Developmental changes in anger expression and attention focus: learning to wait

Being able to wait is an essential part of self-regulation. In the present study, the authors examined the developmental course of changes in the latency to and duration of target-waiting behaviors by following 65 boys and 55 girls from rural and semirural economically strained homes from ages 18 months to 48 months. Age-related changes in latency to and duration of children's anger expressions and attention focus (e.g., self-initiated distraction) during an 8-min wait for a gift were found. On average, at 18 and 24 months of age, children were quick to react angrily and slower to shift attention away from the desired object than they were at later ages. Over time, children were quicker to distract themselves. By 36 months, distractions occurred before children expressed anger, and anger expressions were briefer. At 48 months, children typically made a quick bid to their mothers about having to wait before distracting themselves; on average, they did not appear angry until the latter half of the wait. Unexpectedly, children bid to their mothers as much at age 48 months as they had at 18 months; however, bids became less angry as children got older. Developmental changes in distraction and bidding predicted age-related changes in the latency to anger. Findings are discussed in terms of the neurocognitive control of attention around age 30 months, the limitations of children's self-regulatory efforts at age 48 months, and the importance of fostering children's ability to forestall, as well as modulate, anger.     

Demographic and familial predictors of early executive function development: Contribution of a person-centered perspective

Executive function (EF) skills are integral components of young children’s growing competence, but little is known about the role of early family context and experiences in their development. We examined how demographic and familial risks during infancy predicted EF competence at 36 months of age in a large, predominantly low-income sample of nonurban families from Pennsylvania and North Carolina in the United States. Using latent class analysis, six ecological risk profiles best captured the diverse experiences of these families. Profiles with various combinations of family structure, income, and psychosocial risks were differentially related to EF. Much of the influence of early risks on later EF appears to be transmitted through quality of parent-child interactions during infancy. Findings suggest that early family environments may prove to be especially fruitful contexts for the promotion of EF development.     

Informed inferences of unknown feature values in categorization

Many current computational models of object categorization either include no explicit provisions for dealing with incomplete stimulus information (e.g. Kruschke, Psychological Review 99:22–44, 1992) or take approaches that are at odds with evidence from other fields (e.g. Verguts, Ameel, & Storms, Memory & Cognition 32:379–389, 2004). In two experiments centered around the inverse base-rate effect, we demonstrate that people not only make highly informed inferences about the values of unknown features, but also subsequently use the inferred values to come to a categorization decision. The inferences appear to be based on immediately available information about the particular stimulus under consideration, as well as on higher-level inferences about the stimulus class as a whole. Implications for future modeling efforts are discussed.     

A comparison of activity‐based to event‐based prospective memory

Four experiments were conducted that directly compared activity‐based to event‐based prospective memory. In general, when a goal is established to perform an activity at the conclusion of a different activity, successful completion suffers as compared with associating the same intention with a concrete environmental event. In this regard, activity‐based performance was worse than comparable event‐based conditions. However, certain conditions such as making transitional points salient between tasks and providing practice may ameliorate these differences between the two kinds of intentions. Other variables that may discriminate between these two kinds of intentions are considered; but the initial evidence favours the notion that ultimate goal completion covaries with the type of intention that is established initially at encoding and the degree of environmental support provided at retrieval. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Deficits in Attention to Emotional Stimuli Distinguish Youth with Severe Mood Dysregulation from Youth with Bipolar Disorder

Studying attention in the context of emotional stimuli may aid in differentiating pediatric bipolar disorder (BD) from severe mood dysregulation (SMD). SMD is characterized by chronic irritability, arousal, and hyper-reactivity; SMD youth frequently receive a BD diagnosis although they do not meet DSM-IV criteria for BD because they lack manic episodes. We compared 57 BD (14.4 ± 2.9 years old, 56% male), 41 SMD (12.6 ± 2.6 years old, 66% male), and 33 control subjects (13.7 ± 2.5 years old, 52% male) using the Emotional Interrupt task, which examines how attention is impacted by positive, negative, or neutral distracters. We compared reaction time (RT) and accuracy and calculated attention interference scores by subtracting performance on neutral trials from emotional trials. Between-group analyses indicated that SMD subjects had significantly reduced attention interference from emotional distracters relative to BD and control subjects. Thus, attention in SMD youth was not modulated by emotional stimuli. This blunted response in SMD youth may contribute to their affective and behavioral dysregulation.     

Valence of autobiographical memories: The role of mood, cognitive reappraisal, and suppression

The selective recall of positive memories is thought to be an effective mood repair technique, but little research has examined individual differences in the motivation or ability to implement this strategy. This study examined factors considered likely to impact valenced memory recall: dysphoria and emotion regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal and suppression). Dysphoria was related to memory negativity but not positivity, whereas cognitive reappraisal was associated with positivity but not negativity. Suppression was not reliably related to the valence of self-reported memories, but was associated with increased accessibility of negative memories, as indicated by a response time measure. Our results indicate a relationship between cognitive reappraisal and more positive memory and suggest that the experience of dysphoria is more strongly related to negativity than positivity of memory. Our findings highlight the utility of examining emotion regulatory variables, in addition to mood, in the study of valenced memory recall, and underscore the importance of including both behavioral and self-report memory measures.     

The Motivational Impact of Perceived Control on Behavioral Intentions

This research explores the moderated influence of perceived control and its underlying motivational processes. Perceptions of control can change one's motivation to engage in deliberative or nondeliberative processing when forming a behavioral intention. Studies were designed to test the moderated relationships of perceived control on decision theoretic variables (Study 1), to provide experimental evidence of differences in processing relative to levels of perceived control (Study 2), and to examine how levels of control induce motivation to engage cognitive resources toward a decision (Study 3). Findings support predictions that lower vs. higher levels of control result in the formation of behavioral intention based on deliberative rather than nondeliberative processing. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Differential patterns of spontaneous experiential response to a hypnotic induction: A latent profile analysis

A hypnotic induction produces different patterns of spontaneous experiences across individuals. The magnitude and characteristics of these responses covary moderately with hypnotic suggestibility, but also differ within levels of hypnotic suggestibility. This study sought to identify discrete phenomenological profiles in response to a hypnotic induction and assess whether experiential variability among highly suggestible individuals matches the phenomenological profiles predicted by dissociative typological models of high hypnotic suggestibility. Phenomenological state scores indexed in reference to a resting epoch during hypnosis were submitted to a latent profile analysis. The profiles in the derived four-class solution differed in multiple experiential dimensions and hypnotic suggestibility. Highly suggestible individuals were distributed across two classes that exhibited response patterns suggesting an inward attention subtype and a dissociative subtype. These results provide support for dissociative typological models of high hypnotic suggestibility and indicate that highly suggestible individuals do not display a uniform response to a hypnotic induction.     

Trust and distrust: the perception of trustworthiness of faces in psychopathic and non-psychopathic offenders

Psychopathy is a disorder linked to impairments in social cognition. Individuals with psychopathy and comparison individuals, as defined by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist Revised (Hare, 1991), completed a task requiring complex social judgments. Participants viewed a series of male faces, and made judgments concerning how trustworthy they considered the person pictured to be and the degree to which each face was displaying specific emotions. Judgments of trustworthiness did not differ between the individuals with psychopathy and the comparison individuals. Trustworthiness judgments of the faces negatively correlated with, in particular, ratings of anger in the faces for both groups of participants. The data are discussed with reference to the neural systems, including the amygdala, considered to be involved in the mediation of task performance and also neuro-cognitive models of psychopathy.