Timing of pubertal maturation in girls: an integrated life history approach

Life history theory provides a metatheoretical framework for the study of pubertal timing from an evolutionary-developmental perspective. The current article reviews 5 middle-level theories--energetics theory, stress-suppression theory, psychosocial acceleration theory, paternal investment theory, and child development theory--each of which applies the basic assumptions of life history theory to the question of environmental influences on timing of puberty in girls. These theories converge in their conceptualization of pubertal timing as responsive to ecological conditions but diverge in their conceptualization of (a) the nature, extent, and direction of environmental influences and (b) the effects of pubertal timing on other reproductive variables. Competing hypotheses derived from the 5 perspectives are evaluated. An extension of W. T. Boyce and B. J. Ellis's (in press) theory of stress reactivity is proposed to account for both inhibiting and accelerating effects of psychosocial stress on timing of pubertal development. This review highlights the multiplicity of (often unrecognized) perspectives guiding research, raises challenges to virtually all of these, and presents an alternative framework in an effort to move research forward in this arena of multidisciplinary inquiry.     

How to be an Anti-Skeptic and a NonContextualist

Contextualists often argue from examples where it seems true to say in one context that a person knows something but not true to say that in another context where skeptical hypotheses have been introduced. The skeptical hypotheses can be moderate, simply mentioning what might be the case or raising questions about what a person is certain of, or radical, where scenarios about demon worlds, brains in vats, The Matrix, etc., are introduced. I argue that the introduction of these skeptical hypotheses leads people to fallaciously infer that it is no longer true to say that the relevant person knows. I believe that that is a better explanation of the so-called intuition that the person does not know than the contextualists who claim that raising these skeptical hypotheses changes the standards that determine when it is true to say S knows that P. At the end I raise the possibility that contextualists might defend their view on pragmatic rather than skeptical grounds by arguing that the standards of evidence rise when more is at stake in a practical sense.     

Resilient teachers: resisting stress and burnout

In Australia, the incidence of teacher stress and burnout has caused serious concern. Many studies of teacher stress have focused on the dysfunctional strategies of individual teachers – in other words they have adopted a deficit approach to the problem with the focus firmly fixed on whats going wrong. From this perspective, the failure of some teachers to cope has generally been defined as a personal rather than an institutional weakness and the solutions that have been promoted have been largely palliative or therapeutic. The study reported in this paper adopted a different approach to the question of teacher stress and burnout. Instead of asking whats going wrong we asked why are some teachers able to cope successfully with the same kinds of stressors that appear to defeat others – in other words, we looked at whats going right.     

Look into my eyes: gaze direction and person memory

The current research considered the effects of gaze direction on a fundamental aspect of social cogition: person memory. It was anticipated that a person's direction of gaze (i.e., direct or averted) would impact his or her subsequent memorability, such that recognition would be enhanced for targets previously displaying direct gaze. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with faces displaying either direct or averted gaze in a person-classification (i.e., conceptual) task. Then, in a surprise memory test, they were required to report whether a presented face had been seen before. As expected, a recognition advantage was observed for targets displaying direct gaze during the initial classification task. This finding was replicated and extended in a second experiment in which participants initially reported the spatial location (i.e., perceptual task) of each face. We consider the implications of these findings for basic aspects of social-cognitive functioning and person perception.     

Emotions, personality, and health: introduction to the special issue

Our intent in this introduction to the special issue on Emotions, Personality, and Health is to alert readers to the logic underlying the editors' choices of topics for the issue and to provide a brief summary of its contents. We discuss how the 10 articles fit together to provide a mosaic of diverse approaches to the study of emotion. Collectively, these articles show ways that emotion research may be integrated with personality theory to inform us about the psychological dimensions of health and illness.     

Children's performance on a false-belief task is impaired by activation of an evolutionarily-canalized response system

We examine whether children's performance on a false-belief task is impaired by task content that activates an early-developing, prepotent motivational system: predator-avoidance. In two studies (N = 46 and N = 37), children aged 3-4 years completed variants of a false-belief task that involved predator-avoidance, playmate-avoidance, prey-seeking, and playmate-seeking, respectively. The proportion of correct answers on the playmate-avoidance task (Study 1: 52%; Study 2: 51%) was significantly greater than the proportion of correct answers on the analogous predator-avoidance task (Study 1: 28%; Study 2: 22%). This difference was not an artifact of children generally performing better on playmate stories than on predator-prey stories. The findings are consistent with the hypothesis that activation of the predator-avoidance system generates prepotent response patterns that pre-empt full consideration of the mental states of the prey characters in false-belief stories.     

Do expertise and the degree of perception-action coupling affect natural anticipatory performance?

Two experiments using a temporal occlusion paradigm (the first with expert and novice participants and the second with participants of intermediate skill) were conducted to examine the capability of tennis players to predict the direction of an opponent's service in situ. In both experiments two different response conditions, reflecting differing degrees of perception-action coupling, were employed. In a coupled condition players were required to make a movement-based response identical to that which they would use to hit a return of service in a game situation, whereas in an uncoupled condition a verbal prediction of service direction was required. Experiment 1 provided clear evidence of superior prediction accuracy under the coupled response condition when ball flight was available, plus some limited evidence to suggest that superior prediction accuracy under uncoupled response conditions might hold true if only advance (pre-contact) information was available. Experiment 2 showed the former finding to be a robust one, but was unable to reveal any support for the latter. Experiment 1 also revealed that expert superiority is more apparent for predictions made under natural (coupled) than uncoupled response-mode conditions. Collectively, these findings suggest that different perceptual processes may be in operation in anticipatory tasks which depend on skill level, the type of information presented, and degree of perception-action coupling inherent in the task requirements.