Deficient Behavioral Inhibition and Anomalous Selective Attention in a Community Sample of Adolescents with Psychopathic Traits and Low-Anxiety Traits

Socialization is the important process by which individuals learn and then effectively apply the rules of appropriate societal behavior. Response modulation is a psychobiological process theorized to aid in socialization by allowing individuals to utilize contextual information to modify ongoing behavior appropriately. Using Hare’s (1991) Psychopathy Checklist and the Welsh (1956) anxiety scale, researchers have identified a relatively specific form of a response modulation deficit in low-anxious, Caucasian psychopaths. Preliminary evidence suggests that the Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD; Frick & Hare, 2001) may be used to identify children with a similar vulnerability. Using a representative community sample of 308 16-year-olds from the Child Development Project (Dodge, Bates, & Pettit, 1990), we tested and corroborated the hypotheses that participants with relatively low anxiety and high APSD scores would display poorer passive avoidance learning and less interference on a spatially separated, picture-word Stroop task than controls. Consistent with hypotheses, the expected group differences in picture-word Stroop interference were found with male and female participants, whereas predicted differences in passive avoidance were specific to male participants. To the extent that response modulation deficits contributing to poor socialization among psychopathic adult offenders also characterize a subgroup of adolescents with mild conduct problems, clarification of the developmental processes that moderate the expression of this vulnerability could inform early interventions.     

The effects of local and global processing demands on perception and action

The line-bisection task, adapted to utilise a wooden rod as the bisection stimulus, has revealed that patients with visuo-spatial neglect may be more accurate at bisection when asked to pick up the rod, compared to pointing to its centre. We recently reported that neurologically intact participants show a similar dissociation on this task-demonstrating a rightward bias when pointing to the centre, which was not present when grasping the rod by the centre. The current paper examined how pointing and grasping responses were affected by adapted rod-bisection tasks that emphasised local or global processing. In Experiment 1, 26 participants completed four rod-bisection tasks. The rods were compound stimuli and the participants directed to focus on either the local or global level. The results demonstrated that when participants focused on the global level, the previous dissociations found for pointing and grasping conditions were evident. However, the perception of centre did change when participants focused on the local level: both the pointing and grasping responses were rightward biased. In Experiment 2, 42 participants completed three bisection tasks which again emphasised either the local or global level, but in different sets of stimuli. The results of this task further support the findings in Experiment 1: the rightward bias in the local-bisection task was again evident and in addition, the global-bisection task resulted in no bias and no difference between the pointing and grasping bisections. These results demonstrate how task demands can similarly affect the pointing and grasping responses, and indicate that local and global processing may be involved in perception/action dissociations on rod bisection.     

Gender priming in Italian

The goals of the present study were (1) to determine whether grammatical gender on a noun modifier can prime recognition of the following noun, (2) to determine whether the priming effect involves facilitation, inhibition, or both, and (3) to compare performance across three different tasks that vary in the degree to which explicit attention to gender is required, including word repetition, gender monitoring, and grammaticality judgment. Results showed a clear effect of gender priming, involving both facilitation and inhibition. Priming was observed whether or not the subjects’ attention was directed to gender per se. Results suggest that gender priming involves a combination of controlled postlexical processing and automatic prelexical processing. Implications for different models of lexical access are discussed, with special reference to modular versus interactive-activation theories.     

(Mis)Understanding Strategy as a ‘Spectacular Intervention’: A Phenomenological Reflection on the Strategy Orientations Underpinning School Improvement in England

The introduction of the ‘National Strategies’ for primary education in 1998, positioned ‘strategy’ as a powerful instrument for mobilising the school ‘workforce’ in England in the cause of continuous improvement. Government approaches to strategy formulation and enactment appear to reflect an instrumentalist orientation found in many mainstream strategic management publications. This paper reflects on how the strategic pursuit of quick, ‘spectacular’ gains may lead to the loss of ethics of care. Phenomenological insights into modes of being-in-the-world are drawn upon to suggest that a preoccupation with strategy and its accompanying ‘toolkit’ of targets, standards and inspections diminishes a deeper engagement with the meaning and purpose of education. Based on Heidegger’s premise that understanding is at the core of being human, it is posited that the concern with ‘spectacular’ outputs is both superficial and potentially de-humanising. At the root of strategic thinking and the resulting forgetfulness of being is the Cartesian dogma and its dualistic (mis)understandings.     

Technology and At-Risk Young Readers and their Classrooms

This study examined the ways in which 18 first-grade teachers and their students in 11 high-risk urban schools began to use literacy-focused technology. The goal of the study was to observe the technology in use by the students, to observe the classroom dynamics and teachers’ instructional choices centered around technology use, to look at student learning, and to investigate student and teacher perceptions and beliefs as they began to use technology for literacy. Analyses of classroom and pupil observational data and of student performance data indicated positive effects of the literacy technology on classroom instruction and student literacy achievement. Further, interviews of students and teachers confirmed that the literacy technology was perceived as engaging and effective by both groups of stakeholders. The study also generated implications for further research and practice in schools struggling to make change.     

Significance of Rorschach Response Modified by Responses to Other Projective Tests

Suggestions are offered for distinguishing those instances in which a disturbed Rorschach may indicate a need for psychotherapy from those in which psychotherapy is not indicated. Two contrasting cases are presented. The difference lies not so much in the quality of the Rorschach per se as in the quality of supporting and supplementary test results. The Kinetic Family Drawing, the Lowenfeld Mosaic, the level and balance of verbal and performance IQ scores, and the nature of visual and perceptual problems are used.     

Genetic evidence for multiple biological mechanisms underlying in-group favoritism

In-group favoritism is ubiquitous and associated with intergroup conflict, yet is little understood from a biological perspective. A fundamental question regarding the structure of favoritism is whether it is inflexibly directed toward distinct, "essentialist" categories, such as ethnicity and race, or is deployed in a context-sensitive manner. In this article, we report the first study (to our knowledge) of the genetic and environmental structure of in-group favoritism in the religious, ethnic, and racial domains. We contrasted a model of favoritism based on a single domain-general central affiliation mechanism (CAM) with a model in which each domain was influenced by specific mechanisms. In a series of multivariate analyses, utilizing a large, representative sample of twins, models containing only the CAM or essentialist domains fit the data poorly. The best-fitting model revealed that a biological mechanism facilitates affiliation with arbitrary groups and exists alongside essentialist systems that evolved to process salient cues, such as shared beliefs and ancestry.     

Social information processing and cardiac predictors of adolescent antisocial behavior

The relations among social information processing (SIP), cardiac activity, and antisocial behavior were investigated in adolescents over a 3-year period (from ages 16 to 18) in a community sample of 585 (48% female, 17% African American) participants. Antisocial behavior was assessed in all 3 years. Cardiac and SIP measures were collected between the first and second behavioral assessments. Cardiac measures assessed resting heart rate (RHR) and heart rate reactivity (HRR) as participants imagined themselves being victimized in hypothetical provocation situations portrayed via video vignettes. The findings were moderated by gender and supported a multiprocess model in which antisocial behavior is a function of trait-like low RHR (for male individuals only) and deviant SIP. In addition, deviant SIP mediated the effects of elevated HRR reactivity and elevated RHR on antisocial behavior (for male and female participants).