Use of morphology in spelling by children with dyslexia and typically developing children

In English and some other languages, spelling problems that arise at a phonological level can sometimes be solved through consideration of morphology. For example, children could infer that tuned should contain an n and that fighting should contain a t because their stems include these letters. Children could thus avoid misspellings that might otherwise occur, such as "tud" and "fiding." We used a spelling-level match design to examine the extent to which children with dyslexia and younger typical children use morphology in this way. Both groups of children benefited from morphology to some extent, but not as much as they could have given their knowledge of the stems. Our results suggest that the spellings produced by older children with dyslexia are similar to those of younger normal children in their morphological characteristics, as well as in other ways.     

360 degree feedback: accuracy, reactions, and perceptions of usefulness

This study examined how 360 degree feedback ratings and self-other rating discrepancies related to reactions to feedback, perceptions of feedback accuracy, perceived usefulness of the feedback, and recipients' receptivity to development. The results indicated that less favorable ratings were related to beliefs that feedback was less accurate and to negative reactions. Negative reactions and perceptions that feedback was less accurate were related to beliefs that the feedback was less useful. Those who found feedback less useful were perceived by a facilitator as less development-focused. Goal orientation did not moderate the relationship between ratings and perceptions of accuracy or reactions to feedback. Goal orientation was related to perceptions of usefulness of the process several weeks after receipt of feedback. The results question widely held assumptions about 360 degree feedback that negative and discrepant feedback motivates positive change.     

Use of landmark features and geometry by children and adults during a two-dimensional search task

Three- to six-year-old children (n = 28) and adults (n = 46) participated in a two-dimensional search task that included geometry and feature conditions. During each of 24 trials, participants watched as a cartoon character hid behind one of three landmarks arranged in a triangle on a computer screen. The landmarks and character then disappeared and reappeared in the same or a new position on the screen. During feature condition trials participants could use unique features of the landmarks to locate the hidden character, while during geometry trials participants could only use the geometry of the triangle. In both conditions, adults’ performance was near ceiling while children’s performance was significantly worse. Children’s performance was worse in the geometry condition than in the feature condition but search accuracy improved with age for both types of information. Findings are considered in the context of the broader literature on spatial cognition and development.     

The unconscious cost of good fortune: implicit and explicit self-esteem, positive life events, and health.

J. D. Brown and K. L. McGill (1989) found that positive life events were associated with better health only for people high in self-esteem. Among people low in self-esteem, positive life events were associated with poorer health. The authors of this study replicated this finding in a self-report survey of 61 male and 110 female college students. In addition, they showed that implicit self-esteem moderated the relation between positive life events and self-reported health in the same fashion as explicit self-esteem did. Whereas people high in implicit self-esteem reported being healthier when they experienced more positive life events, people low in implicit self-esteem reported being healthier when they experienced fewer positive life events. Moreover, the effects of implicit self-esteem were statistically independent of the effects of explicit self-esteem.     

The role of causal models in multiple judgments under uncertainty

Two studies examined a novel prediction of the causal Bayes net approach to judgments under uncertainty, namely that causal knowledge affects the interpretation of statistical evidence obtained over multiple observations. Participants estimated the conditional probability of an uncertain event (breast cancer) given information about the base rate, hit rate (probability of a positive mammogram given cancer) and false positive rate (probability of a positive mammogram in the absence of cancer). Conditional probability estimates were made after observing one or two positive mammograms. Participants exhibited a causal stability effect: there was a smaller increase in estimates of the probability of cancer over multiple positive mammograms when a causal explanation of false positives was provided. This was the case when the judgments were made by different participants (Experiment 1) or by the same participants (Experiment 2). These results show that identical patterns of observed events can lead to different estimates of event probability depending on beliefs about the generative causes of the observations.     

Emotional scenes elicit more pronounced self-reported emotional experience and greater EPN and LPP modulation when compared to emotional faces

Emotional faces and scenes carry a wealth of overlapping and distinct perceptual information. Despite widespread use in the investigation of emotional perception, expressive face and evocative scene stimuli are rarely assessed in the same experiment. Here, we evaluated self-reports of arousal and pleasantness, as well as early and late event-related potentials (e.g., N170, early posterior negativity [EPN], late positive potential [LPP]) as subjects viewed neutral and emotional faces and scenes, including contents representing anger, fear, and joy. Results demonstrate that emotional scenes were rated as more evocative than emotional faces, as only scenes produced elevated self-reports of arousal. In addition, viewing scenes resulted in more extreme ratings of pleasantness (and unpleasantness) than did faces. EEG results indicate that both expressive faces and emotional scenes evoke enhanced negativity in the N170 component, while the EPN and LPP components show significantly enhanced modulation only by scene, relative to face stimuli. These data suggest that viewing emotional scenes results in a more pronounced emotional experience that is associated with reliable modulation of visual event-related potentials that are implicated in emotional circuits in the brain.     

Parenting Adolescents: Examining the Factor Structure of the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire for Adolescents

The Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ) is a well studied assessment of parenting practices for school-age children, especially in relation to child externalizing behaviors. Given the developmental changes between school-age children and adolescents and subsequent changes to parenting approaches during that time, the utility of a public-accessed measure to span across a broad age range is of high clinical and empirical importance. This study investigated the psychometric properties of the APQ in a community sample of 376 parents of adolescents. In an Exploratory Factor Analysis the data suggested a 4-factor solution similar in composition to the original 5-factor model. Proposed factors for the APQ when given to parents of adolescents included Positive and Involved Parenting, Parental Monitoring, Discipline Practices, and Discipline Process.     

Music evokes vivid autobiographical memories

Music is strongly intertwined with memories—for example, hearing a song from the past can transport you back in time, triggering the sights, sounds, and feelings of a specific event. This association between music and vivid autobiographical memory is intuitively apparent, but the idea that music is intimately tied with memories, seemingly more so than other potent memory cues (e.g., familiar faces), has not been empirically tested. Here, we compared memories evoked by music to those evoked by famous faces, predicting that music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) would be more vivid. Participants listened to 30 songs, viewed 30 faces, and reported on memories that were evoked. Memories were transcribed and coded for vividness as in Levine, B., Svoboda, E., Hay, J. F., Winocur, G., & Moscovitch, M. [2002. Aging and autobiographical memory: Dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval. Psychology and Aging, 17, 677–689]. In support of our hypothesis, MEAMs were more vivid than autobiographical memories evoked by faces. MEAMs contained a greater proportion of internal details and a greater number of perceptual details, while face-evoked memories contained a greater number of external details. Additionally, we identified sex differences in memory vividness: for both stimulus categories, women retrieved more vivid memories than men. The results show that music not only effectively evokes autobiographical memories, but that these memories are more vivid than those evoked by famous faces.     

Using behavioral economics to optimize safer undergraduate late-night transportation

Many universities sponsor student-oriented transit services that could reduce alcohol-induced risks but only if services adequately anticipate and adapt to student needs. Human choice data offer an optimal foundation for planning and executing late-night transit services. In this simulated choice experiment, respondents opted to either (a) wait an escalating delay for a free university-sponsored “safe” option, (b) pay an escalating fee for an on-demand rideshare service, or (c) pick a free, immediately available “unsafe” option (e.g., ride with an alcohol-impaired driver). Behavioral-economic nonlinear models of averaged-choice data describe preference across arrangements. Best-fit metrics indicate adequate sensitivity to contextual factors (i.e., wait time, preceding late-night activity). At short delays, students preferred the free transit option. As delays extend beyond 30 min, most students preferred competing alternatives. These data depict a policy-relevant delay threshold to better safeguard undergraduate student safety.