. At 12 months there were no significant differences between married and nonmarried groups on smoking cessation rates, HDL, LDL, triglycerides, or exercise treadmill test results. When patients were categorized as married, divorced, separated, widowed, or single, similar results were found for the analyses using two groups (married versus nonmarried), with the following exceptions. Separated patients were significantly less likely to quit smoking. In addition, separated patients showed significantly higher rates of starting (and continuing) to smoke during the time following their MI. Mortality was not significantly different between married and unmarried patients. Implications for intervention with separated patients and the importance of assessing both marital status and marital quality are discussed.